Kevin Jagernauth

Ultimately, it’s hard and a bit pointless to nitpick Jack The Giant Slayer because it never sets out to be or presents itself as anything more than a slightly beefed up fairy tale.

With no unique viewpoint on the story of its own, it’s perplexing why Papillon went in front of cameras at all.

So you have The Rewrite, which feels like it had a rewrite at some point, perhaps muddying the waters of the film's larger intentions. But there's enough from both halves — the more original dramedic vehicle and the less imaginative, predictable, mainstream-aimed entertainment — to make for one wobbly, yet enjoyable movie, if you just put your guard down enough to let it in.

It's no surprise the film became a box office sensation in its native France; the characters are a delight to know and the whole movie goes down easy like a cold glass of Chardonnay on a warm summer evening.

As I Lay Dying is another Franco lark that is more of an experiment with form than a fully realized movie. One almost gets the sense that Franco is working out ideas with As I Lay Dying, with the goal of creating a cohesive film as a secondary ambition to simply capturing the feel of Faulkner's prose.

Leterrier's film is a reminder that sometimes a good yarn can do enough heavy lifting on its own to provide thrills. Whether or not the illusion pays off will be up to you, but the trick itself may be intriguing enough.

The film’s attempted cathartic payoff is inauthentic and unearned, and it’s a shame considering that Gyllenhaal once again gives a committed turn.

A fascinating look at the juggling act of a man who is succeeding in public, but still trying to find the answers in private.

Body is very much an exercise, but by a couple of guys who are already showing a confident handle of coaxing solid performances out of their cast, sustaining a mood, and not reaching beyond their means.

A lack of courage on behalf of the filmmakers to take any position renders the film narratively limp.

Big Sur rises and fades, shifts and moves, through movements and melodies, singing a beautifully sad song for an era and a man who lost his way.

A film desperately in need of an electric charge, Mary Shelley is simply another cinematic corpse on the table.

The engaging opening third of Cooties is enough to make the rest of the 96-minute film a mildly amusing diversion, but as the minutes roll by, you'll wish the brains of the film had remained intact.

Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down The White House couldn’t be more timely, yet those parallels never quite resonate.

Didactic yet generic, The Promise endeavors to educate about a period of recent history that is still unacknowledged by the Turkish government, but curiously manages to be anonymous in form nonetheless.

For those who are coming to Codegirl looking for a fiery rebuke and exposé on the gender imbalance rampant in Silicon Valley, they've come to the wrong place.

The Judge has the curious ability of straining too hard while managing to say nothing dramatically.

Yes, it's uneven, more jokes miss than hit, and it winds up taking easy dramatic shortcuts from the more interesting avenues that the script presents, but it's thanks to the lead quartet that the comedy is as engaging at it is.

The movie is never without forward momentum, it's just too bad when just when it's ready to go to interesting places, we jump back to Bonner and Aya's pedestrian romance.

Keeping things on the right side of watchable are the performances, none of which are particularly revelatory, but all of them serving the territory their role in the story requires. Blunt and Bennett both rise above the pack, but even so, the screenplay doesn’t give them dimension until almost too late.

Lords Of Chaos is more interested in the spectacle than the substance behind the true story, and that kind of phoniness likely wouldn’t even get the film or Åkerlund invited into The Black Circle.

Ultimately, Dellal’s film is never as brave or courageous as Ray, and in spending more time on Maggie than her son, misses the opportunity to jump from informational to insightful.

A Cure For Wellness is an exercise in watching a film continually stifle itself at its most compelling moments.

That The Dressmaker remains watchable in any sense is thanks in large part to a cast who give the material that’s way beneath them far better treatment than it deserves.

Overstuffed yet trite and empty, Fort McCoy attempts to mix heavy drama, slapstick comedy and romance all in the wrappings of a coming of age tale set in the summer of 1944, but flounders on all fronts, resulting in a picture that offers a rather naive and simplistic view of the murky territory between good and evil.

There is something potentially special in the elements of The Returned, with its allusions to class and social structures, and stigmas held around people with certain afflictions. But it merely nods toward them with no commentary or depth.

Therese is almost voyeuristically distant from what's happening on screen, asking the audience to observe, but leaving just enough a gap of being completely engaged, that while everything is very well articulated, the impact is more academic than sensual.

It seems doubtful that Ballad of Small Player will serve as a third straight return to the Academy Awards for Berger. However, it does firmly establish the filmmaker as perhaps the finest purveyor of reliably high gloss pulp. But even as far as low stakes bets go, the film only offers a very modest payout.