Drew McWeeny

The movie is as good a Blair Witch film as anyone could have faithfully delivered.

Snowden has a secret weapon, and it’s one that I wasn’t expecting: a fully-engaged and on-his-game Oliver Stone.

There are no real stakes, and I find the attempts at creating suspense to be almost offensive. Irritating, at the very least.

Southside With You is quietly romantic, but more than that, it burns with a deep sense of optimism.

Kubo works because it is so direct, so honest about the emotional story it’s telling. Knight may have epic ambitions, but he keeps the stakes very personal.

Our best fables and fairy tales are the ones that speak truth, and this version of Pete’s Dragon easily takes its place on any short list of the great films for young audiences as a result.

By making this look like the sort of film that studios think of when they think of animation, but subverting the very nature of those movies, Sausage Party is more than funny. It’s downright revolutionary.

The Mind's Eye is straight-up sincere, earnestly played and honestly intentioned. This is exploitation fare without any wink attached. These guys aren't trying to elevate the genre… they just want to make a psychic wars horror film and blow up some heads.

Suicide Squad is not the darkest mainstream superhero comic book movie ever made, nor is it even the darkest live-action film featuring Batman ever made. However, it is gleefully nihilistic, and it takes a different approach to what has become a fairly familiar story form at this point, right at the moment when it feels like superhero movies either have to evolve or die.

There are scenes I dug and a few set-pieces that work, and there’s an overall level of intensity that I like from director Paul Greengrass. Taken as a whole, though, this is very familiar territory, and I just don’t care when the stakes are this low and the violence is this rough.

There’s a brisk sense of invention to the film, and it feels like it is breathlessly told, something that is due in large part to Justin Lin, who has been developing a very particular approach to blockbuster filmmaking. Yes, he’s fine with the big action mayhem that is par for the course with these films, but he understands that the thing that makes any of it interesting is making sure the audience really enjoys spending time with these characters.

This film says everything the first two films tried to say, but better and in a more coherent thematic way.

The original Ghostbusters will always be a classic that means something special to me. The good news is, there’s a whole new generation that’s about to feel that way about this one. And more power to them.

Like any comedy that throws 1000 jokes at you, some land and some don’t, but it’s the confident, cheerful energy of the humor that carries the day.

While Hunt For The Wilderpeople is very funny, what makes it stick is the way Waititi allows the relationship between Hec and Ricky to develop slowly, and how nimbly he sets the emotional stakes for both of the characters.

The Neon Demon’s going to frustrate anyone who goes in looking for a conventional film or a thriller that has any interest in actually scaring you. This is a ride, a carefully crafted experience, and it is precisely because it is so immersive and controlled that I would recommend it.

Whatever affection I once held for this story was ruined by this documentary, and I hope that these guys are, once and for all, finished with Raiders and remaking it. I certainly am.

Central Intelligence manages to be a far more coherent comedy than I would have expected, and it’s a worthy representation of the genre.

Say what you will, but Pixar understands innately that making their audience feel something deeply is the greatest magic trick in movies, and all of their work as technicians and artists are always focused on making that happen. Finding Dory may be familiar magic, but there’s magic in it all the same.

If you’re in the mood to laugh until various parts of you hurt for a multitude of reasons, then I have a feeling Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping will accomplish the goal. And then some.

With a rich supporting cast, a smart script, and an ensemble that is put through their paces in some intense physical scenes, The Conjuring 2 is that rare horror sequel that stands toe to toe with the original, possibly even improving on it.

DePalma emerges as a charming storyteller, funny and slightly wicked, and he offers up some terrific anecdotes about his casts, his process, and his choices over the years.

The movie suffers from being the same shape as so many modern blockbusters, and the plot in the second half of the film is basically another riff on the “reach the glowing doodad on a roof to prevent the end of the world” structure. But the focus on the Turtles and the film’s overall amiable sense of goofball humor carries the day.

Warcraft errs in how much it asks the audience to juggle, and as a result, the things that the film does well (and I think there are many) are muffled somewhat.

It is an easy sit, a big fat slice of smart entertainment. Constantly funny, startlingly violent, and oddly heartfelt, The Nice Guys is a grown-up delight, a perfect antidote to the nonstop barrage of effects spectacle that normally marks the summer movie season.

I think it is precisely because the technical work by everyone from James Bobin down is so good that I find myself infuriated by the film. So much muscle, so much effort, so much raw talent on display, and all in service of demographic-and-merchandise-driven garbage that sullies the name of the source material.

Jodie Foster deserves credit for orchestrating things with a nimble wit and a relentless energy.

I enjoyed the energy of the film, and the cast is pretty solid throughout, but there’s a big problem that is inherent to the idea that we have to make these films bigger and bigger to outdo things that have come before.

Captain America: The First Avenger is one of the finest movies yet from Marvel Studios, and a big departure in tone and storytelling from most of the films they've made so far. It is a strong indicator that the more willing the studio is to experiment, the more exciting the payoffs can be.

From scene to scene, there are some beautiful images in the fantasy world where this is set, but frustratingly, it never adds up to something that comes to life. This feels like terrific production design and costuming in search of a story worth telling.

What makes Captain America: Civil War such a terrific accomplishment is the way it takes what could have been the most crass and overcrowded story to adapt as a film and instead transforms it into an examination of just who these heroes are and what impact they’ve had on the world around them, and vice versa.

If you enjoy thrillers, Flanagan expertly turns the screws here, and Kate Siegel makes a very appealing and capable hero.

It’s mind-boggling that this entire thing was shot on soundstages using greenscreens. Favreau’s jungle feels like a real place, but it’s heightened and stylized and it feels like a perfect fit for the talking animals who make up the majority of the cast.

Everybody Wants Some!! offers a mature and crystal-clear voice, a filmmaker of enormous muscle who makes it all look ridiculously easy.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is a film of modest pleasures, but what I liked about it, I liked a lot. I hope more filmmakers figure out how to write to Fey's strengths, because she's really engaging here.

I’m not sure how a filmmaker whose work normally speaks to me as clearly as Snyder’s does could deliver something that feels this confused, this impersonal, and this corporate. It is a confounding mess of a movie, and while there are individual sequences that I enjoyed as isolated moments, it is almost breathtakingly incoherent storytelling.

While it’s doubtful any film could match the weird giddy energy that made Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure a classic, this movie honors and expands his legacy, and should prove to be a pleasure for anyone who has ever loved this character.

This is a very raw, sad, and beautiful film about faith and fatherhood, and it feels just as grounded and big-hearted as the other films Nichals has made.

Economically told from the start, the film moves beautifully.

An entirely laughless affair and easily the low point of Cohen's career so far.

As crazy as the design of the world is, Zootopia ends up feeling like a genuine place. There's a vibrancy to it that runs through everything from the pace of the storytelling to the background details of the world in which the story takes place.

Brutally unfunny, visually off-putting, and filled with cameos so embarrassing I am bruised from holding a cringe for a full half-hour, Zoolander 2 is every horrible decision you can make with a comedy sequel wrapped up into one nigh unbearable film.

It is almost preposterous how little "plot" there is in the film...What it has in spades is attitude, and right up until the moment the film began, I was afraid It was going to be so juvenile and filthy that I would end up annoyed by it. Instead, from the very beginning of the opening credits, it is clear that director Tim Miller and screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick have crafted something deeply silly that isn't remotely interested in playing by the conventional rules of what we've come to think of as "the superhero genre."

Even when they're silly, Joel and Ethan Coen are as smart as any filmmakers working, and Hail, Caesar! is a clever cartoon filter through which they examine some very sincere spiritual ideas.

What is most impressive about the final film, adapted for the screen and directed by Burr Steers, is that it gets the Pride and Prejudice side of things right, and that's what matters most.

The Dirties feels authentic all the way through, and it carries a bitter punch. It is a slight movie in terms of actual events that happen, but it grapples with some giant ideas and emotions in a very effective way.

It's impressive to see how Johnson manages tone in the film, as things go from sort of giddy and fun at the start to increasingly paranoid and then eventually taking a turn into a sort of brutal sadness.

Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester By The Sea is an extraordinarily wise and well-observed film about what can happen to someone when life gives them more than they can handle, and Casey Affleck's lead performance is, simply put, the model of what great film acting should look like.

This film puts Nat Turner and his moral journey dead center, and it asks you to take an unflinching look at how an inhuman system broke the human beings trapped in it.

While there is an untruth at the heart of the film, it's in service of illuminating any number of smaller truths, and I find that approach fascinating.

Beautifully photographed to take full advantage of the corners of a 2:76:1 aspect ratio, often hiding key character details in the background of shots in a way that demands a second viewing, this is a gorgeous piece of filmcraft all the way around.

It must have seemed like a nearly-impossible task when JJ Abrams and his collaborators set out to bring "Star Wars" back to life, but they've more than done it. They've made something honest and beautiful and, above all, fun, and I find myself energized by the movie and by the promise it represents.

Overall, it is false, both narratively and visually, in a way that just doesn't sit right with me, and it feels like a lesser effort from Howard, an itch he scratched but that hold little interest for anyone else.

It is as impressive as any movie released this year, but the storytelling falters in some fundamental ways that keep me from completely adoring it. Innaritu dreams big, and he has the muscle to back it up. The Revenant may not be his best film yet, but it's hard to imagine many filmmakers who are working at a higher level than he is these days.

While [Lawrence] does robust, heartfelt work in the lead in his new film Joy, this is the most miscast she's been in a while, and it's such a strangely imagined film in the first place that it never really gets its bearings.

There are a number of moments where Doughtery introduces something truly interesting and then never returns to it. Yes, the movie is perhaps overstuffed with interesting ideas, but that can be just as frustrating as a film with no good ideas at all.

The Good Dinosaur is fine. I found myself moved by it on a very direct level. Technically speaking, it's a gorgeous film in many ways, but I'm still not a fan of the super-cartoony style of the characters over the photo-realistic world, which is genuinely jaw-dropping.

This may be one of the most subversive blockbusters I can name, and I respect just how raw Francis Lawrence and his team play things. Even the "action" in the film is grim and painful and rarely thrilling.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire more than makes the case for this as a franchise that's going to get better as it goes, and I am genuinely excited to see how they wrap it up.

It is a thrilling, intelligent, deeply-felt movie that does not play by the typical rules of franchise building in modern Hollywood.

By the time Coogler wraps things up, his film manages the difficult trick of looking back with earned nostalgia and standing alone as a genuinely strong dramatic piece.

It may be overstuffed the point of bursting, but there's much to like here.

It sounds far sexier, just based on the synopsis, than it actually plays, though, so hopefully people aren't sold the wrong movie. For those in the mood for a throwback to the doomed romanticism of mid'60s art films, this feels like about as sincere an homage as anyone could produce.

Despite the very real threat and the personal stakes and the grim weight given to things, director Sam Mendes manages to pay sophisticated, sincere homage to the conventions that define the Bond series while remembering that one of the things that makes the series such an enduring presence is fun.

They have tried, with this Daniel Craig run of films, to elevate the Bond movies so they are more than just acceptably silly spy movies, and one of the reasons SPECTRE is so frustrating is because it feels like the collapse of that ambition, and it is in one moment that you can see the entire thing burn to the ground.

Frequently very funny, undeniably aimed at younger audiences, and true to the source material, The Peanuts Movie is too mild-mannered to win over brand new audiences, but it's going to please people who were already fond of the underlying property, and it should be a big nostalgia-driven hit for the studio.

To the bitter end, the series manages to wring some fun, solid scares out of something other invading something utterly familiar.

Walking out of the film, I might have given it a C+ or a C based purely on the fumes of Murray's better work that are present here, but the more I've thought about it, the more infuriating it is to see something this lazy and familiar from Murray at this point.

I was pleased to see that "Spies" is not a thriller so much as an ode to both American diplomacy and the tradition of moral movie fathers along the lines of Atticus Finch.

This is a film of tactile decadence, such a rich sensory experience that it's almost suffocating.

With no clear purpose in telling the story and no real focus in the actual storytelling, Pan never gets off the ground.

There's not an ounce of fat on the film. It feels like it moves forward in every single scene, and while it's a little mechanical about how it follows three-act structure, it's almost charmingly old-fashioned about it.

When you're watching something Zemeckis made, anything can happen, and reality is up for grabs. In this case, he's used his powers for good, and the end result is stirring and spectacular at times, with a devastating, if subtle, final line of dialogue.

It's a very direct film, a lovely portrait of family and strength and just how far one voice can carry.

Wheatley is all about control of tone and how he's using this big obvious metaphor. His film is alive with human behavior, heightened at times and stylized as hell, but alive and identifiable and crackling with a wicked energy.

Stonewall is the anti-"Selma," a movie that not only fails to fully capture the energy and importance of a true event but that fails so completely as a film that it is almost impressive.

Meyers wants this to be all sort of amiable and charming and a big warm bath of a film, and it is.

Anomalisa is an extraordinarily wise film about the reasons we turn to other people and the enormous difficulty of doing so.

If you can get past the witlessness of the world itself, there is some very good work in Equals, and fans of the cast will be no doubt pleased with the connection they have in some of the movie's best moments.

The pacing on this one is flaccid, and while I think he has some interesting points to make, the framing device to the film is a total bust.

It takes a genuine master craftsman to take something as complex and difficult as this and make it look easy, but it also takes an artist with a great ear to take something as dense with exposition as this is and make it practically sing.

Just on a technical level, the film represents such a big jump forward for Saulnier that you should expect the studios to immediately start arguing over which giant soulless franchise should occupy his time in the near-future.

If this was someone's first film, I'd be okay with the small signs of life that make this merely an annoying film instead of a completely dreadful one, but for this to be the latest work by a guy who made his first impression on the general public by sticking to his guns and refusing to compromise his voice… unthinkable.

If you have a fondness for the genre and a particular love of '60s pop, The Man From UNCLE is the summer's big fizzy drink, all bubbles, and while it may be gone the moment you walk out of the theater, the smile it puts on your face will likely linger.

Neither the disaster the fanboy nation seems to be itching to attack nor a significant improvement over the Tim Story movies, Fantastic Four seems doomed to please no one.

I think Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is the most consistently entertaining, most laser-focused entry in the series so far, and while I would argue that it is very much a sequel to the third film and not just a disconnected piece of a flexible franchise, it is also a great rollicking self-contained spy movie adventure on a grand scale, and it's preposterous fun.

Both of its time and of the moment, Straight Outta Compton is potent and largely successful, and makes a hell of a case for why this was a story worth telling.

The biggest problem I have is that the film seems determined to push the outrageousness as far as possible, and there comes a point where it just stops working because it's all so outrageous.

I would argue that this may be the funniest of the films overall, and with Robert Elswit shooting it, it's absolutely gorgeous, with crisp, clean action choreography that you can actually see.

I think Sandler's miscasting leads to a real deficit of energy at the center of the film, and then the conceptual misfire is so dire that I just don't know what to say beyond that.

It is a singularly unpleasant experience, not because it is scary or extreme or even interesting. It is unpleasant because it is a dull story filled with characters that are so poorly drawn as to be forgettable even while you're watching them.

Ant-Man has its own voice, no doubt thanks to all of the talent involved, and it stands as a surprisingly sturdy success for the studio, a delightfully weird little movie that has no business working this well.

It is rowdy at heart, but smart about it, and it is one more reminder that Channing Tatum is really not like anyone else working in movies right now. It is also celebratory in the way that the first film was sad, concerned more with self-acceptance than running from something.

There is nothing about Terminator: Genisys that suggests that this film was a compelling, urgent, essential dream for anyone involved. This is all about squeezing cash out of people who are fond of the original films, calculated and without any of the soul of Cameron's films.

Like most comedy sequels, it is too long and too indulgent in calling back to the original film.

There's a slightly muted quality to the film, though, which keeps it from being a complete pleasure, but considering how rarely we get a new film from Dante, I'll take something slight over nothing at all.

Trevorrow seems to be genuinely enjoying what he's doing, and it's that sense of someone having fun behind the camera that ultimately won me over.

There's nothing particularly wrong with the ghost story itself. It makes sense, there's an internal logic to the way things happen, and Whannell does his best to keep a certain pace up so there are near-constant ghost attacks punctuated by scenes of the characters trying to figure out how to handle them. Quinn's just not a very interesting character.

The way an Entourage story works is that they establish what it is that Vinnie and his friends want, they challenge them a little bit, and then they get what they want. And while that's something I find unsatisfying, it is the exact reason that fans watch the show and it's why they'll watch the film.

Whimsy's hard, honestly motivated romance is harder, and when you get both of those things wrong in the same movie, the result is almost too much to take.

The reason you go see San Andreas is to see what the state of the art looks like when you destroy an entire state, set piece after set piece, and Brad Peyton delivers on that.

Poltergeist is professional and slick and entirely fine. It's also unnecessary in every way.

Co-directors Pete Docter and Ronnie Del Carmen have told a very, very small-scale story when you look at what happens in the actual physical world. But in doing so, they've done something very powerful, because they have paid full respect to just how turbulent and important the inner life of a child can be.

Tomorrowland may be well-made, but whether you're talking about it thematically or dramatically, this is a profoundly mixed bag.

There is nothing easy or predictable about what George Miller delivers with Mad Max: Fury Road, a stone-cold action master class, beautiful and brainy and startling in the ways it throws off the current definition of the blockbuster.

The film feels very tiny, and intentionally so. This isn't a horror film at all, which is an odd thing to say when you're talking about a movie with zombies in it.

It would be a lot easier to give the film a soft pass if it wasn't so aggressively lazy.

This is a movie that is almost exhaustingly large-scale, and Ultron's ultimate plan involves a crazy visual idea that Whedon makes sort of beautiful and eerie. It's got so much action that I'm going to bet some audiences go numb after a while. But in scene after scene, there are beats and stunts and poses that suggest that an army of comic book fanatics worked on this movie.

I'm baffled by the screenplay credit. Richard Price is a muscular writer, and he's done some great work in the crime world over the years, but this feels like a screenplay by someone who has never written a film before, full of first-draft dialogue and weird structural and tonal issues. It's almost amazing how tone-deaf it is.

I'm giving this an "A" letter grade because I find it utterly absorbing, start to finish. I don't know if I think it's a good film, but it is a powerfully compelling film. Perhaps my favorite kind of strange or insane film is the personal passion project, and "Roar" is one of the most remarkable examples of this.

It's obvious that they're aiming for something more fun than genuinely haunting, and it helps that there is a good deal of humor used to punctuate the horror. It doesn't all land, but there's a fair amount of wit in something as simple as watching what someone types, deletes, then retypes.

It would not surprise me if most reviews for this film are openly hostile. It is a wretched piece of writing, and an absurd final product. It almost seems pointless to pile on, though. The audience who loves Sparks is going to go see this film and they'll no doubt walk away satisfied.

Tim Johnson gets the character stuff right, and the animators do an amazing amount of subtextual work with color and with texture ripples on the various Boov characters.. It's lovely work overall, and it might be the most cheerfully benign conquering force we've ever faced on film.

There is a giddy sense of glee that runs through most of this movie, making it feel like Feig can barely contain himself with all of the things he wants to do and show you in the movie.

This is a film that suggests that Morehead and Benson have something important to share with their work.

Visually uninteresting, dramatically inert, and remarkably silly no matter how seriously it tries to play things straight, Insurgent is franchise management and little more.

Competently made but morally repellent, Get Hard may be my least favorite Will Ferrell feature film.

Trainwreck is more than funny. It's also wise, and that hard-won wisdom makes this a can't-miss for anyone who feels bruised by love, but never beaten.

Plot is unimportant. Family is everything, and Furious 7 is a blast.

Run All Night starts off on the wrong note and never recovers. It is entirely too serious and entirely too thin, and that combination turns what might have worked as a pulpy action romp into this po-faced, overly somber march from one unlikely plot point to another.

Chappie feels like Blomkamp and his co-writer Terri Tatchell had three or four different films they wanted to make, and instead of figuring out which one actually worked, they just made them all at the same time.

It helps that Gelb shoots this less like a horror film and more like a drama. When the film does finally kick into overt horror, it becomes more familiar and less overall effective.

Ficarra and Requa are good at creating a sense of momentum in their films that carries you along from scene to scene, and a film like this depends largely on chemistry. Smith and Robbie have bundles of it, so there is an easy pleasure to watching them circle each other.

Shira Piven, working from a script by Elliot Laurence, has directed a beautiful, sad, sweet and funny movie that deals honestly with mental illness while also earning big laughs and offering up some hard truths. And it helps that Kristen Wiig gives the best sustained performance of her entire career in the lead.

The best moments in this film are the moments where it feels like they're just throwing jokes at the screen. The moments that are toughest are the ones where they try to create some sort of emotional beat, because the moment we're supposed to invest in these guys at all, the movie crumbles.

It's a very slick film. But in the end, that slick becomes suffocating, and there's no real pulse here.

This is a case of all the elements lining up and pushing a potentially good film into the great category because of just how well executed it is.

Knock Knock has something genuine to say, and it uses some really dark dramatic beats to get there.

It is a staggeringly bad film, made up of lots of faulty pieces.

The film is frantic from start to finish, and I suspect it will wear some people down completely. I thought there was a point where it stopped being funny and started being exhausting, but my kids went positively ballistic for it.

Fast, frequently teetering on the cusp of the ridiculous, and eye-poppingly pretty, Jupiter Ascending is a wicked slice of entertainment, and a heck of an antidote to the typical February box-office blahs.

Using real transcripts, and with the involvement of Dr. Philip Zimbardo, who was the psychologist who designed the project in the first place, Talbott and director Kyle Patrick Alvarez have opted to aim for something authentic and honest.

There is real wisdom and honesty in every moment of the film, and that's refreshing in a genre that is built largely on fantasy every bit as disconnected from our reality as any superhero film.

Z For Zachariah may not be a faithful adaptation of a well-liked book, but as a film, it is a lovely, powerful piece of work.

One thing Mississippi Grind has in spades is soul, and that's a better bet than narrative mechanics any day.

As a theatrical experience, I Am Michael is fairly forgettable, but it does manage to pierce in places, and it carries a cumulative charge that is bigger than any of the individual emotional pieces.

Eggers manages to create a sense of mood and dread that is so suffocating at times that it feels like we're watching something genuinely transgressive, something we should not be seeing.

In the broad strokes, I think The Bronze is okay. I laughed at some things, I sat stone-faced during some things that don't work, and at the end, I could tell what I was supposed to feel, but it was more like I'm being ordered to feel this way instead of the film actually earning it.

I don't think Strange Magic is terrible movie, but it is a very weird one in many ways, and perhaps the most bizarre thing about it is realizing that we finally have a fairy tale written expressly for the age of date rape drugs.

It's an excellent showcase for Paul King, for the tremendous character animation by Framestore, and for Ben Whishaw's delicate, inquisitive work as the title character, and it is one of those rare family films that actually seems to think of children as smart and full of empathy.

Blackhat is a staggering misfire by a whole bunch of talented people, terrible in a way that only a good filmmaker can accomplish, and it kicks off 2015 by setting the bar very, very low. Things can only get better from here.

Taken 3 is formula filmmaking at its most formulaic, a film that exists only because it makes sense financially.

There's a slightly lurching quality to the way things play out here, like Cross knew what he wanted to do, but he wasn't committed enough to any of the characters to make them more than the joke.

It is apparent that Ramaa Mosley has a voice, and that The Brass Teapot is a focused, controlled piece of storytelling that displays real control.

Whether it's past its pop-culture expiration date or not, Into The Woods deserved a more visually inventive director to help make it work, and instead, we get something that feels somehow reduced by its translation to the screen.

The real problem for me is that every one of the films feels exactly the same, and this is where I think I'm at odds with what the studios want from these films.

Kill Me Three Times is a confident smaller film, and if you enjoy this sort of chess game with bullets, you'll probably get a kick out of it, and for Pegg fans, it's pretty much continuous pleasure throughout.

Wallis, who is an appealing young performer, simply doesn't have the chops for what has traditionally been one of the more demanding leads in a musical for a young performer, and Gluck, along with co-writer Aline Brosh McKenna, has built a film around Wallis that is constantly undercutting the songs, the choreography, and the entire idea of musicals.

By far, the best part of the film is the last twenty minutes or so, and it's so good that it almost makes up for some of the missteps along the way.

The Interview is laugh out loud funny all the way through, and once again proves that Rogen and Goldberg will do anything, no matter how dark, for a big laugh, and that character is just as important as punchlines in their work.

When it comes to this particular story, I find myself unconvinced in the end. Unbroken looks like the real thing, but evaporates upon closer scrutiny.

By focusing on a few key emotional arcs instead of making it about every shot being the BIGGEST THING OF ALL TIME, Jackson gives the battle a sense of urgency that builds and ebbs, builds and ebbs.

This is that rare case where it feels like every choice Scott made was off, and the cumulative impact of all of these choices is one of the most crushing disappointments of the year in terms of who made the film and how little of it works.

It is a perfect example of marketing driving the machine. It's also a profoundly silly movie that really isn't even trying to play by the conventional rules of family animation.

The film explores the way propaganda is used to set the stage for a conflict, and considering this is a mainstream franchise aimed primarily at young audiences, it's actually a pretty interesting take on how image matters as much as action in a media age.

There are gags that work, that pay off in a big way, and gags that fall flat, derailing entire sequences. Because the world around them is so absurd, the film's attempts at creating some genuine heart for Harry and Lloyd doesn't really work.

There are laughs in the movie, but they feel like they are isolated gags, not sustained runs, and in order for this to work as character comedy, they'd have to be playing better defined characters and not just heightened versions of themselves.

Overall, American Sniper is a solidly-staged but unexceptional picture, filled with overly familiar dramatic situations and a surprisingly blindered view of the world around its central character.

This is a film that is quietly confident. Everything's well-composed. Everything's put together right. There's a very sure hand on the wheel here, and at this point, I'm sold on Rupert Wyatt as a guy who can tell a story with a certain kind of intelligence, both towards his subject and towards his audience.

This is brutally strong filmmaking, aggressive and alive and impeccably accomplished.

J. C. Chandor's A Most Violent Year is a powerfully told story, a thrilling surprise, and both Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain do remarkable work.

I was moved by Interstellar, and there are stretches where it is as good and as pure as anything Nolan's made. You can feel just how important all of it is to him in every frame of the thing. I don't love all of the film's dramatic choices, though.

As much as the action stuff works and would indicate that any other property Marvel entrusts to the animation side of things is in good hands, Big Hero 6 gets by more on the charms of its comedy.

It's a gentle, amiable, sincere little movie, and we could use about a hundred more Lynn Sheltons in this business, making movies that feel this lived in, this true.

The Book Of Life may play by the rules when it comes to story, but it plays its own game when it comes to how it looks, and in the world of animated family films, that's what really counts.

Housebound is that rare film that manages to be funny without defusing any of its scares.

John Wick won't redefine action movies, but it perfectly exemplifies what I want from an action film when I go. Have fun with the world, shoot the action well, motivate it in a way that doesn't feel cheap.

The film's best moments are those focused on combat, and Ayer does a tremendous job of creating the details of daily life for a combat tank team in the waning days of WWII.

This movie is so funny, so strange, so wonderfully charmingly deranged.

Things escalate nicely over the course of the film, and there is a creeping sense of dread that is carefully calibrated.

Leonetti doesn't seem to have any particular knack for the staging of suspense or fear.

Gone Girl is not Fincher's best film, nor is it the most conventionally satisfying of them, but it feels like this is a movie that represents the very best that Hollywood craft can offer at the moment.

Beautifully shot, impeccably paced, and with a voice cast that nails it in every role, large or small, "The Lego Movie" is a genuine delight.

Gabe Polsky has made a smart and incisive film about an important moment in the history of a now-fallen empire, and he happened to make it wildly entertaining as well. No easy feat.

Wes Ball's background is in animation and effects, and he certainly has an eye for composition. Thankfully, he doesn't just lean on visual flash in his debut feature, the adaptation of the first of James Dashner's four books, and his skills allow him to build a convincing world around his appealing cast without losing them in it completely.

The film is at its best when it simply focuses on this strange dynamic between the two couples and the way they are each looking for something from the other that they don't dare articulate for fear of having to grapple with these weaknesses or flaws in themselves.

Top Five is, above everything else, really entertaining. It is a successful sophisticated spin on Hollywood formula, and it feels like Chris Rock finally finding a filmmaking voice that is just as limber and funny and sharply satirical and angry and even romantic as Rock's stand-up.

Niccol is working in a very stripped down and direct mode, and I think overall, it works. Good Kill is unsettling, and the entire cast does spare, unsentimental work.

The film plays with tension beautifully, and there are a few set pieces that I think are all-timers.

In essence, we get to study Brian's break with sanity and his eventual healing, but by keeping the focus tight on these two moments, the film becomes emotionally exhilarating.

Its sweet nature combined with its strong messages about responsibility and empathy make it feel like something family audiences in particular should enjoy.

There is a glee to the filmmaking that is matched by a greater sense of control than I've seen from Smith before, and while I think the film is wildly uneven at times, I think that's also the point.

The film is often quite funny, and just real enough that we may recognize ourselves in some small way in this family.

It's a dull film.

The Judge is risible Hollywood dreck, a star vehicle with nothing genuine driving it, and at 142 minutes, it is nearly impossible to defend.

Witherspoon does really uncompromising work here, playing Cheryl without any hesitancy or any fear or any ego. It's not a glamorous role, and she doesn't try to make Cheryl seem perfect, and she doesn't sand off this woman's rough edges.

For sheer craftsmanship, As Above, So Below is the type of horror film you should see theatrically. It's really well-made, even if it ends up feeling a little familiar by the end.

This entire film is like someone raised a kid in a room, cut off from all contact with the outside world, and all he had was a stack of Hustlers, a stack of Soldier of Fortunes, and a bunch of black-and-white stills from old detective movies, and at the age of 14, that kid gets turned loose and spends two hours screaming in your face about these stories he's been writing.

While I think If I Stay has to do a fair amount of juggling to get its premise to work, there is a cumulative power to it that I found undeniable and earned.

Frank rides a really strange tone, and director Lenny Abrahamson deserves credit for how he manages to make the strange and the sad and the funny all feel like it's part of the same film.

The script by Luke Greenfield and Nicholas Thomas makes too many easy choices, and it simply doesn't work in terms of maintaing credible audience sympathy.

There are some actual big ideas bubbling around somewhere below the surface of the film, but it's so ham-handed, so unable to grapple with the full implications of any of those ideas, that it actually becomes offensive.

It is forgettable fluff, but well-delivered, and it suggests that they'll be able to keep making these as long as they can prop up the cast, and with the younger generation making a decent showing this time out, they may even be able to hand it off when the time comes.

The film barely services the main characters and their arcs, so there's really no room for the sort of delicate etching needed to make supporting characters live and breathe. The film is at its best when it embraces the goofy nature of disaster films in general, and when it gives the audience the red meat it craves so desperately.

The film is a mild pleasure at best. There's nothing necessarily wrong with it, and it's well-crafted, but the screenplay by Steven Knight is so remarkably free of anything resembling actual drama that I'm almost mystified by it.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is about as predictable as movies get these days.

Guardians Of The Galaxy is the most charming Marvel movie so far. The primary ensemble (Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper, and Vin Diesel) is perhaps the most winning group of characters they've introduced in any of these movies.

There are moments of real wonder and even beauty amidst the slam and the bang and the big bada boom, and while Lucy is a mixed bag, it's been mixed by a master, and it is delightfully, happily insane.

There's plenty of potential there for really sharp comedy, but Allen's script just lobs softballs.

Everything is written to theme. Everything moves the film forward. When it comes down to the last half-hour, Braff manages a long sustained emotional crescendo packed with both laughs and tears, and it is accomplished work, carefully balanced, beautifully constructed.

The Purge: Anarchy improves upon the original, but it's still a long way from being the sort of smart, savage satire it would have to be to fully exploit such a socially charged hook.

These self-actualization stories, while certainly well-intentioned, get exhausting after a while, and it also starts to make storytelling for kids feel like it's all wrapped in this language of affirmation, and it smothers the simple joy of creating good characters we want to spend time with.

The film wants to be wild and dark and crazy, but it's also a big studio summer movie, and so it feels like it flirts with truly insane material, but without ever really committing to it.

While I thought it was gently moving at times, it feels like Gondry is hoping for a much more powerful impact, and the film just doesn't swing hard enough to make that happen.

It's like a supernatural version of "Gone Girl," and yet, there is some very, very dark comedy in the film as well, and by keeping it dark instead of letting the humor undercut the severity of the situation, Aja has made what has to be his most commercial film so far.

Boyhood is more than a movie; it is a vibrant, living thing, and it is beautiful, and it is sad, and it is wise, and it is sprawling, and it is intimate, and it is painful, and it is more than any filmmaker could have intended, and, yes… when it comes to trying to capture truth in a way that cannot be argued or denied or even summarized… I am sure that nothing will ever be this good again.

It's a dark and grimy film, and while I think it's juggling a whole lot of cliches, there is something genuinely admirable about the way it tells this story and the way it handles the supernatural onscreen.

Tammy is a mess, and it feels like a real misstep for this rising star.

"Dawn" is not just a good genre movie or a good summer movie. It's a great science-fiction film, full-stop, and one of the year's very best movies so far.

Earth To Echo is a little bit big and broad, but that's also part of its charm.

There are probably funnier satires out there, but They Came Together is laser accurate in the way it skewers its targets.

The action sequences in the film are spectacular, and there's one in particular that I think is an all-timer, both in the way it's imagined and in the way it's accomplished on film, but this isn't a film about empty sensation. It's a richly realized science-fiction world, and the cast is just tremendous.

Age Of Extinction more than delivers on whatever promises Bay makes to an audience at this point. Giant robots. Giant mayhem. Destruction on a global scale. You know what you're in for if you buy a ticket, and Bay seems determined to wear you down with the biggest craziest Transformers movie yet.

[Eubank] creates some remarkable images and moments in this movie, and his sensibility leans towards a sort of painterly love of quiet and sustained imagery. He juggles some pretty big shifts in tone here, and doesn't always pull it off, but it's really interesting to watch him try.

The details are what matters, and the script by Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber, adapted from the well-loved novel by John Green, is very smart and fairly unsentimental, which works to the material's advantage.

Suffice it to say that it is a cannily-constructed film, and it does have a bigger "movie" feel than the first film. There are places where they swing for some big jokes that don't quite work, but the ambition is dizzying all the way through.

John Carney, who wrote and directed "Once," has made another great film that focuses on songwriters and the way their lives influence their work.

The reason the film works is because it throws everything into the blender and comes up with something new, something that has a great lively sense of wit and humor to it, and it takes the time to fully explore its wild premise fully.

While I can see how there is a version of this film that might be able to successfully grapple with its central metaphor, I'm not sure Stromberg is the guy to make that movie.

A Million Ways To Die In The West certainly has merits, and in some ways, it is a step forward for MacFarlane, but it is also deeply undisciplined, and it undercuts its own best instincts in ways I find almost unbearably frustrating.

Force Majeure is an impressive and adult piece of work, bracing and intelligent.

There is a very quiet, natural quality to even the most dramatic of scenes.

Lost River is a beautifully dressed minor effort, a movie in which all the muscle in the world can't transform the thin, thin script into something more.

Beyond being very smart and funny, it's also a great looking movie.

It is a ridiculous story, and these aren't human beings acting in a way that any of us would recognize.

Julianne Moore seems to be the one person in the film that truly gets the tone right, playing Havana like a person walking a tightrope over a yawning pit of psychosis, her every emotion bubbling up and threatening to knock her off.

At its best, the film has moments that are creepy and that work on some strange primal level.

While there are some very strong performances in the film, the movie is inert, dramatically speaking, and covers such familiar ground that I can't really recommend it.

These performances are beyond reproach, which makes it even stranger that the film never quite turns into the crushing experience it feels like it should be.

Palo Alto is the sort of debut picture that makes me eager to see how Gia Coppola is going to grow and change as an artist, but it's more than just a demonstration of potential.

This is a sequel that has its own story to tell and that gets right down to it, and it expands on the ideas from the first film, but in a way that tells a thematically satisfying and complete story. In other words, this is how franchises are supposed to work.

It feels like the single most successful attempt to pull the shape of one of the beloved comic stories into the film world. It also feels like Bryan Singer has finally figured out how to shoot an action scene where the X-Men actually look and feel like the X-Men, and where the fantastic is handled the right way.

It's a feel-good story that raises cultural questions that the film doesn't seem terribly interested in answering, and it feels like an easy triple in the grand Disney tradition.

This could easily be ground zero for a whole new series of films, but if it remains a stand-alone single movie, Edwards told an entire story, and for the first time in as long as I can remember, it feels like Godzilla actually matters.

This thing swings from broad gross-out comedy to something that seems to be struggling to be a reflection of real life, and it never establishes a baseline reality. It is a strange misfire that is only saved from being a complete disaster by the efforts of the film's two leads.

If you can't handle extremes in your horror, Wolf Creek 2 is not for you. It is definitely ugly in places, and it wallows in it a bit.

By the end of this film, they've done a very good job of setting up the next three or four films in the series, but at the expense of this film telling any sort of cohesive story.

The sheer sly joy of the filmmaking that is on display here is one of the reasons I go to movies.

It's a completely average film that makes a few terrible choices.

There is nothing in this version that make any of this feel urgent or even important.

300: Rise Of An Empire is a worthy sequel to "300," stylistically consistent and equally loony, featuring what may well be the first truly can't-miss performance in a film this year.

It is safe to say that The Grand Budapest Hotel is one of those breakthrough moments, a movie that is so beautifully realized from start to finish that I almost doubted myself on the way home. Could I really have enjoyed that film that much?

The film plays with some funny ideas about time travel, and like any good time travel movie, it flirts with paradox and what happens when you violate the rules of time and space. It doesn't really go far enough with those ideas, though, and the end result is too often timid instead of brash and silly.

The film is loose and genuine and makes great use of place.

[Bateman] proves himself just as comfortable behind the camera as he in in front of it, and "Bad Words" is very, very good as a result.

As someone who enjoyed the show enormously while it was on the air, I am relieved to report that the film felt to me like it successfully recaptured the spirit of the show's first season.

Not only is it uproariously funny and almost breathtakingly dirty, it is better written than it needs to be on a character level, delivering completely on its premise.

Need For Speed is several different movies at once, and most of them are very stupid.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a tremendous piece of pop entertainment, smart and engaging and featuring a home run movie star lead performance by Chris Evans.

Darren Aronofsky's Noah is not just one of the most ambitious films I've seen this year, it's one of the most ambitious films I've ever seen.

There's a great sense of rot to everything as shot by Bruce McCleery, and David Sardy's score is propulsive and appropriately caustic. What ultimately works about Sabotage is the way it so unabashedly plays rough.

The script by Keir Pearson is admirably restrained in many ways, but it is also almost completely devoid of anything that would give the film the feel of actual life.

The film earns some big laughs, but it never sacrifices character for a punchline.

Rio 2 is a perfect example of franchise maintenance in place of storytelling.