The Midnight Sky shines with Clooney’s deep and abiding belief in the human condition, in compassion, in … “redemption” is the wrong word, too Catholic. Rather, in connection, even if it is brief, even if it is seemingly one-sided.

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.

While Ferdinand isn’t a train wreck by any means, it does come off as an also-ran in a year now dominated by the truly marvelous "Coco."

It may tell you everything you need to know about Easy Virtue to note that Hollywood hottie Jessica Biel receives top billing over veteran Brit thesps Kristin Scott Thomas and Colin Firth.

Remains an above-average and affecting descent into both heretofore unknown Soviet naval history and the always popular submarine-in-peril genre.

This Tom Clancy thriller gets the proper screen treatment here with this first-rate cast and direction by one of the genre’s best: Die Hard director John McTiernan.

The movie's storyline is not always perfectly clear, seemingly falling into the same murky “grey zone” as everything else.

The landscape and the lovers are pretty to look at, but two households divided should really pack more of a punch.

Greenwald's doc is pure partisan warfare of the liberal stripe, to be sure, but that doesn't make it any less disturbing.

13 Minutes, which was released in Germany two years ago, is an earnest examination of personal conscience and the frequent necessity of the individual to monkey wrench the state. Or at least to try.

Happily drifts into the same kind of sci fi-tinged bourgeois relationship drama territory as Elizabeth Moss/Mark Duplass four-hander The One I Love, or the dimension-hopping dinner party of indie fave Coherence. Snide, sleek, and effortlessly biting, Happily is wittier and meaner than either, but also curiously romantic, like an episode of The Twilight Zone with a score by the Mountain Goats.

F*ck manages to strip some of the mystique from the forbidden word, and in the end, despite some road bumps, is a satisfying f*lm.

Creative Control has a knowing, caustic wit, and it’s not afraid to go to pitch-black places.

We know that we have turned rivers from mystical places into resources, but in its sumptuous 75-minute delivery River allows us to see the flow of that narrative. And it is beyond gorgeous, as visually dazzling (if not quite as stomach-churning for acrophobics) as Mountain: luscious landscapes of quiet streams, poisoned fish and angular dams presented as abstract patterns, and the quiet joy of swimming.

Absurdist humor abounds throughout a story whose underlying themes echo Elvis Costello’s eternal question, “What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and understanding?” even as corpses dangle from a foregrounded gallows.

Lowery may have dealt with the uncanny in A Ghost Story, but the whole point of that film was the mundanity of the afterlife. This is a truly supernatural tale, and the storytelling transitions into his version of horror, abstract and oblique.

Though The Express may stretch the limits of probability, holding up Davis as an athletic superman incapable of losing, it's also that rare sports film that isn't afraid to dabble in personal and social ambiguity.

Refreshingly unsentimental and straightforward.

The supposedly epic battle the entire film builds toward – the single action set-piece – is a ho-hummer. Fire and ice, turns out, was an oversell: Think tepid tap water instead.

McTiernan is an old hand at actioners and, like the pro he is, keeps the film rushing along from fiery stunt to stunt.

It’s the cinematic equivalent to a carnival funhouse: a bit scary when you’re traversing it, but utterly forgettable (and mildly regrettable) once it’s over.

Visually stunning (as can now be expected from esteemed studio Production I.G.), what truly distinguishes The Deer King is in the narrative, and how it is laid out by the co-directors, Miyaji (Fusé: Memoirs of a Huntress) and directorial first timer Ando.

This is Gilliam at his most Gilliam, and that's fine, but there's nothing left to say.

Regardless of whether Cry Macho merits a rating of good, bad, or ugly, Eastwood’s mere presence, despite any perceived physical frailties, can’t help but dwarf this slenderest of movies.

You come away from Splinter feeling it would have made a far more effective short than the feature-length drag it is.

The title seems engineered to ride the tailwind of a Liane Moriarty suspense, but constitutionally, Wicked Little Letters is more of a cozy British mystery goosed with eye-popping profanity.

Satire without teeth is sort of a mewling entity that brings little into sharp focus. Nevertheless, the performances here are all stellar, and narrative movies that take the making of art seriously are a rare breed indeed.

Bottom line: Jonah is strictly for kids suffering from rescinded television privileges or adults seeking a nap in a cool, dark environment that reeks of stale popcorn.

The terrific ensemble acting and Troche’s genuine, nonjudgmental interest in exploring the weird places wounded people go, both internally and externally, amount to an insulated but moving portrait of the real nuclear family.

If you’re the type of moviegoer who finds the idea of 19th-century characters using phrases such as "Be cool" and "You must work out" in their conversations, this is the film for you.

Miike's film is a cunning little comedy of manners gone mad. Even when you feel you have to turn away from the screen or lose your lunch, Miike has something interesting to say. I'm not entirely sure what it is but his lips are moving and something horrific is definitely coming out.

It would seem the purpose of this movie, if not to deify, is to define -- and in this it fails miserably.

Less extraordinary and considerably more banal, given the sci-fi/comedy subject matter, is Men in Black 3's story, which jumps the ectomorphic shark in high style but with a deficit of actual belly laughs.

Tim Burton is all grown up and getting serious with this wildly scattershot tale.

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.

Gordon-Levitt, however, nails the part completely, physically hunching down into himself and getting Snowden’s halting, thoughtful speech patterns just right, while Stone, working with screenwriter Kieran Fitzgerald, creates a whirlwind ride nearly but not quite worthy of The Parallax View-era conspiracy thrillers.

Lawless never fully comes together as a whole but it is quite intriguing in spots.

Ultimately, Look & See seems to have many objectives, yet accomplishes none of them satisfactorily.

Love's real heartbeat is the sheer likability of its attractive young cast and the earnest naïveté with which they reach (through obsessive movie fandom, endless conversation, and polymorphic romantic pairings) for insights just beyond their grasp.

Brothers is too depthless to dredge up any tears.

Hanks is perfect in the central role, drawing on both his dramatic and comic acting skills.

The reveal is a bit predictable, but a couple of fake-outs keep things interesting along the way.

These characters are too remote, too pretty, and too unrealistic to move us in any lasting way.

Apted manages to say a lot by cutting between the squalor of life on the reservation to the magnificence of the land around it. Unfortunately, when the characters speak for themselves, they are often forced to deliver lines that are unspeakable. There is an element of misty romanticism about Native Americans that Apted just doesn't manage to pull off. His yarn, however, is a good one even if it could be told a little better.

A film about Geronimo and about the great feared Chiricahua Apaches would offend, should offend our sensibilities. We should be forced to confront and understand a different way of thinking. This is a more civilized movie, a more noble movie, a remarkably and consistently boring movie.

Eden shows humanity at its worst, but without reflecting much on the why of it all – a Lord of the Flies analogue that concludes not with a gut punch but a tidy historical coda.

You don't have to be Jewish to enjoy this light romantic comedy, but it helps.

The Guy Movie to end all Guy Movies, a ridiculously overblown summer testosterone blowout right down to the Wagnerian strains of the soundtrack and its stunningly high body count. It's also a hell of a lot of fun.

Jumanji: The Next Level feels like a "BioShock 2" when we were hoping for "BioShock Infinite."

A shot-for-shot remake would have had more school spirit than this.

Only a quite over-the-top character played by Raquel Welch strikes any false note. Otherwise, Tortilla Soup is a real chef's special.

Although the story and imagery are absorbing to watch, the details of the plot are sometimes hard to follow and fully digest. But enough of it survives to make this extravagant production a delightful experience for Westerners to watch.

A sumptuous ride with breathtaking scenes and a soaring musical score.

First Snow tries hard but lacks originality.

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

Inelegant but not uninteresting, Ramen Heads is a bronze contender at best.

Ultimately, The Equalizer 3 marks a fitting and warm end to the franchise. It offers all the audacious violence and familiar set-pieces of the previous films, paired with a wistful goodbye to its central vigilante. It’s not reinventing the genre, but it doesn’t have to. Like its protagonist, this movie knows it has a simple job to do and accomplishes it in the most satisfying way possible.

The sensation that dogs Hope Gap is that they forgot to roll camera on the most dramatic parts. What’s left over isn’t bad, only underwhelming.

To sum it up, there is little that is unexpected in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Rather than an epic continuation of Jackson's Middle-earth obsession, the film seems more like the work of a man driving around a multilevel parking garage without being able to find the exit.

Shrek, DreamWorks' big green cash machine, has finally run dry, perhaps not of box office power, but most assuredly of the caustic, fractured fairy tale-isms and the wry, snarky wit that made the first film, and to a lesser degree, the first sequel, so winning.

Carter Burwell’s score is particularly thunderous, mirroring the onscreen action, and the 3-D really is – for once – superb, making for a rather breathtaking two hours. Well done.

There is truly magic in this long, golden summer day.

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

What makes The Hummingbird Project so intriguing is that it explores areas of business – and of industrial espionage – so esoteric that it's hard to imagine that it's really a business model.

Pacing problems and shallow psychological inquiries plague this film almost as much as the overworked metaphor that supplies the film's title.

It’s a daunting task to mount a stage production of the play these days, given the college-lit symbolism embodied by its hapless titular bird and the narrative arcs to which today’s audiences are accustomed, much less adapt it for the big screen and still remain true to Chekhov’s delicate dramatic sensibilities. Either way, it’s an uphill climb. This film adaptation of this seminal play (the fourth, by most counts) gets about halfway up the hill.

Ultimately, it's undone by the overfamiliar nature of Doon and Lina's quest, the outcome of which, while breathlessly paced, is never really in question.

This “one crazy night” taps out at lightly kooky; there’s nothing here that gets within striking distance of the sheer weirdness of "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle" or the darkness of "After Hours", to name two genre stablemates.

This is one of the major delights of Hotel Artemis: a plot that posits a damaged, Medicare-aged woman as its central figure. And that the role is executed by a two-time Oscar-winning actress delivering her best work in many years makes this a rare treat.

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

This is a garish, rocket-fueled slice of popcorn mayhem, and the perfect antidote to this summer's limp action lineup.

Less can sometimes be perceived as more, but in the case of The Myth of Fingerprints less is simply less.

A go-for-the-lowest-common-denominator grab bag of raunchy sex gags and freakish outbursts. The cool thing is that it works.

Writer-director McKee’s arch comic dialogue (i.e., "We’ll hang out and eat some melons or something") is out of synch with the creepy horror he wields.

Let’s be honest: With a cast like this, it doesn't matter too much what the characters are doing onscreen, or if it makes about as much sense as a monochrome rainbow.

Chon’s ambitions are astonishing, but his bloated script needed an edit or two. It’s a film written with big moments for big performances in mind, which is too painfully obvious as the film treads on.

Lots of ideas are tossed around in Freakonomics, and it often feels as though one is trapped in some kind of pop centrifuge. None of the authors' arguments is contested in any way, and the zippiness of the film paints everything with a Teflon sheen.

See it for the performances – they are delights from the leads on down to the characters in the episodic vignettes. But the film’s vision of Gen-Y nesting is liable to leave you up a tree.

The setup is great, but Fading Gigolo’s follow-through lacks dynamism.

Granted, the lavish set pieces are beautiful, and there really is quite a bit of amusingly acrobatic coupling going on, but in the end, it's extremely hard to fight down the giggles you'll find swelling inside you. It's all so relentlessly goofy, it makes you long for the early Eighties antics of Traci Lords, or The Dark Bros.

As a surrealistic depiction of the mental disintegration of Jim (Abramsohn), a seemingly ordinary family guy, while visiting “the happiest place on Earth,” it’s a prank and a spit in the eye of Disney’s relentless cheerfulness. But director Randy Moore’s pièce de résistance goes far beyond flipping the bird to the mouse that roars.

Hosking has a keen eye for this type of cringeworthy comedy, as evidenced by every scene going on 30 seconds longer than it should, and enhanced by over-the-top, cartoony violence. But is The Greasy Strangler a contender for cult classic status? I guess that’s a question for the ages.

Glory Road really isn't a bad show – it's just an obvious one – and one wishes material of this historical import had received a more refined rendering.

What Rana and Warin have also created is a quiet warning. As a new tide of fascism and monomaniacal cultural oppression looms on the horizon, they make Salomon’s story a tragic reminder that fleeing a nightmare may mean more than just keeping it in your rearview mirror.

Oh, how I rued my failed foreign-language skills in the opening moments of Gemma Bovery. Who wants to read subtitles when a French baker is rolling out such pliant, such pokeable, such heavenly looking dough?

By trying too hard to stay on this side of hip and the other side of sentimental, Crowe winds up with a zoo that's neither fish nor fowl.

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?

Monday asks, what happens when that thing you do with your life in lieu of a plan becomes the plan?

Low Down is a wonderful downer of a film that fits quite comfortably on the video-store shelf between "Barfly" and "Drugstore Cowboy." That said, depending on your proclivity for plunging into the cinematic depths of despair, your mileage may vary.

The characterizations are sincere, but overly familiar.

Surprisingly well-done nearly all the way around, this neither plays down to its target audience, nor fumbles the inherent childhood fantasy of the story.

Has a haunting afterglow, one that neither satisfies nor illuminates, but at least keeps the flame alive.

Mostly this is a tense, portentous, and provocative piece.

There's none of Spielberg's verbal wit or the astonishing shot composition that helped the rest of the films flourish so far above their gutsy, 1930s action serial roots. Dial of Destiny feels like a less skilled hand tracing over the work of his favorite artists: The lines may be their own, but you'll always see the superior work underneath, overshadowing it and making you wish you could see the original instead.

If anything, The Invention of Lying is too soft for the satirical promise of its premise.

Elemental is thoughtful, visually interesting, and emotionally compelling, even if it doesn’t all gel together all the time. When the clunky story falters, the vision and dedicated vocal performances of the cast carry it through, and give Elemental real heart.

Gray's direction is a languid thing, moving at roughly the speed of a maimed snail, and the cast never really gels.

Although the narrative hiccups in The Holy Land can be chalked up to the mistakes of a beginning filmmaker, they are not disruptive enough to diminish the film’s realistic impact.