Randy Cordova

Newbie director Aleksander Bach handles the project with a competent precision. The film doesn’t rise above the genre and the plot is muddled, but he pulls off the basic elements with a distinctly chilly European style.

It's sometimes compelling, sometimes frustrating, and usually chaotic.

It feels like a filmmaker’s exercise rather than an involving motion picture. Although you may never be bored with All Is Lost, you are rarely fully engaged.

Just when you're ready to throw in the towel, Plummer does something that keeps you going; maybe it's the quietly affecting way Jack turns up the twinkly charm as age and illness are starting to take things away. Then there's Farmiga's ability to mine a laugh out of angst and yet remain human, and MacDougall's sly, sleepy charm.

The movie makes some observations about the worth of human life — the title refers to the monetary value put on the life of the injured waiter — and the economic class system, but they're not terribly interesting or surprising.

The makers of Wish Upon must love the “Final Destination” films, because they perfectly mimic the style, which is alternately nerve-wracking and slightly silly.

Despite all its noble qualities, the movie boasts a stiffness that keeps it from ever feeling fully alive.

Although everything here works for the most part, there is also a definite lack of oomph as the movie pushes toward the inevitable climax.

Krasinski is likable and Martindale can make the lamest dialogue sound believable. But even they can't make us invest in characters that are nothing more than a collection of stock quirks and tics stuck in wildly contrived situations.

At first, it’s fun and shiny, then you’re left with a crumpled mess on the floor.

Lane is an endearing performer, but she needs something, anything, to work with. Here, she's getting by on sheer likability.

First-time writer-director Peter Sattler keeps things glum and unsentimental, then tosses it all up in the air with a syrupy ending that derails everything. On another movie, the high-corn finale might have worked; here, it just feels patently false.

Despite competent performances all around, you never feel much chemistry between the actors.

The Finest Hours is set in the early '50s. But did it really need to feel like it was made during the Eisenhower era?

Everything is lathered with a syrupy, string-laden musical score designed to gnaw at a viewer's tear ducts. It's about as subtle as having an off-screen narrator yell "Start crying!" before big scenes, and probably as effective.

Visually, the film is sumptuous and the costumes are suitably wow-inspiring, but the humans are a blah bunch.

Most of the time, it simply coasts along at the level of a typical Lifetime TV movie.

Ultimately, At Any Price isn’t terrible, but you can tell that’s hardly the endorsement the filmmakers were seeking.

There is no sense of dread or impending doom; instead it's just one jolt after another. It's like having someone jump out at you every five minutes, and about as much fun.

The film, much like Willis' performance, never flatlines, but it never delivers the thrills you expect from this type of genre piece.

The club scenes, initially exciting, are ultimately wearying, and the movie meanders about much of the time.

Going in Style will probably be a lot more enjoyable if you’ve never seen the original. It’s not that the remake is terrible. It’s cheerful and undemanding, and an appealing cast makes the time go by painlessly enough. But the 1979 film is poignant and layered.

[Costner's] utter conviction to such a daffy project is strangely endearing. You may never believe one minute of Criminal, but Costner sure does.

The movie is a pretty humdrum affair when it focuses on humans, even when actors are playing characters based on real people.

Documented is obviously a bit of advocacy filmmaking, which is fine, but most of the time it's not compelling enough to reach beyond the converted.

It's not a total wash. Shaye's performance is reliably good and the sequences set in The Further (the netherworld of the "Insidious" films) have a kicky charge.

The movie is not uninteresting, but a viewer isn't breathlessly waiting to see how things will wrap up, either. By the third act, you even start to get impatient with the characters. That's not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Cate Blanchett gives a ferocious performance as the steely Mapes, and she mines some genuine emotion out of the material.