Michael O'Sullivan

The movie is pretty unabashed about the all-but-corny sentiment: Each of us has something to give.

As a rule, the drawn and computer-animated imagery is top notch and seamlessly integrated, but the central characters' tawny complexions and the often chiaroscuro lighting sometimes obscure all but the whites of their eyes and their pearl-perfect teeth.

Meet Joe Black is Hopkins's movie and, despite the film's unnecessary length, his quiet and dignified performance almost carries the ball across the finish line.

It's the Weather Channel on steroids.

The film as a whole, while possessing a kind of vicious beauty, feels as cold and as embalmed as a corpse.

A generally well-made tale of humor and hard luck.

A tad preachy and more than a little bit sanctimonious.

A jaundiced view of litigation, however authentic, is not necessarily the stuff of great drama, even of the legal-thriller variety, which by definition is confined to a claustrophobic courtroom.

Charming but slight comedy.

If these repugnant people were really your friends and neighbors, your time would be more profitably spent reading the real estate listings than the movie reviews. But for 1 1/2 hours in a darkened theater, the derailment of their unhealthy emotions makes for one compulsively watchable train wreck.

Yes, Knowing is creepy, at least for the first two-thirds or so, in a moderately satisfying, if predictable, way.

The kind of stunning and contentious work of art that will leave a lot of folks speechless.

Where Town and Country gets really good and weird – and I do mean good – is only after about an hour into it in deepest, darkest Idaho.

Overwhelmingly predictable despite its cute surprise ending, Tortilla Soup is a filling but unoriginal dish.

Charming but slight.

It's a pretty compelling yarn, not to mention full of pretty pictures, and yet it could be so much more than that.

It's a lot more tightly focused than the first outing, and for fans of the demented comedy of Elliott and Cross, or the thespian chops of Woods (a last-minute replacement for an ailing Marlon Brando), it's worth putting up with humor that's the filmic equivalent of a big, spit-soaked raspberry.

Make no mistake. This is partisan filmmaking at its most gleefully unapologetic. Unless they're also masochists, Bill Clinton haters and Ken Starr fans will know better than to buy a ticket.

There's something that never quite works about the film.

Satisfies and disturbs in just about equal measure.

It is also, despite the all-too-rare focus on the Filipino American community, a creakily familiar take on an age-old family dynamic.

Cares not a whit for such arbitrary concepts as justice, crime or punishment. It understands the relativism of right and wrong and takes a kind of perverse pleasure in reminding us that there are some things we'll never know.

Sappy but sweet B-ball Cinderella story that succeeds thanks largely to the outsize charm of its 4-foot-8-inch, corn-rowed protagonist.

Presents an America that is as much about the pathological display of imperial power -- a showmanship of arrogance and violence -- as policy.

Blade's stomach-turning special effects, bone-crunching martial arts and cynical humor will more than satisfy any action-film addict's need for a fix of eye-popping escapist adrenaline.

Fitfully amusing and ultimately kind of heartwarming in a twisted sort of way

A considerable cut above the crop of recent features by other 'SNL' alums.

If Guess Who were either a whole lot funnier, or a whole lot less funny, it would be a far better film.

It is this sense of real life blurring with make-believe that Allen's film is really playing with, like a kitten toying with a scared mouse. Back and forth he bats the subject, moving between reality, illusion and the imitation of reality with a deft touch that may bruise but never kills.

A blackhearted little film. What's being marketed as a frothy French confection about jealousy (specifically the jealousy of a regular guy married to a famous movie star) also just so happens to be a portrait of a marriage going down the toilet.

The pleasure is entirely like eating cake made from cake mix. It's not like you don't know how it's going to turn out, or how it tasted the last time you ate it.

Now for the bad news. The filmmakers seem to have spent so much attention and, presumably, money on getting the primates right that they completely forgot about the people.

It’s Rainn Wilson who steals the show as the cocky physical education teacher who takes charge when the pint-size monsters corner him and his fellow educators.

Destined to be forgotten in the wasteland that stretches between the actor’s best work and his worst, this dumb-but-not-dumb-enough, simultaneously heartwarming and disheartening film features layer upon layer of wedding-disaster clichés (complete with a trashed cake).

The domestic drama, like the heist story line, fizzles out in the end.

The overly schematic nature of High-Rise does not entirely diminish its pleasures as a story, which include, in addition to Wheatley’s richly lurid visual sensibility, an effective metaphorical tool in Laing.

A funny thing happened while watching Luce. With only a half-hour or so of the movie left to go, it suddenly occurred to me: I wasn’t sure what the movie was actually about. Or, more accurately, it was about so much that, at the point where most films are starting to wrap things up, this one felt like it was still just setting the stage.

The Marksman proves itself to be the cinematic version of comfort food: satisfyingly familiar but full of starch and empty calories.

It's a rousing, fast-paced tale, told with a modicum of verve and packed with colorfully flawed, occasionally heroic and even tragic characters. It also feels disappointingly bloated and too fast-paced by half.

It has certain je ne sais quoi, if graphic nudity, self-referential humor and serial murder — neck stabbing, eye gouging, alligator munching and shotgun blasting — are your thing.

Based on "Romeo and Juliet" the way a martini is "based" on vermouth.

In order for the trick of the film to work, however, one must hold Morgan to a standard that the movie is unlikely to live up to.

As large as Earth Two looms - literally - in the frames of Mike Cahill's film, so do its implications. It's one big, honking metaphor, as much as a special effect. As a symbol of second chances, it's as intriguing as it is frustratingly obvious.

Just inspiring enough, just scary enough, just sappy enough and just funny enough to get by.

Jason Bourne belongs to Damon and Greengrass, whose admirable — and entirely appropriate — goal of playing it for kicks comes across, this time around, as an oddly joyless chore.

The action is sufficiently gripping, even if the drama plays out along predictably violent lines.

Even if you agree with the film’s argument that teenagers shouldn’t be locked up for life when there are other ways to save them, “Monsters” doesn’t offer a convincing argument that a screenwriting class is that lifeline.

Director James Watkins knows how to make a body jump out of its skin, even if he does use the face-reflected-in-the-mirror/window trick once too often. At the same time, the film is kind of, well, silly.

In the end, The Devil's Double is one long balance sheet. On the plus side are the dueling performances of Cooper, which anchor the film. On the minus side is a seemingly interminable litany of violence, abuse and degradation. They cheapen the film by nudging it in the direction of a splatter flick.

For all the outrageousness of Kevin’s alters, the movie falls oddly flat: less tantalizingly enigmatic “et cetera” than “blah blah blah.”

Ironically, the film is conspicuous not for its brio but its blandness.

It's like a PBS version of a movie of the week about child abduction, complete with histrionic, spit-flecked speechifying in quaint Irish brogues.

The Keeper will win no filmmaking prizes. But it doesn’t mean, or need, to. Like an infomercial, its aim is more simple, direct and unapologetic: to call attention to an epidemic hiding in plain sight. By that measure: mission accomplished.

The anarchic spirit of the film suggests the screenwriters (brothers Kevin and Dan Hageman, Paul Fisher and Bob Logan) may also have been a little high on bee venom when they wrote this thing.

It is also very much a Mike Flanagan film, for better and for worse. Part homage to Kubrick’s moody atmospherics, and part hyper-literal superhero story, Doctor Sleep is stylish, engrossing, at times frustratingly illogical and, ultimately less than profoundly unsettling.

It’s all so confusing. But reason is an obstacle to appreciating The Nun II. What you need, like Irene and Debra, is faith — in this case, in the power of pure nonsense.

Disorder is, in other words, more of a technical achievement than an artistic one. The movie is at its best when it recreates what it must feel like to be in a constant state of paranoia and pain. If only that feeling were accompanied by one or two other emotions.

Despite the marquee names and their obvious talent, the film feels like a made-for-TV movie. It’s slight and episodic, with a weirdly scrupulous ambivalence about its subject, whom it seems torn between loving and loathing.

Kandahar is very much a box-ticking exercise, with Butler playing the same kind of hero — perhaps literally the same guy — he has built a career out of.

While it’s gratifying — and occasionally gripping — to see that story told in 12 Strong, the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced film contains few genuine surprises, at least from a cinematic standpoint.

Although laced with adrenaline and flavored with noirish seasoning, John Frankenheimer's Ronin is a disappointingly conventional thriller.

Mostly, this is a problem of storytelling, not acting. Moss is riveting, even if the material is not.

Controversial, yet undeniably powerful.

The film's title suggests the wry irony of hindsight: We've come a long way, baby, but we're not there yet. Any Day Now could do with a little more of that astringent humor and a little less sap.

Goes beyond interesting, though, to moderately annoying.

It’s an emotionally stagnant affair, whether it’s going for laughter or tears.

There are a few laughs here and there. Most come at the expense of Ferrell, who plays the kind of hapless (and occasionally shirtless) straight arrow that the actor could turn out in his sleep.

A compelling if singularly sour tale.

This is an untaxing, big-budget summer popcorn movie for the whole family. Like the ride itself, it requires no more mental engagement than you would devote to any theme park visit (excluding the thrill rides, which actually raise a pulse.)

That’s the real, and somewhat obvious, lesson here, in a lovely yet flawed confection that might be summed up by two words: beautiful nonsense.

At times, the movie struggles to maintain the critical balance between detachment from and engagement with the thing it’s making fun of.

Scares, to be sure, which is certainly one promise on which it delivers. But the film offers little insight into what it seems to be saying is essentially a mundane fact of life: When one devil leaves the world, there is always another one waiting just outside the door.

Even Lawrence, in the end, is a letdown. As entertaining and committed as she is — and she’s easily the best thing about Joy — the actress ultimately can’t sell a souffle that’s half baked.

The film does have its moments, mostly involving the relationship between Meir and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, nicely played by Liev Schreiber, whose character engages in delicate negotiations with her over a bowl of borscht, speaking in a seductive, diplomatic rumble.

There are pleasures to be had here, though it wouldn’t be accurate to call “Peter” fun, by any stretch of the imagination. At times this admiring but uninspired making-of movie feels like the cinematic equivalent of the Karl/Marlene character: fawning to the point of sycophancy.

In the end, 13 Minutes isn’t about the timing or logistics of one man’s plot to kill Hitler at all, but about what made that man tick.

It’s a mildly engrossing if wonky exercise in what could be called a kind of selfish activism.

Yes, “Honk” picks some low-hanging fruit. But it also, as it turns out, leaves a sour aftertaste in the mouth.

Dear Nicholas Sparks, There's no easy way to say this. But with Dear John, the latest of the five films made so far from your sentimental, best-selling novels, I think our relationship is in trouble.

It’s incrementally more fun than it is silly.

Even as Brick Lane manages to sidestep one formula, it falls prey to another.

The problem, sadly, is that the whole amounts to less than the sum of its parts.

The film’s steady accumulation of little quirks... soon grow tedious. After a while they’re less delightfully oddball touches with a promise of more to come than dead weight with no payoff.

The dialogue in San Andreas is lame, its plot both predictable and implausible, and the character development beside the point. Even Dwayne Johnson, that force of cinematic nature and rock-ribbed charisma, doesn’t have enough charm to dig this mess of a movie out of the rubble of cliche it’s buried in.

If you go in with the right attitude, there’s a fair amount of fun to be had from In Secret, considering it’s a musty French costume drama done in plummy English accents.

With a surprisingly unhappy, anti-Hollywood ending that will appeal to those who like things dark.

It’s a heady dramedy, albeit without terribly many tears or laughs, except those that arise, perhaps unintentionally, from the incongruity of Stevens being repellent.

Yes, it’s a coming-of-age story: If Boogie were fully evolved, woke and enlightened, there would be no "Boogie." But the film is just rough and unformed enough to suggest that Huang might still have some growing up to do as a filmmaker, too.

Bizarre yet popular.

Unfortunately, whatever steam has been built up during the more compelling first act slowly dissipates under the overly talky, on-the-nose conclusion, despite some modest suspense ginned up as Argentine authorities get close to discovering the safe house.

The sexual backstory is a new twist, one the filmmakers handle with less finesse than is healthy for the argument that they ultimately make.

I love a good story, too, but I prefer one that actually goes somewhere (although, as joy rides to nowhere are concerned, this one is a beaut).

American Ultra has a clever premise. But it misses several opportunities to at least comment on, if not skewer, the spy movies that it only halfheartedly pokes fun at. As it is, it’s content to generate a low-grade buzz, rather than deliver a true high.

The performances are fine and nuanced, but the stakes seem, for some reason, more theoretical than actual.

It's a case of the heart being in the right place, but the script getting in the way.

Hiddleston steals the show here, making wickedness and treachery look a heck of a lot more fun than virtue.

The movie never exactly loses sight of Bayard Rustin, but neither does it ever let us get inside his heart.

The film actually gets to tackle some larger questions than one normally finds in the average fireball drama.

At times, it's downright nasty; and that's when I like it best.

Like Affleck himself, the film is perfectly satisfactory without being deeply satisfying.

However many millions of dollars Rodriguez set aside for blanks and exploding squibs was a waste. Depp's salary, on the other hand, was money well spent.

It’s not especially new to see a story about a guy who pulls himself up by his bootstraps, even one this hyperbolic. One might say that Flamin’ Hot is just another serving of cinematic junk food: corn chips sprinkled liberally with the moviemaking equivalent of maltodextrin.

Buffed and waxed to within an inch of its life, Stella registers as more of a sequence of slick commercials than an actual drama.

The Prime Ministers: The Pioneers is hampered by a static structure that relies too heavily on a single voice.

During the movie's awww-inducing conclusion, those of you who are allergic to cuteness - or to Jim Carrey - might want to look away.

Shamelessly catering to fans of the original film, while giving them nothing new, its story and humor are also inexplicably calibrated for a much younger demographic than those old enough to have seen the first film when it came out.

Viewers of “Session” may find it harder to take solace from (or to find entertainment in) this stagy jar of slightly pickled discord, directed by Matt Brown, based on the 2011 play by Mark St. Germain (itself inspired by Armand Nicholi’s 2002 book “The Question of God”).

Sure, there’s an undeniable pleasure from watching Pacino and Hunter work the screen, but the syrupy, symbol-heavy script by first-time feature writer Paul Logan is weighed down further by cliches and false notes.

The fly-on-the-wall film is fascinating at times, but less than essential.

There's lots of extraneous plotting -- which, however fact based, is handled in such a pre-fab manner that it feels phony.

In the end, what mars "Timothy Green" most is its middle-of-the-road approach. Its appealingly quirky, fairy-tale-like center is so coated with sugar, it cloys. It's not that "Timothy Green" is odd, but that it isn't odd enough.

Smashed never really rises much above the level of a dramatic public service announcement. That's not so much because of its tone, but because what it's announcing isn't exactly news. Alcoholism is a disease. Alcoholics aren't bad people. Quitting is hard.

It's alternately monotonous, hot and dramatic, which makes for a peculiar, not entirely unsatisfying atmosphere of neo -- or is that post? -- noir. What it all means, of course, I have no idea.

Life of Crime feels like a rambling car ride through the countryside with friends. The scenery is great, and the passengers are diverting, but you keep wondering where the driver is headed.

Isn’t Statham’s best — or most brutal — work, but it’s not bad.

A great performance does not necessarily make for great tragedy, and Christine remains mired in the minutiae of its portrait of a doomed, bitter young woman.

Watchable, if cliched.

The movie is as damnably perplexing as the subject himself.

A serviceable, drug-themed crime thriller, made just a skosh more interesting by a handful of ingredients that give it a boost. Chief among them is its unusual premise. Instead of centering on the real-world scourge of heroin, meth, opioids or cocaine, it’s about a new drug — Power.

The effects are effective. The humor is humorous and just self-referential enough to let you know the film doesn't take itself too seriously.

Does Lurie have an ax to grind? And how. Yet if, to some ears, its high-pitched whine nearly drowns out the underlying story at times, why did so many in that preview audience seem deaf to it? Maybe that's Lurie's real point: A culture that feeds on violence -- in real life and on film -- has also inured us to it.

I Am Here is, at its core, something much less complicated: a bearing of witness to horror. It’s inspirational, yes, but sadly far from unique. In its oft-heard contours, then, lies both its power and its tragic familiarity.

The Cursed is stylish and scary enough for what it is. That’s an old-fashioned creature feature, effective enough to give you a mild case of the heebie-jeebies but nothing chronic.

A fable that is by turns antic, scary, sweet and, in the end, slightly soulless. In other words, it's a heartwarmer that doesn't have much of a heart itself.

It does exactly what its subject didn’t do: toe the line.

Like a dream you’ve half forgotten by the time you get to the breakfast table, it’s neither good enough to make much of an impression or bad enough to completely forget.

For those so inclined, it's nice to see the girl and the gangsta -- not the gunslinger -- save the day.

Resurrection ultimately leaves us, like Gwyn, wondering if the story that’s just been dropped in our laps — a kind of sick, surreal poetry, fashioned out of curdled blood and guts — is a new breed of monster movie or some old-fashioned metaphor of loss made flesh. Sadly, given its acting pedigree, it doesn’t really work on either level.

The derriere-flashing, dope-smoking, potty-mouthed antics of this antisocial E.T. justify every bit of the rating that the MPAA has slapped on him.

I wanted to buy this story. I really did. But its protagonist floats through the action — filled with jealousy, lust and violence — as though he were anesthetized.

Land of the Dead is fairly intense. Intensely gory and violent, that is, as has come to be expected from the genre. It's just not very frightening. Not half as frightening as, say, last year's "Dawn of the Dead."

Tommy’s Honour is never boring, but at best it invites a smattering of polite applause, not an upturned barrel of Gatorade.

The film is not without its pleasures. Kidman and Firth lend the pulpy material a certain prestige, even if Strong comes across as simply another plot device (and a perplexing one at that).

The lightweight nature of the plot is, arguably, appropriate to the film’s gentle comedy, which elicits chuckles here and there, but rarely stings or draws blood.

And that's the moral of this story. Or one of them, anyway. Clash's success is shown as the result of a combination of talent, gumption, pluck, misadventure, supportive parents, following your dreams, luck and, yes, love.

It's an infusion of zip that's sorely needed, because the chief deficiency of A Bug's Life so far is its blandness….The film's other weakness is the low-octane vocal performances of its leading cast.

Most gratifying — if also gruesome — are the many examples of Battaglia’s powerful photographs of Mafia victims. Although black-and-white, they are deeply disturbing, and it is easy to imagine that Battaglia found the work difficult. Imagination is necessary, because Battaglia herself doesn’t provide the deep introspection you might expect.

The most ironic thing about Gold is this: For all its efforts, the movie seems to know it’s sitting on a gold mine of a backstory, but it just can’t figure out how to get the stuff out of the ground.

Gripping, if manipulative and somewhat preposterous, drama.

Call it a Christmas miracle, albeit a minor one: Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel isn't entirely awful.

The purpose of A Dog’s Purpose isn’t to solve philosophical riddles but to warm the cockles of dog lovers’ hearts. That, it does — as well as a wet kiss from a slobbery tongue can.

In Upside Down, writer-director Juan Solanas takes the gimmick about as far as it can go, rendering the metaphor of longing and separation in effective, and richly visual, terms. If anything, however, he goes too far.

Everybody wants a happy ending. But that doesn’t mean that we should always get the one we want. It’s fine, if also cliche, to be reminded that good will triumph over evil. But it would make for a deeper and more powerful lesson — one that, after nine movies, might leave a lasting dent in the heart — if the hero actually had to give up something, or someone, that didn’t feel like a tiniest bit of a cop-out.

Miss Julie is a strangely clinical movie experience. It’s a story that makes an impression without leaving a mark.

Uprising is loud, packed with impressive effects and propulsive — or as propulsive as a car with no brakes going downhill — but it lacks the heart of del Toro’s original.

Your Name is still highly watchable, even when this mystical Young Adult love story cloys — or confounds.

Lords of Dogtown isn't a cop-out, but rather an ever-so-slight concession to commercialism.

The plot itself is predictably divorced from reality, containing more holes — and smelling staler — than month-old Swiss cheese. All of which means that Stallone and Schwarzenegger end up having to do all the heavy lifting.

Lots of people pay good money to endure the kinds of thrill rides that make them wish they were back on solid ground. Fall does the same thing, but with the added benefit of being entirely vicarious.

There’s a nugget of . . . maybe not wisdom, but something gristly worth chewing on here, if you have the stomach to stick your hand into gaping intestines, pull it out and wipe off the blood. I wouldn’t call it food for thought, but it gives “Forever” a slightly higher nutritional value than some of its predecessors.

A mite too hard to follow for most of the kiddie crowd who'll want to see it.

A martial-arts ad­ven­ture with more video-game and comic-book DNA than the traditional kung fu flick, Tai Chi Zero is good, if empty-headed, fun.

The film never wholly or satisfyingly engages with why Elizabeth becomes so convinced of Todd’s innocence.

You'd never know it from the innocuous-looking trailers, but Home Fries is really "When Dorian Met Sally" meets "Psycho."

The movie is a capable and attractive enough biopic, if also less than riveting cinema.

It's a hyper-violent buddy comedy. If you like that sort of thing -- think "Training Day," with laughs -- you'll love this.

It's tasty enough, and probably good for you, but at 73 minutes, the film is hardly a very filling entree.

Does it matter that Maggie might be a charlatan if she's truly capable of helping people? That's the film's most intriguing, and open-ended, question - not the more gimmicky one that will leave you hanging, and probably disappointed, at the end.

The singer-actress has screen presence to spare and a nice, rich voice. By the time her young fans outgrow her -- or she them -- she should have an excellent chance at a second career. Making, you know, real movies and real music.

Blue Bayou strikes a nerve, of that there is no doubt. But then it keeps poking at it, pointlessly.

An ambitious but ultimately ungraceful meditation on pop superstardom that spans decades, awkwardly weaving themes of school shootings, terrorism, obsessive fandom and post-traumatic stress into the psychological portrait of a singer whose career was born of tragedy.

Photograph goes a little too far in implementing Batra’s favored style of storytelling. Sometimes, less isn’t more, but — as in this case — not quite enough.

The film is less a look into the Fed’s head than a presentation of its history, going back even farther than its creation in 1913, in response to a series of early 20th-century banking panics.

Director Nimród Antal (“Predators”) does a serviceable job of keeping everything interesting and suspenseful, if not exactly fresh.

The bigger mystery is whether the models actually work. Though the Armstrong partisans in the film strongly suggest that they do, director Marcus Vetter struggles to convince the lay viewer.

A misbegotten marriage of sweet and sour.

The sci-fi thriller Voyagers is grounded in very real current fears. But otherwise, it’s a bit of an airhead.

The plot, in which Swank is given little more to do than guzzle Costco-size bottles of liquor and mope, proceeds in somewhat somnambulist fashion, generating surprisingly little suspense even when Paige confronts a suspect whose identity has been telegraphed throughout the film. This comes as a disappointment, at least for viewers who have watched a movie or two before.

It starts out with a tsunami - and ends up standing in a puddle.

Maybe the whole endeavor is some kind of self-portrait of an artist who doesn’t know what he wants to say anymore, or how to even say, “I don’t know how to say what I want to say anymore.”

The first dumb-fun action movie of the summer season has arrived early with The Losers, a loud, loving homage to guns and testosterone based on a series of comic books about a renegade band of CIA operatives. How dumb is it? You might actually kill a few million brain cells just watching it.

Let Me In wants to make your flesh crawl, and it probably will. But it's unlikely to ever get under anyone's skin, the way "Let the Right One In" did.

The bad news is that the opening credits, which make sick and darkly comic allusions to suicide, are the best thing about the film.

Sunset Song is a gritty and gorgeous film. Perhaps a little too gorgeous, in fact, and not gritty enough.

There’s a little too much happening in the film’s violent, frenetic conclusion, which involves the retrieval of fractured memories, the confession of betrayals and so many narrative loops within loops that the film’s big reveals never make perfect, deeply satisfying sense. Maybe it’s not supposed to.

Redeeming Love is an incident-rich saga populated by cardboard heroes and villains and outfitted with greeting-card sentiments and cartoon villainy.

The question isn't whether Toys in the Attic is any good. The question is: good for whom?

Without at least the tawdry pleasure of a little bodice ripping, the film moves along sluggishly, even though it is well acted and handsomely shot.

Much of the film's humor hovers around crotch level. If jokes about mental illness, terminal disease and sex with orangutans sound funny to you, go for it.

The film dutifully cleaves to the contours of a well-established and viscerally satisfying formula.

If you’re a fan of broad black comedy — the kind in which someone blasts a hole in someone else’s head, and then the next camera shot is framed by that gaping aperture — Villains may be your cup of strong tea. The dialogue by writer-directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen is less than witty, and peppered with a heavy sprinkling of dully numbing f-bombs.

As messages go, I've certainly heard worse. As movies go, Wimbledon is a generally painless float down a lazy river.

It's a pretty scathing satire of reality TV, including itself, which makes it both what it is, and a critique of what it is.

Storks delivers its package, but it’s a bundle of just-okay, not joy.

It’s all very eventful, to be sure, but there is little insight offered up into any kind of larger meaning, whether psychological, musical or sociological.

As far-fetched as it sounds, such torque-y plotting works, catching the audience off guard, even if the quasi-feminist payoff is less satisfying than it should be, thanks mostly to the film’s puerile fascination with girl-on-girl action.

Tries to cram too many ingredients into one small pot.

What really sells this three-hanky tear-jerker -- and there were a lot of women buying it during a recent screening -- is Lane's steely and vulnerable performance. Like Tinker Bell, she almost made me believe in fairies. Almost.

There just isn’t a whole lot to say about this deliberately lowbrow, gleefully low-budget expansion of Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp’s half-hour stage play, originally performed by the duo in 2015 under the auspices of the Upright Citizens Brigade improv and sketch comedy group.

Is “Operation Fortune” a cure for the blues? No. It’s an appetizer for better things to come, an amuse-bouche at best — at worst, a placeholder meal of cinematic comfort food, tiding us all over until it’s summer blockbuster season again.

A love boat afloat on the vast cinematic ocean that sloshes back and forth between the stinko and the fabulous.

If it touches on notions of scientific arrogance and the question of what makes us human, it ultimately does so lightly, and with a mix of eye-popping action and loopy good humor.

The movie isn't exactly full of twists and turns, but neither is it a long, hard slog.

The characters in Aloft seem to float over their strong passions, like birds riding on columns of air, without ever alighting. I kept waiting for the sharp sting of a talon to take hold of my heart, but it never came.

Even if you’ve never heard any of this back story — let alone anything about Mine That Bird — the outcome of the film is never seriously in doubt. That leaves filmmaker Jim Wilson in the predicament of having to entertain us by showing how the horse and his handlers get their act together. Unfortunately, 50 to 1 never really does that.

The Man Who Knew Infinity tells a great story. It’s just that it’s a little too by-the-book to make anything other than a so-so movie.

In structure and concept, the film resembles the faux-documentary “Borat,” with the distinction that the cameras here are all hidden. And that is where the film falls down and can’t get up.

The Persian Version is an ambitious effort to suture up the rift between past and present, parent and child. But like its heroine, it also suffers from a bit of split personality. It’s a tale with too much drama for the candy-colored comedy of its telling, and too much comedy for the drama to leave much of a mark.

It will put some viewers in mind of yet another story with the same theme: "Pinocchio."

There's more waiting than lightning in Waiting for Lightning, a nonetheless watchable-enough documentary about the preparations leading up to professional skateboarder Danny Way's historic 2005 attempt to sail over the Great Wall of China on a skateboard.

Except for the last five minutes, Robin Hood is the story of the radicalization of some guy named Longstride. Who?

All in all, Jack Goes Boating is an auspicious -- if slightly ostentatious -- debut by Hoffman, one of today's greatest actors. Maybe next time his performance in front of his camera will be as subtle as his performance behind it.

Litte Pink House feels like it’s only ever checking off the requisite moments of civic outrage, while failing to connect with viewers on a level that’s deeper than the average made-for-TV issue-of-the-week movie.

In the end, “Breaking” feels like a foregone conclusion: a dismal portrait of a system — and a someone — already irreparably broken.

When it is good, the film by "Chicago Hope" actor Peter Berg is very, very good, but when it is bad it is horrid.

It's the sick humor that's most appealing about this odd little Danish film.

"Created Equal” doesn’t offer many insights, at least not in a deeply satisfying way, as to how and why he has changed.

This slight but insinuating documentary by Abbas Kiarostami...will do nothing to advance or detract from the reputation of the acclaimed Iranian filmmaker.

The franchise is cheapened by Disney's crass commercialism in releasing material that, by rights, should have gone straight to video.

Despite the vastly improved visuals, the new film is just as soft-hearted — and, unfortunately, just as mush-headed — as the earlier one.

Despite its earnestness and valuable lessons, however, "Blood" feels a little like preaching to the choir.

This may be the world’s first movie micro-targeted to several thousand of the people who live and/or work in Washington, and no one else.

In The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, deeper meaning is left by the wayside, in a tale with way too much story and not nearly enough life.

The humor is generic. And the film’s most obvious comparison — it’s been called “Toy Story” with animals — only points up the one thing “Pets” lacks, and that any animal lover will tell you their furred and feathered friends have, in spades: personality.

This very thinly sliced character study of beautiful if benighted adolescence is more a pre-coming-of-age tale, one that takes us close to, but not through, the transformative acquisition of good judgment.

It’s purely unintentional, but the little numeral dangling, like a broken, mangled finger, from the end of the title of The Equalizer 2 signals more than the fact that this is a sequel to the 2014 action thriller about a violent vigilante. It also lets you know that there are two, and only two, pleasures to be had here.

The film is smart, literary, nuanced, slightly stagy — and pedigreed to within an inch of its life. It practically reeks of dusty, yellowed pages and engraved-leather bookbinding.

If you’re looking for that kind of moral-rich message, delivered with equal amounts of sincerity and syrup, congratulations: You may have found the mythical source from which all other malarkey springs.

The odd and disturbing thing about the film is just how comfortable [Mancini] — and we — have become putting moments on camera that, once upon a time, were meant to be shared between two people.

Loud, overstimulating and hard to take in all in one sitting, it feels like the vacation that you’ll need a vacation from.

Ultimately, Atomic Blonde is, like its heroine, something of a machine. Lit by glowing neon, fueled by the rhythm of ’80s power pop and fashioned from stiletto heels, cigarettes, guns and sunglasses, it looks and sounds good, but it isn’t much of a conversationalist.

Berry’s performance, although less campy and histrionic than the trailer makes it look, is still outsize in proportion to the material, which feels slight and insubstantial despite its basis in a true story.

Like Father, Like Son grows on you, subtly and over time. Just as with the unexpected realignments forced on its characters, it may be difficult to fall in love with the movie, but eventually you do warm up to it.

Cranston is consistently watchable in the title role, although Howard’s journey into — and, at least potentially, out of — madness is a tough one to keep up with.

His screenplay for Beautiful Creatures is sharp and witty, considering the needlessly complicated source material. His cast is stellar, and the chemistry between his young stars magical. But too much of rest of the movie, like Thompson’s monstrous mother, is an unholy mess.

There are laughs to be had here, yes, but your mileage will vary depending on your tolerance for sophomoric bathroom humor and gratuitous vulgarity.

Despite some cool camera work and the kind of noir-lite moral ambiguity that barely gets your shoes dirty (courtesy of a shallow script by Brad “Out of the Furnace” Ingelsby), the movie is the cinematic equivalent of junk food. It satisfies the craving for the sensation of nihilism, without its substance.

At times, the film feels less like an homage to a beloved legacy than a 1 1/2-hour piece of advertainment.

There's nothing terribly surprising about Special Forces, a moderately gripping action flick about a group of commandos on a mission to rescue a pretty blonde who has been abducted by the Taliban. Nothing, that is, except that it's French.

Just because it's a good idea doesn't mean it's easy to do well. Screenwriter-turned-director Kurt Wimmer has a hard time keeping his actors from, well, acting a lot of the time.

And, yes, Kung Fu Panda 2 is a little darker and a little more intense than the first film, especially for very young viewers.

It isn't that Bobby Jones is especially bad. It's just not especially good, either.

This is a sophisticated movie, but one whose sophistication is surprisingly simple-minded.

The film is full of quiet little truths.

They're enough to elevate the film above its somewhat by-the-numbers plot and add a little juice to its slightly sluggish forward momentum.

Unlike his action-movie rival Johnson, Statham does not have the charisma to carry this film. He gets the job done all right, but makes it feel more like work than play.

It's a light and breezy, recession-themed romantic comedy; "Up in the Air" without all the angst and introspection.

The movie builds a moderate, if less than monumental, level of spookiness, regardless of your ignorance. It’s a workmanlike piece of suspense.

Despite some Cold War humor, the formulaic film is aimed squarely at the youngest of young children.

Broad and cheesy, yet it is not utterly without a kind of junk-food appeal.

When Miss You Already works, it’s because of the cast.

The unsatisfying thriller A Perfect Murder is a triumph of style over substance, with style in this case winning only by default.

Parker the movie, like the man, delivers exactly as promised.

Spiral, which involves the hunt for a serial killer by the police force of a nameless metropolis, is a thriller, a mystery, a police drama, but it hews closely to “Saw’s” grisly curriculum.

Aficionados of gore and guts may not mind the comfortably lived-in feel of this blood-spattered Green Room. But anyone looking for the ferocious originality, and unexpected humanity, of “Blue Ruin” will be disappointed by Saulnier’s uninspired cover version of a song we all know.

The movie suffers by taking itself a little too seriously. It's not just that it's a lot less funny than the book. It's also a lot less fun.

It feels sharply, even painfully true, while also hazy and nonspecific. Its head is in the clouds, while its feet are grounded in the very real catastrophe we are all currently suffering through.

The mixture of tension, yuks and horrific violence at times reminds one of nothing more than a poor man's "Pulp Fiction."

Not quite documentary, yet by no means drama, Inside the Mind of Leonardo is what might be called poetic biography: maddeningly fragmentary and idiosyncratic, but 100 percent true.

There's a visceral, albeit somewhat goofy, satisfaction to this stuff.

A slightly soggy tale of father-son bonding, crossed with an action-adventure flick about high-tech battle-bots.

The film isn’t bad, although it is somewhat repetitive. If it has plot holes, conceptual laziness and an overreliance on dumb-insult humor, the film at least seems to know it. There are lots of self-referential jokes that acknowledge its own stupidity.

The comedy about a coterie of high school seniors plotting to steal the answers to the dreaded standardized test talks a pretty good game, but in the end the numbers just don't add up to much.

Though Ouija starts off evoking a nicely eerie atmosphere of dread, it ultimately goes too far, making the liminal space between the spirit world and this one all too eye-rollingly literal.

The film does not jerk tears as much as it knocks you down and runs away with them.

The movie itself is a tad overheated. In the lurid, swampy, yet almost perversely engrossing follow-up to director Lee Daniels's "Precious," the temperature is set to "sizzle." Ironically, it could have used a little more time in the oven.

When the jokes work, it's for a simple reason: The four actors playing the couples are seasoned veterans of film comedy (although each is more than capable of handling dramatic roles, as well).

Beltrn, for his part, makes a solidly believable Garca Lorca. The problem is with the man with whom he's obsessed. In Pattinson's performance, we never see what Garca Lorca sees in Dal.

Hardy is extraordinarily good at evoking the fraught fraternal connection between the Krays.... But the film is ultimately unable to plumb the Krays’ deepest souls, if they even have any.

As Kaulder, Diesel does what he does, rumbling out lines of silly dialogue in his subwoofer of a voice. As far as acting goes, there’s not much.

The sense of goofy, if gory, good humor [Copley] brings to Hardcore Henry goes a long way toward mitigating the film’s tedious barbarity.

This a sweet, mostly cute story about the importance of the people we’re related to, peppered with some fairly broad and not especially hilarious yuks.

This adaptation of Agota Kristof’s 1986 novel is impossible to take literally, yet too obscure to read between the lines.

If the story is fun — and it is fitfully, only after a protracted, sloggy set up — it’s a lot less so than either of the first two films.