Tom Russo

The movie’s best bits come when Tong’s script eases up on banter and clunky Indy homages and instead simply indulges in random zaniness.

The film feels as if it’s drawing its characterizations far more from the appeal of its stars than from any prose.

For all Kendrick's stolidity, he delivers a couple of wrenchingly tender scenes.

Angelo Pizzo knows inspirational sports drama. As the writer of “Hoosiers” and “Rudy,” Pizzo has made a career out of mining the genre and its themes of underdog determination and locker-room brotherhood. But he’s overmatched in his directing debut, the well-intentioned football biopic My All American.

Funny thing, though: The sunnier that Barrymore gets in her scenes with Sandler, the more the iffy elements and leaden bits seem to just melt away.

The actors also acquit themselves well singing the film's numerous tunes. Breslin's voice is pleasantly melodic, while Nivola sounds like someone who's been grinding it out on tour for years.

There are echoes of Roman Polanski’s “Rosemary’s Baby” in all of this that are impossible to miss.

As he did with his "Everest" cast, Kormákur draws a strong, pathos-rich performance from Woodley, filled with moments of her character confronting her own mortality and looking back on safe choices not made. It’s solid drama, but also very slow going.

The problem with this adaptation of Lawrence Block’s detective yarn isn’t that it casts Neeson in a role we’re seeing him play again and again. It’s that no one else in the movie makes a character feel nearly as broken-in and fully inhabited as he does.

A serviceable thriller that might have been something more.

Some of this vigilante-fantasy misbehavior is wickedly funny.

Hand it to Amanda Seyfried - she seems to have a knack for underplaying unstable characters in a way that lets their nuttiness creep right up on you.

The copious violence, as always, is an assault - even aurally, as every thudding knife strike is made to sound like a boulder dropping on the theater.

Where we hoped for a narrative rebound, we get instead another pedestrian, overlong post-apocalyptic entry that fails to capitalize on some decent character dynamics.

The film is quite the showcase for Zoey Deutch (“Before I Fall”), giving her loose-scripted freedom to play brazen, breezy, even soulfully vulnerable. Still, her selectively promiscuous hellion is so off-putting so much of the time — as are most of those around her, and their lurid plots and predicaments — it’s hard to see the point of it all.

Entertainment so generically gentle, it doesn’t compare to last year’s similarly themed, tonally looser “Trolls.”

A story that builds toward Po training an army of his panda brethren fails to deliver exponentially greater fun.

The result is a scattershot comedy that only intermittently nails either tone, finally just bogging down in flatly choreographed mayhem in the late going.

The initial close-up of Thompson - all sourly snaggletoothed and begoggled - is as funny as anything in the original. And just that one quick glimpse would have been perfect.

The result is a reworking that feels both unnecessary and uninspired, even if it’s too genial and visually captivating to be flat-out off-putting.

What’s ironic — and frustrating — is how precipitously the movie itself eventually goes tumbling down the intelligence scale. In the process, Chiwetel Ejiofor is wasted, along with some potent moments from costars Roberts and Nicole Kidman.

There are some amusing looks at the elation - and panic - that come with winning big, from the praise-Jesus swooning of Kevin's grandma (underutilized Loretta Devine).

The film is slow going with its mix of stilted political discourse and restless village folk just looking to celebrate life and dance. At times, it’s like “Footloose” gone didactic.

As it stands, The Expendables 2 is lazily satisfied with repeating the first movie's formula, shortcomings and grisly strengths alike.

The dialogue also reflects the material’s stage origins in ways that don’t always translate well.

The riot of color here brings to mind what the makers of “Ice Age” delivered with “Rio,” which in turn reminds us that these animators certainly aren’t just one-trick talents. Could be time for them to show us some new ones.

A sequel seemingly eager to assert that monster mashes are about B-movie chills not "Twilight'' melodrama. Eager to a fault, ultimately.

Middling cop thriller, whose attention-grabbing city-on-lockdown premise is undercut by thin plotting and forced performances from the supporting cast.