Kate Taylor

Any hope that the clever concept behind Risen might produce a clever movie is thrown to the ground, where it lies quivering for the next hour or so, before expiring noisily in the film’s second half.

Having managed Berlin rather gracefully, Race often plods along the home front.

There’s nothing subtle about The Finest Hours, but much that is satisfying.

From a sympathetic perspective, let me say that sequel No. 3 shows how difficult it is to keep these franchises fresh while remaining true to their initial charm.

There’s lots of wisdom here, but in the Icelandic barrens, good cheer has sometimes gone missing. Yes, there’s a price to pay for being stubborn.

In short, there are an awful lot of subplots and comic characters but none of the actors in this star-studded cast is allowed to build his laughs and the Coens just abandon several of these vivid personalities along the way.

It’s the direction, not the script, that really kills the picture, as Mazer limps along from the chugging contest to the half-naked conga line to the car chase without ever raising the laughs he needs from the comic set pieces or the tension he needs from the dramatic developments.

Gomes believes we should all take responsibility for one another and sees austerity as a government abrogation of social duty that ultimately turns citizen against citizen.

Labelling his film as a response to the impoverishment of ordinary people caused by the government-imposed austerity of 2013-14, Gomes explains his dilemma brilliantly at the start of Volume 1. How is a well-meaning filmmaker to effectively render the pain of the Portuguese with a documentary set in a town where the shipyard has closed just as alien wasps are attacking local beehives?

Arabian Nights is a remarkable achievement, but also an erratic one.

[A] fascinating documentary.

Bay has attempted to carefully characterize and humanize each member of the security force, and Krasinski, Dale and Schreiber are largely successful at creating personable fighters.

The film is made watchable by a strong cast that renders the men’s vulnerability particularly sympathetic.

If his direction is erratic, the script he wrote with Annie Mumolo (Bridesmaids) has gaps you could drive a truck through and dialogue filled with painfully obvious exposition of plot, motive and theme.

Tarantino is a masterful storyteller, painter of cinematic images and director of actors; the script, the cinematography and the cast of outlandish characters, created by a powerful ensemble dashingly led by Jackson, can’t be faulted in any way.

It tells a well-crafted story; the new characters are invigorating; the old characters are reintroduced tidily. But it is also far too enamoured with the power of its own history.

There are unresolved questions and puzzling detours along the way, but Bikes vs Cars does show that cars, millions and millions of stationary cars, may yet prove the bike’s best friend.

For the first time in the series, Stallone did not write the script, yet director Ryan Coogler and his co-writer Aaron Covington aren’t exactly brimming over with fresh ideas: Worn thin with repetition, the sentimental old premise muffles suspense and dampens emotion.

In a big, engrossing performance that is the film’s chief delight, the reliable Australian actress Toni Collette plays Milly.

A Bond movie is all about delivering on expectations: to enjoy it you have to be pleased rather than frustrated by its predictability. In that regard, Spectre, Daniel Craig’s fourth outing as Bond and the second directed by Sam Mendes, can be deemed a solid success: not as darkly stylish as "Skyfall" but not as stupidly grim as "Quantum of Solace" either.

Unusual for a Holocaust drama, the film offers no false hope of rescue or resurrection, but does insist that our bearing witness matters.

Every scene is perfectly framed, every symbol lovingly shot, but the story and the characters remain opaque.

The ever-reliable Hanks sympathetically personifies all in America that is worth fighting for, while his British colleague’s surprisingly comic version of Rudolf Abel portrays the Russian spy as a man quietly steadfast in his loyalty to a different cause.

In fashioning a creation myth for Peter Pan, director Joe Wright and writer Jason Fuchs have produced such a thin story that they reduce, rather than amplify, J.M. Barrie’s famous characters.

In the end, the family drama rolls on as the political metaphor wears thin so that the second half of the film is less striking and less interesting than the first.

As directed by Robert Zemeckis from a script he co-wrote with Christopher Browne, the film limps through its first two acts, putting in time until the big moment.

It’s only mildly entertaining, never funny enough nor smart enough to summarize the cultural moment in the manner of a "Working Girl" or "The Social Network."

There is no tragic hero here; there is no overarching explanation, but a movie that offered either of those would seem pretty pat. Take it or leave, Everest is just there.