Connie Ogle

Ride Along sabotages itself, although I suppose that doesn’t really matter — there are already plans in the works for Ride Along 2.

Pine, who has been so good and so instrumental in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek series as Captain Kirk, turns out to be a decent Ryan.

The arsenal is empty, and there’s nowhere for The Truth About Emanuel to go except — unfortunately — downhill.

August: Osage County is easier to watch on screen, and maybe for that we should be grateful.

A better primer-for-the-uninitiated than an in-depth, fresh and insightful examination of a famous and remarkable life.

Page, who died in 2008 in Los Angeles at the age of 85, makes for a blunt but engaging narrator who’s refreshingly candid about sex and her own inner demons.

Kill Your Darlings is more coming-of-age story than murder mystery, but its characters are so well drawn and complex the emotional weight carries a suspense all its own.

Curtis pulls off some amusing moments, and he has a secret weapon: Nighy, who is so jolly and funny you wish he’d had more screen time.

What you don’t expect is camp. The Counselor is more "Wild Things" than "No Country for Old Men", with which it shares a border town setting. But at least "Wild Things" knew what it was. The Counselor treats its material seriously and seems to have no idea it’s a joke that can’t even muster up a bit of smarty-pants Tarantino cleverness or energy.

Assange is a compelling figure that merited a better effort.

Carlei’s film is not particularly imaginative in terms of context, but it offers proof that this material never tarnishes, that with the right sort of movie magic, even a traditional telling can be thrilling.

If only more romantic comedies played out as charmingly and perceptively as this one.

There are a few flashes of wit in the romantic comedy Austenland, but for the most part, the humor lands not with Dear Jane’s grace and style but with all the subtlety of a cholera outbreak.

It’s filmed with a sharp eye and filled with good performances.

Its flimsy plot can’t quite support all the characters stuffed into the script, and the movie plays out in a weirdly static way that makes it feel improvised and uneven, leaving a few too much time during which nothing funny is happening.

Paranoia has a promising foundation — betrayal, danger and corporate espionage are solid building blocks of suspense. But the movie turns out to be more exasperating than exciting.

In Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, choosing the dumbest character is a colossal task.

The To Do List is a funny movie, but only if you’re not easily offended.

The movie does miraculously end up making good use of a couple of running jokes, and the cast soldiers on, though the laughs are meager. But mostly, Girl Most Likely is a case of good actors in serious need of worthwhile material.

It’s bad enough to make you look askance at Salma Hayek, Maria Bello, and Maya Rudolph, all of whom deserve a chance to do something funny other than pose as wives exuding various degrees of sexiness.

Unfinished Song is full of predictably poignant moments; you’d be lucky to survive the film dry-eyed.

A Hijacking is not quite as exciting as it should be, but its realistic examination of grit and folly are still more intriguing than swaggering action movie heroics.

This is getting old.

A decent thriller made better by good performances and an intriguing setting.

Love Is All You Need works despite its occasional preposterous developments.

Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby is a failure that should have at least been a magnificent mistake, a risky endeavor that showed a daring intent even if its brash vision didn’t quite succeed. Instead, the movie leaves you cold and weary and vaguely disgusted.

The film builds to a three-pronged tumultuous climax, shot in slow motion that could have been overwrought but somehow isn’t.

And still 42 persists in entertaining you, even when you’re cringing, because the real story is so compelling.