Scott's epic - and it's hard to think of anything this big, this elaborate and, no doubt, this expensive as anything but - is very much an origination story, a prequel, if you will.

Fans of the “Fast and Furious” franchise are sure to enjoy the latest model.

It works, both as a character study and a BOO! made-you-jump exercise in horror.

On Chesil Beach, Dominic Cooke’s adaptation of Ian McEwan’s bestseller, features a couple of outstanding performances, but you have to suffer through some serious heartbreak to enjoy them. If “enjoy” is even the word. This is seriously depressing stuff. But good! Really. Don’t let the downbeat vibe scare you off.

Mostly “Novocaine” is just fun. And mostly, that’s enough.

As tiresome as those live-action sequences are, they are more than outweighed by laughs — some riotous, some groaning and some very, very befuddled, but none predictable.

For every crisis there’s a line of homespun wisdom, in every failure a universal lesson to impart. The film highlights each symbol, making explicit that which would be stronger left implicit, until Rex’s glass castle becomes an overbearing metaphor.

If you're a fan of provocative, offbeat films such as "My Own Private Idaho" or "The Crying Game," you might want to give "Phillip Morris" a chance.

These are fantastic performances, even if they’re painful to watch. Una isn’t pretty, but it is powerful.

Caro's direction, Costner's performance and the winning cast, along with the shining of a sliver of light on the plight of field workers, however thin that sliver may be, combine to make McFarland a much better movie than it has any right to be.

True Story never really soars in the way it might, but the performances more than keep it aloft.

Boseman and Gad are both good. Marshall drinks and smokes and fights in a bar; certainly that's a side of him we haven't seen before. If anything, he's portrayed as a little too good at his job, a risk-taker whose every courtroom hunch pays off. It's an interesting approach to the story, but it also holds the film back a bit.

It's an entertaining film and a deceptively gritty thriller, and Kinnear conveys Mickey's mounting desperation in winning fashion.

There is much to like about Avengers: Age of Ultron. There was much to love about "The Avengers," and therein lies the difference.

It's a little too obvious -- interesting, sometimes kind of fun but, ultimately, not as satisfying as it might have been.

A surprisingly effective horror film, which is to say it’s scary in all the smart ways.

In Wakefield’s mind, naturally, there is no life without him. It’s to Cranston’s credit that, at least for a couple of hours, we’re willing to play along.

Simon Killer is a beautifully made look at ugliness and brutality, the kind of oxymoronic exercise that fascinates some and repels others.

It’s aggressively charming, and competitions and training montages are filmed with kinetic whimsy. The film’s chief triumph is in spinning something remotely thrilling out of something as inherently dull as speed typing.

There is a hollowed-out gravitas to his Getty, the perfect example of someone for whom having almost literally everything is just not enough, and Plummer captures this magnificently. No matter how he got there, it’s impossible now to imagine All the Money in the World without him.

Barber uses various stylistic devices - hand-held cameras, cellphone cameras, etc. - that make a somewhat slow story seem to move at a brisker pace.

Yam Laranas doesn't leave it at that. In his low-budget, creepy thriller, he spells out why and how this particular path is so deadly, as well as what led to the crimes and supernatural horror that seem to frequent the place.

It's not always pretty, and it's not always exciting, but you genuinely don't know from one moment to the next how these characters will behave.

It’s delightful. Director Caroline Vignal infuses the film with just enough whimsy — but not too much. It’s not going to rewrite the rules of cinema or anything, but it’s not trying to.

Perhaps because the bar was set so low, Mother’s Day turns out to be surprisingly watchable.

Again, 155 minutes is a lot of time for throat clearing, but by the time the film is done Villeneuve is hitting his stride. He has created a complex, intriguing world.

You might say the lack of a Hollywood narrative arc is both a strength and a weakness in this film, because Lipitz isn’t entirely clear about what story she is trying to tell.

It’s not the best movie of the summer, not by a long shot, but if there’s such a thing as smarter dumb fun, this is probably it.