Claudia Puig

The film’s major saving grace is how it seeks to be inclusive in its depiction of Christianity. Through a collective endeavor, a sense of community and faith is reinforced.

In Cretton’s hands, this fact-based tale of an oddball, destitute upbringing rings false. It’s based on a woman’s complicated personal recollections of her traumatic childhood, and yet it feels like a cloying, one-note Hollywood tale, the beastly trauma all tied up with a pretty bow and de-fanged.

The minimal character development will frustrate filmgoers seeking substance, as will Coppola’s stilted dialogue.

Derbez brings warmth and intermittent goofy humor to this too-broad and uneven comedy.

Free Fire is an ultra-violent, gut-punching spectacle that borders on a slog. It makes you feel guilty even for enjoying minutes of it, and then empty after it’s all done.

The boxing drama Bleed for This has a powerful story and a strong lead performance in its corner, but falls short of knockout status. Hampered by clichéd writing and stereotypical portrayals, this extraordinary true-life account feels run-of-the-mill.

Cuarón’s tale of a madman Minuteman is well-shot and sharply paced, but too simplistic.

Lovely visuals are key for the success of any animated film, arguably more so even than for live-action movies. But a compelling story is also essential, and that’s where “Long Way North” trips up.

A Tale of Love and Darkness seeks to blend serious political history and probing psychological analysis. The effort does not succeed, coming across disjointed and grim.

While Kristen Wiig fully commits to her bizarre, mentally ill character in Welcome to Me, the result still feels more like an extended sketch than a movie.

The D Train is long on high-concept comedy, then runs out of steam and becomes a forced and far-fetched drama.

The story feels like a less complicated companion to "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." Obvious logical questions are ignored. For instance, if she remains 29, does that make her immortal?

Crowe's performance is the best thing about the ambitious historical drama, which takes some artistic liberties.

Home could have fashioned a more original story, dug deeper into a theme of cultural understanding and jettisoned the toilet humor.

These movies can't possibly be the best chance Neeson has got. Certainly he's offered more nuanced dramas that call on subtler acting skills and don't entail a mounting body count.

If a pointless and nasty Hollywood satire filled with vile characters and no one to root for sounds like a good time, go see Maps to the Stars.

If you've seen "Mean Girls" or "Easy A," you've seen a far better version of The DUFF.

Some of the gags are stupid-funny, others are just puerile, making for a hit-or-miss experience.

The live-action elements — mostly in the person of Antonio Banderas as cranky pirate Burger Beard, who spends most of his time addressing a flock of seagulls — don't mesh seamlessly with the animated sequences. It almost feels like two movies awkwardly melded together.

Give Binder credit for addressing racial divides even if not as profoundly as one would hope.

Strange Magic is strange all right, but hardly magical.

Despite its patina of stylishness, The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death is sorely lacking in thrills.

Aniston's portrayal feels honest, but the film doesn't rise to the level of her performance.

Quvenzhané Wallis is adorably plucky as the lead in Annie. She and Jamie Foxx as the newfangled Daddy Warbucks character have an appealing chemistry and their songs together are the best moments in the movie. But the rest of Annie is banal, shallow and markedly cynical.

Considering the controversy and chaos Sony Pictures Studios is undergoing because of it, The Interview fails to live up to the hype, floundering as a rowdy comedy as it grows duller by the minute.

Swarms of flies, oozing pustules, alligator attacks and gaggles of frogs are vividly rendered in three dimensions in Exodus: Gods and Kings. And yet this biblical epic is still bland, overly long and otherwise forgettable.

This is a joyless, frenetic film that is very rarely funny.

The corny love story is all the more disappointing given the pedigree of the octogenarian actors.

White Bird in a Blizzard is blank, pale and flat when it needs to be probing and suspenseful.

What makes it slightly better than the others is an affable, low-key chemistry between James Marsden and Michelle Monaghan as star-crossed lovers.

A classic example of a second-rate courtroom drama.

An awkward blend of fable, travelogue and relationship drama, it's the story's hybrid style, vapid message and predictable arc that disappoint.

Audiences could use a wise and probing movie about the meaning of our increasingly digital, techno-juiced lives.Men, Women & Children is about half that movie.

Maze Runner feels only partially formed.

As a chronicle of the collapse of a marriage, the film is choppy, contrived and cloying.

The cartoonish mayhem in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For aims for a film noir sensibility, but too frequently the script simply resorts to anachronistic scenes of Jessica Alba twerking.

While the adult performances are strong, especially Jeff Bridges in the title role, youthful characterizations are not nearly as illuminating as they were on the page.

One-dimensional characters play second fiddle to the main event. Given the large cast of faceless players, it's hard to care when a few get sucked into oblivion.

With the lackluster quality of its characters — aircraft, a smattering of trucks, RVs and motorcycles — the movie makes Pixar's Cars and its sequel look like masterpieces.

More than anything, the movie makes the viewer want to hop on a plane and visit Iceland.

What was blandly charming on stage — characters addressing the audience, ultra-broad jokes and showbiz patter — feels contrived, cheesy and cliched onscreen.

It fails to live up to its early promise, mostly because of an uneven tone and murky character development

The Love Punch is a romantic comedy as painfully unfunny as a sock in the jaw.

You have to work hard to make an African vacation seem unpleasant. And Adam Sandler nearly pulls it off in Blended.

Glimmers of a fascinating and lively period film surface and fade in the first half-hour of The Immigrant. What predominates is a dully morose, overheated and implausible story.

The story soon devolves into a far-fetched, futuristic snooze-fest that often defies its own logic. Characters' motivations are rarely clear, and allegiances shift with no explanation.

Rio 2 teems with colorful animated splendor and elaborate musical numbers, but its rambling, hectic, if good-hearted, story is for the birds.

For those who don't equate sexual appetite with the intricacies of fly fishing, Nymphomaniac: Vol. 1 is more tiresome than titillating.

It's an improvement on some of Perry's other films that strike a heavy-handed moralistic note. And it lacks the silly slapstick humor of his Madea movies.

It's a maudlin, superficial exercise in obsession masquerading as a heartfelt romance and study of grief, and character development is sorely lacking.

It's undoubtedly a daunting role, and Morgado captures the gentle benevolence associated with the messianic figure. He doesn't, however, project the authority, gravitas or depth of a spiritual leader.

The result is a generic saga with a cast of forgettable one-dimensional characters

Lurching back and forth through time, Winter's Tale tries to blend the supernatural and the sentimental, with a synchronous nod to elements of New York history. But this would-be magical romance flounders, hitting only dissonant chords.

Moviegoers are stuck with this sci-fi thriller's bland story, murky cinematography and frenetic special effects.

Genial and well-intentioned, but tepid.

While the visuals are lovely to behold, this unremarkable version of the classic 18th century Japanese legend is stiff and uninvolving.

By trying to combine fantasy and romance with goofy humor, globe-trotting adventure and feel-good inspiration, Stiller has made Mitty a mixed bag of clashing tones and facile redemption.

The movie for anyone who has dreamed of watching young dinos in love.

When it's not stalled on silly, it falls into slog territory.

Graphically gruesome when it means to be a provocative look at vengeance.

The concept's execution is sloppy, full of inconsistencies and plot holes. The situations teeter on funny, but never achieve it. And sections meant to be heartwarming feel lukewarm, far-fetched or inappropriately comical.

Only a few charming tidbits are nestled snugly in this over-stuffed Christmas stocking.

Leaden, non-involving and filled with mind-numbing computer-generated effects.

Rather than offering new blood, Carrie is a purely cosmetic revamp.

While there is a pleasantness about this faithful Shakespearean reboot, there also is some woeful miscasting and a lukewarm feeling about the straightforward production.

One of the film's biggest problems is that Richie is an unsympathetic and rather dim character. The badly drawn role does the likable Timberlake no favors.

It would have worked better if the silly premise had been played for farcical satire, rather than following the cookie-cutter rules of the romantic comedy playbook.

Self-indulgent, heavy-handed and lumbering, Jayne Mansfield's Car is not a wreck, but it's certainly a vehicle for boredom.

The Family is a fish-out-of-water/buddy comedy/Mob flick. But most of all, it's a missed opportunity.

Winnie Mandela is a simplistic look at a complex figure.

One thing it doesn't do is offer a revealing look at the mercurial entrepreneur. The movie that bears his name settles on a blandly superficial treatment of a deeply complex man.

Lovelace is a lackluster, skin-deep biopic.

Essentially Cars in midair.

Nathan Fillion is the movie's brightest spot as Hermes, re-envisioned as a UPS manager. He makes a quip about how the best TV series always get canceled, in a nod to Firefly, the iconic sci-fi show in which he starred.

By its conclusion the story has worked so hard to be twisting and clever that it runs out of steam and becomes outlandish, marked by a surplus of violence — too often casual and gratuitous — for what essentially is a buddy cop movie.

This shallow sequel to 2010's much cleverer Despicable Me — the 10th-biggest animated movie in U.S. history — seems to be merely going through the motions.

Intermittently funny. But the movie's first 20 minutes is devoted to tediously showing how his career has taken off around the world. That might be fine if this were a documentary, or if it were done more artfully, and with humor — since we go into the movie expecting a 75-minute laugh-fest.

It's a 2 1/2-hour slog, with tonal inconsistencies and monotonous, drawn-out action sequences. Scenes alternate between frenetic and tedious.

While the plot strives to be a raunchy-clever sex farce, it feels more like a leaden repurposing of Airplane with drunken pilots, mile-high dalliances and dancing flight attendants.

Makes its point ham-fistedly and then devolves into a blood-spattered slasher movie. It also unashamedly cribs from more disturbing films like "Straw Dogs," "Funny Games" and "A Clockwork Orange."

Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson may be the worst interns since Monica Lewinsky.

Though it's meant to be pulse-pounding, After Earth is a lethargic slog.

Fast & Furious 6 might have just as easily been called "Planes, Tanks and Automobiles."

So much effort seems to have gone into the eye-popping production design, swooping camera work and anachronistic musical score that the result is hyper-active cacophony rather than enthralling entertainment.

Forced, formulaic and never believable. It's a particularly unholy combination.

Arthur Newman is an old story and chronically, consistently uninvolving.

A badly constructed, blood-spattered caper that comes unglued early on.

Goes overboard on the gruesome and scrimps on humor. Raimi's "Drag Me to Hell" was a much funnierchill-fest.

Saoirse Ronan's talents are wasted on a foolish dual part in this dull sci-fi fantasy.

This is for those who like their political thrillers far-fetched, far-reaching and filled with pretty people.

With director Harmony Korine's visual overload and somnolent voice-overs — the same sentences are repeated ad nauseum — it manages to be both mind-numbingly dull and off-putting.

The action starts with a bang, but deteriorates and grows more absurd as the story strays farther from the LAPD call center.

What might have been an entertaining, silly comedy opts for pseudo-earnestness over movie magic.

As a gritty thriller, Dead Man Down doesn't stand out among its bullet-riddled brethren.

The combination of tight close-ups and jarring camera work might require a dose of Dramamine. Better yet, give this movie a wide berth and check out a superb film set in a submarine, the 1981 classic "Das Boot."

The picture-postcard location of Southport, N.C., is the film's strong suit.

It tries to be a moody thriller, but cliched dialogue and too many coincidences make for a predictable and hackneyed film.

In the last five minutes the film shifts gears and offers a tribute to law enforcement. But this tacked-on resolution is as sticky and fake as Sean Penn's make-up job.