Joe Neumaier

The moments when Spy falls apart are when the film fancies itself the real thing. The times when it works are due to its leading lady.

This mashup of a teenage assassin lark and high school misfit comedy misses the chance to add a supercool heroine to pop culture.

Mostly, though, there’s hopefulness here, and determination to win a fight worth fighting.

Entourage plays like a solid, if slightly too long, episode. But even given the bloat, the cast’s easy camaraderie and a “play it as it lays” atmosphere wins you over.

There’s never a false moment.

San Andreas is a disaster — literally. That’s not to take a piece out of Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson. His charm and family-man-style fearlessness as the movie’s star is the only saving grace in this thuddingly repetitive, badly written crash-a-thon.

Aloha isn’t horrible, but it does have a pitiable odor about it, like a dog that’s sat too long on the beach. Crowe aspires to Golden Age of Hollywood repartee, but something feels off, just as it did in “Elizabethtown” (2005) and “We Bought a Zoo” (2011). Everyone just seems to be trying too hard.

The emotions are florid and the entanglements heated. But the film become preoccupied with, as Flaubert would say, the pettiness and mediocrity of daily life. Arterton, though, is plushly magnetic. She draws us in despite the overly lyrical atmosphere.

Director Hiromasa Yonebayashi did a wonderful job adapting “The Borrowers” into “The Secret World of Arriety.” But this slow-moving film, also from a book, tends to plod rather than float.

This fantasy adventure lacks focus when it should be laser-sharp, and stumbles when it could soar.

Slow West isn’t a grand epic of that genre. It’s more like “McCabe & Mrs. Miller,” “Dead Man” or the recent “The Homesman,” using familiar signposts to tell a simple, compelling, terrific story.

Because it's so rooted in real life, the drama Good Kill is even more terrifying than “The Purge,” Ethan Hawke’s horror film from two years ago.

Director Tiller Russell sometimes get sidetracked — a dangerous thing in a story that already has a lot of twists, turns and off-ramps. But it’s a story you have to hear, from the guys who lived it and may never live it down.

Its creepy atmosphere aside, Maggie is a slog of the living dead.

Screenwriters Chris Shafer and Paul Vicknair’s script feels like a first draft that was written in one night as they got pumped up on Red Bull and speed-watched Netflix. Guys: Another few polishes could only have helped.

Strap in, load up and hang on because Mad Max: Fury Road is a freaky, ballsy, phenomenal ride.

Hot Pursuit gets cold quickly. That’s certainly not the fault of stars Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara, who work to keep this blessedly brief action-comedy shaking and cruising to an unthrilling end. The blame lies with a dopey script, director Anne Fletcher and a lazy Hollywood assumption that female buddy flicks should be as half-assed as their male counterparts.

Kristen Wiig is scary. That’s a good thing. It’s part of her appeal as a comedian, and crucial in the funny-weird comedy-drama Welcome to Me, which uses the working-without-a-net aspect of Wiig’s humor to unsettling effect.

Despite the incongruous romance and abrupt action beats, Crowe gives a likable, sympathetic performance. But it all starts to dry up before our eyes. Emotions feel false or melodramatic, flashbacks are drawn out and coincidences and connections are forced.

Avengers: Age of Ultron is a kinetic, wicked mix of muscle and magic. Look no further if you want a world of superpowered freaks and geeks. But be aware: It comes at a cost. Vaporized in the parade of action and characters is the wonder and simplicity of its first, superior entry.

Explaining humor is usually like boiling water — it evaporates. But the funny folks in actor Kevin Pollak’s well-structured doc can actually break down what they do.

Travolta’s face looks immobile, while Plummer and Jennifer Ehle, as Cutter’s estranged, strung-out wife, look out of place. Sheridan (“The Tree of Life”), though, does seems comfortable in a movie where the colors blur sloppily.

The former “Friends” star clearly wanted something special, but sadly the result is ... this.

James' everyman appeal is stretched to the limits here, like that polyester shirt he wears.

The mystery at the heart of the film is a riddle wrapped in an enigma covered in dullness.

If you don’t love monkeys already — and really, we all should — then Monkey Kingdom will swing you in the right direction.

True Story is a prisoner of its own dull storytelling.

This film, though, lacks any spine. Director Jean-Baptiste Leonetti isn’t sure if he’s making a Hemingway-lite faceoff or a hemmed-in horror flick.