Joe Williams

For better or worse, this is a straightforward performance film.

Compared to most teen comedies these days, Fun Size is almost touchingly tame.

As phony as a poodle-skirted waitress at a mall diner, yet it's as sweet as a malt. A vanilla one.

It still has cool creatures and 1960s set design, and the 3-D is the best of the season, but if you try to remember the story or jokes, you'll find that you've been hit by a neuralyzer beam.

Bully is a good start to a necessary conversation, but its loving voice is likely to be drowned out by haters who hide their own wounded hearts behind Internet pseudonyms and broadcast microphones.

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.

Built on shaky and blood-soaked ground, but if towering technique is all you want from an action movie, then yippee-ki-yay.

A true story of animal rescue, and it even stars the sea creature to whom it happened. But it's the humans who do the cutesy tricks that make it a mixed blessing.

This long, ludicrous soap opera is also a mighty spectacle, a new standard in disengaged destruction.

Although the characters are three-dimensional, the simultaneous crises and last-act resolutions are a little too neat for a movie about the messiness of life.

You would expect an epic with brains and hearts. Instead we settle for sturdy craft, with a stellar cast struggling to breathe life into the cold material.

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.

It's deliberately difficult to untangle the crossed allegiances of the people that Kelly interviews, and it's melodramatic that he tries to smuggle Ming and a surrendered assassin onto a plane bound for the United States. But dramatizing such a complex situation is a necessary evil.

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.

The Hefner we meet here is the likable rogue we already know.

With its references to other properties in the Marvel universe and to classic tales of redemption, this no-surprises summer movie might appeal to those who've been bitten by radioactive spiders or the Shakespeare bug.

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

Like the politicians it tries to pull into the big picture, Killing Them Softly promises more than it delivers.

Unfolds like a fable instead of a believable slice of life. Mexican TV and film star Bichir gives a poignant performance, but he's distinctly more European than the cholos and Chicano laborers on the sketchy edges of the hero's plight.

Without the kindling of character development, Planes: Fire and Rescue is no smoldering success, but if Disney’s flight plan is to share Pixar’s airspace, it’s getting warmer.

On a minute-to-minute level, it's an engaging mystery, the kind that rewards our participation with eye candy and adrenaline shots. But when we pull back for an overview, we see that it's flat and that pieces are missing.

Although Besson, the director of “La Femme Nikita” and the producer of “Taken,” indulges in some operatic violence, the film is more spacey than pacey.

Michael as a character is defined almost solely by his helplessness and gratitude. He's as lovable as a lost puppy, but a more perceptive movie than The Blind Side would have let us see him from another angle.

Despite some gruesome images and the psychotic fervor of Rakes, it's a frustratingly slow boil.

Too modest to become a worldwide phenomenon, but sensitive teens and their older kin who pine for the '90s may want to take it for a spin on the dance floor.

The Road has the signposts of an important film, but it lacks the diversions of an inviting trip.

Barney's Version has episodes instead of plot, outbursts instead of wit and alibis instead of growth.

There’s plenty of talk about sex — even from Brandy’s supportive mom (Connie Britton), who offers her lubricant — but not much nudity or consequence. In The To Do List, sex is just another dubious achievement to outgrow.