At least [Teller's] presence, along with Woodley's, makes Insurgent good, if not great. And it's not too late to keep improving.

Above and Beyond is a straightforward, rah-rah documentary.

Kristian Levring offers a brutally beautiful take on the Western in The Salvation, a film reminiscent of a song that sounds familiar but offers its own pleasures.

Demange's busy camera is effective in conveying the chaos swirling around Hook. If we can't always tell exactly what's going on, neither can Hook. It ratchets up the tension considerably.

The Cobbler definitely won't please the audience for Sandler's mainstream blockbusters, and it's unlikely to win him new fans among the indie intelligentsia, either.

In Run All Night, Neeson gives us more of the same, although with Collet-Serra's assistance, it's dressed up in a more interesting package.

It's beautiful to behold and wears its magic on its well-appointed sleeves, daring the audience to crack wise.

The utter lack of surprises and waste of a first-rate cast — Anthony Hopkins as Alfred "Freddy" Heineken; Jim Sturgess and Sam Worthington as kidnappers — make for a tremendous letdown.

Supporting turns by Philip Rosenthal and David Alan Grier as two pals in the business are fun, but they can't prevent the movie's rather aimless nature or self-indulgent feel.

Polsky keeps things lively, both visually and with his editing. But the sometimes-lighthearted approach never undermines the serious business at hand. It enhances it.

Boorman retains the sense of melancholy and, ultimately, optimism from the first film. That, coupled with excellent portrayals of what could have been stock war-movie characters, makes Queen and Country a worthy follow-up to a classic.

Unfinished Business is a jumble of half-baked ideas, none particularly interesting.

It's asked in the film, "How many new lives can we have?" The answer, it turns, is however many we want. And as long as Dench, Smith, Nighy and Imrie stick around, the same probably is true of "Marigold" movies.

Blomkamp regular Sharlto Copley is quite good — as Chappie, in a motion-capture performance. (He also provides the voice of the robot.) If this were somehow a commentary on man's increasing lack of humanity or something, that would be fine. Instead, it's just good work buried inside a movie made up of intriguing ideas that never really go anywhere.

Written, produced and directed by Christopher Nolen, who gives himself a small role, the movie fails as both a comedy and morality tale.

There's nothing particularly earth-shattering here, but maybe that's appropriate for a film honoring food that aims to be mouthwatering but unpretentious.

Mommy is a film as harrowing as it is exhilarating, a story sometimes hard to watch but impossible to turn away from.

There is so much love and understanding of all the genres the film is skewering that What We Do in the Shadows transcends its lowbrow inspirations. It's a real treat.

In "The Player," Robert Altman carves up Hollywood with knowing, surgical precision. Cronenberg is a gifted filmmaker in his own right, but here he takes a meat-ax to the place. He gets what he's after but leaves quite a mess.

Aside from the waste of talent, the frustrating thing about The Lazarus Effect is how it cheats. Good horror movies work on internal logic.

Although it brings nothing new to the con-artist fold, or even anything thrilling, Focus is a seductive enough rehash that benefits from the built-in pleasures of the trade.

The movie makes some observations about the worth of human life — the title refers to the monetary value put on the life of the injured waiter — and the economic class system, but they're not terribly interesting or surprising.

Hot Tub Time Machine 2 is a movie that didn't need to be made, and certainly doesn't need to be seen — not when you can rent the original and still feel good about yourself afterward.

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.

Yes, there are sex scenes in the film, quite a few. But for a movie where people are naked for a large chunk of time and play at bondage and dominance (without ever really seeming all that committed to it), it sure is boring.

A sense of dread hovers over all these characters, and, by extension, the audience. It's in the air of the place, like oxygen. And vodka. Lots of vodka. Yet Zvyagintsev's achievement, or one of them, is creating a film that is not one long downer. It's not exactly a laugh riot, but we do care about these people.

Seventh Son is recommended only for the most far-gone of fantasy addicts, for whom it will serve as a sort of methadone. It won't exactly satisfy, but it will tide you over until the next season of "Game of Thrones."

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.