Marc Mohan

It's beautifully photographed, but pretentious, overlong and trite.

Ultimately, The Keeping Room feels more like a clumsy melding of "Unforgiven" and "12 Years a Slave" than a unique take on violence, race, and gender.

It's also exhausting, despite an engaging premise.

Crimson Peak ends up feeling like a bit of make-work, a project to keep the visionary filmmaker busy until something that truly sparks his passion comes along.

It's not that Pan isn't entertaining. There's plenty of color and action and some inventive 3-D effects. Jackman's unhinged performance is either gloriously great or gloriously terrible, but captivating either way. There's no magic, though.

Just because it's how they did things in the old country doesn't excuse clinging to these outdated, oppressive traditions, even if Ravi manages to negotiate them with surprising good humor.

If the filmmakers had opted to play things closer to the vest, this could have been the clever "Pineapple Express"-meets-"The Bourne Identity" mashup it wants to be instead of the shallow, gratuitously violent exercise it actually is.

Oscar-winner Davis can maintain her dignity in just about anything, and she almost gives Lila enough depth to be a compelling character. Lopez gets points for trying something a bit more challenging than the hot-for-teacher dreck of "The Boy Next Door," but she inevitably struggles to hit more than one note.

Brittain's life and literary output are worthy of celebration, and there's no better time that the centenary of "The War to End All Wars" to commemorate its bloody folly. It's a shame that Testament of Youth does both in such a bloodless way.

Aloft reminded me of the work of another Latin American filmmaker, Alejandro González Iñárritu, who made somber, constipated dramas such as "Babel" and "Biutiful" before loosening up and conjuring the lunatic profundity of "Birdman." Llosa has the intelligence and directing chops — Aloft looks fantastic — to do wonders, but she should take a cue from him and warm up by just chilling out.

Terminator: Genisys isn't so much a sequel or a reboot but a piece of fan fiction come to ludicrous, big-budget life. Even for an unnecessary entry in a series of movies about indestructible time-traveling robots and genocidal computer networks, it's pretty silly.

A recent article in Film Comment magazine praised Saint Laurent for avoiding "banal psychologizing," but Bonello avoids any insight into his subject's state of mind, banal or not.

Multiplex audiences can choose over the next few weeks between two starkly different views of the future. The remnants of humanity struggle for survival in the brutal world of "Mad Max: Fury Road," while Tomorrowland offers an optimistic retro-future paradise full of jetpacks and robots. Me, I'll take post-apocalyptic desert wasteland over soulless corporate utopia any day of the week.

It's a shame that a movie centered on such a powerful and unique work of art is itself so obviously a corporate product.

In the quest to purge this Cinderella of anything sly or post-modern, though, the filmmakers have eliminated any wit or distinction, making this a pre-modern disappointment.

If the star does his utmost to make a one-dimensional character interesting, his director, Clint Eastwood, adapts Kyle's memoir — a life story rife with moral complexity — by hammering it flat.

Even the show-stopper "Tomorrow" comes off as half-hearted and obligatory. The choreography looks like it was improvised by the young actors who play Wallis' fellow foster kids — all listless jumping and arm-folding, no inventiveness or energy.

As an action spectacular, Exodus is on par with Scott's other forays into ancient times, "Gladiator" and "Kingdom of Heaven." But as a believable human drama, much less a worthy exploration of Judaism's origins, it falls flat.

There are some attempts at a comic-bookish, film noir vibe, including a hotel where all the crooks and killers stay, forbidden by house rules from "doing business"on the premises. And everywhere Keanu turns, he bumps into a character from HBO.

There's potential here, as well as in Junn's touching relationship with a fellow resident at the home, for real intensity, but Khaou insists on sticking with a glacial pace and lip-trembling emotional repression when a little bit of melodrama might have gone a long way.

The lunacy to which The Equalizer descends is especially disappointing because the movie starts out with some promise.

Fonda gets some of the movie's best moments as the sexually frank, silicone-enhanced mom who got rich off a best-selling memoir that exposed her children's intimate habits.

Makes good, unobtrusive use of its European locations, and has a couple of well-orchestrated urban chase scenes. But, even in these days of renewed U.S.-Russian tensions, its Cold War demeanor feels anachronistic, and its simple cynicism comes off as recycled and cheap.

The movie's biggest flaw, from a local perspective, is its unconvincing use of Vancouver, B.C., to represent Portland, Oregon.

First-time director Jeff Baena struggles with framing, editing, tone and casting, leading to an unimpressive entry in the ever-burgeoning zombie comedy genre.

A good test of a movie like this is whether it would be more or less stimulating to hang out with people you really know for 82 minutes. If Happy Christmas is the time better spent, it might be time to find a new crowd.

Stage magicians often depend on sleight of hand to succeed at their art, but Woody Allen's new movie, Magic in the Moonlight, is just plain slight.

It's not as if empathetic peeks into the lives of America's poor white boys aren't valuable, and Hellion has nothing if not empathy for every one of its characters. But without a more original story or a distinctive visual presence, it's hard for it to rise above a crowded field.