Steve Persall

Stylish to a fault and straying from the source, Guy Ritchie's The Man From U.N.C.L.E. revives a 1960s television hit for the short attention spans of today's youth-skewing movie audience.

The End of the Tour asks viewers to lean in, listen well and be rewarded with an uncommonly intelligent and relatable movie experience.

As an actor, Meryl Streep is incapable of making false moves. That doesn't mean she's incapable of making false movies.

The stop-motion technique never ceases to fascinate, but the episodic structure of Shaun the Sheep Movie hinders any true emotional buildup and payoff.

Fantastic Four is so mediocre that its title seems like a violation of truth in advertising laws.

The Gift is B-movie melodrama at its lurid finest, and worth a look.

The man is a movie star, underline it twice. Cruise is this young century's personification of what it takes to earn that title, a perfect storm of personality, drive and talent on delivery, incapable of irrelevance.

Vacation is a Gen X comedy franchise rebooted exactly how audiences can expect in 2015, bawdier and less likable than whatever classic inspires it.

Forbes' screenplay is fuller of humor than the topic might suggest, and Ruffalo as usual is imminently watchable, in a uniquely feel-good movie.

For the most part, however, Southpaw is a terrific boxing movie, with choreographed violence emphasizing the sport's speed rather than its poetry in slow motion.

Basically it's Ghostbusters meets Wreck-It Ralph, without the sustained charm or wit of either.

Appropriately, the best jokes in Trainwreck are unprintable, or too winding to describe. Schumer's sexual vocabulary and observational skills get a workout, surrounded by an occasionally surprising cast of foils.

Never thought I'd type this about a comic book movie, but Ant-Man needs to take itself more seriously.

In some moments, Amy feels like another intrusion on the singer's privacy, like the gossip vultures circling her drug and alcohol binges, awaiting her 2011 death. Those uncomfortable moments are far outweighed by sympathetic ones.

At times the screenplay by brothers David and Alex Pastor strikes the proper tone for claptrap.... Mostly, though, the dialogue thuds in circles.

Comedy and narrative demand more rhythm than simply scamper, jabber, fall but that's what Minions bring to the table.

Will they, won't they? A bolder movie wouldn't settle for maybe.

Someone describes the T-800 as "nothing but a relic from a deleted timeline." Too harsh to lay on Schwarzenegger yet, but certainly it applies to the Terminator franchise.

Magic Mike XXL is darker, and between money-rain showers, duller. It's the movie many feared the original would be.

This is among the funnier entries in the cancer-kid genre, flawed yet affable, with no fault in its dweebly charismatic stars.

Ted 2 isn't cinematically special; the plot structure and shot framing is identical to MacFarlane's animated TV shows. But my god, is it funny. Trashy, nasty as it wants to be funny. Wake up the next day still giggling funny. Yes, that funny.

Whatever definition of "dope" you prefer, it applies to Rick Famuyiwa's movie of the same name.

The surprises are plentiful and seamlessly connected.

Trevorrow hits all the right, respectful beats, as a protege should; you can sense a desire to please his mentor, with several amusing references to Spielberg's 1993 original, and a climactic, triumphant nod to another of his works.

It's a remarkable movie, the first of 2015 that I can't wait to see and hear again.

Entourage the movie operates like Vince's pals, making itself feel important solely through who's famous nearby.

All Crowe's movie has going for it is casting, a lineup of favored actors wasted in a screenplay unsure of what it wants to be. Aloha is by turns a love quadrangle that never materializes, an ode to Hawaiian sovereignty, an opposites-attract cliche and an outer-space weapons caper, all of which is clumsily executed.

Starting with a mountainside rescue setting up Ray's bravery, through cities ruined and a tsunami leveling San Francisco, San Andreas is gnaw-your-knuckle fun. Which is the roller coaster conflict that comes with the disaster movie genre, the closeness to horrific reality that attracts millions yet repels a sensitive few.