For a while, the movie is like “National Lampoon’s Vacation” if Clark Griswold had secretly been Steven Seagal. Is it remotely “believable”? No. But “Nobody 2,” like “Nobody” before it, unfolds in its own weirdly grounded action-fantasy universe. Odenkirk has the ability to make behaving glumly fretful seem like a form of slyness; he’s really creating a conspiracy with the audience.

The “Neon Bull” director has always had an incredible visual sense, though his plots tend to lack focus. Not this one.

The filmmaking is at its most successful when it moves away from dialogue-driven sequences and into the more visual, visceral aspects of Nejma’s chosen line of work.

The duly playful, freeform result occasionally skirts preciousness but is mostly rather affecting, bound by a palpable sense of female friendship and a perceptive interest in the dynamics thereof.

Solving one mystery unexpectedly quickly before diving into deeper, more searching uncertainties of human behavior and relationships, the third feature from Singaporean writer-director Yeo Siew Hua gradually reveals a broken heart beneath its sleek, chilly veneer.

The bottom line is that none of these characters, after the swap, seem different enough from themselves to allow the comedy to detonate. That said, the double swap lends “Freakier Friday” a juggling-balls-in-the-air quality that gives off a pleasant hum. It’s fun to ride the film’s complications.

Regardless of how you feel about the ending (and many will happily embrace the movie’s darkly comic finale), Cregger has achieved something remarkable here, crafting a cruel and twisted bedtime story of the sort the Brothers Grimm might have spun.

It’s a densely textured, quite gorgeous dive into folkloric witchiness that avoids nearly all anticipated clichés, finally arriving at something not so much terrifying as unexpectedly poignant.

Ultimately, though, Before We Forget feels much too tidy (didactic, even) in how it unfolds for it to land the emotional gutpunch it so wants to deliver.

The movie doesn’t deal in labels — it’s not important to the filmmakers whether Luke identifies as gay, straight or bisexual — but instead presents this relationship as one that expands the provincial notion of romance someone like Luke might have had.

White’s bemused alpha authority carries the day. And this uneven, sometimes sloppy vehicle gets a real boost from Method Man. He lends his wannabe-main-character sidekick moments of comedic invention that make him MVP here, much as he was in the very different “Bad Shabbos” a couple months ago.

Rowland ratchets up the suspense with cunning and confidence, advancing the narrative and introducing secondary characters with suitable swiftness and meticulous precision that never call undue attention to themselves.

What should be a tender, feminist-minded story centered on a young woman rediscovering her dormant childhood dreamer turns into a middling melodrama about being with a cute guy in desperate need of her rescue.

When it comes to customer satisfaction, does Amazon’s refund policy apply to stuff like this?

The Naked Gun has enough honest laughs to get by.

Davidson shows he may not have the chops to carry a horror film, while DeMonaco fails to deliver any thrills this time. Ultimately, it’s a by-the-numbers effort that proves quite disappointing.

Happy Gilmore 2 is a happy orgy of raucously well-executed Adam Sandler fan service. It’s a pointed exercise in nostalgia, but with a present-tense edge. It’s not some fake update of the clever/dumb brand of slob comedy that made Sandler a superstar in the ’90s. It’s the genuine article, a true revival of Sandler’s Jerry Lewis-meets-rock ‘n’ roll rage. A sequel to his fabled 1996 golf comedy, it extends that movie’s anarchy-on-the-putting-green spirit as blithely as if the original had been made yesterday.

If you let yourself get on that wavelength of frisky innocence, The Bad Guys 2 exerts a wholesome and slightly mischievous appeal.

Duplass is careful to make a film where it’s up to the people involved to make Christmas a special occasion, rather than any relying on the genre’s traditional trappings. In that regard, The Baltimorons has something to celebrate.

True to its subtitle, the film feels like a fresh start. And like this summer’s blockbuster “Superman” reboot over at DC, that could be just what it takes to win back audiences suffering from superhero exhaustion.

“Smurfs” might be the best of the Smurfs films. It’s an amiable diversion for kids.

Annapurna Sriram manages to succeed in delivering a singular vision in all aspects of filmmaking, though not without its influences.

Nearly every scene plays a bit too long. The characters keep at it until they exhaust the situation and whatever jokes it brings, to the point it stops being funny and starts to grow tiresome.

Guns & Moses can be accused of implausibility, tonal missteps and sporadic heavy-handedness — but you can’t say it lacks chutzpah.

Theirs is an outwardly simple life made complex with yearnings, resentments and impossible dreams: equally mythic and mundane, as presented in Miro Remo‘s wonderfully sui generis portrait Better Go Mad in the Wild.

I appreciated that Robinson was actually trying to make a real movie out of all this. Yet it’s not a real movie. It’s a concoction impersonating one.

The movie is a real-world thriller that’s also a riveting character study that’s also a portrait of the place where the reactionary politics of today curdles into obsession.

Heady almost to a fault, Daniela Forever is all concept, all the time. Vigalondo’s screenplay is much too schematic and analytical for its own good.

As the celluloid universe spun from Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” continues to accrue remakes, spin-offs, addendums and miscellany, “Boys” does provide one potentially compelling footnote. But its execution feels like a missed opportunity.

Beyond all the legal and even medical specifics resides a sense of communal understanding, and — at the risk of sounding mawkish — a deep and abiding love for one’s fellow human beings, which Feder taps into with aplomb.

The new movie isn’t “dark” (Zack Snyder’s ambitious mistake) so much as it’s a loopy, spinning, multifaceted story with genuine emotional stakes. That’s why it treats Superman’s powers as the most spectacular and least interesting thing about him.

Provazník’s focus is not on trauma, and it’s fitting that such a sensitive, understated treatment of real-world abuse should end on a poignant note of solidarity.

Donnelly seems reluctant to embrace melodrama at the same time that he fails to provide the psychological detailing needed to elevate this story above stock genre expectations.

“Nobody” director Ilya Naishuller takes gags that have no business working . . . and milks them for laughs, adding original solutions to otherwise familiar action scenes.

for all the talk of centuries gone by, “The Old Guard 2” feels like a time-tripping action fantasy made on the cheap.

The movie offers an updated version of the same basic ride Spielberg offered 32 years earlier, and yet, it hardly feels essential to the series’ overall mythology, nor does it signal where the franchise could be headed.

Sparkling like a rhinestone in the rough, Ponyboi stands out amid a lineup of cartoon gangsters, tough-guy dealers and gum-smacking prostitutes — lowlifes recycled from a hundred late-night cable movies with superficially similar plots.

This half-baked potboiler leaves one with the nagging suspicion that it was produced simply to meet some sort of quota, and cast with actors who came on board only because they lost bets.

Lavender Men is a heady and meta-theatrical excavation of Lincoln’s long-rumored gay affair that’s wildly ambitious if a tad overstuffed.

Malformed comedy and character beats keep the movie feeling like a rough first draft.

M3GAN 2.0 is amusing at moments, overblown at others. Here’s hoping that “M3GAN 3.0” is brasher, funkier, crazier.

It is the greatest and most elaborate comedy ever filmed, and will stand for years as the biggest hit in its field.

Because the nimble, genre-hopping movie is set in the world of K-pop, it may not even occur to fans that they’re watching a musical — although it’s kind of hard to deny as you catch yourself singing along.

Inside has a suspense hook to drive it forward and a climactic violent set piece, if not quite the one we were expecting. But the question of who’s going to kill or get killed ultimately proves less important than how their pasts have shaped these men — or rather trapped them, like quicksand.

It is engrossing stuff, as a cautionary tale as well as a taste of the spirit that leads people into explorations more bold than wise. The lure of the ocean’s mysteries (and the Titanic’s enduring romance) are vividly conveyed.

When you’re simply looking for something semi-interesting to stream, stories like these don’t necessarily require great actors, but great actors are the reason some of them still reverberate in our memory decades later.

In “Something Beautiful,” with the songs employed as catwalk power anthems, you see how Miley Cyrus, in elevating her erotic aura, is trying to be a performer of mystery — to let her beauty singe our eyeballs, to let it vibrate into the cosmos. Yet it’s all a little insular.

Barbara Walters Tell Me Everything is a documentary a lot like its subject. It’s sharp and inquiring in a playful way. It asks friendly questions but knows just when to toss in a tough one. It sizes up important people with clear-eyed worldly perception, but it’s also enthralled by the seductions of fame and money and power.

The message feels muddled amid all the pratfalls and fart jokes.

Its aesthetic approach seldom lives up to its gestures toward camp as a guiding principle or its weighty themes (except, perhaps, in its surprisingly raucous final act). However, its flimsy aesthetic foundations are supported by remarkably well-formed characters.

Typically, we look to adrenaline-fueled entertainment for catharsis. Boyle’s thrilling reboot offers enlightenment as well.

It’s not just a wallow in nostalgia: It also stands on its own merits as a satisfying entertainment that could easily find a receptive audience among folks who’ve never seen, or even heard of, such golden oldies as “Seven Ways from Sundown” or “Gunfight at Comanche Creek.”

Enigma, an HBO production that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, derives its strength mostly from Lear’s resolve to always be herself. And with that, the film can inspire courage in its audience, whatever their identity.

While Ride and O’ Shaughnessy never wed. Her candor here marries a spectacular professional saga with the personal love story convincingly.

We go into “F1” excited about being excited, and the film makes good on that. It’s nothing if not an adrenaline high. Yet it’s a high that may leave you feeling a bit empty afterwards.

Elio is right at home in the Pixar catalog, but lacks those undeniable signs of intelligent life (wit, surprise and the capacity to expand the medium) that set the studio’s best work apart.

Once all the toasts are made and the rice is tossed, Bride Hard proves an entertaining marriage of something borrowed (the plot) and something blue (some of the jokes).

Everything’s Going to Be Great is a ramble, an unconvincing grab bag, a domestic tall tale with too much stuffed into it.

Sacrificing good taste in pursuit of the higher goal — which could be described as joining “Fritz the Cat” in animated infamy — Tartakovsky and co-writer Jon Vitti (a veteran of “Saturday Night Live” and “The Simpsons”) make no apologies for the project’s obscene sense of humor.

At first, DeBlois’ involvement felt like a way of protecting “Dragon” from some other director coming along and destroying it. But by the end, his vision serves to bring the whole fantastical story one step closer to reality.

It’s a sharp and serious social romantic drama full of telling observations about the way we live now, and about how connected that is (or not) to the way we’ve always lived. And there’s a dark side to it. It’s “Sex and the City” filtered through a sobering reality check.

It’s busier than it is funny, more frenetic than dynamic, but watchable enough.

Straw is too messy to be “good,” exactly — but it has a bitter relevancy, and it works.

Whether gazing in rapt widescreen across wondrous ancient structures, ruined recent cityscapes or the oceanic shift and shake of a stone quarry in action, this is blatantly dazzling, epic-scale filmmaking that nonetheless invites viewers to consider the implications of our awe.

Ballerina is a worthy entry in the “John Wick” canon, though I say that as someone who doesn’t think the “John Wick” canon is all that. By the end, Ana de Armas has proved that fighting like a girl and fighting like a guy need not be appreciably different, especially if they’re all fighting like a video game.

Tortorici evidently remembers that disorienting sense of being released (or perhaps abandoned) into the world before you’ve quite found yourself; if you don’t, his funny, nervy, aptly unformed film will give you quivery flashbacks. It’s an auspicious arrival for both the filmmaker and his intense, mercurial young star Manfredi Marini, who holds the camera with the guilelessness of a newcomer and the ease of a natural.

The ambition of Mountainhead is much lower than diagnosing the underlying dysfunction of the privileged few who run the world, settling for putting their dysfunction on caustically hilarious display.

A Useful Ghost is an entertaining and moving – if also somewhat sprawling – fable of love and loss that isn’t quite like anything you’ve seen before.

The result is a hauntingly timeless depiction of power and its mechanisms, filtered down to an intimate tale of journalistic integrity.

The film unfolds in a dreamy, liminal place in Sofia’s personal evolution, but lacks the tangible sense of vicariously experiencing it ourselves — a shame, since it’s a splendid location in which to be doing such intensive self-healing.

“Ballad” is assembled with such peculiar, calm exactness that it actually resembles a series of experiments in simplicity.

It’s a movie that’s unapologetically basic and wholesome and, at 94 minutes, refreshingly stripped down. In its formulaic way, it works as an antidote to the bloat and clutter of your average “high-powered” teenage/kiddie flick.

While the ultimate destination somewhat underwhelms, it’s a thrill to see Foster navigating a fully bilingual role, while tossing off the kind of personal insights only an expat could feel toward the French — a tiny glimpse into Foster’s private life, perhaps.

Whether the love it features on screen is simple or complex, and whether it’s romantic, platonic or maternal, the film lands on tremendously moving moments that stir the soul by scrutinizing the dueling cruelty and tenderness found within its characters.

While The President’s Cake mostly plays like a genial fairy tale, with superbly balanced humor and drama, Hadi's still unsparing about the ills of patriarchal society.

As the audience is taken in by this intimate and well-observed drama, the rug gets pulled from beneath them by revealing the violence and strife that was simmering underneath. It’s a trick so devastating that it completely upends the movie, elevating it into a deeply humanist narrative.

A whirling, maximalist satire at once despairing and exuberant, subtle as a cannonball in its evisceration of the ruling classes and those who obey them, it’s both absurdist comedy and serious-as-cancer polemic: as grave as any film with an extended dance break to 2000s novelty hit “The Ketchup Song” can possibly be.

Deeply moving but never manipulative, Young Mothers amounts to the brothers’ best film in more than a decade.

Honey Don’t! is a deliberate throwaway — a knowingly light and funny mock escapist thriller, one that’s just trying to show you a flaky good time.

Very possibly her most accessible and enjoyable film to date, still it remains an unmistakably Reichardtian investigation into the fabric of ordinariness and what happens when it frays.

There are no grand moments, enormous revelations or manipulatively overpowering scores in his delicately constructed and produced film — it is as narratively straightforward as movies come.

The psychology simply doesn’t add up.

Simón’s sweetly sorrowful ode to lost family imagines what might have been, while acknowledging that not all memories can be passed down between generations — some die deliciously with us.

For those who miss the way the movies used to act on us, it is a reminder of the uniquely paradoxical pleasures of immersion and surrender: a dazzlingly cineliterate lesson in the lost art of letting go.

Reprising high-school slasher cliches dating back at least to 1980’s “Prom Night,” minus any particular invention or irony, this new entry is a slick-enough but disappointingly unimaginative effort that can’t even be bothered to reference the mythology established in the prior films.

The History of Sound is a movie that never fully finds a life beyond what it is on paper.

While not as stylistically radical as Trier’s last film, “The Worst Person in the World,” this layered family-centric drama (which was also written by Eskil Vogt) shares its ability to find fresh angles on sentiments you’d think that cinema would have exhausted by now.

This thoroughly predictable but undeniably engaging faith-based drama is an inoffensively old-fashioned entertainment that, with only minor tweaking, could pass for a Walt Disney Studios release of yore.

Despite Guy Ritchie’s herculean efforts to combine a whole lot of immediately familiar elements into a brisk, occasionally imaginative “adventure movie” potpourri, screenwriter James Vanderbilt’s reinvention of footnotes from his real-life family history never quite achieves the consistent balance between real-world seriousness and buoyant escapism demanded of a globe-trotting treasure hunt like this.

The push-pull kinetics keeping these increasingly raddled lovers together and apart eventually turn from manic to strenuous, not least because viewers are likely to be less invested than the film is in their final formation.

Left-Handed Girl is an assured and lovely portrait of difficult motherhood and painful daughterhood, but it’s perhaps most entrancing for its turning-kaleidoscope-view of the director’s native city, where the characters are the bouncing beads, but Taipei is the glitter and the dazzle.

Johansson, however, while she does a perfectly efficient job of directing, doesn’t hone the tone of her scenes. She keeps the whole thing earnest and rather neutral in a plot-driven way, with Squibb as her wild card.

It’s a trifle, and not even fully successful on its own small-bauble terms. But oh, is it ever meant to bathe you in a warm retro glow.

While the simple premise recalls certain post-WWII dramas in which survivors recognize the Nazi culprits who once terrorized them, the film’s chilling last scene feels like a call to action.

Martone’s repetitive, tediously non-linear film attempts something more impressionistic and expansive, with emotionally muted and sometimes strangely exploitative results.

There’s no defiling of peaches or precocious sexual experimentation between the roughly decade-apart duo, though the ambiguous subtext proves infinitely more fascinating, leaving everyone who sees it with a different interpretation.

Laced with a wry sense of humor, Pillion manages to be both understated and explicit in the way Lighton presents practically everything that happens in Colin and Ray’s unconventional relationship.

Sensitive and empathetic but a little timid in storytelling and style, The Little Sister rests considerably on its lead performance by first-time actor Nadia Melliti.