It’s perhaps surprising that there aren’t more Linklater documentaries out there, considering how substantial, influential, and plain f---ing brilliant his body of work is. In the meantime, 21 Years will have to do.

In short, there's nothing remotely real or appealing about it.

The film never recovers its initial fizzy-pop charms, owing largely to pacing that turns positively molasses-slow in the second act.

Pratt delightfully plays against type here as a fierce bully, and Hawke looks as though he were born to wear spurs and a badge.

This Danish comedy, like most of that country's dramas, is dark, dark, dark.

Let the brilliant, epic silliness of The Man With the Iron Fists engulf you in a tsunami of crimson cheese and you, like I, will have a super-happy-fun-big-smile-crazy-face-monkey-time.

Love is a maddeningly myopic film, mainly due to Murphy's squarely white-male heteronormative experience.

Paxton, as always, is thoroughly engaging, and Theron is coming into her own as an actress, but the bottom line here is that the film lacks the original's goofy good humor. Less effects and more humanity are in order before this remake can even get within spitting distance of the original.

A terrific cast, intelligent direction, state-of-the-art special effects, a strong story, and skilled narrative construction all end up being much ado about not very much.

Slight but agreeable picture.

A gleefully gross adventure that bundles together all of wrestling-and-horror nerd Eisener's favorite obsessions (he's also part of the team behind VICE's The Dark Side of the Ring), Kids vs. Aliens is exactly the kind of age-inappropriate horror that kids will absolutely love.

The result is a visually fantastic but sometimes exasperating entertainment that (once again) gets lost in its own chaos. It’s one funned-up spectacle of a movie.

A lean, mean chase movie that plays like equal parts Donald Trump’s immigration policy, Steven Spielberg’s "Duel," and Wes Craven’s "The Hills Have Eyes," Cuarón’s desert-based take on "The Most Dangerous Game" is very much of the moment. It’s also, unfortunately, a one-note story populated with a handful of semi-anonymous archetypal characters.

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.

Despite its authentic feel for things Western, Wild Bill misses the big picture.

The delectably atmospheric Asylum remains gothic to its morally maggoty core.

Still, it's worth checking out if only to see Kidman immolate everything else on screen through sheer sexy charisma. Tom who?

The movie treats all its characters kindly -– especially in moments where it would be easy to go for the cheap shot -– but there’s either not enough froth or meat on its bones to sate the appetite.

There are flashes of wit and flair here, including two stylish sequences detailing the French obsession with food and scarves, but they are but brief respites from the film’s near-pathological drear.

It does effectively recall those bygone days when impossibly attractive, charming, and endearingly flawed characters dressed to kill, smoked like creosote plants, and behaved atrociously on the way to rapturous romantic consummation.

Unfortunately, The Pelican Brief comes across as a prolonged bout with deja vu: you know you've seen this before, and more than once at that.

Plenty thought-provoking, but it's not much of a movie and ultimately inspires curiosity rather than passion.

I COULD do without "Dancing Queen" stuck in my head, but that will unstick soon enough, and with any luck so too will the memory of Streep noodling on an air guitar.

The relationship advice is all fairly boilerplate, much like the film itself, but these actors have made this a bankable romcom.

Unfortunately, Snitch is torn between being an ideological drama and a more traditional action film – and Johnson’s presence only contributes to the confusion.

Shoddily constructed out of bits and pieces of previous genre triumphs, She's All That is as dull and droning as the fluorescent lighting in your old study hall.

In the end, it’s hard to rule out any Johnson movie entirely, but Skyscraper is more disappointment than summer sleeper.

But for what it is, I think it's pretty okay. It's not going to win an Oscar or anything. But I liked how it was actually made for tween girls.

It’s a tale full of sound and fury, signifying something that’s nothing less than appalling.

The drama may not be as focused as we might like, but Slattery’s outstanding gallery of actors make this an ensemble piece that commands our attention: These dead-end characters stick out like bas reliefs in the community framework.

For anyone over the age of nine, Yankee's journey is ultimately a dull one paved with good intentions.

Viewers should be warned that Irréversible means what it says: Your experience of this movie can not be forgotten once the die is cast.

Surprisingly, it’s distinctly one of the better faith-based films in some time to wander down the road to Galilee.

Transporter 3 is so far over the top that it more than once spills into outright cartoonishness.

The Song of Names evokes a certain kind of quality film that we associate with Holocaust dramas. Laudably, the movie fully escapes lugubrious wallowing, yet, perhaps as a partial result of this, The Song of Names lacks dramatic intensity and depth.

Director of photography Robert Murphy deserves a Spirit Award of his own for his breathtaking and evocative lensing of ever-cinematic Berlin and Montenegro, and Stephen Coates’ melancholic score is equally suited to the story at hand.

The film isn't going to catapult Butcher to international stardom, but he holds his own in it and helps to sell its curious logic.

There are so many interesting components of Umma that never click, wasting a completely original idea on banality.

The few gags that hit their mark only serve to point up how flaccid the rest of his material is, and that spells doom for a comic, no matter how much his hometown crowd cheers him on.

The DreamWorks team continues to give Disney a run for their money.

Austin Powers is the kind of movie Mel Brooks used to make -- extravagantly funny, with plenty of juvenile humor, but as much or more of it smart, delivered with a dead aim at a cultural milestone, affection for its victim, and style.

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

It's a kinder, gentler "Tales From the Crypt" that, in the end, is neither kind nor gentle.

The film is vast and epic, featuring sprawling rivers, awe-inspiring landscapes, serious military campaigns, and the rich political and ideological history of the period. Still, without sufficient context, the films swirls grandly but without making much meaning.

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).

Despite his character's fondness for mugging and mouthing like Michael Corleone, Spacey (and by extension, his director and writer Norman Snider) can't quite catch the operatic wallop of Corleone's arc, possibly because the film is played top-to-bottom like a caprice.

In The Grinch power rankings, this one trails Theodor Geisel’s original 1957 storybook and Chuck Jones’ cheeky 1966 TV special by a long mile.

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.

Problem is, the movie shifts gears abruptly in mid-story and what had previously been merely melodramatic extremism turns into hyperbolic horror.

The fun of Wild Things -- and there's a lot of it -- is in its never-ending game of cross and double cross.

Isn't teen heartache confusing enough without adding into the libidinal mix a bunch of buff scullers nicknamed the Queerstrokes?

Guilty of the most mortal of all movie sins: It's dull.

So slow-moving, the narrative takes forever to gain momentum, and when it finally does, it deliberately undercuts it. This either is the most contemplative and sensual kind of pleasure or a well-meaning, finely executed misfire that ultimately drags instead of soars.

If Dumbo 2.0 does have to exist, then you could do far worse than this sweet and occasionally quite nifty revamping.

No matter whether the cast is male, female, or somewhere in between, the absence of a well-constructed story, particularly when the humor goes south (literally), will doom any movie to quick obscurity, no matter how many d**k or p***y jokes get told.

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

The real tragedy of What Just Happened isn’t that it succumbs to predictable pseudo-satirical farce but that when it does, it loses sight of the very thing that could have made it a film worth caring about: the story of a man perpetually caught between art and business, between strength and weakness, between adoration and loneliness, between success and failure, between the movies and reality.

Onscreen it all plays out like some sort of self-coronation, a celebration of the boy Vaughn’s rise to the heights of superstardom.

Marshall, like his characters, does not mess around: Good people do bad things to not-entirely bad people while the Man (in this case No. 10 Downing St.) seeks ways to screw everyone.

Works quite well for what it is: a wooly crime yarn with touches of humor and a satisfying, well-developed relationship between the schemers.

This is strictly dull chuckles from dull wits, and while there are a few genuine laughs to be found amidst the dross, they’re as rare as Francophiles in Crawford, Texas.

One of Linklater’s greatest filmmaking instincts involves his casting decisions. Newcomer Emma Nelson is a real find as Bernadette’s daughter. Although Blanchett’s performance seems a bit mannered and slightly reminiscent of her Oscar-winning performance in "Blue Jasmine," these are hardly flaws when the outcome is so riveting. Wiig beautifully toes a difficult line between drama and comedy. It’s a line similar to the one etched by this film: an emotional crisis mixed with laughs.

Operation Fortune is just one long series of heist sequences that run at the same speed, at the same tone, and all flatly shot by Ritchie's new regular cinematographer, Alan Stewart.

Gustav Klimt’s spectacular painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I far outshines this pedestrian movie about the legal battle waged by Maria Altmann (Mirren), the niece of the portrait’s subject, to regain possession of the work which was seized from her family by the Nazis during their takeover of Austria.

Blends into so much white noise, until all that's left is the lingering sense that the tragic and promising story of Doug and Richard won't be sticking with you past the closing credits.

MBV 3D is full-on, old-school, Fangoria-approved, gorehound heaven – a supersaturated arterial goregasm with zero socially redeeming values for anyone other than first-year med students.

You can almost smell the desperation in the twisted psychosexuality of Savage Grace.

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.

Me Before You isn’t going to win any awards for sophistication in storytelling or direction, but it tenderly reproduces the book’s most iconic scenes, and their tearjerking effect.

Aronofsky's reach far exceeds his grasp with this film, and the muddle he concocts makes one wonder if there was ever a solid foundation for The Fountain. Hope may spring eternal, but this fountain is a dry hole.

Moog is an inventor's movie all the way.

Kids may come out of Karate Kid: Legends crane-kicking in excitement from the handful of fights, and older fans can relish the nostalgia, but for everyone else it’s wax on, nod off.

It’s all mighty existential and interesting, yet the introduction of this heady topic acts as prelude to a rather bizarre, if dark, comedic situation. The timing, like everything in this movie, is a little off-kilter.

It's hit-or-miss comedy of the very broadest sort, but those who groove on deciphering obscure film-geek in-jokes will find their work more than cut out for them.

It makes virtually no sense, but the costumes are fetishistic gems and the set design trips the light fantastic. A camp classic.

A genuinely outrageous and occasionally brilliant coupling of American animation and classic early-Eighties heavy metal (does anybody even remember Riggs and Trust?).

Conceptually, The Accountant kills it, but in terms of execution, The Accountant doesn’t add up.

The film weaves comedy, horror, and romance without delving too deeply into any of them. The humor is rather dry (and completely dialogue-driven), and the horror only alluded to: There’s something chilling about certain things writer Mike Makowsky leaves to the imagination.

Worst of all, as much as this will be a welcome escape for small kids (and a distraction for parents), it's a frustration that Kendrick is back in this kind of easy, cookie-cutter, disposable frippery.

There are momentary pleasures, to be sure – a corker of a kiss here, an Otis Redding-backed barroom slink there – but frankly, I'm a little weary of Wong wearing "that same old shaggy dress."

Despite a few scattered moments of visceral excitement, the only thing truly frightening about the oh-so-ominously titled Fear is how so many talented people came to be involved in so inane a project.

The entire film is curiously soulless, with major characters making their entrances and exits (some of which are unexpectedly final) as if they were breezing in from some other screening next door.

In Moshe’s new film, Livingston throws himself with defeated gusto into the role of Patrick.

Summer was made for this kind of film, and Predators is almost exactly what you need to fix this otherwise busted summer cinema season.

Hotel for Dogs is a decent family film, sure to please animal-loving kids and their parents alike. Well-acted, the movie also looks good and is stocked with lots of goofy gadgetry.

Pleasant but dull formula film.

This hodgepodge of little stories about the members of a college football team contending for a championship is flaccid seasonal fare that will do all right its first few weeks at the box office amongst those starved for gridiron action but will fade from memory long before the Rose Bowl parade ends.

Funny and friendly and all-inclusive and unremarkable.

A slick, sexy little package with fast cars, big explosions, dazzling locations in the south of France, a trip-hop score, and about as much plot to fill a thimble.

It goes down easy, with likable performances and a laudable emphasis on love and compassion.

Hood's realization of Card's novel is a tightly constructed, thought-provoking meditation on adolescence trapped by permanent war footing, alloyed with some of the best CGI effects work I've seen since, uh, "Gravity."

There’s an earnestness about Accidental Texan that can only warm your heart. Every moment is predictable, but in Bristol’s capable hands that becomes a strength.

I've short-sheeted beds and belted out camp songs with the best of them. Indian Summer made me long to be back in one of those gloriously rickety, mildewed cabins in a lush, rural forest. Provided, that is, I wouldn't have to bunk with any of the stupefyingly self-involved, gee-how-can-I-be-happy-with-all-my-wealth-and-beauty morons that Camp Tamakwa apparently produces. Despite tantalizing ingredients like the beguiling cast and spectacular scenery (the film is shot on location at the real Camp Tamakwa in Ontario's Algonquin Provincial Park), writer/director Mike Binder serves up an unappetizing concoction of Big Chill and Ernest Goes to Camp stew.

Despite its predictability and sappiness, this conventional comedy about a worldly lounge singer who masquerades as a nun as part of a witness protection program busts loose as one of the funniest -- and happiest -- films in a long time.

Movies shouldn’t have to meet a PC checklist so they won’t offend – who wants that kind of cinema? – but when they poke you in the eye one too many times, it’s fair game to poke back.

Best just to say Macbeth is coming down hard and leave it at that.

Why make a new mediocrity when the old ones are still so much more fun to watch?

Nemesis, by comparison, is about as exciting as a Tribble on Vicodin.