Perhaps the film’s most telling moments, however, are wordless ones in which no actor appears. They’re the bird’s-eye views of American tableaux – suburban tract houses, elementary schools, interstate highways – that mimic similar sky-high perspectives just before a drone fires its missile.

Come for the sophisticated charm and intoxicating wit suggested by the term “café society.” Stay for the rote charms and recycled bons mots offered up by Woody Allen’s umpteenth movie, a decidedly lesser entry in the director’s vast catalog but, as with all Allen movies, a cut above most everything else that passes for comedy these days.

Ultimately one of those sprawling epics best suited for a rainy day.

This Native American romantic comedy, which won the Audience Award at the 2001 Austin Film Festival, arrives in theatres four years late but seasonally right on time.

Neglects to provide the characters with enough background history to explain what makes them such original figures in the Old West.

This is a gutsy, oddly inspiring film that embodies both the risks and rewards of artistic boldness.

In the movies, black comedy is a difficult proposition: it's a genre more suited to a ten-minute sketch than a two-hour film. For every brilliant black comedy like Dr. Strangelove, there are a hundred duds. Unfortunately, the $50-million-plus Death Becomes Her doesn't quite make the grade either, although its wicked take on modern vanity is often hysterically on-target.

Bogs down during several fuzzily romantic interludes.

Size matters, too, in Live From New York!, a portrait of SNL at 40, but in inverse: 82 minutes isn’t nearly long enough to consider every angle – or even many angles – of a cultural institution.

This current film smartly adds material that keeps it up-to-date with the reality of today’s sophisticated electronic surveillance. The series may become a marker by which we come to gauge the future disappearance of all personal privacy. For the sake of the series’ endurance, I hope so, but for the sake of the rest of us, I hope not.

Hostel certainly delivers in the gore department, and Roth, who knows and loves his favorite genre at least as well as the gang over at the Alamo Drafthouse, peppers the proceedings with various witty in-jokes.

A horror film (or, more accurately, a shocker film) that takes such exuberant, gleeful delight in the unspeakably gory dispatch of assorted teenagers that it may well be the most fun you'll have at the movies all week.

Though he has stepped up his game, Perry's plainspoken, unsubtle aesthetic is an uncomfortable match for the fragility of Shonge's speeches, and scenes abruptly switch between the language of Perry's scripted continuity sequences and sudden poetic soliloquies.

While the story starts fast and furious, it sputters in its second half, not so much running out of gas as just turning into a completely different film which becomes increasingly more convoluted as it becomes less engaging.

While the documentary offers a few delicate glimpses of a self the writer did not openly share during her 74-year lifetime – she lived as a lesbian, albeit privately – it falls short of conveying the vital essence of this modern and enigmatic woman of her time.

While Smith's testosterone-loaded humor is a taste I have yet to acquire, his choices of a comic book-inspired credit sequence, the guest appearance of Marvel Comics genius Stan Lee, and the film's overall superhero aesthetic perfectly capture the mall mise-en-scene.

It's still not quite Pratchett-y, still a little static – most especially in the oddly flat animation – and still not quite snappy enough. But that doesn't stop Maurice being an entertaining way to convince kids to pick up the book.

Make no mistake -- this Mummy is an effects film all the way.

The result is either a brilliant bit of idol worship satire or a sign of the apocalypse. Despite the sad fact that audiences will surely settle for this watered down, kind of funny attempt at the genre, I couldn't help but enjoy the ride a little.

A nagging question persists throughout Darkest Hour: Is Oldman’s compulsively meticulous turn here anything more than a brilliant impersonation? The answer is yes, but it’s a performance that always stands apart from the rest of the film.

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.

An uninspired, mechanical tale, derivative of a first draft Twilight Zone episode or the chorus of that one Neil Young song whose name escapes me.

The movie is a strange amalgam of compelling visuals and fascinating vocational details forged with deep moral ambivalence and often hollow didacticism.

Level 16 is a mystery horror that gets darker as it unravels.

Before You Know It feels like it fell out of the mid-Eighties – and that's not a bad thing. In the tradition of "Mystic Pizza" or "Moscow on the Hudson," it finds its humor in the light and shade of its characters, with the odd broader gag (especially from Tullock, who is unafraid to go big with Jackie's theatrical habits).

By the end, there's nothing to admire except Range's technical virtuosity.

The script is all too often downright clunky though it's saved by vigorous direction (especially in the dance sequences) and performances.

Roberts, wearing that beatific half-smile of hers that suggests inner peace and wisdom before she's even begun her journey, is too open-faced with her emotions to signal the complexities of Gilbert's distress – over her divorce, her control issues, her rootlessness, and inability to live in the moment.

A surprisingly uneven and perhaps even mediocre character drama.

On film, goosed along by Thomas Newman’s jaunty score and a generically weepy power ballad co-written and performed by Hanks’ wife and producing partner, Rita Wilson, the effect is hollow, placating. They’ve turned themes of great love, loss, and the will to keep going into … easy listening.

The filmmakers do well to create a rich milieu, even if it is as short-lived and enigmatic as the artist’s own life.

Marry Me is ... okay. It’s not great. I think I would’ve like it a whole of a hell lot less had it not starred Lopez and Wilson, who are both eminently likable (the supporting cast is okay, too).

Ultimately, though, Jack Goes Boating is too much of a banal thing. Jack's a good guy, and you root for him all the way to the end, but, wistfully, that doesn't make him an any more interesting everyday Joe than he is.

Ultimately Hedges’ film, like the turkey, comes out underdone.

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

The movie's third act goes astray as the storyline shifts to Dorian's dating problems, which seem an overextended tangent to his coming-out story. Still, the film has a lot of playful dialogue and pixillated montages.

One personal pet peeve is the music. A movie about evil reincarnation could pave the way for any of a hundred different song choices, but The Prodigy’s score is focused on a dissatisfying blend of danger chords and a single shapeless Hungarian folk song.

McGuigan's wonderfully ambitious but terribly melodramatic film is chock-full of symbolic references, subtext, and the sort of period detail that made Monty Python's historical comedies so gamely endearing.

There are a lot of laughs in The Boss. The problem is that the space in between them is stagnant and shapeless. Falcone, who also directed and co-wrote "Tammy," is a dud as a filmmaker.

Book Club isn’t a movie for me. It’s probably not a movie for you, either. Book Club was written for an audience that will find loaded references to "50 Shades of Grey" delightfully risqué.

While the Occupy Wall Street rage supposedly fueling this thing is flimsy, what’s left is still solidly entertaining.

Ghosts of Mississippi isn’t a bad film by any means; it’s just not a very good film.

It's charming, in its own little way, but really, this film has as much substance as a Cirrus cloud, despite fine turns from Boyle as the family patriarch and Warden as Godfather Saul.

A crowd-pleasing portrait of boys-who-will-be-men-who-will-be-boys.

It wouldn't feel out of place on a double bill with "Dangerous Liaisons," given Breillat's unrepentantly nihilistic attitude toward the battle of the sexes in which all are pawns, every knight is errant, and the only queen is Queen Bitch.

If you can get past the ick factor inherent in these suddenly adulterized relationships –- and there’s really no way this film should have received a kid-friendly PG rating –- and latch on to the film’s wealth of metaphor, you’ll surely have something to discuss over coffee post-screening.

The filmmakers insert their own bulldozer midway through the story, rendering the metaphoric literal and the literal absurd.

Brothers is too depthless to dredge up any tears.

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?

Even though Stardust is not coated in gossamer, the film still has some glittery moments.

What starts out promisingly enough continues considerably beyond the end of the world and wears out even the most determined Wenders fan.

Magic Farm feels more like a work-in-progress than a final draft.

Ultimately offers some ironic amusement but wallows too long in the sins of its father.

He seems to be everything anyone might want from a pope, and this commissioned film seems to be part of the PR campaign to spread that particular gospel to the world.

Three films in, and Soderbergh's Ocean's franchise has settled into a kind of hipster equanimity – happy to live in that loosely defined territory where art meets commerce and story blends seamlessly with cool.

If you’re expecting "Paddington"-level profundity and whimsical adventure you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

The twist – and it’s a smart, effective one to be sure – is that this time it’s not a bunch of beergasming dudebros making life hell for the Radners, but an off-campus sorority led by Moretz’s feminist-slash-party powerhouse blonde, Shelby.

Surprisingly, Countdown works best when it operates less as a Nineties horror homage and more as a modern horror-comedy.

Venokur's candy-colored world and wild menageries of animal drivers, most especially Shale and MacDonald as expectant parent seahorses, pop out of the primary-colored backgrounds with glee and charm. And even if the route to Zhi and Shelby's first kiss and Archie's inevitable defeat is pretty linear, it's a diverting joy ride for the littles.

What the movie lacks is spark and sizzle. There's no palpable chemistry between Lopez and male lead Ralph Fiennes, plus the script by "Working Girl" scribe Kevin Wade is workmanlike in the extreme.

Mickey Rourke's narration provides an appropriate level of drama and importance as it details the men's training, adversities, failures, and triumphs.

For all the film’s rallying efforts, its meandering structure and absence of a central driving character results in a film about genocide that is, as unbelievable as it sounds, kind of boring.

Venom: Let There be Crazy, Stupid Love isn’t a great movie, but it doesn’t matter because it’s just big, dumb, romantic fun.

Reeves sticks out like a bad grape in an otherwise acceptable harvest. Having taken this role to broaden his acting horizons, his gain is the film's loss.

This is an action flick for those who like form over substance in their popcorn movies which explode onscreen every summer.

It gives the creeping sensation that this is going to be a talking-heads documentary, which Greenwald delivers in spades.

The screen version feels like a rewrite made to make the tale more palatable to the "mindless moviegoing masses," which prompts the question: Is the film a truer vision of Baitz's tale of an uncompromising man or a version in which the truer vision was compromised?

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.

This footage is essential to this film, allowing us to view Marianne as a solo human being and not just as a muse to a great man. It is she who first noticed the figurative beauty of a nearby “bird on a wire,” not he. Yet this is also how the movie fails. Praiseworthy for finally providing some three-dimensionality to the figure of Ihlen, the film doesn’t go far enough in examining the plight of the muse.

Good Burger is not fully cooked but it provides a taste of things to come.

In its own way, sloppy and excessive with LSD camera work and cutting, Posse is like a Gene Autrey Western from the Forties where the bad guys are the bad guys and the good guys are the good guys and the girl and the boy love each other (and those films were frequently more elliptically hallucinatory than this).

Gemini Man features strong chemistry between its leads and an undercurrent of regret that makes it surprisingly empathetic for an action movie. Do away with the digital de-aging, and this might’ve emerged as one of the more enjoyable action movies of 2019. Then again, for some, it probably already is.

A romantic comedy, too, but this time the romance is between two women, and one of them, truth be told, is a dud.

Wanderlust is flawed, too, but for its exploration of financial ruin and alternative lifestyles, it shows once again that Aniston, at the very least, knows which way the wind is blowing.

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?

Not for everyone's taste, I'd think, but a notably thoughtful effort nonetheless.

On screen, Wolf and Dacascos have a remarkable chemistry. They bounce cheesy lines off of one another like they were reciting Shakespeare or Tarantino or whatever passes for great writing these days. Both are surprisingly good actors. Unfortunately, there are no further surprises.

At two hours, the movie goes on too long and resolves too little -- even though it provides some interesting moments along the way.

The elements are all here for something spectacular – and in brilliant bursts, Jeunet really gets it – but in the end, all that potential is sunk by a terminally confused tone and milquetoast pairing of lovers. Pity that.

In the end, however, Protocols of Zion illuminates manifestations of anti-Semitism without ever really elucidating or posing solutions to the problem.

This Total Recall is fast, furious, and frequently confusing fun, but to be completely honest, it lacks the snappy, weirdo vibe of its predecessor.

While not always dramatically successful, The Song of Sway Lake earns big points for originality. The film has a distinctive tone, look, and setting, which are supported by strong performances (one of them by the greatly missed Elizabeth Peña, who died in 2014, making this her final film appearance – somehow appropriate to this movie about how the past can impinge on the present).

Stays on its feet through all the rounds, but it never “floats like a butterfly.”

Ruby Sparks doesn't. Spark, that is. Oh, the film is sprightly and wholehearted, sweetly in thrall to its bold central conceit, and endearing as a puppy with boundless energy. You want to like it. And you do. It's just that it never, you know, it never sparks.

It's all peak Anderson, which sadly also means his inability to put a story together.

This is a more hardscrabble, beaten down version of Neeson’s iconic revengers than most of his action roles, with Hanson coming across as sympathetically appealing despite the cliched storyline.

It bears noting that Greendale is an awful lot like the town of Mayberry R.F.D. in that paragon of homespun virtue, "The Andy Griffith Show," but then again, it's probably equally wise to bear in mind that before Griffith was the sheriff of that hamlet, he was in "A Face in the Crowd" playing a character who, with his conniving, manipulative, black-at-heart ways, might well represent Greendale's dark and awful future.

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.

By no means a great film, but it is an entertaining one, a nearly bloodless, family-friendly throwback of sorts to a cinematic age when Persian palace intrigue, winsome princesses, and ambitious princes ruled the back lots and Errol Flynn was in like, well, Errol Flynn.

Never inspires more than an interested detachment.

It seems almost beside the point to bring up the notion of plotting and characterization in such an effects-driven film ; nobody's going to rush out to catch Dante's Peak on account of the Shakespearean-caliber thespians involved.

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

Despite wonderful performances from all the actors, Wyler’s attempt to retell the story in a more forthright manner still seems to pussyfoot timidly around the issues.

Animated films have trended toward a perceptive intelligence in the past few years, but Storks wades in shallow waters most of the time.

The action is constant, often pointless, definitely gratuitous, and breathlessly fun.

As a subversion to rape revenge films, it’s only halfway there.

While it’s great fun to watch regular people learn to express themselves after meeting their heroes, it’s disheartening to notice how much fame sits at the center of it all. The “fantasy” Rock Camp returns to isn’t just making music — it’s wealth and name recognition.

The skating sequences are also well-thought out and fun to watch. The movie loses momentum at times with directionless subplots about Kate and her boring fiance, Doug and his family back home who think that taking up figure skating is tantamount to turning a gay blade and the manipulations of Kate's father whose vicarious attachments almost put a permanent hex on her life. Certainly, The Cutting Edge is a well-timed vehicle for those who couldn't get enough of the Winter Olympics on TV, but it pushes past simple opportunism to deliver a backstage story that works in any season.