Rene Rodriguez

John Wick reminds you this actor deserves better. Reeves makes the movie entertaining in a background-noise way, but he can’t give it any gravity, even when the filmmakers pull the cheapest trick in the book to get the audience to root for the hero and hiss at the Eurotrash villains. Someone get this man some good work, quick.

The problem with Men, Women & Children — and it’s a big one — is that the movie isn’t telling us anything we don’t already know.

Fury aims for history, and the contrived resolution shows a timidity by Ayer that is uncharacteristic of his previous work. Still, the action sequences, which use actual vintage tanks and little CGI, are pretty extraordinary and, at times, incredibly gruesome. War is hell. That’s entertainment, folks.

The less you know about Gone Girl going in the better, but even knowing what’s ahead doesn’t prepare you for the movie’s tone, which is funny yet curdled and cynical and black. This is a satirical antidote to the feel-good pap most Hollywood movies about relationships push on their audiences - here’s the perfect date movie for someone you want to break up with.

Unfortunately, Life After Beth starts feeling more conventional the wilder and darker it gets, and the laughs become more sparse as the movie winds to its bizarre and but unsatisfying conclusion.

Sometimes, love can feel like hate or annoyance — it is, as the title states, strange. But sometimes, more often than not, it can be a wonderful thing.

Stories about scientists doubting what they know to be true — "Contact," for example — can be provocative and engaging, on an intellectual and emotional level. But I Origins challenges too little and ties up things too neatly for it to register as anything more than well-made, well-intentioned hogwash.

Once the premise has been established, the film goes absolutely nowhere.

Gunn makes this huge entertainment accessible to the converted and the neophyte alike, and he has only has one goal: To send you out of the theater with a fat smile on your face. Mission accomplished.

Like most of le Carré’s novel, A Most Wanted Man has a veracity most spy thrillers lack, and the suspense is of the intellectual, not visceral, kind.

The good news is you’re feeling stuff, you know? And you’ve got to hold on to that. You get older, and you don’t feel as much, your skin gets tough.” This remarkable, wonderful movie helps you remember.

“Movies are a machine that helps us generate a little empathy,” Ebert said about films. Life Itself is a lovely, eloquent tribute to a man who devoted his existence to showing us just that.

Watching an army of apes riding horses heading into battle is undeniably cool, but that’s the only thing the movie gives you: Neat eye candy. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is written at a level so low, even 8- year-olds will find it lacking.

Pay attention, Michael Bay: This is what thrilling summer movies look like.

[A] visually stunning, technically impressive and crushingly dumb and overlong picture.

After an exciting high-speed car chase reminiscent of the Mad Max pictures, The Rover settles into a two-character drama between Eric and Rey, but Pearce is so one-note that their relationship is never engaging.

Palo Alto is a pale imitation of the early novels of Bret Easton Ellis, who wrote about young ennui and misdirection from the inside out.

De la Iglesia’s knack for offending audiences while showing them a good time is stronger than ever: Witching and Bitching isn’t much on substance or logic, but man, is it fun.

The Signal is too ambitious for its own good: The movie is built on shells of ideas and concepts that haven’t been fully thought out, and once it’s over, the movie collapses the more you think about it.

The movie offers just the right amount of spectacle.

The movie wouldn’t work, of course, without the chemistry between Hill and Tatum, an unlikely duo who share a tremendous charisma.

The Dance of Reality, which deserves a place along Amarcord as a fantastical take on coming of age, is the work of a wise and experienced old soul with the heart and curiosity of a young man in love with life.

Edge of Tomorrow isn’t good, but it’s also forgivable. Just please stop the "Top Gun 2" rumors, Tom. Please.

Don’t expect Hitchcock or De Palma here — Reichardt is much too low-key and modest for such crowd-pleasing pyrotechnics — but one long, sustained shot near the end seems to suggest that people who are convinced they are doing the right thing are capable of great evil.

By film’s end, everyone has been transformed for the worst. Heli is a troubling and upsetting picture, a portrait of a broken country that seems to be beyond repair and a depiction of how violence and corruption, when left unchecked, taints saints and sinners alike, sparing no one.

The things that stay with you are the dull, boilerplate love story, the laziest performance of Liam Neeson’s career as a murderous gunslinger and the distracting amount of makeup Seth MacFarlane sports in the film.

The result is a rare live-action Disney movie that merits comparison to its beloved feature-length cartoons.

This is the first film Gray has made with a female protagonist — he wrote the part specifically for Cotillard — and he gives the character the same resilience and resourcefulness usually reserved in movies for men.