Kerry Lengel

Guilt, grief and the struggle to move on are big themes, but unfortunately, director Burr Steers and his script writers aren't interested in exploring them.

How much of this is actually funny is a question of taste, but even a confirmed Perry hater might get caught laughing once or twice.

There’s a lot to be admired here, and After the Wedding certainly gives you a lot to think about. It just doesn’t quite make you feel all the feels.

The result is a pious mess of a movie that falls short both as history and as storytelling.

Directed by John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side, Saving Mr. Banks), it’s a well-crafted procedural, but it’s also a whole lot of familiar tropes put together in familiar ways.

For fans, counting up how many superheroes can emerge from the clown car of one three-hour movie is half the fun. For casual moviegoers — say, those who might skip minor installments such as “Ant-Man and the Wasp” — it accounts for half the exhaustion, a bit of world-building fatigue to go along with the sensory overload of a fantasy realm that seems stuck in perpetual apocalypse.

There's no question it looks fantastic...As for the story, well, much like the original Frankenstein's monster, it is a haphazard assemblage of well-aged source materials jolted back to life with new technology, but it isn't quite as sophisticated as one might hope.

[Estevez] still hasn't progressed beyond the film-school basics, but somehow he managed to recruit an all-star cast of (presumably) like-minded activists for The Public.

Artfully shot and mooded-up with a jittery ambient soundtrack, Risk is compelling because the enigma of Assange is compelling.

In The Internet's Own Boy, writer-director Brian Knappenberger ("We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists") paints a portrait of Swartz as a martyr for the information age, but ultimately the story falls short of such mythic ambition.

One kudo to this lazy effort: The climax does have a real end-of-a-trilogy feel, making further sequels less likely. Silver linings, folks.

If anything, Carnage does too little to adapt to the new medium, and the result is a film that makes its audience feel as trapped as its characters.

The performances are certainly compelling.

This brand of gonzo journalism was effective in Moore’s 1989 debut about Flint and General Motors, “Roger & Me,” but it has long since devolved into self-parody.

Wild Grass retains a literary feel with the help of an unseen narrator, who offers intriguing poetic observations. And Resnais' visuals are equally lyrical. What can you say: The French sure know how to make pretty pictures.

One can forgive the trying-too-hard aphorisms -- "You don't choose a life ... you live one" -- but savvy cinephiles are sure to be annoyed by Tyler Bates' hypnotic ambient-folk soundtrack, studded with such despoiled musical gems as Nick Drake's "Pink Moon" and the Shins' "New Slang."

It delivers plenty of exciting action with some CGI-assisted visual flair, from stampeding bison to a starkly beautiful image of a frozen lake with our hero flailing on the wrong side of the ice. Hughes’ efforts to bring emotional drama to the proceedings fall flat, however, relying on coming-of-age clichés that strip the story of any real surprise.

There's nothing particularly earth-shattering here, but maybe that's appropriate for a film honoring food that aims to be mouthwatering but unpretentious.

While the actors certainly have charm, the farcical plot is so formulaic that the comic fizz often feels forced.

It lays on the pathos, moralizing and forced whimsy thicker than figgy pudding, but it’s still entertaining, heart-warming family fare, thanks in large part to charmingly sincere performances.

There’s a fine line between homage and rip-off, between a clever mashup and a messy pileup of tired tropes. But, much like a rainbow, where that line appears is in the eye of the beholder.

Shown in flashbacks, the story of 10-year-old Sarah Starzynski is powerful, thanks in large part to the luminous screen presence of young Mélusine Mayance.

Even though Five Armies is the shortest Hobbit movie, it also is the least thrilling as it chugs toward the finish line weighted down with all the added characters and confusing subplots that have been tacked on along the way.

It’s a lazy, thoroughly unoriginal bit of storytelling, but it has just enough cheeky humor and bass-thumping action scenes to be a potential crowd-pleaser.

The acting is great, but screenwriter Matthew Orton’s attempts to give the film the philosophical heft that it deserve fall somewhat short.

Outdoing all of the headliners, at least when it comes to capturing voices and body language, is a new character inside the game played by Awkwafina of “Crazy Rich Asians.” It’s subtle, but there’s something more authentic about her version of the shtick. She’s just more in the moment — or maybe less desperate for a laugh.

The film is not without its flaws, but the story it tells is both terrifying and inspiring.

Téchiné's fidelity to the facts delivers a disappointing denouement to an intriguing character study.