Joe Williams

Fuqua is a proficient action director, and the boxing scenes deliver plenty of whomp. But the music-saturated scenes involving the media, the law and a turncoat friend played by Curtis (“50 Cent”) Jackson are trying to appeal to fans of “Empire,” not “Raging Bull.”

Long before you’ve gotten a nickel’s worth of entertainment out of this dumb, unfunny flick, you’ll be wishing for the flashing sign that says “Game over.”

This debut film is fun, and everyone involved can proudly declare, “Honey, I shrunk the Marvel Cinematic Universe.”

Amy Schumer is so scary-good in Trainwreck that it almost seems risky to speak her name.

Lovely to look at, and Vikander does nothing to derail her inevitable ascension to the A-list. But as a story, it evokes a word that no battlefield nurse would ever apply to her experiences: sterile.

This meta movie even has fun with faulty translations between French and English. To paraphrase Gemma as she conjugates verbs on the treadmill, “J’ai adorée.”

Minions is product, pure and simple. Little kids will love it, but grown-ups will feel like they’re being held hostage in a Fisher-Price test laboratory.

With stingy portions and plenty of filler, Magic Mike XXL is the worst sausage party ever.

This mash-up movie is like a greatest-hits collection for obsessive collectors. On its own terms, Terminator Genisys makes virtually no sense.

When the movie morphs from a story of mutual healing into a crime-fighting caper, it goes off track.

One man’s mirth is another man’s poison, this critic can only consult his belly as the barometer. On a gut level, Ted 2 is a funny film.

The documentary Live from New York is a separate thing. It doesn’t try to be wild and crazy, and it can’t be comprehensive. Like a land shark, it’s an uncomfortable hybrid that bites off more than it can chew.

But even without world-class smarts or amusing mutations, the next generation of “Jurassic” is an enjoyable ride.

Love & Mercy is artfully but unobtrusively directed by Bill Pohlad.

With the overlong, limp and lazy Spy, Feig has lost his mojo.

On that vicarious-pleasure level, the movie version delivers. Yet for anyone with a sense of irony or social justice, it’s also frustratingly soft around the edges, with no real sense of the drugs-and-violence underside of show business or the spiritual cost of failure.

The setting and offbeat tone may remind some viewers of another recent comedy, but whereas “The Descendants” was a substantive meal, Aloha is a pu pu platter.

Be forewarned: The 100-Year-Old Man is edgier than its title would lead you to believe. Bad guys are bludgeoned, blown up and even crushed by an elephant, and the two duffers take a lassez-faire attitude toward disposing of them.

We need to have a dialogue about the wages of war in the remote-control era. But it’s hard to spark a good dialogue with movies whose dialogue is so bad.

Disney’s gimmick of naming movies for its theme-park attractions crashes and burns in Tomorrowland, a here-and-now caper that will confuse children, bore adults and offend anyone who’s ever taken a science class.

In the context of confounded expectations, director Maxime Giroux may have intended the what’s-next ending to be ironic.

Second verse, not as good as the first.

This is analog filmmaking at its most daring.

It’s Belgian actor Schoenaerts who will leave the target audience atwitter. Seemingly incapable of cracking a smile, he fits securely in the stoic-farmer tradition that stretches from John Wayne in “The Quiet Man” to Russell Crowe in “The Water Diviner.”

While Black is painfully effective as the dork who drops slangy kudos on his new BFF, Marsden is a revelation.

This showcase for Wiig is sufficiently absurd to make real-world parallels laughable.

Age of Ultron has self-aware laughs, grandiose themes and the best effects that money can buy. But at this point, it will take true vision to plot the umpteen sequels without getting trapped in a time loop.

With a stellar cast and seductive look, Ex Machina is a sleek contraption for capturing our imagination.

Crowe is effectively restrained in his acting, but in his debut as a director, he overdoes the manipulative music and the pretty images from cinematographer Andrew Lesnie.

Starved of sufficient comedy or drama, The Age of Adaline is a pipsqueak.

Monkey Kingdom tugs our heartstrings to the top of the trees. With a lot of patience, and perhaps a little trickery, directors Mark Linfield and Alastair Fothergill have produced a simian “Cinderella.”

While the movie sometimes seems like faux Fincher, the symbiotic acting, artful imagery and punchline ending turn True Story into credible entertainment.

Finally the film tips its hand and becomes a bet-the-house warning about climate change.

The movie is more of a character study than a biography, as Bernstein dispenses his gentle wit and wisdom for the camera and for an elite class of student.

The Woman in Gold works, largely because of the odd-couple chemistry between Mirren and Reynolds. It just goes to show that broad strokes are appealing when they’re in the right frame.

Only an artist at the midpoint between the maypole and maturity could concoct a comedy as potent as While We’re Young.

The lesson of this likable little movie is that it’s never too late to reclaim your integrity.

If you don’t crave the taste of motor oil on your popcorn, Furious 7 can’t end fast enough.

The documentary offers undercooked subplots about Gruber’s mostly Hispanic staff and his romance with a health-conscious Catholic acupuncturist, but Deli Man is best when it sticks to the menu.

Home delivers like a mailman on Valentine’s Day. But when we scratch beneath the sugary surface, there’s something tart inside that’s difficult to digest.

Based on an acclaimed novel by Ron Rash, Serena is like a towering tale that’s been fed into a woodchipper.

One of the best films of the year, Gett: the Trial of Viviane Amsalem is bound to be compared to the Oscar-winning Iranian drama “A Separation”; but if anything, Gett is an even more artful evocation of a bureaucratic nightmare.

The movie Timbuktu is as fresh as today’s headlines, but it’s paced and photographed like a timeless slice of life. It’s an exquisite, wise and even funny film, easily the best of the year.

The best excuse for watching The Gunman is Penn. His first mainstream leading role in a decade is worthy of comparisons to Matt Damon in the “Bourne” movies; yet it’s also disappointingly shorn of the humor and humanity of which this great actor is capable.

There is such a thing as an infinitely bad movie, and this is it.

Cinderella is so scrubbed of personality, it’s not even worth calling a mess.

If you’re a fan of the “Taken” movies and tend to give action-hero Neeson the benefit of the doubt, our advice here is simple: Run away!

If you can’t guess that the whole thing ends with a big dance number, you’ve been snoozing in your samosas.

An entertaining tour of Tinseltown served with poisoned popcorn.

After some overly talky revelations, the cornered writer/directors are forced to shatter their absurd shell game with a final act of violence that spoils the breezy, capering mood that prevailed for much of the movie.

Kingsman is like a high-speed collision between a Jaguar and a jaywalking soccer hooligan. It’s ridiculously out of balance, and when you’re stuck in the middle, it doesn’t seem so funny.

The movie version of Fifty Shades is better than the book. It's still awful, but when a filmmaker starts with stupid source material, he's handcuffed.

Squeezes plenty of color and noise from a thin concept, then runs with it until non-fanatics can’t keep up.

Channing Tatum is a lot of things, but he’s not a stoic Superman like the role he plays here, which is made more laughable by prosthetic pointy ears.

A textured and unexpectedly entertaining drama about the human toll when racial assumptions crash.

Taking potshots at American Sniper is like shooting fish in a barrel. So why should war-weary Americans see it? Because Eastwood remains a masterful action director, and this may be his last hurrah. Because Cooper is one of our best young actors, and he poured a lifetime of craft into stilling his character’s heartbeat.

For modern moviegoers, the earthy Mr. Turner may seem like slowly steeped tea with an unpleasant aftertaste. But while some are impatiently waiting for the paint to dry, astute viewers will see a cinematic landscape bloom.

The virtue of Inherent Vice is that we can stop chasing the tale and just enjoy the sunset of the ’60s dream.

Many of the people reading this review are doing it on a computer. And all of them are reading it in English. It’s not much of stretch to say that you could credit both of those things to a man named Alan Turing.

Indeed, most of the famous faces are surprisingly adept at singing. Even when the actors are not lip-syncing (which seems to be about half the time), the dense, clever lyrics are intelligible.

If you can take it, Unbroken will lift you like the classics of adventure cinema.

Within the bloodshot-eye perspective of their other stoner comedies, it’s bluntly funny and ever-so-slightly sweet.

If you don’t know the true story, we won’t spoil it for you except to say that it’s not the expected outcome. But if you’re willing to be thrown for a loop, you’re in good hands with this medal-worthy cast and crew.

The special effects remain good, but the jokes are creaky, the sentiments are forced and the pop-historical lessons are obligatory.

Whose story is this? There’s an old saying that history is written by the winners. The screenplay for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies must have been written by elves.

Because VanDyke wasn’t embedded with the American media, Point and Shoot has some priceless front-line footage, including a chilling scene where he must decide if he’s willing to kill for someone else’s cause. But without a rigorous editor, it’s “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.”

While the wilderness vistas are starkly beautiful, there’s no tangible sense of Strayed’s ultimate goal. (Why Oregon?) And the flashbacks, which include scenes of sexual misadventure and heroin use, are too brief to provide answers.

A handsome movie with a handsome leading man. Christian Bale is widely considered the finest actor of his generation. Yet here he’s adrift in the bulrushes. This might be the most indifferent performance of Bale’s career.

The message of the movie is as clear as Siberian ice: Whether you’re a Tea Partier, an Occupier or just an ordinary Joe, you might be the next citizen who’s stranded in limbo.

Further proof that likable actors have to take an occasional sick day.

A brainy bio that exerts a gravitational pull on the heartstrings.

Although it doesn’t make a lick of sense as a stand-alone story, Mockingjay — Part 1 is the first “Hunger Games” movie with meat on its bones.

This is epic cinema that begs to be compared to "2001: A Space Odyssey." But unlike Stanley Kubrick's psychedelic joyride, this journey is powered by a human heart.

Most biographical docs contain a montage of old footage, but this one is especially haunting. As Campbell watches home movies, he has to ask Kim to identify the people on screen, including his ex-wives, his children and his younger self.

Gilroy vividly evokes both the LA exteriors and newsroom interiors, and the action sequences are fraught with tension.

Directed by and starring Mathieu Amalric, it’s a deceptively low-key riff on a Hitchcock whodunit. It’s both sexy and inscrutable, a cold-blooded puzzler to the very end.

Although the characters don’t lapse into stereotypes, neither are they sufficiently funny or fierce to engage us in the issues they raise.

Sorry, Keanu, but you stole my time and you murdered my brain cells. By the sacred oath of WHOA, there will be blood, and this time it’s personal.

The iconic actor may be too gruff for sainthood, but Murray still retains a secret stash of soul.

Sparks would be delighted if this movie were compared to his other story about reunited lovers, but compared to “The Notebook,” The Best of Me is the coffee-stained outline of a sales pitch for sleeping pills.

There’s a good movie to be made about the alienating effects of modern technology. In 2013, a little-seen indie called “Disconnect,” starring Jason Bateman, came closer than this well-intentioned failure, which has virtually no heart, humor, sense of place or central point of view. In trying to be a big, important movie, Men, Women & Children is about none of the above.

While the chronological details and social significance of the story Webb reported get shortchanged, Kill the Messenger is a vital reminder that a free press must be free to press the powerful for answers.

One one level, Pride is as fake as a lip-sync revue, yet the emotions it arouses are real.

Despite playing with a stacked deck, The Judge is guilty of exceeding expectations.

A genuinely touching and occasionally powerful film, not least because the boys are so disinclined to pity themselves.

Ultimately what makes Gone Girl so watchable is the three-headed monster of Fincher, Pike and Affleck. The director bathes the B-movie scenario in the queasy-green hues of a morgue, while Affleck flashes his million-dollar smile like a dime-store Dracula and the beautifully inscrutable Pike absorbs the light like a wax mannequin. If it’s true that Nick and Amy were made for each other, they were made in a fiendish lab.

Annabelle is so lazily coat-tailing on Roman Polanski, they should have called it “Rosemary’s Barbie.”

In a poignant and potentially depressing film, it’s redeeming to see that when they are with their kindred spirits, even the saddest skeletons can dance.

The Equalizer, loosely based on the TV series of the late ’80s, is a guilty-pleasure platform for Washington’s slow-cooked, kick-butt heroism.

So stupid and hateful, it needs to have a stake driven through its heart before it can spawn a franchise.

What makes Love Is Strange so special is that the challenges the couple face are more mundane than menacing.

Although the ratio of comedy to drama becomes increasingly weighted toward tearjerking, few of the emotional moments are realistic or effective.

While director Michael Roskam lays the groundwork for a heist thriller, The Drop is fueled by character, not plot.

A family flick that punches the right buttons like a trained seal.

He’s like a globe-trotting Richard Linklater. And with Winterbottom’s first-ever sequel, his “Trip” films now rival Linklater’s “Before” series in charting how a twosome evolves over time. Plus, they’re bloody hilarious.

Although The November Man shows us some attractive people in motion, the cumulative effect leaves us neither shaken nor stirred.

The settings and supporting roles suggest that If I Stay started out as someone’s passion project, but the final product only requires its star to sleepwalk through buckets of schlock.

Alba is a showstopper in a fringed cowgirl outfit. But nine years wiser, we know that pretty things aren’t always worth killing for.