Tiny and well-intentioned but dramatically inert and sham-kooky, Girl Most Likely is for Kristen Wiig completists only, and even they may squirm at spending a whole movie waiting for her character to pull her head out of her ass.

The seen-it-all-before elements of this supernatural thriller directed by the filmmaker who gave us "Saw," however, are more hoary than horrific. It might as well be retitled "The Amityville Exorcist."

Fill the Void is almost more like an ethnographic film than a fictional narrative in regard to our rare observational perspective. Yet Shira also shares attitudes in common with Jane Austen heroines, whose worlds are dominated by their marital prospects and domestic matters.

The Land of Lazy can crown a new king because with Grown Ups 2 Adam Sandler has officially nabbed the throne.

That’s the central problem with The Way, Way Back – it’s more manipulative than truthful.

It gives the illusion of a conclusion and cuts to black before it has to answer for how many more questions have been raised.

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.

All together, it is a wearying display of defensiveness from a man who – by any barometer, not just his own – is wildly successful.

Sweetgrass’ unbroken shots of often-repetitive activity have a beguiling quality to them, their very monotony encouraging a deeper absorption and reflection, but hard facts aren’t easy to come by.

The gifted veterans, Redgrave and Stamp, manage to imbue their characters with personalities and physical bearings that transcend the stereotypical. But there’s little else that separates a film like this from the sing-your-heart-out self-actualizations of a teen show like "Glee."

It’s impossible to know how much of Tonto’s story is tall tale or historical fact. The tactic undercuts the film’s attempt at revisionism or at best equalizes men of all races as untrustworthy tellers of of their own history. The Lone Ranger stokes the legend but its smoke signals only add to the haze.

Given the outlandish premise, you'll wish the film twinkled with a more savvy sense of humor and adventure, like the chapters of the "Toy Story" series, for example.

When the gut-wrenching conclusion of A Hijacking comes in the form of a single, random act, it’s only then you realize how far you’ve been pulled into its emotional core. It’s a staggering moment, one for which you may not be fully prepared. It’s a moment that differentiates the merely good from the very good.

Although the film is never fully convincing about this rock band’s overlooked potential – despite testimonials from the likes of Alice Cooper, Henry Rollins, Jello Biafra, and Elijah Wood – the story of Death sure adds an interesting and virtually unknown footnote to the annals of punk rock.

This is a film you skip seeing at your own risk.

Somm doesn’t try to write the book on wine connoisseurship, but it does give good CliffsNotes.

White House Down is amply endowed with enough tension, humor, and calamitous action to ensure it a solid berth in the summer box-office sweepstakes. Channing Tatum comes into his own as a leading man in this picture, proving himself as a beefy yet agile action star and not just the pure beefcake of "Magic Mike."

More often than not The Heat is just stupid-funny, which circles us back to McCarthy, motor-mouthing four-letter fury like an operatic aria. She sells Mullins as delightfully unhinged and fairly radiating with rage, and it’s irresistible.

Fillion’s performance as the constable Dogberry in this section is the film’s comic highlight. Wounded by an insult, his ass-backward indignation achieves a droll momentum that will have you chuckling. All’s well that ends well, indeed.

The problem with The Bling Ring is that it feels as soulless as its young protagonists, and of course there’s little sympathy to be found either for the story’s über-rich victims like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan.

An amazing argument no matter which side of the debate you favor, Stone’s film manages to restock and bring a fresh voice to an old controversy. The documentary is well-made and articulately argued, although that doesn't mean it isn't going to have as many adversaries as champions.

It’s not like Monsters University is a bad movie. It’s just not a terribly interesting one.

World War Z comes across as a smart and ambitious horror movie, a bio-disaster film along the lines of "Contagion" or "28 Days Later." It’s nail-bitingly tense at times, although these well-executed moments mix with others that are too much of a murky jumble to follow with any precision.

The film looks good (nod to cinematographer Roman Vasyanov). The images are sharp even when the film’s ideas are not.

Maybe it has something to do with Jewish writers riffing on the apocalypse, but This Is the End doesn’t really know how to end.

Snyder has cast Man of Steel with dramatic actors, not action stars, and it pays off.

After establishing this interesting premise, writer/director James DeMonaco only scratches the surface of its implications before devolving into a creepy roundelay of murders and deaths averted.

It’s Robinson’s tender portrayal of Joe that sticks in your mind. He and Tye Sheridan from "Mud" are the summer’s real finds: young actors with promising futures.

Product placement aside, there’s an admirable, even sweet, message about fellowship and misfit pride shot through the whole script, and Vaughn is rather touching as a kind of cuddly uncle figure to his fellow interns.

As with her other films, when Sarah Polley takes it upon herself to tell us a story, you can bet it’s a tale well-told and one that you’ll want to hear.

Funny and touching, Frances Ha may very well be the most eloquent take yet on a generation in flux – a cinematic talk-back to so many Atlantic articles, minus the scolding and the statistics, and uncharacteristically (for Baumbach) uncynical.

Director Leterrier keeps the camera moving and swooping throughout the film as if the Steadicam were another device in the magicians’ tool belt. A clear sense of space and sleight-of-hand is rarely achieved.

As romantic comedies go, Danish helmer Susanne Bier’s follow-up to her Oscar-winning "In a Better World," percolates more than it froths – but that’s a good thing.

Although a Norwegian production, the film has a muted Hollywood sensibility that keeps things real. It’s an absorbing and often lyrical piece of storytelling that doesn’t overembellish the facts or rely on a pumped-up score or whiplash editing to heighten the dramatic action.

Given its many failings, nothing short of an extreme makeover could save American Mary. Scalpel, please.

The film is repetitive and not as suspenseful at it tries to be. Often gorgeous, sometimes fascinating, it is ultimately unwieldy and unsurprising. It fails as a Smith-family project. Jaden Smith, who was fine in "The Karate Kid," is flat here.

Everybody’s tantalized by the store’s exclusivity because next to nobody makes the cut. Thus the title’s morbid connotation rears its ugly head: Having somebody sprinkle your mortal remains on the marble floor is the only way you’d ever fit in.

This is in fact the end – it is what is. We’ve had some good laughs. Let’s part amicably.

There is a plot – a pretty clunky one, jerry-rigged with character motivations that amount to one long “huh?” and dialogue that might as well have been chunked out of a cliche generator – but who needs plot when we can have mayhem?

Before Midnight surpasses the two previous films in this trilogy in terms of its intelligence, narrative design, and vivacity. It’s a grand accomplishment, and I feel greedy about wanting to see this film series continue.

Great voice work, stunning visuals, and a witty, full script make this entertaining for all ages.

Though well-researched and competently acted, At Any Price doesn’t risk much, having neither a thesis nor a resolution. Like an awkward hug between estranged relations, there’s a lack of confidence in the execution.

First-time feature director Adam Leon’s shots are precise and full of detail; it almost doesn’t even matter what’s being said (which is good, because the dialogue sounds stilted at times). What’s important is the art, and Leon and his leads have a palpable passion for it, but they also aren’t afraid to stop and smell the carnations along the way.

There is an enormous amount of effort put into this film which at its end just seems like noise, wind, and dust.

In the House, from the eclectic French filmmaker François Ozon (Under the Sand, 8 Women), is an almost perverse delight, an egghead thriller that slyly shell-games its truer purpose as an inquiry into the construction – and deconstruction – of fiction. Scratch deconstruction: Make that tear-the-house-down demolition.

The performances of these two leads are compelling and the Cheonggyecheon area can almost be seen as another character in Kim’s morality tale. And even if forgiveness is not always possible in the human condition, Pieta allows that expiation of one’s sins is within the realm of the possible.

Renoir is great at capturing some of the details of daily life within this unique household and conveying an Impressionist atmosphere on film, but as far as telling us a story, the film is a washout.

The all-around excellent cast swings with aplomb from silly to sweet.

Screenwriters Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, and fanboys’ favorite whipping boy, Damon Lindelof, keep the film moving at a quippy clip; there’s really no fat here until the film feints a climax only to lurch the coaster-car back up the hill again.

Arthur Newman is overwhelmed with arty ambitions and a heavy-handed acting style. Ultimately, all the weight prevents the film from taking off and soaring.

Luhrmann has always had a knack with the fever of passion, but here he only catches high fever’s empty gibberish.

In films by the likes of Michael Bay, Paul Verhoeven, and Guillermo del Toro, machines are shown to be the nightmarish enemies of human beings, so it’s refreshing to find the machines in Trash Dance working in harmony with their human operators.

I’m afraid there’s more than 2% evaporation going on in Loach’s latest.

Blancanieves never lags, per se, it’s just awfully in love with itself: with its gorgeous black and white chiaroscuros and whirling-dervish first-person camera perspectives, the Spanish-guitar-scored dance sequences (that include the undeniable dance of the matador in action), and battering winds of emotional extremes. By the end of this sumptuous and sincerely felt melodrama, I was rather in love with it, too.

Some chronicle is better than no chronicle, but the past exists only in the retelling; how history is written is as important as the story itself. Don’t these survivors deserve better?

The film provides more of the same and nothing startlingly innovative, but what's here is good.

I’m not saying there isn’t comic gold to be mined in the topic of cunnilingus and the senior set, but The Big Wedding couldn’t hit pay dirt even if it face-palmed the film first.

Graceland is terrific entertainment, but I can’t decide if it’s a cautionary tale, an exercise in moral relativism, or an exploitation film. There’s the final conundrum.

And come on, guys: There’s nothing cinematic about Googling.

This chase film combines elements of the thriller and newspaper procedural to create a contemporary saga about political idealism, stone-cold realities, and the repercussions of past deeds on future innocents.

Yes, the canon invoked for this film is that of the Three Stooges, but it’s still not as magnificently berserk as they can be. Set your expectations carefully for this one.

With American independent film teeming with so many shaky-cam snarksters, what an electric riposte to the status quo is Nichols, whose films are classically constructed and deadly serious. In his short but potent career, he’s mastered a wide-vistaed eye for the epic and the elemental.

Meticulous and abstruse, Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color is an idiosyncratic film that invites explication but defies total understanding.

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.

Berger’s low-key, likable ensemble film flares with brilliance in its framing concept.

What begins as a cute idea grows annoyingly sentimental before it is through.

I could go on and on about Zombie’s style-over-substance direction, but why bother? The Lords of Salem is so clearly a project that Zombie has had stewing in his blood-and-black-lace heart for, I assume, ever, that the fact that it’s not a masterpiece seems almost moot. It’s a head trip, to be sure, but it’s Zombie’s electric, haunted head, so my advice is just sit back and goggle.

Admirable in its look and style, the film is not unique or exceptional. Nevertheless, given the state of current science-fiction fare, the film does hold its own.

SM5 tanked opening weekend, which may toll the knell for this property.

I suspect a second viewing would uncover more information embedded in the mise-en-scène; had Trance – tonally a jumble and disorienting to the point of distraction – rewarded the audience with the pure perfection of a Keyser Söze-like reveal, I’d be more inclined to make the return trip.

Although To the Wonder never transported me, personally, to the ecstatic heights the title promises, there is still much here worth one’s engagement.

Exuberant but fairly formulaic.

Boseman as Jackie Robinson and Beharie as Rachel Robinson both deliver terrific performances, and the cast of managers and ballplayers – are excellent. Harrison Ford plays Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey as a larger-than-life eccentric, seeming almost like a demented Orville Redenbacher at times.

The film is so velvety textured and dreamy, I would’ve stuck around for more. That is Cianfrance’s special talent.

There are no hard answers in Room 237, a feature-length, sporadically engaging exploration of the latter (The Shining).

In The Girl, writer/director David Riker returns to many of the same themes he pursued in his award-winning 1998 film "La Ciudad," which told the stories of four Hispanic immigrants living in New York City. Immigration is still very much on Riker’s mind, although he approaches it from a very different perspective this time.

Somebody is nihilistic, misanthropic, and weirdly relaxing. I've never seen anything like it.

Evil Dead, however, accomplishes what it sets out to do: Scare viewers silly and uphold a tradition.

Apart from its dramatic predictability, Temptation is a snooze because of its languid pacing and rudimentary camerawork.

This film adaptation feels like YA, with cat’s-cradle love matches, soft-focus sexuality, and a main character who never satisfactorily makes the transition from page to screen.

There actually is some clever dialogue in the film, especially early on between Roadblock and Duke (Tatum). But this fades over the course of the film, and too much of what the characters say sounds as though it’s been lifted verbatim from 1930s and 1940s serials.

Back to that question of medium: Scrubbed of the few, ill-fitting four-letter words that earned it an R, Language of a Broken Heart might have made a passable Hallmark or Lifetime TV movie, cushioned by the TV-movie context. But as a theatrical prospect, it’s a fail.

Plotnick is an appealing actor. He has the same sweetly knit brow and watery blue eyes as Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul, but his character here is as flat as a pancake. Moreover, if you’ve seen the trailer for Wrong, you’ve seen the movie.

It all looks crummy, to say the least, but this is clearly the director’s intent. I’m not fully convinced that the technique delivers the kind of veracity the filmmakers were trying to achieve, although it is a creative solution to an intractable visual problem.

Once the film gets cooking, the questions never stop. For instance: When you find the dead body of someone you love, isn’t your first call to the cops?

The film’s historical pageantry is fascinating to observe, even though the story is mostly conjecture. Competently directed, the real pleasure in this high-grossing South Korean film lies in its performances, which lighten the regal solemnity with comic warmth.

The characters’ painful inability to connect only endears them to us, and somehow the film seems, like any human object of our affection might, more vivid and more knowable in its absence.

Come Out and Play is a good example of how to eke out film thrills with a minimum of elements. Makinov should prove to be a filmmaker to watch.

A good concept yields scattershot results in this horror-film anthology.

Spring Breakers is Korine’s most cogent take yet on society’s outsiders.

Melissa Leo has some standout scenes as the secretary of defense, who gets pretty well beaten up for defying her captors, but others, such as Angela Bassett and Morgan Freeman, have little to do but bite their lips and look tense from the confines of their command posts.

A spirited and eye-popping stealth charmer.

Never finding its right tone, Admission uncomfortably founders between the story’s comic and dramatic aspects and leaves behind a lumpy residue that tars its likable leads.

A pastiche of classic plot devices scrounged from "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three," "The Conversation," "Blue Velvet," and dozens of other movies, the story often feels familiar, but director Anderson (The Machinist) has a such a flair for suspense that even the most jaded viewers will find themselves in a sweat.

More honest than you might expect a promotional piece such as this to be, but less self-investigative than you might like, you come away thinking there are much greater depths for Snoop Lion to plumb.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone draws a lot of goodwill from the basic likability of its star performers.

It’s clear this director sees carnage as nothing more than an opportunity for music-video production values.

Although there are moments that push the story a bit beyond credulity, Shortland has created something remarkable by forcing us to find within ourselves sympathy for this would-be Aryan princess.