Joe Williams

As long as Hollywood keeps hitting us over the head with empty spectacles like G.I. Joe: Retaliation, regular Joes will be too numb to fight back.

Notwithstanding the characters’ spiritual camaraderie, Salles’ emphasizes the hard physical labor and loneliness in Sal’s story, including the jittery rigors of the writing process. When he reaches a crossroads choice between down-and-out Dean and his own rising career, Sal senses that except for the words on a typewritten scroll, his life on the road is gone, real gone.

With a greater emphasis on sex than violence, Spring Breakers is a more enjoyable guilty pleasure than “Natural Born Killers” and just as acute about our cultural devolution. For all its seeming stupidity, its masterstroke is making us complicit in the corruption of its young stars (who include the director’s own wife).

With a child’s perspective on war, Lore deserves comparisons with “Empire of the Sun” and “Hope and Glory,” and with a feisty female protagonist it stands virtually alone.

Like a taxidermied owl, Stoker is lovely to look at, but in the end it’s hard to give a hoot.

The film is so masterfully controlled, we feel like we’ve eavesdropped on something like life.

It’s too cheesy and predictable to be a real miracle, but by Vegas standards, it’s a winner.

The more suitably antic Robert Downey Jr. and Johnny Depp were considered for the part before Franco wandered into the picture with his stoner grin.

This true-ish story adds a romantic subplot to the prosecution of Japanese war criminals by American general Douglas MacArthur, but neither the love nor the war are completely baked.

The several allusions to Thomas Mann’s forbidden-love novel “Death in Venice” are apt, but Yossi is also a standalone film and an extraordinary sequel.

Obviously a labor love, and its very existence in a godforsaken marketplace is a minor miracle.

The verdict on Snitch is that Johnson has attempted a career detour on a street marked Do Not Enter.

Hallstrom (“Chocolat”) makes the mishmash palatable, and romance mainstay Duhamel provides some sweet-and-salty charm, but there’s not much they can do with Sparks’ canned dialogue and Hough’s undercooked acting.

The derivative script and skimpy effects don’t convey either the power or the problems of being a young witch.

To paraphrase a classic of Reagan-era cinema, A Good Day to Die Hard is a bad day to stop sniffing glue.

Some of the themes and the hallucinatory special effects are reminiscent of Cronenberg’s “Naked Lunch,” and there are cheeky allusions to “Dawn of the Dead” and even “Eyes Wide Shut,” but a viewer with an open mind might say that this midnight-style movie is more enjoyable than any of them.

Suffering through this felonious farce could only inspire a prison riot.

Dare we say it? Even the acting is atrocious, with pop-eyed Pacino chewing the scenery like a geezer gumming his oatmeal.

This is a brutal and stupid movie.

Although the brazen lovers, bellicose ministers and backstabbing handmaidens are familiar elements, the film is so handsomely mounted that we happily endure the ride until the turning of the screws in the tragic last act.

While the cast includes Luis Guzman (as a buffoonish deputy) and Johnny Knoxville (as a local gun nut), there's no sense that these are real people in a real town, and Schwarzenegger's Sheriff Owens has the weakest backstory of all.

Because he's the protagonist of the movie and played by the likable Matt Damon, we keep an open mind, but Promised Land is morally ambiguous to a fault.

Perilous incidents have riveted audiences since Pauline was tied to the railroad tracks, but in the hundred-year history of cinema, few thrillers have been as emotionally compelling as The Impossible.

With a fearless director and his mighty pen freeing a talented cast to attack a vital theme, Django Unchained is damnation unleashed.

Fans of the franchise will greet Les Misérables as a feast for the senses, but the rest of us are left with crumbs.

Apatow still hasn't set the table for a meaty drama, but making us laugh is a piece of cake.

There's an alliance of interesting stories fighting for dominance here, but instead of a clear victory, Hyde Park on Hudson is the site of a muddled truce.

At nearly three hours long, "An Unexpected Journey" has moments when the caravan seems both overstuffed and out of balance, but it's such a scenic trip that only a stubborn homebody could complain.