To be sure, Snakes on a Plane is going to inspire some highly readable graduate-school film theses. You may even want to re-enroll to pen one yourself.

Never manages to get its relationships framed in as sharp focus as "Lantana" and goes down some unproductive side roads in its attempt to get to the point.

Life of Pi, ironically, soars when it confines itself to land and sea; when it grasps for the celestial, the film goes beyond its reach.

It's a silly, goofball romp, sure, but this newfangled Josie rocks far harder than her predecessor.

I’m not sure The Bad Guys is something kids on the younger side will enjoy, as the action and humor seem aimed at a slightly older, 10-and-up crowd. Still, there are some good lessons to be learned here about staying true to your friends and not judging someone on the way they look – a lesson we all, not just the kiddos, need to learn.

Dougherty appears determined to work his way through the underbelly of our most cherished seasonal festivities. Plus, it’s an extremely welcome change of pace from the “found footage” barrage of the past 10 years.

A feel-good film that uses hope, kindness, and generosity (if a bit austerely) to convey this strong message that releases endorphins as strong as any runner’s high.

All told, Pitch Perfect isn't all that good – but it's an awfully good sport.

Hudsucker Proxy works more like a fairy tale in which all implausibilities are acceptable and none of it has to play by real-world rules. But it's a fairy tale without any lessons, a satire without any targets.

From a purely visual point of view, Escape Room is worth the price of admission.

The Hunger Games franchise, both in print and onscreen, has been exceptionally clever about cozying away imaginative space for fans to fill in the blanks and cast themselves in the rich drama. That this latest film leaves us hungering for more only means that it’s working.

A study in fine gradations of resentment in the great outdoors, In Our Nature is a little too subtle for this genre. Country-house-fiasco films are only satisfying when the shit truly hits the fan.

There’s no denying Pacific Rim is the best film of its kind. It remains to be seen whether the film’s epic clawing and clanking satisfies a pent-up demand equal to its ambitions.

If you can describe something as a B-action movie and not mean it as a derogatory phrase, then this is probably the thriller for you.

The Lookout marks Frank's directorial debut after years of working as a screenwriter on movies like "Get Shorty" and "Out of Sight," and though his new movie may lack the sexual tension and bubbly wit that elevated those films to rarefied heights, there's a newfound, and not unwelcome, sobriety to his writing.

Despite its pleasant veneer, Laggies is a bit adrift itself. Winning performances keep us engaged – and a one-sequence appearance by Gretchen Mol as Annika’s mother who flew the coop is hauntingly complex.

The filmmakers don’t endorse Michael’s solipsism, but we’re stuck with it anyway – the film is entirely from his point of view, save a lovely, pacifying final shot.

Cinematically well-made, The Other Son is nevertheless workmanlike. The actors are all excellent, the storytelling compassionate, and the overall sense one takes from the film is more humane than political.

The darker stuff begs to be handled less delicately than this dance, and in that respect the director stumbles.

Big Miracle is all formula, but with just enough savvy to temper the gentle-spiritedness and qualify it as that rare family film with an emotional manipulativeness that doesn't leave a sick slick in the mouth.

The Dreamers is infused with the same kind of wistful melancholy that made the French New Wave films so winning, and it’s all gorgeous to look at.

An intriguing psychological study that, more or less, leaves out the psychology and presents us with surface behavior.

Bill Murray's Polonius is so delightfully coy and self-satisfied that this performance is reason alone to see the picture.

What is notable is how the film gives children a framework, and the language, to process this act of violence, same as it does the pain of grief, the bitter rub of mortality. I don’t know if that sensitivity will translate to a gajillion more princess dresses sold, but as a teaching aid for kids – a tool for taking on more adult concerns – I found it surprisingly impactful.

An absorbing human drama.

Anchored by a terrific performance by Abbass, Satin Rouge shows that the idea of women's self-actualization knows few continental divides.

This first release from Disney’s self-explanatory new arm, Disneynature, is at the very least peripherally concerned with the planet and its dwindling prospects, but the real renewable resource here is the groundbreaking "Planet Earth" miniseries.

Simultaneously creepy and hilarious, this is the perfect slice of Grand Guignol for a humid summer's night.

Zips along at an urgent pace, both tantalizing and repulsing as it goes.

Makes for a playfully enthralling hour and a half.

The movie's light, easily forgotten and very good for a few laughs. I sure hope that eating thing comes true.

With help from talented young director Ferland and a sublime performance from Kevin Bacon, Eszterhas has created a gentle and affecting ode to universal growing-up conflicts within a beautifully rendered evocation of a specific time and place.

Something this bad can’t help but be good.

Sure, we’ve all seen this story before, but that doesn’t hamper this film from being enormously entertaining, with riveting performances, great beats, and poetic rhymes.

Despite an overlong running time and a punishing amount of violence and gore, it's a deeply ambitious picture, one of the most expensive and original to come out of France in many years.

Does Apatow understand his heroes are assholes?

Instead of a gross-out gag fest, Butt Boy is a surprisingly tender bizarro comedy that works because it plays the strangeness straight.

All this is not to say that the Coens' True Grit is an awful film; it's just that these filmmakers have set their own standards for excellence, and True Grit falls short.

At just under two hours, Die My Love is a lot of movie with not a lot of story. Good thing, then, that it centers Lawrence in very nearly every frame.

It’s a tonally imperfect film that’s nonetheless ideal for holiday viewing, a respite from "Rogue One" perhaps, or simply an exciting, old-school explorer’s tale well told (for the most part).

Seligman's script will strike a sharp chord in anyone that has run into overly-complicated situations at a family gathering (i.e. just about everyone). It feels like a hurdy-gurdy that is just enough put of tune to leave you uneasy, a sensation of queasiness further unbalanced by Ariel Marx's discordant, scratchy, string-and-timpani soundtrack

For those looking to be stylishly entertained while learning more than anyone might ever want to know about the formation of the Bergman psyche, well, here it is.

While a solid addition to the new canon of microbudget sci-fi flicks that look like a million bucks, with an aesthetic that’s equal parts Blade Runner and Tron, it’s really about this couple who aren’t a couple yet. It’s that old equation of two people who are clearly too high-maintenance for anyone but each other, and that’s why Litwak isn’t afraid to use oh-so-familiar beats of the rom-com classics.

Doesn't necessarily make for a crowdpleasing experience, though it is a provocative and uncomfortably authentic one.

There's no question that the actors and filmmakers have fashioned a compelling (if unformed) love story of a certain age – which is not to be confused for a love story for the ages.

It’s a film you can easily fall into and out of, a breezy walk through the park. French Exit is simply an enchanting day at the movies.

The director avoids turning this into some form of misery tourism, which would be a real risk in less adept hands: yet the story is told with such a uniform tone that it’s hard to remain emotionally engaged.

Predictable as sunburn on the 4th of July, it is a film as ingratiating as its star. Visiting the town of Grady is a fairly pleasant pastime, but there's no excuse for a film this light to last over two hours as this one does.

To MacLachlan's credit, his impersonation of the indomitable is serviceable, although it must be said that the role is weirder than anything David Lynch ever dreamed up for him.

There is Clooney’s deceptively layered performance, some startling bits of laugh-out-loud absurdity, and the not-at-all-negligible pleasure to be had in a cockeyed point of view.

You may have the biggest flat-screen DLP monitor in the city, but Red Cliff will never look half as spectacular as it will on the big – and I mean really big – screen.

It's big, it's stupid, it's pretty kick-ass.

Depends on the magical for the inner workings of its story, and that might not suit viewers desirous of more concrete explanations. But, again, the movie seems just right for the viewers it aims to please.

The film is worth seeing for the performances, but the drama is a nonstarter.

Though for all its more intriguing qualities, the film still falls into the traditional biopic trappings. It can’t get away from the Wikipedia-entry style of storytelling, events mindlessly unfolding one after another like they’re being checked off a list.

Reiner abandons his previous movie's sense of farce and satire for much broader and more innocuous comedy.

This is the best performance Cage has delivered in ages, and Herzog demonstrates, once again, that he is capable of virtually anything.

The cramped environs and the paranoiac thrum that runs throughout the film like a main circuit cable straight to hell are almost outmatched by a third-act explosion of horrifyingly excellent practical gore effects.

For better and worse, Uncle Drew feels like the kind of movie that would’ve cleaned up in the summer of 1998. We’ll see how well its game holds up 20 years later.

The sense of true wilderness is amplified by sound mixers Morgan Hobart and Brian Mazzola, who deploy bug rattles and rain splatters like weapons, building in the diegetic sound of nature so that the odd moments of silence are truly oppressive and menacing.

Luckily for Franco, Cranston makes for the perfect comic foil in Why Him?.

This movie belongs to Posey, and her nuanced performance makes Broken English a worthy adventure.

As with the original Anchorman, the gags fly fast and free; not all of them work, but a romantic subplot between linguistically challenged Brick and GNN secretary Chani (Wiig) is an inspired comedic dorkgasm.

It takes a special kind of smart to be really, really dumb. And make no mistake, Bullet Train is a really, really dumb movie. Like, every gunshot echoes around its gloriously vacant skull. Because there's also a particular kind of smart-dumb film that is endlessly, idiotically fun, and that's what Bullet Train is.

What holds Earth back from greatness is that, like the human erosion of the planet's surface, it too ends up being a little wearing.

Peterson's film is a huge, loud beast of a film, filled with gunfire, explosions, and not a few tears. It's all grounded, however, in Ford's gritted-teeth performance as President Marshall.

Quite likely the most original dance film you'll see this year, The FP is awash in silliness that probably took ages to script, but the film's goofy heart and soul (yes, it has one) is what sticks with you in the end and makes this crazed film into a potential cult-movie masterpiece.

The film’s quiet confidence in an evolved America only tells half the story; as a result, it already feels more like a prologue than a happy ending.

Achingly gorgeous in almost all respects, the film soars in its period depiction of turn-of-the-century London (and later in Venice, as well), from costuming to cinematography on down.

The story, serviceable though it is, still shatters like eggshells under even the lightest scrutiny, and the dialogue is often stale beyond belief.

It is a perfect instance of meta self-awareness that thankfully lets a little air out of this grand narrative pomposity. Ant-Man is infectious, silly entertainment, a popcorn flick that knows what it is and does what it does to an intoxicating degree.

Ultimately works a great deal better than you might expect.

Bachelorette – at least in its first half – is a dangerously funny movie about four old college friends on the eve of one member's nuptials.

Beauty and the Beast, one of Disney's latest animated features is even better than The Little Mermaid. At the same time, it's vaguely disappointing.

Left me with the feeling I've seen much of this before. It's not that I'd like something better, it's just that I'd like something new.

It’s part camp, part trash, and part cabaret, with a delightfully retro Hollywood Hills palette and zingy dialogue served up with relish.

Most importantly, Claydream is a reminder of a master artist and visionary who revolutionized an art form.

So four episodes in, and The Purge franchise is as nakedly provocative as ever.

It was likely from Mikhanovsky’s own experience driving a medical transport van that he was able to tap into the complexity and full humanity of the different characters and thus, manifest a greater truth.

Medem's film is a bleached-out beauty, hitting our most commanding human emotions -- lust to love to grief to rage and back again -- while only occasionally striking a wrong chord.

Cronos is a thoughtful, intelligent film, and as a horror movie (which is, I think, its main mission in life) it's genuinely disquieting.

The Duke may superficially seem like old hat, but in its comfortable ways there’s still a strong message.

As the falsehoods stack up and fall away, My Old School will increasingly leave you slack-jawed.

The layers constructed between author and art, emotional manipulation and terrorism as coping methods are dense and dizzying. This is film as therapy, and Triet appears to be the one on the couch.

By the end, I was moved. Not floored, but moved.

Bizarre, even darkly comic at times. But it's also elegant and mannered.

Allen (Raiders of the Lost Ark) is ideally cast as the mom, and as the step-dad, Leary gets a break from his bad boy of MTV image. The Sandlot is truly one about the boys of summer.

This solid if predictable courtroom drama is elevated by a terrific cast and impassioned subject matter.

One of the freshest and most original movies around right now, though caveat emptor: This may not be enough to make it likable.

Howard's snappy-smooth performance, unsurprisingly, is what elevates Fighting from its hoary genre predecessors.

Like a time capsule from another era of journalism, The September Issue chronicles a distant past that flourished not but two years ago.

What holds the film together before that nerve-jangling sequence is Ivenko as the young genius.

6:45 is a deliberately uncomfortable watch, a loveless romance that’s left to bleed out again and again.

What keeps Outside In interesting throughout is the nuanced work of its so very watchable leads – especially Duplass, who spent the first half of his career behind the camera writing, directing, and producing film and TV with his brother Mark.

Again, Hill gives us a world filled with morally complex characters, but that just may be this film's undoing.

Packed with an equal amount of fart gags and jokes about the modern state of superhero films, Teen Titans is a perfect bit of escapism for families suffering from superhero fatigue.

Torn isn't really about growing up in the shadow of a legend. It's about growing up without a father, about finding your way through the grief of your other family members, and how processing that experience never really stops.

A remarkable documentary in its own right.