Connie Ogle

Absolutely Fabulous works best consumed bite-sized; there’s not enough here to warrant a full-length movie. Too much feels like padding.

Gerwig and Hawke are outstanding reasons to see this movie, but your patience — just like Maggie’s — will be tested before it’s over.

Me Before You is a sugar-coated romantic bauble, not a gritty documentary. Giving into its pleasures is not for everyone, but its message — live boldly, as the movie’s hashtag encourages — is an admonition that’s awfully hard to argue.

Watching Beckinsale evade and persuade and charm and infuriate is an utter delight. You might not want Lady Susan in your home, but she’s a force of nature in this amusing film.

Scafaria — who wrote and directed "Seeking a Friend for the End of the World" and co-wrote "Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist" — elevates the material with a terrific eye for detail, an understanding of the complexities of mother-daughter relationships and a generous sense of humor.

Carney gets everything right here: Sing Street hums with authenticity.

I Saw the Light, though, doesn’t live up to Hiddleston’s efforts; it’s shallow and disjointed, handicapped by a weak, cliche-sodden script.

The film moves jerkily, in fits and starts, squandering its promising setup and bogging down in explanation.

Fey is a good fit with the material, and her co-stars are all solid, including Billy Bob Thornton as a laconic general; Martin Freeman as a boozy, charming Scottish journalist; Alfred Molina as a local politician with a crush on Kim; and Christopher Abbott (Girls) as Kim’s fixer and translator (he tries to keep her out of trouble).

James and Riley might make an interesting Elizabeth and Darcy in a traditional Pride and Prejudice, but this version? It’s dead on arrival.

The Lady in the Van doesn’t give in to platitudes. It’s unnervingly honest about its subject.

Director/screenwriter Peter Landesman builds a solid dramatic story around this premise, and Smith delivers a terrific, award-worthy performance as Omalu, nailing his Nigerian accent, his intelligence, his determination to do what he knows is right.

What the film truly reveals is something else entirely: how Jennifer Lawrence can elevate any material, any time, even middle-of-the-pack fare like this.

With compassion, a touch of melancholy and a sense of wonder, Brooklyn reveals the profound truths in a simple, familiar story, ending on a note that’s achingly bittersweet, no matter where you’re from.

Some of the developments feel a bit predictable — shot in the dull hues of gray that match Maud’s life, Suffragette occasionally turns hard truths into platitudes — but the story is inspiring, buoyed by a fine cast, a pointed, important examination of the price paid for a shot at equality.

The real trick, of course, was casting the perfect child actor to carry the heavy load, and Tremblay is a wonder. The smart camera work helps highlight Jack’s perspective, but Abrahamson has also coaxed a genuine, marvelous performance out of the kid that’s key to the film’s emotional weight.

Gerwig, not surprisingly, is a marvel: mercurial, thin-skinned, haughty, desperate, funny, warm, a magnetic presence who mesmerizes the audience in the same way she attracts Tracy.

Too much of the breezy humor that made the book a delight is stripped away, replaced with predictable jokes and broad slapstick, sitcom-quality encounters with women and bears and a pushy, grating sentimentality.

Well-acted and sincere, Testament of Youth is chastely romantic in its treatment of the relationship between Vera and Roland, but the film doesn’t hold back on showing the horror of trench warfare.

If Magic Mike XXL is bulging with anything, it’s inane conversation.

In the end The Overnight promises more than it can deliver: Some of the supposedly provocative material ends up being juvenile, and the movie ends just as the situation gets truly, weirdly interesting. It’s too tame a resolution to a film that suggested the capacity for more.

Even Greg’s tattooed and charismatic history teacher (Jon Bernthal) is more interesting than the self-absorbed kid we’re supposed to care about.

As it is, Gemma Bovery is as dry as day-old bread: Not inedible, but why bother with it if you can find something fresher?

The film never allows any of its characters to fall into stereotype; they are complex creatures, full of anger and disappointment and passion, and even the weakest among them is not bereft of honor.

The Age of Adaline is a modern romantic fairy tale set in San Francisco, marred by bad narration and an unnecessary desire to overexplain random magic.

Merely adding an older generation of lovers to a love story does not make your romance one for the ages. Doesn’t even make it "The Notebook."

This period piece, directed by Richard Laxton, is shot in such a grim and grainy fashion you long to turn on the lights — which is fitting, because you also wish the filmmakers had illuminated the characters a bit more clearly.

Unfortunately, Insurgent can’t quite live up to its intriguing set up. Even if you’re curious about it, the movie is often plodding and frequently nonsensical, with action that never feels novel or exciting.