It is an inspired, strange, and occasionally choke-on-your-popcorn funny ensemble piece that, frankly, blows just about every other current comedy out of the water.

The film's sound design is also expertly wrought with a blend of nearly subliminal noises, bumps in the night, and other frights.

Definitely not for the squeamish, Wake in Fright is calibrated for maximum psychic impact. Its madness is viral and disconcerting. Truly, you're going to want a stiff drink and a hot shower, or a noose, after visiting the Yabba.

The film is studded with stirring moments of surprise.

Frankenweenie is that rare film that's both kid- and adult-friendly.

It's fun enough on its own relatively low-budget merits, but it's really nothing to die – or kill – for.

The Oranges has little original shading.

Garner hasn't come across as amusing as she is here in quite some time. Despite many funny bits, Butter also, at times, seems to excoriate the blinkered Midwesterners in the flyover states.

Bachelorette – at least in its first half – is a dangerously funny movie about four old college friends on the eve of one member's nuptials.

The film is worth seeing for the performances, but the drama is a nonstarter.

Liberal Arts is not unlikable: There are some intelligent observations about how humans woo, and the film is so suffused with sincerity you want to give it a pat on the head just for trying so hard.

Chbosky surrounds his hurting characters with the cinematic equivalent of a hug circle – which is sweet, but rather antithetical to tension-building.

All told, Pitch Perfect isn't all that good – but it's an awfully good sport.

The rescuing of our public schools is a national necessity. I just don't know that we are aiding that cause by sending out oversimplified and dogmatic messages about not backing down.

As for Hotel Transylvania,, no need to put a stake in it, it's deadly dull already.

Looper makes a full-meal entertainment out of piecemealing genres: It boasts the kicky mental gymnastics that come with time-travel terrain, the relentless rapid heart rate of a crackerjack thriller, and the bursts of extreme violence, buttressed with black humor, of a modern actioner.

Absolutely, 100% kickass. Now would someone please get busy on the "Tank Girl" do-over, please?

Shue, to her credit, looks like she's trying to crawl out of her skin, but hey, anything to get away from this hell house, right? Right.

A manic, lithesome thing, 2 Days in New York flexes between broad comedy and a beautifully observed portrait of family life – especially life after death.

Fluctuating between the extraordinary and the dull, with sections of narrative explication and tangents, Chicken With Plums can be as frustrating as it is ambitious. It's more like Chicken With Plums – and the Kitchen Sink.

Adams is absolutely winning in this role, which requires her to be a tough-as-nails attorney, grownup tomboy, and psychologically scarred adult. And she makes a good foil for Eastwood, though it's often uncomfortable to see the actor going through melodramatic paces.

End of Watch is more than the sum of its parts, though; it ends on a downbeat note, but that's something I've come to expect from Ayer.

The film strives so much to have heart, it comes across as heartless and mean-spirited. Bah, humbug!

Jovovich's physicality and chilly mien (she was originally a "project" of the Umbrella Corp.) carry the series from start to … whenever it finishes, which might not be for quite a while yet.

Frustrations abound with this limited film, but Wild Horse, Wild Ride does one thing exceptionally well, and that is convey the emotional bond between trainer and horse.

It seems to me that since "Koyaanisqatsi" in 1982, for which Fricke served as the director of photography, every other film of this sort has been repetition.

It's unclear where the buck stops in terms of creative authority – at one point, Clayman complains that "the only thing I feel in control of is the money" – which renders OC87 at once a remarkable achievement, and a fatally compromised film.

Flying Swords of Dragon Gate isn't as much fun as the director's previous film – the wondrous "Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame."