Jeff Baker

It's exhausting, impressionistic, and ultimately hollow, extraordinarily well-acted but not nearly as relevant as "The Social Network."

Me and Earl is smart and appealing, but it spends way too much effort saying "I'm not like that" when it really is.

It's a comedy with an easy message, and it's sort of sweet. Not too raunchy, not too challenging. A good date movie for sophomores.

Stick around for the credits, when the real Trumbo talks about the effect of the blacklist on his daughter. It's the real thing.

Green is onto something with this paper towns metaphor, but it's nothing Rush didn't say better in "Subdivisions."

Ant-Man wastes the regular-guy appeal of its star, Paul Rudd, on a bland, by-the-numbers story that starts small and keeps on shrinking, a metaphor for the movie itself. Its modest ambitions are admirable and unrealized.

It's an odd concept, turning a zombie movie into a downbeat actor's showcase, but first-time director Henry Hobson gets great work from a subdued Schwarzenegger and an even better performance from Abigail Breslin in the title role.

A genre movie like this one depends on pacing, and Focus hits at least three dead spots in the final act. Writer-directors John Requa and Glenn Ficarra get so much right -- the sleek look, the plot set-ups, those montages in New Orleans, the supporting cast -- that it's painful when they can't maintain Focus and land it, before and after the big reveal.

Freeheld isn't bad -- with that kind of source material and topline acting talent it almost couldn't be -- but it could have been much more than it is.

Wahlberg's The Gambler is California Lite.

Not bad, no need to wake Roger Moore from his mid-morning nap and bring him out of retirement, but not special.

With such actors at work and with locations including a first-time use of the Houses of Parliament, Suffragette should look and be a richer experience than it is.

A kinda funny, kinda charming movie about finding out what really matters.

The subject is fascinating, the talent is undeniable, but the humanity that made Lili Elbe so memorable gets lost along the way.

No Escape is xenophobic claptrap of the highest order.

It's very meta and only mildly interesting. The actors are attractive, the countryside moreso. The plot is silly and threadbare; when tragedy does strike, it has about as much impact as a summer shower.

There's too much head-butting between human battering rams Diesel and Jason Statham, too many noisy explosions and generic special effects, and not enough car races and chases.

Also effective is the romance between Gere and Lillete Dubey, an Indian actor who play's Patel's mother.

Oddest of all is how Truth whips through this, making noble statements about journalism while brushing off the failures to get it right. Mapes was busy and stressed. (Slow down!) The document authenticators had doubts. (Listen to them.) The source said he was lying before but is telling the truth now. (Don't trust him.)

What happened in Chile really was a triumph of the human spirit, as cliched as it is to write that sentence. The miners deserved a better movie, but that's not how it works.

It's like watching a high-school football star trying to squeeze into his old uniform after a decade: funny at times, but kind of embarrassing.

True Story, made with obvious seriousness by talented professionals, never establishes itself.

Nothing really connects, not the bullying brothers, not the frustrated parents, not the sight gags familiar to anyone who's seen the giveaway trailer. The whole production has a cheap, tacky look that the talented leads, Helms and Applegate, can't save despite considerable charm and effort.

A featherweight comedy in which he fetches coffee for twentysomethings and calls them "ace" and "boss" without a hint of irony. It's painful to watch for anyone who remembers the thunder De Niro used to have at his fingertips.

The movie is slow, dreary, clumsily staged, and lacks a compelling lead.

Maybe it's too early to say MacFarlane can't make a movie. He's still young, he's compulsively creative. He'll keep getting more chances. He could figure it out, but I don't think I want to watch him try.

That "The Hunger Games" movies lost momentum is hardly a surprise: even "Star Wars" and "The Lord of the Rings" slipped after the second installment. The end feels like a relief for all concerned, and it does feel like the end.

This overwatered trifle is doomed to wilt and fade quickly from memory.