The underlying narrative theme of sons who become greater – and better – men than their fathers is underdeveloped. Meanwhile, the animation feels oddly dated, as the decision to give visual continuity to three and a half decades of storytelling re-enforces this as fan service.

If Brandon absorbed daddy dearest’s predilection for body horror and new flesh, then Caitlin has clearly studied his razor wit and grasp of metaphorical social commentary.

For both kids and adults, CWCM2 is little more than a vague memory as soon as it’s over.

With their debut, Charbonier and Powell proved a rare grasp of childhood horror, and keeping the perspective of youth among adult sins. The Djinn is even more reliant on that ability, and on their extraordinary relationship with the returning Dewey.

Of course, everything leads to the massive final battle, the pay-off we've been promised, and Wingard delivers.

It’s hard not to admire a filmmaking team asking you to endure such a prolonged amount of ruthless, blood-splattering bad taste. It indulges in all of its innate, nasty impulses, and then just keeps going (… and going …).

Strong performances and Miller's equivocal stance toward her characters save the movie from its symbolic overload and melodramatic crash course, but in the end there may be less here than meets the eye.

Go for Sisters is writer/director Sayles’ best film in a number of years, and since this icon of the American independent cinema can always be counted on to deliver maverick work, his latest alternative to the mainstream is welcome indeed.

Between the half-formed romance, the uneven comedy, and the observations that stop just short of real insight, it's a wedding invite that's easy to skip.

Overall, No Hard Feelings is a breezy, welcome return to the sex comedy, even if it’s a bit more tempered than it would have you think. It’s a breath of fresh air that hopefully signals a change for the better, bolder, and filthier in mainstream cinema.

If what you want is a fancier episode of The Great British Baking Show, then you'll "ooh" and "ah" at all the right moments as Ottolenghi assembles his kitchen of world-class patisserie chefs and jelly experts.

He's (Flanagan) never trying to one-up Kubrick or King. Instead, he's trying to push past his own best work, and he may well have achieved that in one supernatural scene that is as shocking and captivating as the fall of the bent-neck lady. In honoring both Kubrick and King, Flanagan's greatest achievement is not being swallowed by the Overlook's shadow.

Cape of Good Hope is a hopeful piece of humanism that is difficult to begrudge too much.

A potpourri of issue-oriented drama enlivened by superlative performances and smart dialogue.

The Princess Blade opens with one of the most note-perfect action sequences ever committed to film.

The Lost World (unlike Spielberg's original film) leaps head first into the action, rushing, it seems, to get the film's real stars -- the dinosaurs -- to the screen as quickly as possible, and it does so with considerable verve.

Yet, the problem goes beyond the film's staginess (although there's plenty of that to go around). It could even have something to do with the delicate difficulties involved in the successful transfer of stage camp to the more intimate level of film.

Filmed primarily in desaturated colors and oblique shadows, the look of J. Edgar is spot-on. The time frame jumps around, spanning decades in a single leap, but it doesn't strain the structure. Eastwood and DiCaprio have delivered a nuanced story about a man, a mythos, and an institution that relies on the facts rather than the legend.

The spirit of the thing – the way it champions intellectual curiosity and critical thinking – warmed this nerd’s heart tremendously.

One of the great things Scarfaria brings to this project is her apparent ability to convince a slew of wonderful actors to perform in small roles that appear in only a single sequence. That describes most of the actors in this film apart from the two leads.

Fincher's camerawork gives the movie a jittery feel, and his video-trained eye lends the prison sets the look of a dilapidated cathedral, but again, there's really nothing here that we haven't seen before, and better, at that. Nice title, though.

Screenwriters Andy Paterson and Frank Cottrell Boyce (who wrote many of Michael Winterbottom’s early films) adeptly shift the action back and forth between these two timelines, and the drama – exterior and interior – is engrossing in both tracks.

Pocahontas' arrow, tipped with tender romance and feathered with spirited folklore, hits the bulls-eye dead on.

The movie is cute but predictable.

Déjà Vu has enough style and forward (or is it backward) momentum to viewers aroused. It's only after you leave the theatre that your head starts to throb.

Dialogue is reduced to consistent mumbled whispering, in an attempt to build mood and tension, but that's as ineffectual as the sepia-tinged photography is at evoking the period.

Before the cocaine economy, Miami was a sleepy seaside hamlet, a "virgin city" with a permeable border and largely unprotected coastline.

Carrey has yet to find the perfect vehicle for himself, but The Mask, while hardly as fantastic as it should have been, is a step in the right direction.

For a film that gets right up close to a musical genius, it’s when he’s walking away, hands jammed in his leather jacket, that you can see the resemblance most clearly.

If only Fight or Flight knew that what it does best is hectic mayhem then maybe it wouldn’t be such a bumpy ride.

Mr. Holland's Opus is the kind of movie that only a person who really doesn't like movies could love. It's a movie whose grandiose swagger is meant as compensation for its message about the resignation of the human spirit to smaller gratifications and vistas.

Jones makes a fine Ginsburg – especially in the mouth, lips pursed expectantly – but something in Hammer’s resigned manner paints a Marty that is more ineffectual than stoic, and the chemistry between them is pretty middle-of-the-road.

The result is a well-cooked serving of meat-and-potatoes action filmmaking, but its main failing is an ultimate inability to distinguish itself by more than minor flourishes.

Gray's signature long takes and overhead shots are in evidence and add to the film's fatalistic tone, and one rainy car-chase sequence is a real keeper. But, overall, it's impossible to shake the film's gloomy sense of eternal repetition.

Much of the original film's geniality – and all of its pro-environment stumping – has gone missing; what we have instead is a watered-down likeness that curiously turns disaster flick in its too-scary third act.

Intriguing and stylish.

It's all fab, baby, a kicky, wiggy sequel that scores on all levels, from the sexy to the sublime.

A meticulously-researched chunk of underground Americana that traces the poet's full life from his rather dysfunctional childhood (beneath the hoary shadow of his mentally ill mother) to his meetings and eventual friendships with Kerouac, Burroughs, Neal Cassady and other Beat luminaries. (Review of Original Release)

That rarest of creatures: a coming-of-age dramedy whose (nearly) teenage stars are natural actors, whose direction is unforced, and whose sexual themes are treated with candor and humor.

Parcels out information like a triage medic doling out morphine; every tiny bit is carefully considered and then rationed out as though he were terrified he might exhaust his supply before the closing credits.

Riot Girls doesn’t disappoint in the mayhem department, and as a meta-story about female empowerment in an increasingly threatening “men's world,” this wild and woolly take on teen-angsters past would make Furiosa herself cheer.

Is this latest outing as bold or bracing or funny as the original film? Certainly not. We’re well settled into our seats now, but there’s some comfort in how the cushion already knows a body’s grooves.

Helping Elvis & Nixon remain in conjectural mode is the fact that neither actor – Michael Shannon as Elvis and Kevin Spacey as Nixon – looks particularly like the character he is playing. Yet both actors make their roles believable through apt choices in body language and vocalization.

Somewhere in that chirpy half-pint frame dwell some meaty comic chops. Goldie Hawn may have found her successor.

Both Farmiga and Akerman emotionally connect in the film, which culminates in an ultimate act of maternal sacrifice more moving than you might imagine. Finally! A slasher movie with both brains and heart, both intact.

This is an interesting/odd take on the Cars universe, seeing as how this is a movie squarely aimed at pre-teens who likely have no concept of aging, let alone four-wheeled mortality, or for that matter Joseph Campbell’s monomythic “Hero’s Journey.”

An admirable effort, but too many words, words, and more words, and not enough of the ache of that half-smile.

If the movie isn’t so fabulous, should die-hard fans who can quote the show by heart see it? Absolutely. (The gays are sure to love it.)

There's so much that's so right in Oliver Stone's dizzying new crime thriller that its impediments stick out like speed bumps. You'll know you've hit one when your vertiginous sense of WTF screeches to a manageable – and much duller – pace.

Despite a marketing campaign that appears bound and determined to make its subject look as grindingly dull as possible, Roll Bounce triumphs on almost all counts.

The whole film rests on the increasingly prison-ink tatted shoulders of Coster-Waldau, Game of Thrones’ Jaime Lannister, who brings his A – as in ass-kicking – game to Waugh’s film.

For his part, director Stephen Daldry synthesizes the predominant beats of his film work, which has vacillated between feel-good awards bait (Billy Elliot) and feel-bad awards bait (The Hours, The Reader). Feel-good/feel-bad is Together to a T. It feels wonderful.

Lux Æterna is barely a film – even Noé has called it an essay – but then it's not meant to be complete. Created in five days on Yves Saint Laurent's franc (one has to wonder what they thought they were getting), it's a discussion, not a conclusion.

Playing comedy, Duris is as engaging as a bowl of porridge; playing tragedy, he’s the height of comic absurdity; in scenes romantic, he’s detached to the point of somnolence.

Whatever the reason for its disappointments, Mission: Impossible is a mission gone awry, prompting you to hope that reruns of its television incarnation will pop up on cable soon.

Once you get past the admittedly breathtaking shots of our national landmarks being turned into kindling, the rest of the film is a tired and empty two hours of feel-good patriotism and oddly cast characters.

In a finely realized and multi-layered first film, writer-director Peter Howitt treats us to a clever and urbane exploration of the monumental repercussions of tiny twists of fate.

It all boils down to trying too hard, when everybody knows a good grift is one that appears effortless.

Fascinating, partly because of its originality.

By turns funny, grisly, tragic and insightful, Jakob's Wife carries the smartness of years. Never has the idea that vampire and vampire hunter are caught in a codependent relationship been more elegantly and humorously framed.

A Rorschach test of a movie that reveals more about the audience than the characters onscreen. The Drama doesn’t just invite judgment; it’s coded in its DNA.

Snyder’s film isn't likely to be considered a classic 20 years down the road like Romero's film is, but it's a winningly extreme episode in the ongoing adventures of Zombie and Harriet. (And stick around while the end credits roll: The film isn't over 'til it's over.)

When the film sticks to biographical and career background, it is on steady ground, but when it argues the case for one particular album, it becomes promotional rather than documentary material.

This comic Disney Western is at its best when Don Knotts and Tim Conway are onscreen as the bumbling bandits who try to steal from a bunch of orphans. Few people remember anything about this movie apart from the hilarity generated by this scene-stealing duo.

It is difficult to see My Darling Supermarket for the whimsical anthropological oddity it so desperately strives to be.

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance's byzantine plot appears fairly straightforward at first, but slowly, deliberately moves into uncharted waters with the fluid grace of a tiger shark bumping up against a potential meal.

Limitless is a writer's movie by a writer, and it explores the dark side of the muse.

There’s a ridiculous level of glee to how the Indonesian filmmaker orchestrates a good old-fashioned headshot, or a kick that sends a knee buckling the right way.

It’s all in good fun, and critic-proof to boot, but Jurassic World doesn’t even come close to that most intimate and dearly coveted “Gosh, wow” sense-of-wonder that the original film mustered so easily. Roar more, bite less.

Day Watch falls prey to the curse of most sequels in which "more" is often a thin concept stretched beyond its limits and misconstrued to mean "bigger and better."

It is, in effect, a movie-house meta mirror, warped and weird, strange but true (except when it isn't). It's whatever you want it to be, which doesn't necessarily make it a great movie (although it contains moments of greatness), but it IS – by virtue of its premise alone – boldly unique.

Junior is passable entertainment, but it could hardly be called fully developed.

Neeson's performance as the legendary Irishman reminds us of how large a presence the actor is: He fills up the frame with his voice, his hands, and his gestures.

The film provides a whole new way of looking at the same old dead things. Eat up.

As a biopic, the movie has several shortcomings, but as a background story Madame Satã is full of atmosphere.

Funny and expands our background knowledge of these likable characters, but the story gets bogged down.

If LaBute wants to plumb the depths of human unkindness, have at it -– only dig deeper next time.

The film’s accumulation of unnecessary complications, bad visual choices, one completely superfluous character (LaBeouf), and tonally inappropriate quips makes us distractedly ponder the limits of human rather than artificial intelligence.

Despite Paxton’s high ambitions to serve up be the next great elevated horror movie, there’s not enough meat on its bones to ultimately feel satisfying when the final holy image is served.

LaBeouf plays Jacob as no naif – he can be as slippery and savage as the next suit – but there's also real tenderness in his scenes with Mulligan and Langella (in a small but significant role as Jacob's mentor).

The premise of I Love My Dad is so icky that the film’s writer, director, and co-star, James Morosini, lets viewers know at the very outset that its plot is based on a true story, thus automatically rendering it more palatable.

Terrio's technically proficient film is mature, modern, and minus the all-important passion and risk.

The show delivers with its corps of dancers, backup singers, elaborate runways, and a couple tunes by boy group, the Jonas Brothers, who do their thing while the fictional Hannah makes the backstage transition into the flesh-and-blood Miley.

Director Catherine Hardwicke doesn’t need that easily-cut path through long grass; she already has a willing cast and story to get to the guts-splaying.

The documentary hasn’t the depth of another study of high school ball, "Hoop Dreams,"' and tends toward repetition, but, in the end, its heartfelt saga scores.

Sheridan's flair has always been in ensembles, but here that trait is caught in a stalemate with the desire to provide an underwhelming Jolie with a star vehicle.

Bad Boys for Life – while not as combustibly fun as the second installment – is fine, cheesy, Saturday afternoon mayhem, smoothly served with a heaping helping of “We’re all getting older.”

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

The Lover is one of those great films that shouldn't be missed.

After Tommaso, which was Ferrara at his least apologetic, it's so fitting that his most epic film is also his most introspective.

More funhouse spook show than actual horror movie but, like the black magic roller coaster ride it's predicated on, it has a startling amount of jolts, frissons, and downright freak-outs to qualify as the best teen date movie of the month if not the year. Boo. Scary.

By the end of this film/experiment/prank – which, to be blunt, is pretty unsatisfying – the viewer is left to ponder what it's all about, and what its purpose may have been, which, knowing Lynch and Herzog, might well be what it was about, and what its purpose was.

There’s a surprising – and truthful – melancholic undercurrent to Definitely, Maybe – the one commonality between the three women is the heartbreak they induce – but Brooks undermines that truthfulness with a dogmatic insistence upon romantic mythologizing. No maybes about it: The reality is far darker, and more interesting.

It’s DC Comics playing rough, but not rough enough, but maybe that’s too much to ask. Where is the fucking "Hellblazer" movie already.

A top-notch example of uninsulting kid humor at its goofiest.

At the end of the day, people won't be lining up at a Disney park to ride a clamshell into a ride based on this live-action version. And that tells you everything you need to know. Next time, maybe just give this kind of money to the ink and paint department.

Magic Trip comes off nearly as scattershot as the events it depicts, which is a major stumbling block.

What the film itself is trying to communicate proves more elusive; whatever meaning Millepied meant to impart by tethering this “entirely new and unique artistic endeavor” to a century-and-a-half-old opera never quite made sense to me.