Happy Endings is unabashedly sentimental (cheekily couched in a black-comic guise), with Roos acting as a sort of benevolent god over his characters.

Sure, we’ve all seen this story before, but that doesn’t hamper this film from being enormously entertaining, with riveting performances, great beats, and poetic rhymes.

The Aviary, a modest mindf*ck of a thriller about two young women fleeing a cult in the New Mexican desert, goes round and round and round in a circle like a snake swallowing itself. A beguiling metaphor, but by the end, you’re left with a self-cannibalized movie.

The result is a lyrical contrast of two contiguous cultures, worlds apart in their definitions of family and love but brought together by mutual awe and basic human need.

Cheech & Chong's first movie is still their best. The duo wrote the genial script about the never-ending search for great pot, and a good supporting cast co-stars.

It’s distinguishing the trickle from the treacle that becomes the problem.

There's no denying the fact that Jackson is woefully miscast here, and as a result spends much of his time struggling to define his role as a “serious” collector of objets d'art in this muddled-though-gorgeous omnibus film.

It's a feast of inconsequentiality, though, a love affair-lite that looks great but is ultimately less filling than a sunny summer Sunday's creampuff dream.

This is your standard genre fare: Smart-a-- player gets schooled, finds love, and is redeemed in time for the final big game.

The film lacks the emotional resonance that made "Big" such a sentimental favorite with audiences of all ages.

WTF is on the right track, even if it never pulls all the way in to the station.

The love match is cringing; as a rom-com’s raison d’etre, their limp connection pretty much sinks the thing. But when the script settles down and stops feeling quite so much like an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink thesis project, it has its bouncy moments.

Even if you like Snyder's non-superhero work, this feels like a serious step down.

Trite? Sure. Obvious? And then some. But a lesson to be taken to heart nonetheless.

What it does have in its favor are two sit-up-and-clap supporting turns from Skarsgård, all barking bear in tacky gold chains, and Lewis, who wears the sour mouth of someone who just underwent a prostate exam. Collectively, they’re the film’s fail-safe: Whenever Our Kind of Traitor threatens to go completely inert, they show up and give it a good goosing.

Mortimer, coming off his critically-acclaimed and award-winning debut Daniel Isn't Real, never quite strikes a tone or a pace that suits his tale of a (potentially) fractured mind.

Too often, the kid in such cinematic scenarios ends up teaching the parent some life lesson. Instead, Nilon’s script depicts a different and deeply compassionate dynamic between father and sons.

There much more roiling beneath the surface of these characters and it's a shame we don't come to understand them better. Smart people, dumb choices: it's true for both the characters and the filmmakers.

It's neither utterly real nor utterly romantic (heroin, like alcohol, manages to be awfully and unremittingly both).

Although Bad Words never quite achieves Bad Santa’s level of misanthropy, the movie is chock-full of racist, sexist, and generally antisocial barbs – not to mention a slew of bad words.

For better and worse, Uncle Drew feels like the kind of movie that would’ve cleaned up in the summer of 1998. We’ll see how well its game holds up 20 years later.

If you have an 8- to 16-year-old underfoot in the house, there are worse ways to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Flesh and Bone is far from a comfortable experience to witness, so if you like your films “over easy” this will not be to your liking. But if you like entertainment that cuts to the marrow, then Flesh and Bone is something to see.

What The Newton Boys lacks in dramatic definition, it more than compensates for with its underlying intelligence and visual luster.

There's a lot of truly hilarious material in The Grand.

The plot is negligible, but that's fine since it's really only a way to get from one set-piece to another.

Albert Nobbs is the furthest thing from a comedy, although as a character study of cultural mores and stations and the lengths human beings will go to to circumvent them, it's fascinating stuff.

The darker stuff begs to be handled less delicately than this dance, and in that respect the director stumbles.