Sara Stewart

The Maze Runner isn’t based on a video game, but you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. In it, our hero must lead his comrades through a dingy gray concrete maze while dodging cyborg monsters, and it all looks like every gaming trailer you’ve ever seen.

Director Daniel Algrant chose well with Badgley, who transcends the rather made-for-TV vibe with a decent rendition of Buckley’s haunting falsetto.

It’s a blatantly terrible idea with potential for comedy, but DuVall’s sometimes amusing screenplay has trouble finding its footing as an ensemble portrait of struggling relationships.

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

There’s not a bad performance in the bunch. Hendricks’ and Fanning’s Brit accents are nicely un-showy.

Poehler isn’t quite cynical enough to pull off a comedy in which, to paraphrase “Seinfeld,” there’s no hugging and learning, but Wine Country could have been improved by keeping its emotional scenes more in reserve — like a high-end cabernet.

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.

Adrift is paced like its title, and the story’s momentum is slowed somewhat by constant toggling between past and present.

Movie adaptations shouldn’t require that you know their source material. But in the case of The Glass Castle, it’s impossible not to just say it: You’re better off reading the book.

In my favorite scene, Hobbs leads his tween daughter’s soccer team in a haka (Maori war dance) to intimidate their rivals. Can’t wait for “Fast and Furious 11: No Boys Allowed.”

Well-intentioned, if ultimately underwhelming, ode to the ongoing fight for a cure.

Farrell feels like a weak link here, never quite as masterfully manipulative or brutish as the role calls for.

Half dark, deliciously topical political satire and half somber portrait of a flailing counterinsurgency effort. The two don’t mesh well, and given the number of modern war movies already out there, it should have stuck with the former.

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.

At a certain point, the pattern of Knoop’s reticence, then acquiescence to Albert’s masquerade becomes slightly repetitive, but JT LeRoy still gives a compelling inside look at the head-scratching hoax that succeeded, in part, due to musty notions of what a hot shot writer ought to look like.

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

The mellow Laue... makes a likable enough subject, if sometimes low-key to the point of dull. Watching other people watch him play, though, is definitely not.

Though Valderrama gives a standout performance as the avenging Angel, brother of the late Jesus (Kareem Savion), two smaller roles are also worthy of note: Paz de la Huerta as a spacy bartender at Pianos, and J. Bernard Calloway as Dre, a bouncer who’s seen it all, and who can be reliably found eating a healthy salad as he sits outside his nightspot.

An inoffensive but bland ode to the talky high school movies of John Hughes and Cameron Crowe.

It has no real reason to exist, other than to be a passable option for parents whose children are too young to handle PG-13 fare and feels like it.

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.

It’s refreshing to see a nonwhite lead, and the husky-voiced pop singer is likable as a brave-hearted kid searching for her mother. But man, is there a lot of Rihanna in this movie: She also provides what seems like the entirety of the film’s soundtrack, making it feel like a vanity project (is “vanimation” a thing?).

Alas, the film’s relevance — and ultimately sane upshot — is buried beneath a meandering and oftimplausible plot.

Scrappy and unsettling, V/H/S puts the majority of today's mainstream "scary" movies to shame.

Marie’s Story will feel familiar, which is mostly a tribute to the enduring power of Helen Keller’s biography.

For all its CGI showiness, the fact that Ryan Reynolds and Jake Gyllenhaal signed on for this splatterfest is the film’s most impressive feat.

Sure, violence in movies isn't violence in real life. And when you combine it with intelligent dialogue and pointed social commentary (a la "Django Unchained"), it can be cathartic. But The Last Stand, absent either of these things, just seems to want to gin up a lot of high-fiving for a lot of shooting, and right now is the least palatable time I can think of for that.

I’d have been curious to see more about Reddy’s interactions with the women’s movement, but the film mostly has room for this one woman. Thanks to Cobham-Hervey’s performance, it’s an engaging, if fairly familiar, story.