Carrie Rickey

It's an involving journey, remarkably free of sentimentality, deepened by the performances.

Whatever you call 21 Jump Street, this potty-mouthed and drug-laced reimagining of the 1980s TV show has one of the highest laughs-per-minute ratios since the "Naked Gun" films.

David Wain's riotous, raunchy, and more than a little raggedy showcase for Rudd's improv genius and Aniston's airy groundedness. He is gut-busting funny, she gently ticklish - ideal comic rapport.

The film's focus on the contest between the two agents does throw the film off-balance.

As lovingly written as it is beautifully rendered.

Madonna the director deserves a script better than the one Madonna the screenwriter handed off to her. The movie is full of incidents that don't quite cohere into a story - kind of like a Power Point presentation without a throughline.

In supporting roles, Bullock and Hanks deliver performances that are low-key and perfectly scaled. Viola Davis and Jeffrey Wright are, likewise, excellent as a couple Oskar meets on his reconnaissance expedition.

Rees tells Alike's story in vignettes that are sometimes slapstick, sometimes heartbreaking, always tender.

Though one wishes Graff's eye were as developed as his keen ear, he elicits rafter-raising musical performances from Latifah, Palmer, and Jordan that are irresistible fun.

Often I couldn't see the character for the metaphors.

Beautifully photographed by Crystel Fournier, Sciamma's film has a floaty weightlessness (as opposed to the heavyosity of "Boys Don't Cry") that neither judges nor pathologizes Laure.

McQueen finds the exquisite tension between the brother wanting to disconnect and the sister longing for connection. To paraphrase a line of Sissy's, it's a good movie that comes from a bad place.

Williams never defaults to mimicry. Her Monroe doesn't have the breathless whisper and quivering lips/quivering hips quality of the Marilyn impersonators. Her Monroe is a lightbulb on a dimmer, suddenly bright, and just as suddenly, indistinct.

Worthy of mention is Carolina Herrera's design for Bella's wedding dress, sophisticated and demure in the front and Pippa Middleton sexy, and proper, in the back.

By turns pleasant and preposterous, The Greening of Whitney Brown is a reverse Cinderella tale for tweens.

Think of it as"Airplane"! with controlled substances.

Though one gets a sense there is part of the story Marks isn't telling, we do pay attention to the man behind the curtain.

An airless, bilious, endless pageant of pseudohistory.

Yelchin and Jones are up to the challenge of suggesting much by doing little.

One wishes that Chambers had more gracefully integrated the stories of the individual players into this celebration of Rush.

With ambitions greater than comedy and results that fall short of character study, The Big Year is neither fish nor fowl.

Besides Paquin, who delivers a once-in-a-lifetime performance as the maddeningly inconsistent Lisa, also wrenchingly fine are Jeannie Berlin as the best friend of the deceased and J. Smith-Cameron as Lisa's actress mother.

It is earsplitting, crowd-pleasing, and, no doubt, 'bot-pleasing, too. If you told me I would get emotionally and viscerally involved in two machines punching the hard drives out of each other, I would tell you you were crazy. I would be wrong.

In some scenes, Faris' sheer velocity gives the movie liftoff. In others, it doesn't hurt that Evans, who looks like the very young Alec Baldwin, and has the sonorous voice of Mark Feuerstein, is the film's sex object.

It's half hilarious, half serious; all poignant.

Between the earnest boy, his playful mammal, the film from actor-turned-director Charles Martin Smith is a winning family entertainment.

Corinne's journey begins with an act of blind faith. The movie ends, but you have a palpable sense that the journey does not.

It fails as a gripping home-invasion thriller.