Betsy Sharkey

All the Wilderness seems tailor-made to play to the actor's strengths — Johnson's script is as lean as Smit-McPhee, both proving adept at doing more with less.

A strange, but strangely entertaining combo of drag racing machismo, slapstick silliness, raunchy riffs, politically incorrect rants and sweet nothings.

By turns hysterical, heretical, guilty, innocent, silly, sophisticated, teasing and tedious.

The spectacularly brutal fighting is the film's main calling card, and in that "Rise of an Empire" doesn't disappoint. Still, in the battle for best guilty pleasure, I'd give it to the Spartans of "300," by a head.

The finale is not an all-out disappointment. It should satisfy the franchise's fans, and it does wrap up any loose ends you might be wondering about.

The sequel sometimes feels like a series of gags ginned up by a gaggle of writers who are not always on the same page.

In truth, the film fizzles as much as it fumes.

What's missing are the kind of moments that actually matter, the ones that are so gripping that you want desperately for time to stop - to savor them, to feel the fear, the passion, the regret. Ah, well … maybe next time.

It's clear from first frame to last that the filmmakers decided to go broad, very broad, with a story that swings between hysterical, hyper-sexual, bizarre, surprisingly tender and just plain awful. This is one mixed bag of a movie.

A hyper-realistic-looking, character-driven story of survival with talking dinosaurs that can't decide whether to inform or entertain. The film and its featured creatures do a little of both but modestly.

Gimme Shelter, a ripped-from-real-life story of a pregnant teen's journey toward hope, is filled with very good intentions, very bad dialogue and a surprisingly affecting turn by its star Vanessa Hudgens.

Too many of the characters are either good or bad, and that loss of nuance is missed.

An emotional runaway of a film that carries neither the insight nor the uplift to make the weight of its dark journey worth it.

There's no real depth or texture to the characters of any sort, sentimental or otherwise, and I say that as someone who can be brought to tears by a Hallmark commercial.

The struggles in the movie are with the moments when life and liberty are on the line. The ones that should put you on the edge of your seat are more likely to have you glancing at your watch.

Two things to keep in mind when considering Barrymore, starring Christopher Plummer as the great John B: It was brilliant as a one-man stage show; it was never a good candidate for film.

The animation is snappy in the way it handles an extremely eclectic-looking bunch of monsters. The 3-D effects are nifty but, as with so much about "MU," not necessary.

The Purge: Anarchy is a good deal bloodier, but also — gulp — a good deal better than its predecessor. Make no mistake, a good "Purge" does not equal a good movie, but the post-apocalyptic thriller is slightly more interesting because it takes itself, and its menace, more seriously.

The script, written by director John Slattery and Alex Metcalf, drifts too quickly into blue-collar cliches, leaving its interesting collection of characters only half-drawn at best.

Fortunately Stewart seems to thrive in water over her head, and when she pulls Gandolfini in with her the movie gels. It makes you wish the filmmaker had left them in the deep end longer.

The film is helped by Costner's self-deprecating, aw-shucks charm. The actor is game whether he's being asked to fight off truculent teens or treacherous terrorists.

On the face of it, tackling the warring sides of science and the spirit seemed a good fit for the writer-director, who continues to be drawn to existential themes. There are occasional flashes of the exceptional, but the film's dodgy story can't sustain them.

Smart isn't all it's cracked up to be and soon the movie is unraveling faster than all of Eddie's grand schemes.

At some point you hope the actor (Butler) will find a movie that will give him the right material to make hearts truly beat faster. Until then, it appears we'll have to settle for films with more flaws than his characters.

What the movie could use is a little more faith — in the power of its message and the art of filmmaking. Instead, Heaven is sincere to a fault, and the closer it gets to heaven, the more it wavers.

Cirque is a harmless bit of fluff with a very cool look, but there's just never enough bite.

The To Do List is neither supergood nor superbad, but passable doesn't exactly raise the bar.

Piranha 3D is trying so hard for the laughs and the allusions amid all the gore, and endless bloodbath of bare naked ladies, that it completely forgets to frighten anyone.