Tirdad Derakhshani

The chemistry between Smulders and Bean is simply terrific. Their performances almost save the film from its earnest, if bumbling, attempts to make a statement about the social, economic, and racial differences that divide the two characters.

While it has considerable charms, Hippocrates is just too predictable.

Profane, randy, oversexed, and wonderfully juvenile.

A stunning examination of teenage cruelty, exploitation, and crime that refuses to give us the satisfaction of identifying with the characters.

The characters' high-minded, if unsophisticated, patter clashes with the film's ironic-chic style, and it never manages to move beyond the late-night palaver of earnest, if naive, college freshmen.

It's a small, intimate chamber piece with beautiful camerawork and gorgeous art direction ... until it loses its way in a wrongheaded bid for sci-fi greatness.

Masterminds is filled with the sort of idiotic bathroom humor that has become standard in big-screen comedies, but it is enlivened by the surreal slapstick touches that made Napoleon Dynamite so good. Even though it isn't the sharpest comedy, it had me in stitches.

Tries - far too hard - to replicate the Alice effect and falls short.

Some viewers will dismiss Autumn Blood as a pretentious Euro-art iteration of Straw Dogs. For those willing to be open to its experimentation and more charitable about its many faults, the film can provide a powerful experience and serve as an fascinating testament to the tenuous nature of the social contract.

The film is surprisingly engaging. It’s fun.

The Purge: Election Year tries to show that what counts isn't firepower but compassion, not egoism but community. But frankly, it can't help but shoot itself in the foot: The violence is too tantalizing, too stylized, too fetishistic - the film features killers dressed in fanciful Halloween costumes who dance and sing as they dismember people.

This story truly is inspirational and a lesson about civic responsibility. However, it makes for little more than a TV movie or a straight-to-video snack.

For all its grand promises, Ip Man 3 teeters uneasily among B-movie clichés.

The Possession has none of the suspense that made Bornedal's morgue thriller "Deathwatch" such shuddering good fun. And despite the absurdly overwrought Bernard Herrmann-esque score, it has very few genuine shocks.

One of the most uncinematic pieces crafted by an otherwise fine stylist, Cymbeline befuddles with its ineffective blocking and lack of art direction.

It's intriguing enough to suck you in, but confusing, fragmentary, frustrating.

Despite a great cast and several terrific action sequences, Fuqua's film is largely forgettable.

Storks feels way too much like a belabored and mediocre SNL sketch. Each character has some neurotic tic or crazy fixation, which they expound upon in monologues that feel like material for a stand-up act or a sitcom.

On many levels, Kingsman has the makings of a sure-fire hit. Yet, this is one spy story even the most dedicated addicts of the genre would do well to miss.

Like other entries of its pulpish ilk, the picture packs lots of violence, a fair bit of gore, and plenty of cheap scares.

A deeply disturbing, intimate, and not unsuccessful look at 10 years in the life of a young boy, Harlon, who grows up to become a Columbine-style killer.

Despite the competent animation, the great tunes, and funny voice work by costars Russell Brand and John Cleese, Trolls is a lackluster entry. The story is clichéd and predictable. Overall, the film has no real magic.

It falls short of the mark, even as it hits every one of the genre's conventions.

Sadly, director Lee Toland Krieger's offering, a weak wanna-be Jean Cocteau-esque fable with magical realist pretensions, does great disservice to Lively and her remarkably accomplished costars.

It's nothing more than a sophisticated clone of the original, and it really overdoes the shaky-camera thing - even more than in some of the worst found-footage movies The Blair Witch Project spawned.

Phase II has some nice comic touches, but it's a forgettable B-movie.

Like Clint Eastwood’s masterful 2006 WWII drama "Flags of Our Fathers," Lee’s film is as much about how we spin war stories as it is about war itself. Both involve a group of heroic soldiers sent home by the Pentagon to help drum up popular support. Both are made by filmmakers keenly aware that stories have the power to justify a war or turn the public against it.

Firth is brilliant as a preternaturally patient man - every day he has to tell her the same exact story. But he has a creepy way about him. Is it love that drives him, or something darker?