Sara Stewart

A funny, shambling buddy comedy that mostly serves as a vehicle for our two stars to do what they do best, which is riff on race and pop culture.

The cinematic equivalent of a paper plate with macaroni and glitter haphazardly glued onto it, Mother’s Day is a film only its creators could love (and even they must be having some misgivings).

The whole endeavor seems like a bad idea badly executed, and one can only imagine that Simone, a fierce advocate of black pride and empowerment, would be aghast at this cheesy rendition of the later years of her life.

This incoherent screenplay seems to have been written by a roomful of the gorilla-like trolls who show up in the movie at one point.

A well worn trope that’s tough to elevate beyond eye-roll level.

Turn off your frontal lobe, and you just might enjoy it.

McCarthy shines when loosely riffing, but the plot tightens around her like a vise.

The journey to this foregone conclusion features several dance-offs mashing up contemporary and classical styles, which director Michael Damian (“Love By Design”) shoots with gusto. Sure, this is all a familiar tune — but it’s still catchy.

Too Late is a good-looking gimmick of a movie, one that will only be shown in theaters on 35mm film. Old-school advocate Quentin Tarantino would be proud — as he should be, since this noir starring John Hawkes feels like a big old valentine to him.

Be advised: The film opens with a warning about “flashing lights and hallucinatory images,” and, while effectively unsettling, these do eventually get a little hard on the eyes.

Some things, like ouzo and flaming cheese, are best left at single servings.

Jane Wants a Boyfriend loses momentum careening between Dushku’s Bianca and Krause’s Jane — the latter of whom is far more interesting.

It’s basically a narrative spin on Alex Gibney’s 2013 documentary “The Armstrong Lie,” only with less cycling footage. This is a plus for those of us easily bored by such things (so many interchangeable mountain passes and neon jerseys!), but there isn’t a ton of new material here.

You may feel echoes of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Starman,” but writer-director Jeff Nichols has ultimately crafted his own unique twist on the genre.

A real nail-biter of a monster movie. The question is: Who’s the monster?

Even the most extreme punishments are softened by hilariously neurotic dialogue. Vive la Delpy!

Field, as usual, goes all-out; the film may be a comedy, but she attains a few moments of real heartbreak.

The film begins by telegraphing impending doom (and wraps up, underwhelmingly, with thriller clichés).

Scary and sad, Trapped is for anyone who cares about the precarious future of reproductive health for American women.

Hugh Jackman, as a (fictional) former American jumper named Bronson Peary, enlivens things a little.

It’s a creepy little gem, and its imagery will stay with you long after you’ve left the theater.

It will probably not surprise you to learn that this film, generically directed by Christian Ditter (“Love, Rosie”), was written by the people behind 2009’s “He’s Just Not That Into You.” Seven years later, guess what? He’s still not that into you! And I wouldn’t be, either, not with this lot.

This well-intentioned drama — writer/director Paul Dalio has spoken publicly about his own struggles — veers into a common pitfall of films that portray mental illness: Romanticizing it.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a pretty silly idea. So why on Earth is this movie, based on the satirical book by Seth Grahame-Smith, not having more fun?

Sudeikis, often cast as genial everyman, is quite good in a more prickly role, and Hall brings her characteristic nuance to a smart but lost character.

Fanning has little to do beyond grasping her prosthetic stomach, but James is a decent foil for Gere, who gives form to the highly topical subject of how pain meds destroy lives.

If you’re willing to overlook some monstrously big plot holes and logic gaps, this half-animated Chinese blockbuster is an agreeably bonkers, occasionally disturbing cinematic ride.

Naz & Maalik does what all great New York movies do: ground unique, engaging stories in the middle of the glorious chaos that is our city.

If I wasn't already convinced of this movie's obnoxiousness, its rendering of Graham's character sealed the deal.

Despite the generally talented cast of Anesthesia, its linked-lives format, which we’ve seen so many times before, is frustrating: Too much adds up to not quite enough.

This reverential documentary, crammed with insidery art-world anecdotes, seems unlikely to convince the average viewer why it was so important that several male artists ventured out of New York at that time to push dirt around with shovels and bulldozers.

It’s substantial food for thought, but too scattered for a two-hour running time.

To be fair, Ferrell is almost always at least mildly funny, even when doing something as lame as skateboarding into a power line, but Wahlberg’s cowboy shtick just seems half-hearted.

A witty and occasionally wise take on sibling bonds and adulthood — even if the latter only arrives kicking and screaming.

I’ve never seen a restaurant documentary that seemed less interested in showing the joy of food.

Virtually dialogue-free and animated in a cacophony of playful bright colors and ominous industrial landscapes, Boy & the World plays like a dream segueing into a nightmare.

Though its resolution is a bit pat, most of The Girl in the Book is a smart and pointed look at abuses of power and roles women too often play in the literary world.

Frothy, forgettable comedy.

Seeing as Krampus is about the Alpine demon who punishes Christmas a-holes, this is a promising start — but alas, it’s all downhill from there, making a murky and humorless hash out of a pretty great piece of

Capping off the year that transgender stopped being transgressive, the story of artist Lili Elbe (Eddie Redmayne) makes for one of the year’s finest films.

The third and weakest book in Suzanne Collins’ trilogy should never have been split into two films, but since that’s become money-grubbing standard practice for young-adult adaptations (“Twilight,” “Divergent”), here we are.

My All American would have done better to dig deeper in its portrayal of a man who set such a high bar for the intrinsic character of a football player. Because he’s actually the kind of example the sport could really use right now.

It’s never a good sign when the real people behind a movie’s story appear in the end credits and you’re stumped as to who’s who.

This featherweight comedy from director Ben Palmer (“The Inbetweeners Movie”) is a lot more fun than many heftier, supposed rom-coms, thanks to the timing and chemistry of its leads.

A likably gushy celebration of female friendship, sometimes feels like a throwback to the Drew Barrymore of the mid-’90s: At times you wonder if she and co-star Toni Collette might actually break out into a lip-sync-with-hairbrushes routine.

In the film’s most visceral scene, as the trio stands on the site of a mass grave in Lviv, Ukraine, von Wächter still can’t bring himself to admit his father’s direct culpability.

Watching Schenck and McBath campaign to fellow Christians for a dissociation between God and guns, you suspect their words are falling on deaf ears.

Fans of the cartoon should stick around for Lewis’ after-credits sequence, which introduces a dastardly rival band. It’s the movie’s best scene, setting up a sequel we’ll never see.

Despite Mulligan bringing her A-game, the film falls short of its potential.

Wiig and Adebimpe give appealing, naturalistic performances — it’s Silva’s character who grate.

James Purefoy (“The Following”) makes a pretty decent bad guy. Olga Kurylenko (“The Water Diviner”) is passable as an action heroine. Neither of those facts makes Momentum any fun to sit through, crammed as it is with leaden dialogue and predictable plot turns.

Chastain and Wasikowska take center stage while Hiddleston flutters around like one of Allerdale’s huge black moths. Watching the women square off within del Toro’s eye-popping, painterly palette is a feast for the eyes, if not particularly substantial fare for the mind.

Men are pigs! Women are psychos! One-percenters have it coming! Pick your moral in this nasty, single-setting thriller that’s ultimately quite tame by the standards of torture-porn director Eli Roth (“The Green Inferno”).

Comparisons to “Slumdog Millionaire” are inevitable, but the kinetic Trash has a rhythm all its own.

Whether you dig this aggressively campy horror-comedy is, to some extent, dependent on your squeamishness.

Animated sequences give life to various voice-overs, but are never as interesting as the young woman herself.

This low-budget indie has a unique ambiance and surprising depth, both in the performances of its two leads and the writing/directing team of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (“Half Nelson”).

Nancy Meyers is known for her obsession with kitchens — sun-drenched, timelessly chic architectural marvels that provide a safe haven for all the director’s characters. The Intern puts a new spin on this trope: Robert De Niro is the kitchen.

For a story whose appeal hinges on the saving grace of getting a "purpose-driven life," this one's got remarkably little of it.

Like the film itself, it’s simple but well-executed enough.

In Zhang’s capable hands, their love story — in which Yanshi masquerades as various workmen in order to see his wife and attempt to jog her memory — is elegantly touching, as is the slow repair of the relationship between father and daughter.

Sunk by too much schmaltz (even for the Lower East Side).

Director Jay Karas doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel as he puts this odd couple through the paces of getting in shape and reconciling old wounds, but he’s helped by some laugh-out-loud quirk in Gene Hong’s screenplay, nice comic chemistry between the two leads and supporting players like J.K. Simmons.

Casting aside warnings and physical threats from the townspeople, this once-demure teen girl embraces her wild side with a gory, punk-rock abandon.

Feels like an homage to the early work of Wes Anderson with its plinky soundtrack, solipsistic banter and emphasis on uniforms.

What begins as a clever action-comedy a la “Pineapple Express” or Eisenberg’s earlier “Zombieland” devolves into a standard shoot-’em-up, with gore splashed around to distract us from the dearth of wit.

Per Swanberg’s signature style, the dialogue is largely improvised, the performances loose and funny. This may be his most star-studded cast yet, but the work is as intimate (“mumblecore” is so passé) as ever.

They’re the ditziest, most solipsistic protagonists I’ve seen outside of a Neil LaBute project.

Mistress America never falters in its case study of a complicated female friendship.

The long-term effects of bullying are at the heart of The Gift, a dark and ultimately quite nasty psychological thriller from actor/writer/debut director Joel Edgerton, who manages to yank the carpet out from under his audience a couple of times.

Debut director Marielle Heller’s spent a lot of time with this material — she wrote and starred in an off-Broadway adaptation — and her confident direction of Powley, Skarsgård and Wiig, fused with a Polaroid-evocative palette and a glam ’70s soundtrack, makes this an indelible coming-of-age story.

The movie itself seems equally divided between the sensibilities of hyperverbal writer Diablo Cody and music-centric director Jonathan Demme, and ends up falling into a muddy gap between the two.

For a company that purports to be all about sparking creativity, asking a kid to follow Ikea-evocative directions to assemble an X-wing fighter seems at odds with the mission.

Whether you’re a veteran Brando-phile or a newcomer, Listen to Me Marlon is a totally fascinating glimpse into the making (and unmaking, and remaking) of a legend.

Overall, the insubstantial Lucky Stiff feels like community theater with an extravagant budget.

It’s very funny and sweet and even a little weepy, and it has maybe the best scene ever filmed of dirty talk gone wrong. In other words, it’s a Schumer/Apatow production — may there be more of them to come.

By the last battle, you may find yourself hoping that at least one person escapes without being macheted to death.

The film spirals steadily downward through humanity’s worst impulses as the guards, led by Angarano’s character, explore the free rein they’re given to torment the powerless.

The two working girls at the center of Tangerine are played by engaging newcomers: Kitana Kiki Rodriguez as the freshly out-of-jail Sin-Dee Rella, and Mya Taylor as her best friend Alexandra.

Two of Winehouse’s oldest friends also contribute, giving deeply sad accounts of watching their goofy, fearless pal disappear into a haze of flashbulbs and self-destruction.

[JK Simmons] provides a little comic relief, and sums up my feelings on this whole outing: “Goddamn time-travelin’ robots!”

The romance between Winslet and Schoenaerts — billed as the film’s centerpiece — is, regrettably, never really allowed to bloom.

The facts (including Protess’ eventual resignation) still make this a worthwhile examination of a narrative that actually may have been too good to be true.

Burying the Ex is missing the key ingredient every good zombie movie needs: brains.

Schwartzman is perfect as Kurt, simultaneously compelling, ridiculous and creepy.

The tone and focus of David Gordon Green’s Manglehorn careens around so much it’s hard not to end up as irritable as its title character.

Andy Goddard’s feature debut is shot stylishly in black and white, but deals in themes that feel equally retro.

Tedious, amateurish and hilariously ill-timed film.

Grim but worthwhile.

The film alternates between shoving its confusing plot forward and dropping dialogue bombs that fizzle.

The awkwardly titled Unfreedom clearly waves the flag for acceptance and nonviolence — but it would be more effective if it invested as much in some cinematic nuance.

Aloft is less like a story than a dream, populated with gorgeous people and symbolism you can interpret any way you like.

Subtle, sometimes really sad and honest about the struggles of adolescence, Marnie is a worthy last entry from Ghibli before the studio reportedly goes on hiatus.

Niccol’s film may not be perfect, but it shines a light on a subject many viewers will know vaguely by name — and not much more.

The film fails to represent how singular and influential the late Giger is in popular culture.

The trope of horror-suffused female friendships is a fertile one, but despite a screenwriting credit from the very capable Nicole Holofcener (director of “Enough Said,” among others), Every Secret Thing comes up short.

Witherspoon’s charge, Sofía Vergara as a recalcitrant witness in need of police protection, is an adept slapstick comic likewise hamstrung by director Anne Fletcher’s sluggish pacing, which reliably stays with a scene for three beats beyond the punch line.

Ultimately, though, Saint Laurent is beautifully dressed with little substance, which doesn’t do much to subvert a prevailing stereotype about the industry as a whole.