Walter Addiego

There are “gotcha” jolts that definitely got me, but for each of those, there must be a half-dozen scares telegraphed in very large letters. I think Annabelle: Creation is suffering from sequelitis.

It serves up a broad humanistic lesson with absurdism and black comedy more sad than barbed.

Well made, but it's a talkfest that wears its stage origins on its sleeve.

Has an impressive cast and captures some of that era's fuzzy rebelliousness and humanism, but taken on its own the picture is finally thin stuff.

By showing so many examples of his art, the film attests to Giger’s real gift for startling images. But it’s hard not to see, in addition, elements of repetitive adolescent provocation.

You may experience Visitors as more of a sedative than a punch in the guts.

Not sure we need to know this much about his family life.

His personal efforts are praiseworthy, but if glacial melting is in fact the "canary in the climate coal mine" (his words), the movie might have given us a bit less of Balog and a bit more of the startling sequences he produced.

Standard-issue slasher pic.

Director Paul Morrison ("Wondrous Oblivion") nicely re-creates the period, but puts too much weight on the sexual relationship as determining the men's artistic courses.

The picture seems to have been intended as a political satire, but only a Hollywood executive could mistake it for the real thing.

The direction, by Ben Nott and Morgan O'Neill, is average, except for the surfing sequences, which are easily as striking as what we see in documentaries about the sport. Another positive is the soundtrack, with amusing high-energy rock tunes of the era.

Miserly on food porn but not on prefab characters, it's well short of a cinematic feast.

As an indulgence in creative verbal abuse, the film offers some nasty fun.

What Laika achieves is an effective mixture of hyper-real and hyper-stylized, a combination that keeps “Kubo” appealing to the eye for audiences of all ages. If the film’s plotting and dialogue had measured up, “Kubo” might have been a masterpiece.

Earnest and kid-friendly -- also simplistic and dramatically creaky.

While there are entertaining segments, and even a couple of comedic touches, in the end the film isn’t convincing, and parts have a paint-by-the-numbers feeling.

Ovation has a self-involved air that may be off-putting to those who don’t feel deeply immersed in that world. You may get the sense you’ve wandered into a super-intense acting class or someone’s therapy session — a hothouse atmosphere that’s oppressive.

Too much of nothing and far from the potentially star-making material that Foxx deserves.

The talented Murphy is appealing here, performing with sincerity and restraint - a wise choice, since his co-stars are a menagerie of wisecracking animals.

Although it’s good to have a critical accounting of his role in modern American politics, most of what we see here has been reported elsewhere, and this documentary seems aimed at rallying the troops.

A romantic sitcom that never transcends its gimmicky plot, but offers enough screen time to Gwyneth Paltrow to satisfy even her most rabid fans.

the movie comes perilously close to implicitly justifying the killing that sparked the plot - a killing, by the way, that is close to senseless.

Writer-director Mark Herman seems genuinely moved by the plight of the mining communities, but his attempt to translate those feelings into a story shows the effects of hard labor.

If you want lots of Will Smith and industrial-strength special effects, the movie delivers.

Offers some hit-and-miss pleasures, but may finally strike you as pedestrian.

Despite a super-dark noir plot and respectable cast, Deadfall is a thriller that never quite delivers on its promise.

Tonal inconsistency is the iceberg that sinks The Pretty One. The film is a mashup of wacky comedy, romance and sorrowful elements that would tax a more seasoned filmmaker than first-time writer-director Jenée LaMarque.

I'll stick out my neck and say that Park Chan Wook's wildly gruesome Thirst is the most whacked-out version of an Emile Zola novel ever to reach the screen.

Strict plausibility isn’t necessary in these movies, and while No Escape doesn’t completely throw it out the window, it still inspires the occasional unintended giggle.

The film is beautiful but troubled, achieving in stretches the director's signature dreamy mood but dragged down by narrative confusions.

The movie is probably best appreciated by devotees of the cult director, who has made some good films and some interesting ones (and some that are both): "King of New York," "Bad Lieutenant," "The Addiction." "4:44" isn't quite in that company.

This is highly skilled filmmaking, but the movie is not for everybody — the relationship involves dominance and submission, sexual games played at a high pitch. This material falls short of pornographic, but still packs plenty of erotic punch.

Freed from the demands of adapting an established and complex literary piece, the filmmakers seem to have relaxed - and so can their audience.

A frantic, epic-sized blowout of campy, "Indiana Jones" -style derring-do mixed with lots of computer-generated gee-whizzes.

Aims to make epic drama of Algeria's battle for independence, but there are moments when you would swear you're watching a "Godfather" knockoff.

Kline is good in a role that suits him perfectly, and his scenes with Steenburgen are among the film’s most affecting. Jacobs is pretty good, too, really pouring on the Southern California “charm.”

Good-looking and empty.

An old-fashioned and family-friendly comedy.

The film is good enough to inspire viewers to learn more about Fela, but it should be better than that.

Perhaps Patten is trying to do to us what Rinpoche does to his followers, but the film's meandering structure and intrusive narration detract from the focus on the master.

Some of the talking heads say entertaining or thoughtful things and some of the locations are quite exotic. But does this justify 98 minutes of screen time?

A melancholy Spanish drama that’s competently made and checks off all the boxes defining a contemporary art-house movie. But it lacks the spark that separates top-of-the-line films from the pack, and watching it becomes something of a slog.

Whatever It Takes is DOA -- dated on arrival.

This is a slacker comedy with "festival" stamped all over it, so you can bet the consequences will be quirky.

The characters are mostly likable, and despite some comic sallies the film takes a compassionate stance toward them. But it feels like a glossy, overly neat take on what should be an explosive topic.

A relentlessly quirky British comedy-drama that demonstrates why more is not always more.

The tales are worthwhile, but it's challenging to find a common thread among them that goes beyond vague generalities.

The dramatic payoff is a bit disappointing; the movie is often overwrought; and its sense of its own importance finally wears you down.

Offers some memorable stories, but it simply tries too hard.

At some point, the movie itself crosses the line, from a modestly thoughtful attempt to extrapolate a drama from real and urgent events to a generic action piece with predictable good and bad guys and pat, civics-book morals.

It's an interesting spectacle, but not enough to carry a movie.

Your heart will go out to Shlain, who clearly adored her father. But other parts of Connected may remind you of an Al Gore lecture.

Really doesn't pay off much.

Occasionally funny and touching, but often embarrassing and cringe-inducing.

Short on complexity and depth, The Divine Order gives us a parade of heroines and villains. Instead of raising questions, it seems to want to induce in viewers a sense of smugness.

The film is well acted, with especially strong work by Alonso and Zegers. And director Larraín has a powerful knack for depicting human monsters. But he stacks the deck so heavily that at times the film can seem like simple-minded anti-clericalism, and at least some viewers are bound to resist.

Wilson is basically playing an even more feckless version of his "Office" character, Dwight, another intense and self-deluded doofus. It's a character that works better in smaller doses.

I liked this movie somewhat, even if I'm not sure exactly what it means. Possibly it has something to do with arriving home, in the broadest sense. But in a Maddin film, uncertainty comes with the territory.

Ari Gold’s The Song of Sway Lake is saturated with a kind of melancholy nostalgia, and viewers who can accept that will find other virtues as well in this flawed film. It’s a story of familial unhappiness passing down through generations, impressive before it begins to lose focus.