Betsy Sharkey

It is difficult to tell whether the filmmakers intended Welcome to the Jungle as a satire or a farce. It is neither funny enough, nor clever enough, to measure up in either case.

The Lego Movie is strikingly, exhilaratingly, exhaustingly fresh.

The filmmaker constructs a growing sense of dread with the calculated precision of a classic horror movie.

Garcia and Farmiga have such an easy, natural chemistry that their on-screen sparkle helps mitigate the film's weaknesses. At others times, it serves to underscore what might have been. It's a feckless conundrum.

What makes this film particularly bedeviling is that you get the sense there is a nice guy behind this mess, one not so callous about matters of the heart. If anything, the raunch seems forced. The closer the film gets to real emotions, the more authentic it feels.

Between Lelio's ingenuity in staging the film, an extremely clever script co-written with his frequent collaborator, Gonzalo Maza, and the pumping disco that interjects its opinions and assessments of each situation, Gloria is one of the most enjoyable movies to come along in a while.

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.

The laughs here are lazy, and any sense of logic is definitely on the lam.

The film finds its footing as the weekend progresses and the temperature and tension — outside and in — rise.

Berg, who wrote and directed, is more interested in how men deal with battle than the ideals or the politics that put them there. What the movie achieves, with a gruesome energy and a remarkable reality, is a firefight.

A very fast three hours, Wolf is a fascinating, revolting, outlandish, uproarious, exhilarating and exhausting master work on immorality.

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.

With so many sight gags and nearly every living comic in the world making an appearance at some point, the entire operation, like Ron's ego, feels a bit bloated.

This drama, about an ordinary guy trying to keep his infant daughter alive in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, is sincere but struggles as much as its hero.

Like art itself, words can't fully capture what it is like to see the Vermeer emerge under Jenison's brush. Or to see Jenison's obsession with the idea run its course.

Jackson's latest go at Tolkien's treasured "Hobbit" story gets closer to that rich alchemy of fantasy, adventure, imagination and emotion that made his "Lord of the Rings" trilogy such a triumph.

The most hopeful — and the best — of this solid and unsettling series.

Bale, Affleck and Harrelson are in their element as men battered by life, delivering exceptional performances that hold nothing back. Bale and Affleck are as nuanced as Harrelson is unhinged. It is among the finest work done by all three.

Deeply moving and devoid of melodrama, These Birds Walk is as pragmatic as its subjects.

Many of the transitions between narrative and music are rough. The temptations of the street, all too real in the real world, feel forced. Confrontations become clichés. The substance of human motivation is missing. And thus the heart never beats as it should.

Oldboy suggests a filmmaker doing almost as much soul-searching as the main character. There is a brashness in the risks taken, the very imperfections revealing an artist finding new inspiration. For Lee, this weird, brutal film seems to have freed him.

Delivery Man, a heart-tugging new comedy about fatherhood and family, is warm as well as wry.

Frozen is fabulous.

I don't know whether the tall man is happy, but I do know that Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? is intellectually and visually groundbreaking, and most certainly a film.

A joyous, raucous, righteous film but also a frustrating and disappointing one.

The Ghosts in Our Machine, a heartfelt meditation on animal rights, comes at you as a whisper. It depends on the persuasive powers of creatures great and small — in their natural habitat or in cages — to argue that we stop using them for food, clothing, research and entertainment.

Though this is an emotionally driven movie, it never drifts into melodrama. Collyer is as pragmatic in her approach as her characters. But it is Dillon and Watts' nuanced portrayals that make "Sunlight's" darkness so appealing.

Even with some flaws and flailing, Dallas Buyers Club is a rough, raw, ragged and exhilarating ride.