Todd McCarthy

Quai d’Orsay zips along at a good clip and benefits from the gruffly benevolent gravity of Arestrup, which offsets the machine-gun pace set by Lhermitte.

There is a trumped-up quality to the action climaxes that is disappointingly perfunctory, and the story's final revelation is simultaneously far-fetched and unsurprising.

Endlessly stimulating and provoking, Ivory Tower presents a solid overview of an urgent problem that some claim is about to implode and others believe can be worked through with the intelligent application of fresh ideas.

A great title in search of a movie to live up to it, this startlingly uneventful compendium of thick-headed boy-talk and female tolerance squanders a fine cast on incredibly ordinary characters and situations.

Audacious, confident and fueled by youthful energy.

The drama flows gorgeously and, unlike in many other franchises in which entries keep getting longer every time out, this one is served up without an ounce of fat. It provides all the tension and action the mainstream audience could want, along with a good deal more.

A humdrum straight line of a film, Monsters University never surprises, goes off in unexpected directions or throws you for a loop in the manner of the best Pixar stories. Nor does it come close to elating through the sheer imagination of its conceits and storytelling.

It takes a little while to get in gear — or perhaps just to adjust to what's going on here — but once it does, Deadpool drops trou to reveal itself as a really raunchy, very dirty and pretty funny goof on the entire superhero ethos, as well as the first Marvel film to irreverently trash the brand.

Directing himself for the first time, Redford has lavished his usual meticulous care on popular material that comes alive on the screen in ways that it never could on the page.

A stellar, warmly persuasive starring turn by Sally Hawkins as crippled, self-taught painter Maud Lewis is the raison d'etre of Maudie.

Smartly plotted, convincingly acted and brilliantly executed technically, this engrossing thriller adds some clever modern wrinkles to the time-tested formula of sinister intruders threatening innocents in their home.

Just about everything Mann has chosen to present is valid, substantial and convincing, but by the end, the feeling persists that while certain essences have been grasped, only part of the story has been told.

Despite numerous surface pleasures, including a beguiling pop soundtrack and presence of rising star Cillian Murphy in the lead role, dramatic shortcomings spell a mixed overall reception.

Borderline dull to sit through, The Sixth Sense is actually rather interesting to think about afterward because of the revelation of its ending.

The director doesn't display the spirit of a natural entertainer; while intellectual notions abound, he never grabs the audience by the hand to pull them into the tale emotionally.

Both annoying and vibrant, casually plotted and deeply personal, Spike Lee’s Crooklyn ends up being as compelling as it is messy.

This labor of love should be embraced wherever the term cinephile means anything.

When Coppola finds creative nirvana, he frequently has trouble delivering the full goods. Tetro represents something of a middle ground in that respect.

Unswervingly sincere and dramatic without surprise or revelation, screenwriter Joe Eszterhas' longtime pet project may be personal, but it offers little to audiences that hasn't been served up in quantity in the past.

An entertainingly eccentric horror tale that envelopes the audience in a dreamy and bloody nightmare.

Respectable piece of work is reasonably involving if not compelling.

A respectable literary adaptation but lacks dramatic urgency and intriguing undercurrents.

Contemplative and absorbing rather than rip-roaring and exciting, the film will likely play better to Western connoisseurs than to general and younger audiences, but it's an estimable piece of work grounded by a fine-grain sensibility and an expertly judged lead performance.

A film that’s pleasurable to engage with, even if the latter stretch doesn’t come close to realizing some of the early promise.

The overall enterprise, for all its intrigue and visceral impact, feels overly thought out, affected and forced in its stylization.

To kill time between action set-pieces, del Toro has done an above-average job of avoiding tedium via some flavorsome casting, passably interesting plot contrivances and, above all, by maintaining strong forward momentum. Unlike so many similar crash-bang action spectaculars, this one feels lean and muscular rather than bloated or padded; the combat is almost always coherent and dramatically pointed rather than just splashed on the screen for its own sake.

Gibson has the closest thing to a John Wayne part that anyone's played since the Duke himself rode into the sunset, and he plays it damn well.

More than even the most faithful of the earlier episodes, this film feels devoted above all to reproducing the novel onscreen as closely as possible, an impulse that drags it toward ponderousness at times and rather sorely tests the abilities of the young actors to hold the screen entirely on their own, without being propped up by the ever-fabulous array of character actors the series offers.

Most crucially, Brosnan makes the grade as 007. He handles the action capably and gets the standard quips out in a commendably straightforward way that's wry but not dismissive.

Fascinating on personal, political and cinematic levels, the film resourcefully plumbs all sorts of resources, including secret tape recordings of Kim himself, but also omits certain aspects of the tale that would merely have added to its intrigue.

A decidedly specialized affair that will appeal only to certain tastes, but there's plenty to appreciate if you let it seep in.

This perfectly dreadful romantic action comedy manages to embarrass its three eminently attractive leading players in every scene, making this an automatic candidate for whatever raspberries or golden turkeys or other dubious awards may be given in future for the films of 2012.

Always commanding attention at the film’s center is Pearce, who, under a taciturn demeanor, gives Eric all the cold-hearted remorselessness of a classic Western or film noir anti-hero who refuses to die before exacting vengeance for an unpardonable crime.

It is far from unpleasant to watch an attractive cast led by Kirsten Dunst parading around Versailles accoutered in Milena Canonero's luxuriant costumes to the accompaniment of catchy pop tunes. But the writer-director's follow-up to her breakthrough second feature, "Lost in Translation," is no more nourishing than a bonbon.

Gere breaks through with what may or may not be his best performance.

Arresting at first but gradually trails off under the weight of its hyper-derivativeness and anxiety to please.

An absurdist piece about a rural community of clueless cretins who careen through life like poorly played pinballs, Napoleon Dynamite represents the definition of the comedy of condescension and ridicule.

Brandishes physical verisimilitude and intelligent seriousness but proves unable to really get inside its chameleon-like central character.

Frozen 2 has everything you would expect — catchy new songs, more time with easy-to-like characters, striking backdrops, cute little jokes, a voyage of discovery plot and female empowerment galore — except the unexpected.

An insightfully observed and exceptionally acted ensemble piece precisely about what the title suggests.

Like it or not, Wanted pretty much slams you to the back of your chair from the outset and scarcely lets up for the duration.

Whether scarily charting the spread of the virus or choreographing a cat-and-mouse chase of choppers above a winding riverbed, Petersen demonstrates a smooth stylistic savvy that keeps the film highly absorbing from beginning to end.

The increasingly broad strokes with which the story is painted serve to simplify rather than deepen it, and to make it seem more artificially constructed than need be.

The picture is not dull, exactly, just mundane, marked by unimaginative plotting, cut-rate villains, a bland visual style and a lack of elan in every department.

Rough as can be in both content and style, Ghosts will be welcome everywhere tough, provocative docus are shown.

This true story of a dolphin with a prosthetic tail has been precision engineered for full inspirational, heart-warming value.

A superficial look at the '50s sex icon, picture feels like it was researched via press clippings rather than attempting a fresh rethinking of its era and provocative subject.

A quiet work with Ozu-like structure and concerns, but remains more an intellectual exercise than one from the heart.

What starts as a bright look at the dim lives of temps in a large company slides into unfortunate digressions and drabness in Clockwatchers.

This immaculately made first feature from noted musicvid and commercials director Mark Romanek provides Robin Williams with one of his creepiest, atypical roles, and the comic star responds with an unusually restrained performance that is, in the end, quite moving.

Although Ridley Scott's 3D visual feast is no classic, the oozing alien tentacles hit all the right sci-fi horror notes.

Although there is incident in the film's second half...it doesn't build to the level of compelling drama, leaving the film in a quiet, temperate realm that scarcely makes the pulse race.

The actors throw themselves into their roles with terrific zeal, enlivened by the often blunt dialogue and the issues at stake.

A steady supply of spiky humor and a game cast keep this cooking most of the way, though the pacing could have been tighter and the film seems as if it's about to end two or three times before it actually does.

If the director has gone out of his way to avoid the usual Hollywood biopic conventions, he has also withheld any suggestion of why the charismatic doctor, fighter, diplomat, diarist and intellectual theorist became and remains such a legendary figure; if anything, Che seems diminished by the way he's portrayed here.

Youth is a voluptuary’s feast, a full-body immersion in the sensory pleasures of the cinema.

The Whale is a thoughtful, philosophical, political and ultimately sad documentary that ponders the impulses behind, and advisability of, intense interaction between human beings and another smart species.

Pleasantly involving and sometimes annoying throughout most of its running time, this is also a vibrant, thoughtful piece about modern life in a very particular gentrified neighborhood.

Despite her (Judd's) efforts and those of a generally talented cast, picture just pokes along and offers nothing out of the ordinary in terms of drama, characterization or insight. Judd's presence notwithstanding, this one would be more at home on small than on big screens.

Some fancy footwork in the writing and directing can't disguise the hoary "Ten Little Indians" origins of Identity.

The film is terribly smart in every respect, with ne'er-a-false note performances and superb craft work from top to bottom.

Captivating, funny and possessed of a surprise-filled zig-zag structure that makes it impossible to anticipate where it's headed, this is a deeply humane film that, like the best Hollywood classics, feels both entirely of its moment and timeless.

Debuting writer-directors Larry and Andy Wachowski come off like Coen brothers wannabes with no sense of humor.

Despite its indie-flavored shooting style, first-rate visual effects, reasonable intensity factor, nihilistic attitude and post-9/11 anxiety overlay, this punchy sci-fier is, in the end, not much different from all the marauding creature features that have come before it.

Fury is a good, solid World War II movie, nothing more and nothing less.

After creating such promise through the intriguing setup of stunning twin vampires in trendy, nocturnal Gotham, it’s disappointing that Almereyda develops narrative butterfingers, letting the storyline become too diffuse and cutting among too many principal characters.

Except for the physical aspects of this bleak odyssey by a father and son through a post-apocalyptic landscape, this long-delayed production falls dispiritingly short on every front.

Eastwood's latest picture boasts tight storytelling, sharp acting and an eye for unexpected, enlivening detail.

So intriguing are the driven, smart and compromised characters, and so infinite are the dramatic possibilities at the intersection of big business and politics, that a vastly expanded small-screen take built around these characters, and others like them, would be quite welcome..

Has a gaudy pop-culture personality that perfectly suits its subject.

Although the story dynamics are fundamentally silly and the family stuff, with its parallel father-daughter melodrama, is elemental button-pushing, a good cast led by a winning Paul Rudd puts the nonsense over in reasonably disarming fashion.

Unfortunately, Mockingjay — Part 1 has all the personality of an industrial film. There's not a drop of insolence, insubordination or insurrection running through its veins; it feels like a manufactured product through and through, ironic and sad given its revolutionary theme.

Competently constructed and nicely acted by Kate Beckinsale and Vera Farmiga.

In the end, though, it's Crowe who must carry the most freight, which he does with another characterization to relish. Still bulky, although not as much so as in "Body of Lies," long-tressed and somewhat grizzled, he finds the gist of the affable eccentricity, natural obsessiveness and mainstream contrarianism that marks many professional journalists.

Melfi comes up with any number of good and effective scenes and there’s plenty to enjoy in the performances.

Succeeds far more often than not in delivering a credible, kaleidoscopic portrait of creative, and often famous, individuals.

Harris' first directorial outing since his impressive and entirely different "Pollock" biopic bears echoes of many genre predecessors, especially Howard Hawks' "Rio Bravo" -- but echoes they remain.

With its perilous central premise and gallery of individuals some of whom are destined not to make it, you could say Everest is a disaster movie in the old Hollywood sense of the term, but it doesn't feel like one. And that's a good thing.

Cedar impressively creates a complex and intricately detailed portrait of the web of political, financial, social and religious affiliations that has everything to do with how the world works.

Displaying a girth that will give hope to overweight romantics everywhere, Hoffman knows his character inside and out and invites the viewer close to this limited, good-hearted fellow.

Wispy and familiar in its themes and humorous strokes, Café Society benefits from an exceptionally adept cast led by Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart and Steve Carell, as well as from a luminous glow that emphasizes both the old Hollywood nostalgia and the story’s basis in dreams and artifice.

Diverting and for the most part agreeably amusing, Late Night is about as mainstream and conventional a movie as could be made right now about the timely issues of women and minorities finding equal footing in the workplace.

Handsome, respectable and well cast, elaborate production lacks the excitement and magic that would elevate the film to beloved status, and sheer abundance of CGI work weighs on it too heavily.

It is never boring and does provoke and stimulate, although not as a turn-on, not remotely.

The 72-year-old star, who is centerscreen throughout, makes this rather far-fetched yarn go down much more easily than it otherwise might have.

Unquestionably the most sexually graphic American narrative feature ever made outside the realm of the porn industry, John Cameron Mitchell's ambitious attempt to merge his characters' active sexual lives with more conventional emotional content is playfully and provocatively entertaining for roughly the first half, but loses staying power thereafter when investment in the uncompelling characters' problems is requested.

Richard Linklater's rough-hewn tapestry of assorted lives that feed off of and into the American meat industry is both rangy and mangy; it remains appealing for its subversive motives and revelations even as one wishes its knife would have been sharper.

As in any classic Western, there are blunt pleasures to be had every time the tables are turned on men in black hats, as well as from direct, threat-loaded dialogue, meaningful looks, geometric arrangements of heroes and villains, and tense hunts for prey that play out both in rugged mountain settings and the tight quarters of buildings.

Fun, almost endearing in its cheeky irreverence, but also rather mild and scattershot in its satiric marksmanship, Serial Mom provokes chuckles and the occasional raised eyebrow rather than guffaws and gross-outs.

In essence, every dramatic goal is achieved far too easily, every opponent is ultimately made of straw. The characters are never truly challenged, as if the filmmakers are afraid that any credible peril might prove too frightening for some little kid.

As sensitively written, fluidly directed and expertly acted as it is, and as elemental as its dramatic conflicts may be, One True Thing has trouble breaking free of its limitations as a small-scale, modestly aimed family drama.

This refitting of Claude Chabrol's 1968 classic "La Femme Infidele" is less concerned with suspense and dramatic fireworks than is the usual American "erotic thriller," and much more devoted to nuances and the minutiae of how men and women behave, pretend and lie in duplicitous situations.

Awash with ripe, voluptuous summertime imagery and brimming with aborning adolescent female sexuality, The Summer of Sangaile is an appealingly simple, poetically conceived teen coming-of-age tale.

Its fleeting intoxications momentarily provide suggestions—and, for some, memories—of how the highest highs can sometimes make the drudgery of the rest of life worth it.

Disturbing because it is so believable, Kids goes well beyond any previous American film in frankly describing the lives of at least a certain group of modern teenagers.

This energetic, dramatically potent look at the band's Hamburg days has quite a bit going for it in the way of cultural and musical history, but lacks a crucial, heightened artistic quality and point of view that would have given it real distinction.

With the help of his stunt and special effects teams, Harlin delivers more than enough goods to satisfy genre fans, so main question is whether a female action hero, and Davis in particular, is ready to be embraced by the huge public the film is clearly targeting.

A minnow of a movie. A drear moment in the careers of all concerned.

A tasty if wildly far-fetched thriller, Out of Time proves far stronger in its characterizations than in developing genuine suspense.

In a very demanding role demanding a vast emotional range from clueless innocent to confident role player and emotional adventurer, Gyllenhaal is outstanding.

Has some emotional pull and isn't stuffy and dull.

Genuinely spectacular and historically quite respectable, Ridley Scott's latest epic is at its strongest in conveying the savagery spawned by fanaticism.

In the meaty bad guy role, Harrelson entertainingly goes all the way, putting him way out there on the ledge with any of your favorite loonies, psychos and unhinged nutjobs.

Emerges as a dynamic action drama in its own right. Making sure of that is writer Taylor Sheridan, who's hatched a compelling new yarn that triggers rugged, full-bodied work from returning leading men Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin.

The film itself is limited by the material's nature as a brainy exercise and by its narrow focus; individual response will depend upon how tantalized one is by puzzles and games, as well as upon how off-putting one finds the central character, who is center-stage throughout.

Dazzlingly designed and staged in a theatrical setting so as to suggest that the characters are enacting assigned roles in life, this tight and pacy telling of a 900 page-plus novel touches a number of its important bases but lacks emotional depth, moral resonance and the simple ability to allow its rich characters to experience and drink deeply of life.

First-time director McMurray, who worked as an associate producer on Fruitvale Station, does a decent job of staging the action and maintaining viewer attention on the straight-line story. But there’s no subtext, investigation of his characters’ various stories or motivations for doing what they’re doing. It’s a very shallow film.

Most of the action is played for broad laughs, and Hogan demonstrates the ability to generate them, even if the humor is very base and often cruel, making fun of people's looks and ineptitude.

Although it will most readily appeal to cinephiles…offers sufficient reality-based incident and ponderable cultural issues to attract curious audiences.

Intelligent and highly respectful of its central character and his titular landmark poem, HOWL is an admirable if fundamentally academic exploration of the origins, impact, meaning and legacy of Allen Ginsberg's signal work.

As the enduring success of this property has shown, there are large, emotionally susceptible segments of the population ready to swallow this sort of thing, but that doesn't mean it's good.

Serves up a judicious blend of showy action, political intrigue, ticking-clock suspense and intramural CIA one-upsmanship for mainstream entertainment.

Emotionally powerful and stylistically sure-handed, this true story-inspired drama begins small with the disappearance of a young boy, only to gradually fan out to become a comprehensive critique of the entire power structure of Los Angeles, circa 1928.

This lushly and pretentiously made drama about a young American whose worst instincts are unleashed during a stay in Paris endeavors to entice with details of the seedy underworld of La Pigalle but is a turn-off in almost every respect.

The picture's constant forward movement and breezy sense of amusement about itself provide a certain mild sort of diversion.

Ambition markedly outstrips achievement in The Congress, a visionary piece of speculative fiction that drops the ball after a fine set-up.

A melodramatic step backward for writer-director Victor Nunez after his last two pictures, the first-rate "Ruby in Paradise" and "Ulee's Gold."

Once Damon's one-man truth squad goes off the reservation and starts behaving too much like Jason Bourne for comfort, the film begins not only spilling more blood but also leaking crucial credibility.

Penn's magnetism and hesitant line delivery create what interest there is, although the whole picture suffers from a central figure who can never get it together on any level.

The writer-directors are so intent on upending expectations and startling the audience that the effort shows far too much and, in the weak second half, ends up being terribly self-conscious.

Darker and more dramatic, this account of Harry's troubled second year at Hogwarts may be a bit overlong and unmodulated in pacing, but it possesses a confidence and intermittent flair that begin to give it a life of its own apart of the literary franchise, something the initial picture never achieved.

A tense, sharply made thriller about a family held hostage during a river rafting vacation.

McDormand's performance slowly builds a solid integrity, and contrasts well with Adams' more flamboyant turn.

Despite excellent lead performances and numerous memorable scenes, this still feels like two different movies in one.

A live-wire performance by Benicio Del Toro sparks an otherwise morose study of loss, addiction and catharsis.

Brad Pitt delivers a capable performance in an immersive apocalyptic spectacle about a global zombie uprising.

Fronted by an outstanding performance from Catherine Keener, who is onscreen, often by herself, at almost every moment, this challenging but not difficult second feature from Mark Jackson parcels out its information in gradual increments, forcing the viewer to infer rather simply receive most narrative information.

Careens from decade to decade, and from relative dramatic realism to frequent hilarity, in often-winning fashion.

Increasingly exhibits a desire to amuse and distract rather than go deep, which ultimately generates disappointment in light of its announced intentions.

A game and winning performance by Melinda Page Hamilton is the only saving grace.

Megamind is snappy good fun.

Nothing about the project's execution inspires the feeling that this was ever intended as anything more than a lark, which would be fine if it were a good one. As it is, audience teeth-grinding sets in early and never lets up.

Even when it's clear Scorsese has decided to employ fakery and allow it to be obvious, it's done with elegance and beauty.

This ultra-low-budget, Godardian "homo movie" feels like a step backward to his earlier group mopes rather than an advance beyond his provocative last film, The Living End.

Closer to a straight-ahead medieval battle picture than the fantastical, other-worldly journey depicted in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," this new entry is a bit darker, more conventional and more crisply made than its 2005 predecessor.

The return of the legendary swordsman is well served by a grandly mounted production in the classical style.

Black and his co-screenwriter, first-timer Drew Pearce, have great fun reshuffling the deck, teasing about who might occupy what superhero suit and morphing the story along with identity revelations and expansions of the dramatic horizons; the well-chosen cast members respond in kind with virtually palpable glee.

First-time scripter Paul Bernbaum's framing story, designed to stir up suspicion that George Reeves was a murder victim rather than a suicide, unfortunately proves far less intriguing than does the melancholy tale of a limited actor reaching the end of the line during a transitional period in Hollywood.

A very vulgar pro-faith comedy rather than a sacrilegious goof, Dogma is an extraordinarily uneven film.

Pretty when it should be gritty and grandiosely noble instead of just telling it like it was, 42 needlessly trumps up but still can't entirely spoil one of the great American 20th century true-life stories, the breaking of major league baseball's color line by Jackie Robinson.

Unquestionably too long, and lacking the snap and audaciousness of the pictures that made him the talk of the town, this narratively faithful but conceptually imaginative adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel "Rum Punch" nonetheless offers an abundance of pleasures, especially in the realm of characterization and atmosphere.

Superbly made but burdened by some dull human characters enacted by an interesting international cast who can't do much with them, this new Godzilla is smart, self-aware, eye-popping and arguably in need of a double shot of cheeky wit.

Thanks to a magnetic cast and intelligent adaptation, "Prelude to a Kiss" has made a solid transfer from stage to screen. Back in the 1930s or '40s, this sort of sophisticated, literary-oriented treatment of a simple romantic idea would have been the norm.

Like his previous efforts, Jarmusch's sidelong take on Western conventions relies upon quirky tone, hipsterish performances and a highly refined visual style to put it over.

Stories of resistance to oppression will never become obsolete, but this feels like a picture that should have been made a long time ago.

As smooth as a good mojito, as stylish as an Armani suit and as meaningful in the grand scheme of things as yesterday's Las Vegas betting odds, Ocean's Thirteen"continues the breezy good times of the first two series entries without missing a beat.

By turns disarmingly amusing and dramatically blunt.

A boner-headed comedy whose sense of gross-out humor is calculated rather than inspired.

As enacted here by unquestionably fine actors, this story does not emerge as compelling or convincing, and the film is aggravatingly narrow-minded in its interests. However, if one stays with it all the way to the end, it is absolutely worth sitting still for the end credits, over which is played a monologue by Nic which is the best thing in the picture.

This nimble, bemused, culturally curious look at the married instigators of the kitschy “big eyes” paintings of the early 1960s exerts an enjoyably eccentric appeal while also painting a troubling picture of male dominance and female submissiveness a half-century ago.

Viewers looking for old-fashioned movie thrills as a change of pace from the glut of alien and digital-oriented features might paradoxically enjoy the feeling of being back on terra firma with this airborne adventure.

A good, old-fashioned suspenser.

This highly entertaining return of one of the cinema's most enduring giant beasts moves like crazy — the film feels more like 90 minutes than two hours — and achieves an ideal balance between wild action, throwaway humor, genre refreshment and, perhaps most impressively, a nonchalant awareness of its own modest importance in the bigger scheme of things.

A picture that, even more than the previous two, feels like a bunch of gags tossed together. The laughs are here, to be sure, although even some of the best of them are retreads and the Swinging '60s recycling act is now feeling a bit past its zeitgeist prime.

Jolting, superbly acted film.

The battle of the sexes is restaged to clever but inconsequential effect in Conversations With Other Women. Very much a case of old wine in a new bottle.

Aside from spasms of brutal violence, however, there's nothing rousing or new here.

Unfortunately, the diverse elements introduced here don’t coalesce into a comfortable package, with much of the background action proving notably listless and unconvincing.

Bleed for This is a gritty, pungently Rhode Island working class-set boxing drama that connects with most of its punches.

More intriguing on paper than when it actually unspools onscreen. Kevin Willmott's small-scaled but ambitious picture is well-researched, sometimes amusing and not unintelligent.

Decked out with sharp and colorful design work, some well-drawn characters and six snappy Randy Newman tunes, this first entry from Turner Feature Animation goes down very easily but lacks a hook to make it anything other than a minor kidpic entry commercially.

A very entertaining get-tough fantasy with political and feminist underpinnings.

Delivers enough thrills, kicks and cool moments to satiate geeks, fans and mere general viewers worldwide -- until the "Revolutions" installment wraps up the trilogy in November.

Not too many films serve up laughs that just keep on rolling with regularity from beginning to end, but Seth MacFarlane's directorial debut does so and without any feeling of strain.

"No Country for Young Kids" would be just as suitable a title for The Woman in Black, a hoot of an old-fashioned British horror film.

The submarine goes deep but the story never does in U-571, a good old-fashioned WWII picture that is exciting in only the most superficial way.

The lively visuals, busy story, zippy pace and TV show running time will make this go down very easily with the target moppet audience.

Swicord took on a daunting challenge in adapting this piece, and she’s met it more intelligently than convincingly. It would have been asking a lot from any actor to carry this film, and Cranston has done the heavy lifting and more.

More evident than ever the film is inherently a deeply flawed work that was far from fully realized in both script and shooting.

Although arresting in spots, it falls far short of bringing out the full values of the play, and doesn't approach the emotional resonance of Franco Zeffirelli's immensely popular 1968 screen version.

A ranting, claustrophobic drama that trades in shopworn paranoid notions, William Friedkin's overwrought screen version of Tracy Letts' play assaults the viewer with aggressive thesping and over-the-top notions of shocking incident, all to intensely alienating effect.

An overly abstract mystery about the difficulty of really knowing another person, "Dream Lover" is too rarefied for a popular thriller and too hokey for an art film. Directorial debut of notable screenwriter Nicholas Kazan displays more of an awareness of film's visual possibilities than a flair for them, and while there are any number of interesting ideas bouncing around here, pic falls between stools both artistically and commercially.

As ambitious and sometimes unsettling as it is, the film, after crossing back and forth over the line many times, ultimately feels affected in its aspirations toward making some profound statement about self-abasement and sacrifice, making one feel like rejecting the whole thing despite some striking individual moments.

Kasdan's direction here is even less energized than his writing.

Expert story construction and compelling thesping and direction make all the narrative elements pay off as if calculated by a precision instrument in which all the parts are working perfectly.

Possesses sufficient intrigue to hook audiences and keep them on board much of the way.

Egoyan's pedantic, lecturing approach makes the film a bit of a slog, although the basic material has an intrinsic interest that makes one at least want to know more about the historical events.

Coolly absorbing without being pulse-quickening.

But the film also has its turgid, dialogue-heavy stretches, and the leading performances, if acceptable, are not everything they needed to be to fully flesh out these elegant immortals.

This is one of those films that, if shown overseas, could potentially make people think that the U.S. is going down the tubes even faster than imagined. Everyone in it — adolescents and grown-ups, too — is beyond stupid and content to remain that way.

Beautifully crafted and legitimately involving once it locks onto a dramatic track, film benefits from remaining mysterious about how far it intends to go in pursuing its themes, but also suffers from long-windedness and preachy final-reel explicitness as to its message.

Streep single-handedly elevates this sitcomy but tolerably entertaining adaptation of Lauren Weisberger's bestselling 2003 roman a clef about a personal assistant's year of chic hell under the thumb of the dragon lady of the fashion world.

A credibly drawn central character is trapped inside a half-cooked dramatic stew in Hello I Must Be Going.

Misses its comic targets as often as it hits them but is endearing all the same for the good-natured cheer with which it skewers the eminently skewerable.

French farce is alive and reasonably well in 2 Days in New York, a madcap inter-family romp that deftly keeps many comic balls in the air for a good hour, before dropping some in the final stretch.

The significant potential of its premise is squandered by an increasing reliance on teen movie cliches, silly plotting and the urge to be upbeat rather than to communicate life lessons.

With the standard Grisham formula having grown stale after so many books and film versions, Jury introduces ingredients that add zest to the old recipe and, in cinematic terms, open up increased possibilities for intrigue and narrative layering.

It’s a film that wants to be visionary but isn’t.

A sharp-minded, plenty entertaining toon that will keep children of all ages wide-eyed and on their toes.

Director Christine Jeffs, who previously helmed "Rain" and "Sylvia," tries to strike a balance between the yarn's dark currents and offbeat comedy, but the result is often uneasy, with the humor receding as things progress.

Lively performances, pungent New York City atmosphere and an abundance of dramatic incident keep this story of an irrepressible lowlife hustler ripping along.

Despite the heavy dose of action and numerous tense situations, this Netflix offering has trouble staying in high gear once it gets there and the characterizations remain one dimensional — the men all speak exactly the same way.

Comedically, everyone's on the same page here, which means that, even when things flag, more fun isn't far off.

Nearly as extravagant as the characters it depicts, Martin Scorsese's comic, operatically-scaled film is, on a moment-by-moment basis, often madly entertaining due to its live-wire energy, exuberant performances and the irresistible appeal of watching naughty boys doing very naughty things.

Impeccably crafted but dramatically dull.

Odd mixture of ultra-sleek visuals, psychological probing, "Paper Moon"-like father-daughter swindling, self-improvement efforts and abrupt tough-guy stuff keeps the picture percolating, even if it seems too artificial to genuinely convince on an emotional or dramatic level.

With its exceptional multicamera coverage and dynamic editing, pic provides an amazing ride across the dusty roads and stunningly varied terrain of what could be the world's most demanding vehicle race.

The lineup of fine actors keenly registers minute details about the passage of time with humor, wisdom and a sharp sense of how moments of rash or just misguided behavior can forever dictate a life's path.

There's nothing funny, provocative or involving about what "Shrek" co-writer Joe Stillman and the team from Madrid-based Ilion Animation Studios do with the notion here.

Magic Mike XXL is ridiculously entertaining.

Lacks the special creative spark needed to lift it to an uncommon imaginative level.

Has moments of power and imagination, but the overworked style and heavy socially conscious bent exude an off-putting sense of self-importance, making for a picture that's more of a chore than a pleasure to sit through.

Lively and quite funny without being obnoxious, this follow-up smoothly mixes the original's New York Zoo escapees with a number of engaging new characters.

Writer David Hare and director Ralph Fiennes have a good feel for the artistic world the story inhabits and professional dancer Oleg Ivenko does a more than creditable job in personifying one of the 20th century’s most celebrated artistic figures, but the narrative bounces all over the place trying to cover too much ground when concentrating on the core drama would have far better served the desired end.

Through wit, surprise and an irrepressible ballsiness comes a scorching humor that neither curdles nor becomes exhausted.

The dramatic trajectory is frightfully obvious, the characters tediously one-dimensional, the dialogue banal.

Anthony and Joe Russo place too much faith in the ability of their talented thesps to carry the day over precariously thin material.

Volume two gets down in ways the first half doesn't, although anything resembling real sensuality remains MIA.

No matter how silly and outlandish the action gets — and it does become ridiculous — it also delivers the goods its audience expects.

Eccentric, misguided and occasionally charming and sweet, this curiosity item with Sean Penn in one of his nuttier performances is unlikely to be embraced critically or commercially.

The repetitive storyline about successive heists during a Muppets European tour grows tiresome and the fun is intermittent.

Although the story is built around the automatically emotional situation of an imperiled kid, scripters Richard Price (who appears briefly as an uncomfortably handcuffed victim of Sinise in the early going) and Alexander Ignon and director Ron Howard largely steer clear of milking the easy melodrama.

An intermittently powerful and meticulously crafted drama that falls short of its full potential due to considerable over-length and some shopworn, simplistic notions at its center.

A straightforward actioner that delivers the goods with no unnecessary frills or digressions.

Although it exists primarily to send an audience into a bloodthirsty frenzy and has major credibility problems in the bargain, "Unlawful Entry" is still a very effective victimization thriller. Strongly following the "Fatal Attraction" pattern--to the point of having a very similar climax--well-crafted concoction trades in the sorts of elemental concerns and fears that get people mightily worked up. This, combined with controversy pic may engender based on its prominent plot element of excessive police violence, gives it the potential to become a summer sleeper hit.

Adaptation of Ian McEwan's 1997 novel takes a surprising number of liberties with the text, given the author's stature, but his name on the credits as associate producer would suggest his stamp of approval.

Snappy, nasty, deftly acted and perhaps the fastest paced film ever directed by a 78-year-old, this adaptation of Yasmina Reza's award-winning play God of Carnage fully delivers the laughs and savagery of the stage piece.

Danny Boyle has great and plainly evident fun adding twists and curves and tunnels and endless style to his modern London noir Trance, but he makes so many left turns that the film turns in on itself rather than going anywhere.

Overlong and ultra-slow, this meditation on the sad state of things will tax the patience of even dedicated Wenders fans.

There’s enough fun, writerly glee and actors enjoying their little rampages to make Velvet Buzzsaw a decent distraction for a couple of hours, but also something of a schizophrenic case all its own.

A small, sympathetic story of a teenage girl’s rough coming out is smothered by a pile of far-fetched melodrama, a loathsomely obnoxious male lead character and far too much unsteadicam visual randomness in First Girl I Loved.

An artistically experimental, ideologically apocalyptic blast at American values that is as obvious in intent as it is murky in aesthetic achievement.

The same tone and look are maintained, but the visceral excitement is muffled by familiarity, an insufficiently conceived lead character and the sheer weight of backstory and multiple layers of deception.

All the interest and good will built up by the sharply conceived preliminaries is washed away in a succession of scenes that feel crushingly routine and generic, not to mentioned guided by ideological urges.

An intense, precision-controlled psychological mystery built around a very creepy lead performance by Christian Bale.

Unfortunately, after a relatively promising warmup, pic actually proceeds to flatten out the characters in the latter sections and to make them less dimensional and interesting than they initially seemed.

Amusing and engaging yet lacking in snap and cohesion, this insider's look at the world of standup comics in contempo Los Angeles rings true in its view of the variously warped, stunted and narrow lives of its mostly male denizens.

A literary adaptation of exceeding intelligence, beauty and concentrated artistry, but one that remains emotionally remote and perhaps unavoidably problematic dramatically.

Falls somewhere in between standing on its own feet as a real movie worth the price of a ticket and merely being a glorified TV episode refitted for theaters.

A fairly entertaining supernatural potboiler that finally bubbles over with a nearly operatic sense of absurdity and excess.

The souffle falls a little flat in The Ladykillers, a Coen brothers black comedy in which the humor seems arch and narrative momentum doesn't kick in until the final third.

Amiable and constantly amusing rather than uproarious, this mangy tale of a ne'er-do-well's fitful assault on personal and professional respectability benefits greatly from Kevin Costner's ingratiatingly comic star turn, his most appealing work in years.

Design aspects are arresting and the filmmaker's abilities are obvious, but the basic survival story remains slight, just as the general setting, no matter how artfully imagined, is by now pretty familiar.

Renner appears completely immersed in his role and when the clouds of doubt accumulate and the man becomes a professional pariah, it's a painful thing to see.

Director Drake Doremus confirms his knack for pinpointing subtle emotional tremors on fragile personal landscapes, even if some too-easy coincidences and pat dramatic moments chip away at the compressed story's credibility.

Desperately uncertain in tone and able to generate only sporadic laughs, pic decks out its meager story of revenge and comeuppance with a vulgar, flashy shimmer that will no doubt attract teenage girls, or the core "Clueless" audience.

Due to digital image manipulation that pushes the picture to the boundary between narrative and avant-garde filmmaking, slightly overlong effort is full of striking, fresh visual interludes showing cars, speed and the sensations surrounding the scene.

Classy, decorous and well acted, directorial debut by Hollywood producer Pieter Jan BruggePieter Jan Brugge is nicely crafted but too buttoned up to generate more than polite interest, much less the urgent excitement a kidnapping story might be expected to trigger.

Director Rourke exhibits confidence and enthusiasm in dealing with such juicy material in the company of her two outstanding young actresses.

George Nofi pulls off a relative rarity in his feature film debut by creating a genuinely romantic fantasy suspense thriller.

Ultimately, frustration and fatigue prevail over the film’s intellectual acuity and political insight; neither is any true emotion ever forthcoming. This is odd and disappointing.

Gibson still has all the energy, impulsive gear-shifting ability and growly vocal command to anchor a muscular film such as this; he co-wrote it for himself, after all, and he certainly knows by now what he does best. Hernandez is entirely credible as a tough little customer with real guts, and all the actors playing bad guys seize their opportunities with relish.

Christopher's lengthy two-hander scenes with Pooh quickly wear out their welcome; what at first is agreeably amusing shortly becomes grating, then just tedious.

Just as quirky and idiosyncratic as the Gotham-based writer-director's earlier efforts, this one pushes the spiky humor a bit more to the fore while unfolding a tale loaded with offbeat oppositions and odd character detailing.

This vigorous, colorful and clever melodrama smartly rethinks both the play and the character, making her a far more proactive figure than Shakespeare did in addition to entirely reimagining her fate.

The script's simpleminded shenanigans notwithstanding, the two stars sync up better than their characters do, especially with some rough-and-tumble physical slapstick, resulting in a crude, low-brow audience-pleaser that will hit the funny bones of both performers' fan bases.

While the director's avid fans may be disappointed, upscalish mainstream auds, particularly women, will eat up this well-acted, emotionally focused adaptation of Jennifer Weiner's popular novel.

All hands on both sides of the camera do outstanding work. Clooney seems to be enjoying himself thoroughly as the old grump whose creative flame hasn’t been entirely extinguished, but it falls more to Robertson to carry the film, which she does with great energy and appeal.

This is a fitfully funny quasi-farce that takes off promisingly, loses its way mid-flight and comes in for a bumpy but safe landing.

A lighthearted yarn designed to stand out by virtue of its intricate structure and trippy time-travel element. But the fanciful material wears thin pretty quickly, the air leaking out of the balloon long before party's over.

The gradual dilution of fresh humor is further undercut by a queasy sense that the picture, in the end, is quietly endorsing all the psychoanalytical mumbo jumbo that it has been poking fun at all along.

Audiences will be excused for any feelings of déjà vu the new film might inspire. That won't prevent them from watching it in rapt, anxious silence, however, as the gruesome crimes, twisted psychology and deterministic dread that lie at the heart of Harris' work are laid out with care and skill.

Removing a live audience from the equation, Soderbergh becomes a bold participant in the storytelling. The backdrop keeps changing, from a brick wall to drapes, windows and assorted landscapes. The lighting is in constant flux, often punctuating the text on cue.

A zippy, frothy confection that emerges as agreeable middle-range Woody.

The Aeronauts achieves impressive elevation as a bracing and sympathetic account of two early and very different aviators who together reached literal new heights in a perilous field of endeavor.

A lifeless, tone-deaf variation on Invasion of the Body Snatchers. ... There’s just nothing going on here with which to engage your interest, nor is there a single moment to even slightly increase the viewer’s pulse rate.

The two leads' highly competitive shtick is more amusing than not — the insults fly hot and heavy — as are the outrageously adverse predicaments over which they invariably manage to gain an upper hand. Director Leitch figuratively winks at the audience and elbows it in the ribs as he has his characters break the laws of physics time and time again as they confront a thoroughly preposterous lineup of physical dilemmas one after another.

Yes, it's a cartoon, but it's conspicuously unmodulated, with the volume set on high and the pacing all but pushed to fast-forward.

The film is rugged, skilled, relentless, determined, narrow-minded and focused, everything that a soldier must be when his life is on the line.

The disparate but highly skilled leading trio of Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton and Cate Blanchett keeps this road movie engaging even when it veers giddily onto the shoulder.

"Boogie Nights" meets "Goodfellas" in Middle Men, a relentlessly sleazy but undeniably intriguing tour of the bottom-feeding netherworld where porn and organized crime do their mutual bump-and-grind.

A cocoon of somber self-seriousness envelopes some fine performances and intelligent craftsmanship in Nell.

Reserved, careful and largely predictable in the way it plays out its wrenching emotional crises.

Like a light buffet of tasty morsels rather than a full and satisfying meal; all the episodes are more or less agreeable, but as a whole it lacks a knockout punch, one dynamite sequence that will galvanize viewers.

The yarn's emotional undercurrents never take hold, resulting in a picture that leaves one thinking less about the fates of the characters than about how the actors had to spend most of their working days soaking wet.

A sense of strain envelops the proceedings this time around. One can feel the effort required to suit up one more time, come up with fresh variations on a winning formula and inject urgency into a format that basically needs to be repeated and, due to audience expectations, can't be toyed with or deepened very much.

A great true story is telescoped down to a merely good one in Unbroken. After a dynamite first half-hour, Angelina Jolie's accomplished second outing as a director slowly looses steam.

Shallow is a mild word for it. Others would be silly, miscalculated, unconvincing, artless, pandering, hokey, ridiculous. Or just plain awful.

Lemon represents a feature debut of unusual assurance and control with a style all its own.

Little Monsters irreverently builds enough good will and comic energy in the early-going to carry it to its conclusion, so it’s bound to gather a cult of some dimension.

A smoothly engineered crowd pleaser.

The final stretch of The Battle of the Five Armies possesses a warm, amiable, sometimes rueful mood that proves ingratiating and manages to magnify the good and minimize the bad of the trilogy.

A labor of love, to be sure, but a simple, small-scaled domestic drama with none of the broad appeal of the hugely popular "Shakespeare in Love" of 1998, this thoroughly respectable Sony Classics pickup will command the interest mostly of older-skewing art house habituees.

Well-wrought individual scenes and sharply focused acting provide Rebecca Miller's third feature with a measure of gravity, but too much abrupt, even melodramatic behavior and undigested psychological matter leave nagging dissatisfactions.

It doesn’t have Jack Nicholson, Stanley Kubrick or even much of the Overlook Hotel, but Rebecca Ferguson and other good actors provide some shine of their own in Doctor Sleep, a drawn-out and seldom pulse-quickening follow-up to The Shining that still has enough going on to forestall any audience slumber.

This surprising collaboration between director Clint Eastwood and "Milk" screenwriter Dustin Lance Black tackles its trickiest challenges with plausibility and good sense, while serving up a simmeringly caustic view of its controversial subject's behavior, public and private.

The dramatic approach here is clear, efficient and entirely on-the-nose, with little time for anything that might distract from the hagiographic effort in play. Its sole purpose is to ennoble and proclaim a hero, which its subject almost certainly is. But it makes for notably simplified drama.

The story keeps everyone in motion all night long, and frantically so, to the point that it could easily have been titled Non-Stop 2.

Adequately acted and flecked with the required quota of action to satisfy genre fans, pic recalls numerous good police dramas of the 1970s, but mostly in superficial ways that bring nothing new to the table.

A tad crasser and pushier than its predecessor, Ice Age: The Meltdown is still an entirely serviceable follow-up to the 2002 hit that will thoroughly amuse kids and get a rise or two out of parents as well.

All smoke and mirrors. With his third straight excursion into the supernatural, M. Night Shyamalan has begun revealing the hand that works his spooky tricks so much that the lack of substance is plainly seen.

The mildly engaging silliness of its premise is never transformed into something more substantial, and the attempt at a fine-tuned "Clueless"-like tone is only sputteringly achieved.

A strange, fun and densely textured work that gets better as it goes along.

Savages represents at least a partial resurrection of the director's more hallucinatory, violent, sexual and, in a word, savage side.

The cutting-edge perfection of effects in Cameron and Spielberg films is replaced here by work that looks more homemade, particularly toward the end in some faintly cheesy composite shots.

A frothy, lightweight romantic comedy that strives to seem richer and more complex than it really is.

The demoralizing slide of the relationship between Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, from artistic comrades-in-arms during the thrilling creation of the nouvelle vague to name-calling enemies from the early '70s onward, is charted in overly academic and constricted fashion in Two in the Wave.

There is much here of interest to aficionados of the great author as well as to those curious about the complicated relationship between sisters Mariel and the late Margaux.

Intensely self-conscious of its status as a cultural commodity even as it devotedly follows the requisite playbook for mass-audience blockbuster fare, Jurassic World can reasonably lay claim to the number two position among the four series entries, as it goes down quite a bit easier than the previous two sequels.

It is unfortunate when such a difficult, ambitious film doesn't quite pay off after building up so much solid credit, but that is the case here. It is possible that the nature of the history under consideration is as responsible for this as any other single factor.

Possessed of another outstanding wall-to-wall score by Philip Glass but rather fuzzy in its message, entry differs from its predecessors in that roughly 80% of its images are derived from existing sources and have been "tortured and recontextualized" to unusual and sometimes extreme effect.

A generally old-fashioned costumer that runs out of gas even faster than does the tempestuous love affair between writer George Sand and poet Alfred de Musset that it so devotedly recounts.

A less raucous and more serious-minded neighborhood comedy than its entertaining predecessor.

A humans vs. robots saga that feels machine-made, I, Robot looks to have been assembled from the spare parts of dozens of previous sci-fi pictures.