Kyle Smith

The film is a lesbian-road-trip gangster farce with a hint of political satire, and though it’s admirably offbeat I found it only mildly amusing.

The setup is fun to explore. But after establishing it, the movie essentially gets stuck delivering variations on the idea of Mother splitting into two selves, the domestic and the feral.

After an intriguing start and a strong middle, however, the film can’t quite deliver a satisfying ending.

What started out as something that promised to be akin to a droll, twisted Coen Brothers comedy instead wanders off into reverie. And when the movie ends, critical questions are simply left unresolved. Mr. Cronenberg may not care about closure, but a movie can benefit greatly from it.

For those who can tolerate—or better yet, relish—extreme violence, The Equalizer 3 is diverting enough. If the script is so-so, the beautiful Italian locations, Mr. Washington’s still-world-class charm and an eerie, frightening musical score by Marcelo Zarvos lift it (slightly) above average for the action-thriller genre.

Though the film can’t capture Wolfe’s writing, it does a public service in passing along its subject’s wisdom.

The Inventor falls awkwardly between a kids’ movie and one for grown-ups.

As a character portrait, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is absorbing, but as an argument it fails.

A solid high-school comedy keeps stopping dead for a series of what amount to so-so MTV videos.

Given that the character is a literal saint, and the script never stops reminding us how brave, honorable, loving and committed Mother Cabrini is, the movie suffers from a certain steadfast tone. It’s warm with fondness but never boiling with passion, and a major star might have succeeded in making Cabrini larger than life. As it is, she comes across as so pure that it’s a little difficult to relate to her.

It’s a film that demands to be watched several times to figure it out, but although I occasionally enjoyed its mordant humor, it’s so unpleasant that it’s hard to sit through once.

Cobbling together ideas from other, better movies, Rust isn’t original enough to be a must-see, but it didn’t deserve to be canceled because of an accident, either. Mr. Baldwin has been largely absent from the screen in recent years, and this effort is a reminder that, to use a word often applied to Harland Rust himself, he remains formidable.

The film is a sort of pocket epic, one that travels a great length of time and distance in order to create space for people to find themselves. The changes in appearance of the two lead actors over the course of events are as startling as China’s full-throttled economic development. Yet Mr. Jia is subtle to a fault.

On a scene-to-scene basis, it’s an impressively taut film, but it left me wishing for a more compelling conclusion than “people are nasty to one another.”

Ms. Polley, a longtime actress who got started in movies as a child, does an admirable job of keeping the dramatic temperature at a high level despite the strictures of the format, and Ms. Mara, Ms. Foy and Ms. Buckley all make a vivid impression. Yet no one in the movie seems to have a grasp of the practical realities.

Having simplified matters, Ms. Fennell sloughs off the psychological depth of the novel and instead lavishes attention on the heavy breathing and the decor, exhibiting much interest in the ornate mansion in which the Linton family lives (one room is set aside for ribbons only) and the costumes and accessories with which Ms. Robbie is gloriously draped.

Though very funny at times, and refreshing in the way it keeps us guessing, Spin Me Round is only partially successful.

Dream Scenario is such an imaginatively offbeat movie that it’s a shame it isn’t better.

Writer-director Kirk Jones doesn’t do a great job finding anything fresh to say about this unnerving situation, with one exception.

Those who’d like to take their more mature children to an animated feature with considerably more imaginative richness than, say, “DC League of Super-Pets” will find that the Japanese anime movie “Inu-Oh” fits the bill: How often do you get a chance to take in a medieval rock opera? But an imaginative hook isn’t everything.

Successfully stringing together shocking, disgusting and terrifying moments counts as a solid day’s work for most horror directors, and since The Exorcist: Believer achieves all that it’s competent enough. But I expected better from Mr. Green.

The minimalist style keeps the suspense warm. The movie is unusual among teen horror flicks in that it largely avoids the usual cheap thrills and bursts of scare music. Instead, it carefully repeats isolated images and sound bites until they take on a shivery power.

If it's violence ye seek, and violently confused storytelling, look ye no further.

Japan’s loony suicide culture seems like an adequately scary backdrop for a horror movie, but the routine horror flick The Forest mostly settles for cheap thrills.

A sort of grown-up version of “Moonrise Kingdom,” France’s Love at First Fight has some youthful free-range charm but not nearly as much as its predecessor.

Ultimately, this throwback, made-for-TV-style film takes the easy way out in a cheesy climax, but its resolute quaintness may appeal to the kind of viewers who regard electricity as disturbingly newfangled.

Despite being named “Gator Bodine,” Franco seems like something Statham would scrape off his boots. Put it this way: Franco needs a baseball bat to be intimidating; Statham just needs to be Statham.

The movie falls into the same uneasy category as "Eight Legged Freaks": too tongue-in-cheek to be thrilling, not funny enough to be a comedy.

It's a one-joke movie, if "Jewish mothers are annoying" is a joke. But just as a film about boredom should not actually be boring, no movie should credibly simulate the experience of being stuck in a car with Barbra Streisand for eight days.

The laughs, the warmth, the love and the faith-based fellowship die out in the dismal final act.

The main reason for Winter's Bone to exist is that it delivers a little voyeuristic thrill -- a bit of poverty porno -- for the critics who awarded it their highest honors at this year's Sundance Film Festival.

Ms. Findlay’s work is nevertheless so delicate as to be slight, so unassuming as to be unsatisfying. The friction between the two leads could form a strong backdrop to the film; instead, it is the film.

The documentary Tabloid shows that an oddball lead character and a smirky style do not necessarily add up to a complete movie.

In Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, selfish oldsters scheme to rob young people of their vital essence, sacrificing them in the process. It’s basically “Social Security: The Movie.”

Strip away the alt-country soundtrack, though, and you've got a Bette Davis fallen-woman-redeemed picture from 1937.

It suffers from a major structural problem, which is that in its endlessly padded middle section it coyly refuses to get to the point until it exhausts the audience’s patience, then sprints through a late explanation that deserves more careful consideration.

Unbroken, is a cinematic scrapbook, a collection of well-composed scenes practically cut and pasted from “Memphis Belle,” “Chariots of Fire,” “Life of Pi” and “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” Unlike those other films, though, Angelina Jolie’s second effort as a director is more a series of similar events than a story, and lacks an underlying message except that torture hurts.

Wraps a sari around the kind of suffering-housewife picture that became a cliché 30 years ago.

Robin Williams’ last live-action film, Boulevard, is a frustrating ending to a stellar career, a cramped and melancholy film about a cramped and melancholy man.

Since this low-grade comedy doesn't really even attempt to be funny, the purpose of the movie is to establish (or reinforce) a feeling of luxurious old-timey melancholy.

The film achieves a mild uptick in the final act, with a surprise change of heart and a race to save a little girl, but up till then it's thickly earnest -- a conquista-bore.

Combines unpleasantness and stupidity to a degree that would be difficult to match unless you were stuck in bed with a case of the shingles while being forced to watch “The Ghost Whisperer."

It has cult item stamped all over it, and fans of (severely) experimental cinema might see it as a revelation. Most others will find that watching this movie is like having your senses beaten with a rake.

Gunning for the near-annual Ugly Makeup Oscar, Aniston proves, as always, a modestly gifted actress, only this time with scars and weedy hair.

David Gordon Green’s Joe largely succeeds in immersing us in a rural world of cruelty, ugliness, decay, neglect and aggression, but if there is a point to it all, I couldn’t find it.

The first “John Wick” was taut and nasty, a potent slug of B-movie. This one is so enamored of its own extravagance that, on more than one occasion, I was reminded of “Zoolander 2.”

The third entry features visual effects that are no longer novel, which means the writing deficiencies are now impossible to overlook. Without a compelling story, what emerges is not a movie but . . . a ride.

There is a passable 85-minute comedy in here, caked in an additional 30 minutes of flab.

A touching love story that gets sidelined by a tiresome intra-family African political dispute, A United Kingdom has a big heart that beats far too slowly.

The movie is well-acted, but it's as talky as if it were written for the stage, with fatally slow pacing. Strictly for hard-core Sayles fans and maybe for lovers of American roots music.

Overrun with malicious goblins, a vengeance-minded pig, a fast-moving troll and a giant horned ogre, but the true source of terror is scarier than all of these combined: New York real estate prices.

Parts of the film (which can be seen in select theaters and via video on demand) are so good that it’s a shame it strikes so many false notes.

What’s the difference between “21 Jump Street” and 22 Jump Street? Same as the difference between getting a 21 and a 22 at blackjack.

Alien: Romulus occupies a strange position: It’s lovingly aimed at fans who have seen its Carter-era predecessor 15 times, yet it’s unlikely to scare anyone except those who are new to the “Alien” shtick. In space, it turns out, no one can hear you yawn, either.

The movie generates a pleasing fog of suspense as it makes the audience pay attention to each new audio cue. Seeing the movie in a hushed theater is ideal; viewing it at home would almost certainly bring in distractions that would dilute the experience.

As visually hypercaffeinated as the film is—mixing animation styles, cramming the screen with imagery, and cutting rapidly around each donnybrook—it’s a bit sleepy when it comes to the plot, which doesn’t really kick in until the second half of the movie.

A comedy as black as vinyl, Kill Your Friends is a music-industry tell-all set at a decadent London record label in 1997.

If the film is ambitious, it is also inert.

In the utterly routine effort Skyfall, we're actually expected to cheer each chord we've heard so many times (here's a martini shaker! Look, it's a Walther PPK! And there's an Aston Martin!) We've been turned into wretched Pavlovian dogs, salivating at the bell instead of the snack. The highlight, by far, is a classic animated credit sequence: Adele, you are the new Shirley Bassey.

The Tillman Story purports to be an exposé of the cover-up of the death by friendly fire of the Army Ranger and one time NFL star Pat Tillman. But, provocative and colorful as the film is, it does the very thing it denounces -- massaging the facts to seize Tillman for a political agenda.

So there is courage and cheekiness here. What there is not is a story, or much insight or even anger; anyone expecting an indictment of Iran will be sorely disappointed.

Though rousing in places, “Young Woman and the Sea” is a routine effort that feels made for television, and was (originally slated for Disney+). Clichés and predictability are more forgivable at home, but asking people to take the plunge on a movie ticket for this so-so offering is asking a lot.

They don’t make ’em like A Walk Among the Tombstones any more. Mainly because everyone got bored with ’em and stopped watching ’em.

As the movie's feet get stuck in its own misery, it made me appreciate "Trainspotting" all over again - its wit, how it moved, the way any outcome for its characters seemed possible.

This unapologetic B-movie at least keeps the action rolling, and the time goes by quickly. To put it another way, I’d rather see Gerard Butler stab a terrorist in the neck than flirt with Katherine Heigl.

It's the Food Network meets The Weather Channel meets . . . the Scary Doomsday Preachers Channel.

Creepy spirits in old-timey dress, ear-stabbing sound cues, slamming doors and bloody handprints: The horror flick Insidious isn't scared to be trite.

At Berkeley casts a nonjudgmental eye on everyone from cement layers to students discussing Thoreau to administrators complaining about budgeting. If only everything were interesting.

A scrapbook of bits from better Allen films that builds up to a hearty shrug.

Without an exceptionally skilled director of actors (such as Cameron Crowe), Cruise can’t dial up much emotion, so the two love interests for his character are two more than he can convincingly handle. He may be at home in the cockpit of a killing machine, but when it comes to displaying his humanity, he’s no Wall-E.

None of it rings true; those who seek a serious dramatic inquiry into the inner workings of the church should look elsewhere.

It’s mainly instructive in that it shows how liberals believe the end always justifies the means.

No, Warcraft isn’t a ridiculous mess; it holds together on its own musclebound terms. It neither tries to be jokey nor undercuts itself by being unintentionally funny. And it offers a bit more complexity than some other nonstop action flicks adapted from video games. It’s a real movie, just not a good one.

Alas, “sad case” is not how we want to see McCarthy; it’s frustrating to see her spend more than half the movie being the pathetic target of jokes rather than the dominating figure she was in “Bridesmaids” and “The Heat,” both of which are far funnier than this one.

It follows exactly the same path as both "Glory Road" (except that was basketball) and "Gridiron Gang" (football).

Misshapen, malodorous and firing its grubby tentacles across the room in a feeding frenzy, The Thing reminded me of a roomful of journalists immediately after someone announces Open Bar. The movie's victims disappear like cocktail peanuts and without a whole lot more significance.

Calling Child 44 a mash-up of “Dr. Zhivago” and “Silence of the Lambs” doesn’t do enough to capture how strange it is.

An essential document of bad taste that needs to go right into the time capsule. History must not forget.

A cute, spunky found-footage thriller undone by a lumpy plot and a weak ending, Operation Avalanche revisits the urban legend that the moon landing was faked, with some fresh twists.

This one is essentially “The Firm” with smartphones.

Even if the movie had more shadings, though, Marshall's political point would undo his he-man action-flick format. If you're looking for a rallying cry to make the emotions sizzle, "Quagmire!" isn't it.

The banality of evil has met its match in the banality of Good, a Holocaust parable that barely registers a pulse.

I don’t know how many sex scenes featuring Winstone and Atwell you can handle, but the movie breaches my limit, which is a firm zero.

In mashing together story elements from Terrence Malick’s “Badlands” with the look of Malick’s “Days of Heaven,” Lowery put 90 percent of his energy into the atmosphere and 10 percent into the script.

Doesn't offer plot or an inquiry into the evil in men's hearts. It simply wallows in the filth and inhumanity that surround a father and his pre-adolescent son as they march across the shattered remains of this country.

Though it may have some novel elements, the franchise already feels tired, and isn’t much more promising than recent DC efforts “Black Adam” and “The Flash.” This beetle doesn’t have much juice.

If the movie's story is anything but daring, it does takes guts to make a movie so shamelessly emotional as this one. Not that guts are the same as taste.

Beginning as an adorable romcom, Hungry Hearts morphs into a disturbing but not particularly illuminating story of mental illness.

If you're in the mood for a clichéd gangland B-movie, though, you could do worse.

Engaging as it is to look at, this stop-motion animation film from the young Oregon studio Laika seems to have been masterminded by people thinking, “Everyone loves Pixar. So let’s do everything the opposite!” Admirably contrarian. Like being cast overboard and calling out for an anvil.

The danger of trying to do a supernatural comedy-romance is that you’ll wind up being as funny as “Twilight,” with all the raw sexual energy of “Bewitched.” Beautiful Creatures isn’t quite that bad, though it did make me long for the cleverer “Dark Shadows.”

What the Charles Darwin biopic Creation mainly creates is a do-over for Paul Bettany: This time he gets to have a beautiful mind.

Unfortunately, the film turns out to be not quite as twisty as promised: it’s less a pretzel than it is a Cheez Curl. And I do mean cheez: The resolution, when it comes, is wholly lacking in nutritional value.

Mongol really isn't worth leaving your yurt for.

The movie begins to wear out its welcome even before a conclusion of breathtaking corniness.

Chism’s characters are pleasingly odd, and though she can’t string much of a narrative together — there is a stop-and-start quality to the picture that grows tiresome — a few of the set pieces are funny.

It puts a conservative twist on Michael Moore-ism, with campy stock footage, deadpan humor, mocking musical cues and less-than-ingenuous questions.

Leonard Bernstein was a towering musical figure and a complicated man. Netflix’s “Maestro” has a great deal to say about the latter characterization and surprisingly little about the former.

Every episode of "Law & Order" I've ever seen has a more complicated and plausible plot, punchier dialogue and more New York authenticity, all in less than half the time consumed by this poky would-be finance thriller.

Stewart’s restrained performance is affecting, the film seems well-researched about what it’s like to try to deal with Gitmo detainees who throw their own feces, and it isn’t as tendentious as the average Hollywood take on the subject.

The movie generally looks great, thanks also to Dominic Watkins’s expansive production design, yet it thinks very little of its audience and comes across as a pee-wee “Game of Thrones.”

The visual effects are amazing, but they don't make up for acting that is restrained to an uninsightful fault.

There have been worse horror flicks, but although this one offers a few scares, it doesn't have a lot of imagination.

To the extent this literary feud evolves into a thriller, it’s not an especially thrilling one.

Unless the director was aiming for a Victorian "Black Christmas," though, he overshot his mark

As things pick up in the second half, the splendid photography and tempestuous John Adams score cannot quite conceal that the film is uncomfortably close to being an extravagantly elongated, Fendi-clad episode of "Dynasty."

Fatally mild, slow and factory-made, Million Dollar Arm belongs somewhere less competitive than the multiplex. Like the ABC Family Channel — the entertainment industry minor leagues.

Among cutesy pop musical trios aimed at nondiscerning audiences, I'll take Alvin and Co. over the Jonas Brothers any day.

Thor: Love and Thunder is, like most of the Marvel films since Iron Man died, only intermittently amusing, a bit wobbly in its storytelling, thin in its emotional impact and more geared toward spectacle than coherence.

They probably should have called it "Beneath the Dignity of the Planet of the Apes," but Rise of the Planet of the Apes is tolerable if you'll just keep in mind that the original feature was an overachieving B-movie.

Why doesn't anybody just buy a gun? I guess the female characters spent all their money on tight tank tops.

The more dramatic revelations and tragic inevitabilities that turn up, the harder it is not to laugh. Give credit to its maker for directing with an earnestness suggesting a pretentious 22-year-old. Having passed through the phases of Interesting Apprentice, Mad Genius, Chastened Bankrupt and Shameless Wage Slave, Coppola at 70 may be the world's oldest student filmmaker.

A barbell of a movie that carries some weight at either end. What's in between is purely utilitarian, though.

With its array of chases and shootouts and a sinister political plot, the movie at least holds your attention and keeps things brisk-ish. But every scene still bears the tags of the place from which it was stolen.

The bickering and mishaps make for a semi-enjoyable if low-impact film that may appeal to the kind of nostalgics who buy Time-Life collections of '60s songmeisters.

Tenderness and good intentions don't necessarily add up to a movie.

Lawless outback, shotgun-toting banditos and even roadside crucifixions somehow add up to an experience that’s about as thrilling as your average trip to the post office.

A central problem: Efron isn’t funny.

At best, the film serves up mild chuckles, with occasional cute jokes.

There might be a sweet 90-minute movie in here somewhere. But as it stands, it’s impossible not to notice how many scenes limp along, how many have nothing to do with the previous one, and how many fizzle out.

Jacquot's lavish décor and costumes are like the perfume the women use instead of bathing: They may cover up the willful carelessness at the center of the project, but it's still there.

Only intermittently does the film treat us to more than snippets of Beal’s woozy, misshapen folk-blues, but perhaps these are best taken in small doses anyway.

There isn't anything especially wrong with Who Do You Love but there's nothing here that cries out to be seen, either. Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/movies/who_do_you_love_VZgyGvsv0ruc9teHrzQIlJ#ixzz0kcaj8Mwl

A Quentin Tarantino knockoff from Japan, Why Don’t You Play in Hell? has some of the master’s nutty energy but little of his cleverness.

So the film is a head-spinning mix of dead babies and romantic dinners, pillow talk and mass executions. Blood and honey don't taste right together.

So swaddled in good intentions that it's like taking a very short journey cushioned on all sides by air bags. That are stuffed with cotton candy.

Even for a French drama, Summer Hours is so slow as to be practically still.

Director Marvin Kren delivers a lot of cheap scares, but the film doesn’t approach the dread-soaked suspense of the 1982 version of “The Thing.”

Mojave is a movie-length standoff between two detestable villains. One is a serial killer. The other is a filmmaker.

If “Once” was a bracing blast of cool spring water, Begin Again is a can of Fanta. If “Once” was a piano, Begin Again is a keytar. If “Once” was Otis Redding, Begin Again is Bruno Mars.

This atmospheric, cool-looking but gimpy thriller based on a John le Carré novel makes “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” look like “22 Jump Street.”

Refreshing as it is to see the military portrayed as something other than a band of neurotics and creeps, there's a reason this brand of rah-rah and bang-bang didn't outlast the age of Whitesnake and Marty McFly.

Everyone's Hero, a tame CGI cartoon for the simple-minded: the very young, the very old and Yankee fans.

The film is never gripping, but at least it moves. Director Ron Howard does his best to spark excitement with cheesy horror-movie editing — brief shots of the damnation in store if the virus is unleashed — and there are a couple of twists to keep things lively. Nothing is what it seems, unless it seems ridiculous, in which case it’s exactly what it seems.

Too slow to be a guilty pleasure and too dumb to be an innocent one.

An Irish indie that is well-observed and well-acted - but ultimately, not much more exciting than the love lives of its lead characters.

Salt contains many conflicts: intelligence vs. counterintelligence, blond Angelina vs raven-haired and . . . well, that's about it.

Here she accomplishes something her father has done many times: making two-thirds of a reasonably compelling supernatural thriller. But that’s like saying the “Agony of Defeat” guy had two-thirds of an excellent ski run before things went amiss.

Combines the sweet strangeness of "Fargo" with the existential panic of "Memento" and some Elmore Leonard tough talk. It all creates a cinematic tummy ache.

Sensitive as the film is, it might be most effective to those who haven’t sat through scores of iterations of what has come to be known as the Sundance Film.

But improbable situations, heavy reliance on coincidence and an improbable climax nearly tip the film into TV-movie territory.

This soft, sedate mystery comedy seeks nothing more than to be like its heroes: warm and fuzzy. Less attractively, it’s also a bit cloddish and tame, falling into that unsatisfying category of children’s entertainment that seems to be styled in accordance with the tastes of old people.

Has the kind of soulful subject matter that will strike some as profoundly emotional, but it gets a flag for roughing the tear ducts. This isn't football - it's cornball.

The last time I saw this much talent in a losing cause was Super Bowl XLII. Trying to mix farce with heart, Drillbit Taylor is instead as soulful as Kenny G and as wacky as public television.

Its priceless clips from the disco era aside, The Secret Disco Revolution laughably fails to turn Barry White and Donna Summer into the Che Guevara and Emma Goldman of the dance floor.

As bright as Ms. Cody’s imagination is, she deserves a director who understands comic tempo. Instead, the third act, which should be frantic, seems ponderous, with a clunky ending. Lisa Frankenstein may celebrate the undead, but it’s not lively enough.

A movie that sets out to make boy bands look silly. The conceptual error is obvious. There’s low-hanging fruit and then there’s fruit that’s already on the ground, rotting underfoot.

A buffet of dumb and degrading stunts halfway between Looney Tunes and Abu Ghraib?

The strange thing about the movie is its idea that such couples are rare flowers. But you can scarcely take a step in Seattle or San Francisco or Los Feliz without meeting them in hordes.

Son of God is guilty of all the sins of the 1950s Bible epics, but without any of the majesty.

If you've seen "Gone With the Wind," you've seen what Love in the Time of Cholera isn't.

As DJ, Columbus Short eases his way through the movie without trying to impress us too much, which is welcome, but he's also a little bland around the edges.

So once you figure out the first rule of Zombie Fight Club — nothing too bad can happen to Brad Pitt — the movie is, despite intermittent thrills, rote.

The movie is a gentle British ensemble comedy much like "Four Weddings and a Funeral" - minus the four weddings and four-fifths of the wit.

It may be a second-rate “Lord of the Rings,” but at least it doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Whedon keeps approaching ideas, but every time he does so he leaves a flaming bag of dog poop on the doorstep, rings the bell and runs away tittering.

Steve Coogan’s Alan Partridge character — a craven, narcissistic, provincial TV and radio host who has been amusing the Brits for more than 20 years — proves too much of a sketch-comedy creation to sustain a film.

Pity the boxing movie that thinks it can be both "Raging Bull" and "Rocky."

You do have to give Starbuck credit for engineering perhaps the largest group hug ever put on film.

With Fading Gigolo, writer-director-star John Turturro does a passable imitation of a mediocre Woody Allen sex comedy, and guess who tags along for this would-be romp?

Seventh-graders are far cooler and more anarchic than depicted in this often-dopey movie, which is aimed at more of a fourth-grade sensibility.

The legend of Thompson is immortal, though, and it'll fall to each generation to jam him into its own mold. Depp and Robinson's view is that Thompson was like a mullet: a party in the back but all business upfront.

A likable cast and interior-­décor porn worthy of Martha Stewart Living are the highlights of The Best Man Holiday, but the mix of raunchy sex comedy and Christian faith doesn’t quite come off.

Some movies present their whole story in a two-minute trailer, but Gridiron Gang says it all in its poster.

Funny more often than not. Worth checking out on video.

Fresh Kills could have been a psychologically penetrating character study but settles for merely reiterating that it’s unpleasant to be a gangster’s daughter.

Thanks to a few sweet father-daughter moments and a relatively direct plot, this entry is a notch better than some even-more-febrile recent efforts such as “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” and “Thor: Love and Thunder.” But overall it’s another lackluster blockbuster.

It has a classical moral that would have made Aesop salute: Greed is not only corrupting, it can be self-defeating. Moreover, suspense lies both in wanting to know whether Miller’s quest will succeed and in what lessons might be learned. Though Miller’s actions drive the story, it is mainly an education for Will, the observer.

Like many movies that premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, The One I Love has plenty of story — for a 30-minute TV episode, in this case of “The Twilight Zone.”

Beyond Outrage fails to live up to its title as Japanese superstar Takeshi Kitano can’t find much in the way of fresh ideas for the genre.

The film gets one star from me for the admirable brevity of its running time and another for the definite article in its title, seemingly an implicit promise that there will be no sequel.

Making a true story of social injustice into a gripping narrative requires more imagination than is contained in this well-intentioned but uninspired effort.

The teary-eyed sincerity of the music-industry drama Beyond the Lights is at times too much, but despite its cliche elements, the film at least has the feel of a passion project.

Asteroid City may be infused with the powers of the Atomic Age, but no Anderson movie except “The Darjeeling Limited” runs so low on energy.

There hasn’t been this bizarre mixture of hooah and death since John Wayne hung up his combat boots.

In The Kid With a Bike, Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne offer a sly but finally banal update of the Italian neorealist classic "The Bicycle Thief."

Everything plays out exactly as you'd expect in a cheerful, well-meaning movie in the style of something made for the Disney channel.

Mr. Davies’s wit is admirable, but his structure is nonexistent. He devises no problem to be solved, no goal to be met, no riddle to be answered. Occasionally we hear bits of Sassoon’s beautiful war poetry in voiceover, but it is irrelevant to most of the action.

Either a ludicrously bad movie or a parody of same. Either way, it's pretty funny.

This stuff is strictly run of DeMille.

As it is, Ticket to Paradise is tolerable, but to make it a true pleasure would probably require some priming with a few glasses of arak.

Hutcherson isn’t particularly adept at playing moral anguish, but the film maintains an electrifying tension for its first half as we wonder just how far his character will go. In the second half, though, the film degenerates into a desultory action movie as everybody starts creeping around trying to shoot one another.

As a comedy, the film isn’t especially funny, and as a screwball drug caper a la “Go,” it’s raggedly plotted, with ridiculous coincidences popping up everywhere.

Two possible ways of regarding Please Give: It's shallow. Or maybe it's deeply shallow.

Pixar, which is notable for its emotionally rich soul and its irresistible fancy, this time comes up with almost none of the former and very little of the latter.

The movie can be mildly amusing. But I couldn’t figure out which of the three principals I least wanted to know.

Mr. Cailley is interested in the allegorical implications of his story, but not interested enough to pursue them very seriously.

Neither bad enough to be a complete waste of time nor good enough to remember past next Tuesday, the film co-written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie staples together one routine action piece after another with cutesy dialogue and lots of merciless pounding away at iPad screens.

Safe House may strike you as a brilliant movie, provided you've seen fewer than, say, 10 spy thrillers.

“GBH” is a featherweight screwball comedy that, trying mightily to be cosmopolitan, feels awfully provincial, desperately touristy.

Like "Sex and the City 2," Marmaduke features well-coifed bitches in heat, nonstop puns and its very own Mr. Big. Unlike "SATC 2," this one is harmless and, on occasion, mildly witty.

Alan Rickman holds the film together.

Starts out as a hilarious take on cop-movie cliches, then turns into Will Ferrell's own "Capitalism: A Love Story."

Unfortunately, the script by Zach Baylin doesn’t do an adequate job of making either side of these cat-and-mouse games thrilling.

In short, every element here has the dusty funk of an item pulled off the back shelves at the Goodwill store for blockbuster story beats. Your enjoyment of the film will thus largely depend on the overall vibe: whether you enjoy hanging out with the new gang as they strategize and quarrel and banter, with occasional interjections of everyone punching, kicking and hurling each other meaninglessly around the set.

Nor does the movie try to use the game to make some larger point. Here's one: Even at its best and luckiest hour, Harvard can aspire only to equal Yale.

Paper Heart is like a really special five-minute YouTube clip that goes on for an hour and a half.

About Dry Grasses is characteristically extravagant and tiny at the same time, like a 10-story museum devoted to paper clips.

Mr. McQueen seems consciously to be shedding his past style—the icy minimalism of “Hunger” and “Shame” and the scarifying gauntlet of his Oscar-winning “Twelve Years a Slave”—in a bid to make a big, warm-hearted, conventional holiday-season tear-jerker. Yet the film . . . will strike many viewers as a bait-and-switch exercise.

Young Hugo (Asa Butterfield), a boy who literally lives inside the clocks he manages in a grand Paris train station in the 1930s, embodies one problem that bedeviled even Dickens: He's boringly nice.

Hanna doesn't go wrong immediately. It takes at least 2½ minutes.

If Broadway shows had DVD featurettes, the unexceptional documentary Broadway Idiot would be perfect for one.

A Skinemax movie cloaked in art-house fancy dress, the sex thriller Chloe might have worked better as an out-and-out popcorn flick starring, say, Jennifer Lopez.

Directed by David F. Sandberg from a script by Henry Gayden and Chris Morgan, “Fury of the Gods” makes no pretense of being anything but a comic free-for-all.

As the movie drags on, though, it takes on a throbbing, sick monotone. This isn't a concert, it's a bass guitar solo, all thumping blackness.

The horror flick The Uninvited is not unclever - but it is unoriginal.

Watching this movie is like listening to Michael Jackson tell you what real men are like.

At one sip per cuss word, though, few viewers will still be conscious for the ending, in which the three cops finally come to the same place, each for an entirely different but equally ridiculous reason.

Even Oliver Stone would giggle at the notion that the CIA couldn't reach JFK through any means except via one of his blond playmates.

Although the movie is reasonably suspenseful for a while and has a few witty moments (of a first draft, the ghost says, "All the words are there. They're just in the wrong order"), it rings false.

Graham Greene's guilt-and-gangsters tale "Brighton Rock" gets an even more melodramatic telling than in the 1947 film version courtesy of first-time director Rowan Joffe, whose histrionic adaptation screams "student film" with practically every frame.

Long on heart if short on surprises, Big Stone Gap is an easygoing visit to small-town America.

I was at least interested in the spooky goings-on, even as I grew increasingly tired of Mr. Branagh’s labored attempts to twist an ordinary detective story into a horror flick.

For all of the moments of splendor and awe in The Mountain, I’d have preferred a less open-ended film.

Clipped, controlled and composed, Jackie Kennedy was a woman of her times, but since composure doesn’t win you Oscar nominations, Natalie Portman opts to play the part with a sort of emotional incontinence.

Most of the best gags are in the early going and the film seems ever more stretched and thin as it goes on. It would have made a brilliant eight-minute sketch, though.

Since they seem like real people we want them to work out their differences. In the second half, their story is nearly lost in favor of lots of documentary footage of the actual protests. This stuff was pretty ho-hum to look at two years ago, and it hasn't gotten more interesting with age.

The movie, told from the killer’s point of view, is genuinely unsettling and propelled by a terrific, buzzing synth soundtrack straight out of the early ’80s. But the only suspense is in which woman will be the next victim.

The bulk of the movie consists of scene after scene coyly setting up the same ironic juxtaposition, in the exact same way, about innocence vs. Nazism.

Though the movie has some engagingly quirky moments, everything falls into place far too easily for much suspense to build, and the romance between the two leads seems as contrived as everything else.

Barbie is a template for how not to write a crowd-pleasing Hollywood feature.

Too often, the self-serving mission of making Mr. Cruise look cool clashes with the audience-serving mission of making sense. The balance between vanity and sanity leans the wrong way.

Idiocy can be funny, but let's not forget that for all of this movie's aspirations to be out-there, it relies on the staple of the sitcom mentality.

Fair Game stars three imposing performers -- Naomi Watts, Sean Penn and Sean Penn's lavish and intemperate hair, a fuming gusher of crazy-ass Sweeney Todd locks that dominates every scene. I couldn't tear my eyes from it, maybe because I couldn't maintain focus on anything else in this histrionic and shamelessly misleading wonk-work.

Bolstered by a spooky musical score, credited to the musician Rob, a tightly wound performance by Ms. Berry, and creepy unexpected appearances by beings who may or may not be manifestations of the Evil, Mr. Aja makes the most of an uninspired script. In this type of film, however, everything depends on the third-act resolution. It doesn’t deliver.

Don’t expect too much of Heist — it’s a cheesy formula picture all the way — but it has solid character foundations, the occasional bright line of dialogue (“Cops, this is robbers,” Morgan says on a phone call) and a neat final twist. As throwbacks go, it’s more bearable than shoulder pads.

Cody’s satiric knocks on Christians couldn’t be more blundering and obvious. Yet her dialogue is often funny, and the unusual three-way friendship is refreshing. Even former star Brand has learned to dial back his manic mugging, though maybe not quite enough.

Rendition has the depth of a bumper sticker without the brevity.

IF you like rap, you'll probably enjoy The Hip Hop Project. I don't like rap.

It's the snobs against the slobs at a Martha's Vine yard wedding in Jumping the Broom. Mostly, it's a tie: Both sides are equally irritating.

Burton may give us a bland hero, a tepid love story and a muddled plot but, hey, at least he’s got a skeleton army doing battle with giant tentacle monsters at an amusement park.

American Hustle is a movie that was built backward, or inside out: It puts actors’ needs before the audience’s. There’s no heart under those polyester lapels, and what all that Aqua Net is pasting together is a few sparse strands of wispy story.

Like its subject, the film is severe, dry and painfully serious, but in the closing seconds Mr. Field does, at last, deliver some relief with a visual joke that deals in a kind of cosmic comeuppance. It’s by far the best part of the movie, but it arrives too late to make much of a difference. Up to that point, “Tár” is like listening to a slow, ominous roll on the timpani for two and a half hours.

After the first two “Captain America” entries, the finest comic-book movies of the last five years, this one is disappointing. The story doesn’t make sense.

For a sex movie, Norwegian Wood is about as dry as a pocketful of sand. Even for a film set in a land that considers paper folding an exciting activity, this is dull stuff.

There are many smart comic ideas in Violent Night, but they are scattered unevenly throughout, the villains are dull, and most of the imaginative energy goes into devising spectacularly gory murders involving the distressingly off-label use of Christmas paraphernalia.

The silliest sci-fi movie since "An Inconvenient Truth."

Edward's a remarkable young gentleman when you consider the hell he's been through: It turns out he's always 17, his fate to keep repeating high school, forever and ever. If that's my only option, kindly burn me at the stake.

The Great Playwrights for Dummies series that began with "Shakespeare in Love" continues with Molière, a French clone of that grating and smarmy Best Picture winner.

The Fourth Kind has a clever gimmick and nothing more.

Mr. Ritchie has fashioned a simple, meat-and-potatoes action thriller, in the same category as “12 Strong” (2018) and “Lone Survivor” (2013). Yet unlike those films, this one is pure fiction, which both untethers it from reality and imbues it with a certain free-floating meaninglessness.

The movie amounts to an extended short story that progresses slowly and fades away with key questions unanswered. Ambiguity isn't necessarily interesting.

I respect a film for being as daring, original and personal as this one is, but by the third act it starts to feel like an extended therapy session about mommy issues. The final sequences are more embarrassing than exhilarating.

Prieto does what he can to keep things roaring along, but the overall effect is not a lot more stimulating than your average diet cola.

Turns out to be a dour, shouty atheist manifesto. With a change of scenery it could have been called "Godless in Seattle."

What profiteth it a man if he should gain the whole world, but lose his hairline? Matthew McConaughey considers the question in Gold, which is in essence a vanity project about a vanity project.

The Hitcher is the Jessica Simpson of psycho killer flicks - cheerfully in touch with its own brainlessness.

Vogt-Roberts never develops the characters enough to make us care whether anyone lives or dies and never whips up even a flirtation between Hiddleston and Larson.

The Beekeeper, which is both a bee movie and a B movie, falls in the same category as many other Statham-versus-everyone action thrillers: not very good, yet enjoyable enough.

Patsy Cline. Loretta Lynn. Gwyneth Paltrow. If you buy that progression, you'll buy Country Strong, an unintentionally campy drama.

Acquires a little vigor and some fun from Tracy Morgan as a friendly drug dealer who lives with his mom.

Suspenseful though it is, the movie is quiet to the point of being sleepy, and Worthington is simply not working out as a screen star.

Silence comes to us billed as 30 years in the making. Unfortunately, it plays like 30 years in the watching.

To kill 80 minutes, the movie has to pad itself with several dull speeches and stagy moments. The worst? How about when the five men, who have ample reason to fear each other and are facing a life-or-death reckoning, whistle "Ode to Joy" together like a bunch of Whiffenpoofs?

Lush romanticism, bloody action and a certain winking distance from the material keep Mr. Besson’s picture vivid if not quite compelling.

The Entourage formula feels warmed-over, played-out, spent.

Billed as a comedy about a single dad with three girls, the movie is essentially another sudser about the plight of upscale black women in Atlanta.

Routine stuff, but things move quickly, with several offhand funny moments. Mos Def is hilarious in a cameo as another delivery guy.

Fay Grim is like watching stoners playing Risk and Clue at the same time.

An '80s coming-of-age comedy with more energy than ideas.

Haywire is a wannabe, or rather a wanna-B, and that B is for "Bourne." As each imitator comes and (rapidly) goes, my appreciation for the best superspy franchise deepens. Even top directors - in this case Steven Soderbergh - can't figure out the trick.

The horror flick 13 Sins is passable enough when it comes to dialing up the suspense, but the “Saw” formula of a mysterious voice guiding our hero through a series of depravities has gone a bit stale.

Yes, we remember one of the best movies of the 1990s, but the sequel is like the moment at the party when someone raises the shades and you realize that it’s blinding broad daylight, well past time to go home.

Entertainingly gruesome in parts, and not without a certain anarchic wit, it’s the kind of movie you pause to watch when it’s on TV, but after half an hour, you’ll click over to something else.

Adults will sniff out a general air of phoniness - the period detail isn't particularly convincing, and the Scottish factor is overcooked to the point where the script starts to resemble the national cuisine.

Seventh Son is not a good movie, but it’s also not a pretentious one, and I call that a fair trade.

The movie is like a two-hour trailer, with one viscerally intense fight scene following another, filmed as usual for the series in long, fluid takes to maximize the wow factor.

I suppose you have to give credit to the movie for coming up with some badass killer mermaids.

Lenny this is not. Still, it's nice to know that the son of a lawyer and a microbiologist can get into Harvard and make something of himself.

A Working Man is watchable enough, with the occasional interjection of humor, but it’s a formulaic punch-’em-up that simply jams in as many fights as it can with little effort expended on plausibility.

This is a fine idea for a PSA TV commercial, but (a) they already did it back in the ’70s and (b) it goes on well past the 30-second mark.