Horror is built on moms wanting to protect their kids, and Come Play falls down because Sarah just never really seems to connect with Oliver.

Kids who can stomach mixed holiday fare should be able to ride out this stereoscopic superstorm of snowglobes, Easter eggs, magic portals, enchanted crystals, moon worship, fruitcakes, matryoshka dolls, and lost teeth. Others may be confused.

To be fair, there are some genuinely funny bits here, but the film's aim is so scattershot that it never really comes together like it should, and, as a result, it rarely rises above the level of Mel Brooks on a bad day.

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.