Mark Olsen

As told by Helgeland this Legend simply isn't memorable, because a tremendous effort by Hardy is let down by unfocused storytelling.

The movie is pleasant and charming, but when making a big-screen adaptation of a beloved classic and genuine touchstone for generations, adequate doesn't feel like quite enough.

Combining Hou's patient, observant style with a historical martial arts tale, the film is a fascinating hybrid of craft, genre and story. Beautiful to look at and with deeply felt emotions, the film has a meditative aura punctured by sharp bouts of fighting.

Truth is a movie curiously in conflict with itself. There is a constant shift between granular detail and big-picture sweep that the movie never fully resolves.

With The Intern, Meyers has made another bright, contemporary American comedy with a lot on its mind — and works hard to make it look effortless.

By turns thrilling, disorienting and draining, Sicario exists in a border zone seemingly of its own devising between the art film and the action movie.

Despite Redford's enthusiasm and best efforts, A Walk in the Woods is a tedious journey to nowhere special.

The movie is visually inventive and with enough good moments and smart moves to never be entirely dismissible, while not strong enough to overcome its essential thinness.

A pleasant if somewhat by-the-numbers family film that lacks any real crack-of-the-bat energy.

The action set-pieces and the comedic character scenes in the film seem to be taking turns and are rarely brought together in a meaningful way.

Being a mildly pleasant, passingly amusing light entertainment isn't exactly saving the world, yet the film crosses its wires to blow up even that modest assignment.

Some movies are so interminable that it seems they might never end, while others are assembled with such indifference that you are essentially left waiting for them to start. Pixels somehow manages both.

Irrational Man never does make sense of the inscrutable Abe, just as most people, Allen included, remain mysteries to themselves and others. This finally reveals the film to be neither comedy nor drama, but an all too human horror story where the monster is within.

Terminator Genisys could be Exhibit A in why the current line of thinking in Hollywood regarding sequels/reboots/remakes often leads to terrible decisions and worse films.

Spy may not be a great movie, but it is great fun. And at times it will have you wondering if there's that much of a difference.

That the bonds of friendship between Vince and his pals are predicated so strongly on excluding others feels regressive and drags the movie away from harmless high jinks into something needlessly more spiteful and ugly.

Even with its off-balance, overstuffed storytelling, the film maintains a charm and energy that never flags, with brisk pacing and generally engaging performances from its deep-bench cast.

The new Poltergeist is a pleasant enough diversion, better as a low-simmer suspense story than a full-blown effects extravaganza.

It's an unsurprisingly ambitious movie from the notoriously, proudly headstrong Crowe, which makes it such a disappointment that it feels so blandly earnest and unexpectedly hesitant, with none of the unnerving conviction the actor often brings even to lightweight promotional appearances.

Turns out Lost River is indeed a mess, but it's the best mess possible, an evocative grab-bag of images and moods with a heartfelt sincerity and conflicting impulses of romantic melancholy and hardscrabble hopefulness.

The film has only the sheer charm of its cast to get it by, and it says a lot about the actors that they nearly pull it off.

Always looking forward, Godard remains remarkably capable of seeing the world and thinking about filmmaking with clear eyes and fresh ideas.

Wyatt, Monahan and Wahlberg never seem quite settled on what they want to say with the character or the story, so the film feels marked not by ambiguity but uncertainty.

There is just enough in Comet to keep it from fizzling out entirely – largely in the performances of Long and Rossum – but its conceits also get in the way of its characters, making it feel fussy and convoluted when it aims for something more simple and elegant.

Winter in the Blood is a difficult film to get a handle on, not least because it often feels like it should be easier to dismiss. But then it locks onto a moment that is unexpectedly arresting and little jabs of poetic meaning or hard-earned truths reel a viewer back in.

Not out-and-out terrible enough to be completely dismissed, while also not particularly memorable either, perhaps the truest summation of the film is to say simply that the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a movie that exists.

The film is then not so much a meditation but a reverie, a swirl of emotions and ideas, managing to be both calmly reflective and skittishly anxious at the same time. Calvary is a serious comedy, a funny drama, a ruminative film about life and a lively film about death.

For a film that purports to be about the process of maturity and growth, it is woefully un-evolved, lacking in understanding and insight.