Why did Mr. De Niro do it, and why would anyone pay money to see it?

The film is unsparing as history and enthralling as biography.

His new film, in Persian with English subtitles, is of a piece with his best work — tightly focused, rather than broad-gauge brilliant, and another instance of this superb filmmaker turning elusive motivations and the mysteries of personality into gripping drama.

Congrats to Mr. McConaughey, usually a beanpole, for making himself unfashionably fat. The movie, though, is thin, if semi-clever, the synthetically exuberant tale of a rogue’s journey from rags to riches and back again.

All I can say is that A Dog’s Purpose left me cherishing my borderline-venerable Skeezix; longing to see Scamp and Fluff and Sukoshi and Sally, the dear departed dogs of my life; and wishing I could have been reincarnated as a better master than I was.

Mr. Von Einsiedel is convinced that his subjects are “true heroes.” Viewers will be convinced of the same.

This exquisite animated feature, directed by Michael Dudok de Wit, has no dialogue, only the sounds of water, wind and birds, the occasional strains of Laurent Perez del Mar’s graceful score; and images of a young castaway living out the stages of his life on a desert island after giant storm waves hurl him onto a beach.

Split reworks some of the themes Mr. Shyamalan developed in the 2000 “Unbreakable” — weakness and strength, unstoppable power, a sense of emergent destiny. The film contends that people are purified by suffering. Having suffered through the screening, I’m still waiting for my purer self to kick in.

Mr. Keaton’s performance is fascinating from beginning to end, and the movie around him is entertaining in fits and starts. Ultimately, though, it’s a tough sell, a biopic with an uncertain tone that doesn’t know what to make of its subject.

Watching a bad movie can be fun for reasons that have less to do with its essence than with its trappings. I enjoyed some of the characters’ cardboard and/or plastic names.

The tone is earnest, with dialogue that sometimes plods when you want it to fly — a running time of 127 minutes doesn’t help the pacing — and a couple of pieces of casting are infelicitous: Jim Parsons gives a flat performance as the fictional Paul Stafford, NASA’s lead engineer, and Glen Powell is years too young to play John Glenn, who looks like a gung-ho frat boy.

For all its sporadic philosophizing and belated stabs at romance, Live by Night is cold and inert at its core. That’s really the long and short of it.

Brilliantly funny and moving comedy.

What makes this droll, darting story about a loose group of family and friends so moving? The answer lies partly in its tone. Mr. Mills seems to have thrown everything he could think of into the mix, dramatic unities be damned, but suffused it all with a poetic sense of life’s goofiness, solemnity and evanescence.

This is filmmaking as an act of devotion, and exploration — not just of the nature of faith but of faith’s obverse, abject doubt. The production is physically beautiful, and evokes the beauties of classic Japanese films, but the substance makes few concessions to conventional notions of entertainment.

Do watch it on a big screen to take in all the beauty. A couple of flawless live-action performances share the screen with lovely animation, and with whatever digital magic spawned the monster — who looks like a tree, has molten sap, biteless bark, Liam Neeson’s voice and a face that reminded me of Boris Karloff.

The whole movie prompts a sense of wonderment: at how boring, dumb and vacant it is; how it fails to give its co-stars enough to do; how the tone changes from one moment to the next; how presumably hard-headed businessmen could have sunk so much money into such a feeble script (the production values are impressive, albeit antiseptic); and, most importantly, how the script raises a crucial question of ethics, then comes up with the wrong answer.

This latest feature by the Spanish master isn’t up there with his sensational best. All the same, give thanks for substantial favors.

The hurtling action, speaking louder than any dialogue, gives a stirring sense of the suffering and heroism that flowed from the terror at the Boylston Street finish line.

[Barry's] search for an identity is the ignition and combustion of the film. The exhaust, however, comes courtesy of Philip Morris. And the odor, like that surrounding the film itself, is of provocation in service of no cogent point.

Fascinating — though overlong and sometimes slow.

A movie that means to be uplifting but turns out to be insufferable.

It’s all too seldom that a feature film combines brilliant acting with a spellbinding flow of language.

The fault lies not with Ms. Jones, an appealing performer, but with Gareth Edwards, who directed doggedly from a delight-free script by Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy.

Damien Chazelle’s musical, consistently daring and occasionally sublime, does what the movies have all but forgotten how to do — sweep us up into a dream of love that’s enhanced in an urgent present by the mythic power of Hollywood’s past.

At the center of this swirl of events, poignant recollections and utter pandemonium, Ms. Portman’s Jackie is a mesmerizing presence.

The filmmaker has put two familiar pieces of music to such glorious, full-throated use toward the end that I can’t resist mentioning them: Donovan’s “Deep Peace,” and “Unchained Melody” done in close harmony by the Fleetwoods. For Nathalie in the uncertainty of the here and now, peace and harmony are great ideas too.

Saroo is played dazzlingly by Dev Patel, who gives his richest performance since Mira Nair’s “The Namesake.”