Lou Lumenick

While “300" maestro Snyder puts together some very striking scenes — which may be enough for many fanboys — they never really cohere into a whole. He literally throws in the kitchen sink in a film that frantically introduces characters and concepts while never clearly establishing the rules of the DC Comics universe.

In the end, this relentlessly nihilistic crime-caper thriller adds up to less than the sum of its impressive parts.

Hard-core Hitchcock fans will not find much in the way of revelations.

Good grief! This painfully sincere animated feature seems aimed less at contemporary kids than nostalgic adults who might buy toys marketed for what is being billed as the 50th anniversary of the Peanuts gang for their children and grandchildren.

For all of its in-your-face, full-frontal sex scenes and threesomes (one involving a transsexual), this autobiographical story is almost sweet.

A slapdash, sporadically funny cross between the infamous “Ishtar’’ and the mercifully forgotten “American Dreamz.’’

It’s a disappointment as a movie, though Shannon is especially fine in a rare sympathetic role.

Perhaps this year’s timeliest film — as well as, unfortunately, one of the hardest to sit through.

A Walk in the Woods is broad as a barn door, with two stars who have minimal chemistry — and there’s not much in the way of reflection about mortality.

“Risky Business” it’s not, and Delevingne is no Rebecca De Mornay.

The film never adds up to the sum of its parts, effectively a two-hour trailer for a movie I’d still be interested in seeing.

The pleasant but forgettable Adult Beginners strains a bit too hard for a happy ending, and tends to lay on the schmaltz and metaphors (like the swim class that gives the film its title) with a trowel.

Coming down too hard on this load of schmaltz — as I said when reviewing my first Sparks adaptation back in 2002 — feels like taking a baseball bat to a sack full of newborn kittens.

Even the great Helen Mirren can do only so much to elevate this relentlessly mediocre, fact-inspired drama.

Certainly watchable, but don’t go expecting much in the way of surprises.

An instant candidate for the so-bad-it’s-sort-of-great hall of fame, Jupiter Ascending is totally bonkers, a sort of black-velvet-Elvis mash-up of “Star Wars’’ and every other sci-fi/fantasy movie of the past half-century right up to “The Hunger Games.”

Despite excellent performances by Kevin Costner, Octavia Spencer and other cast members, Mike Binder’s racially tinged custody battle drama Black or White never achieves much in the way of dramatic credibility.

A glossy, empty and ultimately unsatisfying — if undeniably entertaining — movie.

Nowhere near as funny as you’d expect with its stellar cast.

Certainly nails the era, right down to a lengthy pan across a none-too-appealing dinner buffet.

If you were wondering what “12 Years a Slave” might have been like as a two-part episode of “Masterpiece Theatre,” you might want to check out this unsatisfying but not uninteresting oddity. It renders another historical story about race with exquisite taste but not much in the way of passion.

A fine cast headed by the underrated Greg Kinnear lifts this year’s third major religious movie, the fact-inspired Heaven Is for Real, somewhat beyond its Hallmark Channel-caliber script and visuals.

Deeply mediocre and ultra-predictable.

Divergent is a clumsy, humorless and shamelessly derivative sci-fi thriller set in a generically dystopian future.

The best parts of this awkwardly paced film are Bell’s scenes with Enrico Colantoni, who returns as her private investigator dad, concerned she’s throwing away a bright future by getting sucked back into her old life.

Unfortunately, as in Bay’s “Pearl Harbor,’’ much of the sometimes draggy 2 1/4 hours is given to clichéd inspirational drama.

A campy guilty pleasure that serves up a “Gladiator’’ knockoff as an appetizer to the impressively flame-filled main course.

Except for a couple of isolated, mildly subversive moments, Hanks is basically playing the genial host of “The Wonderful World of Disney’’ rather than an actual person.