Furious 7 is, to put it succinctly, a rush and a half.

Pacino delivers his best work in a long time, but it’s contained within an utterly predictable redemption movie that only comes alive when Pacino plays one-on-one scenes with the other members of the cast.

The subject itself – the musicians, the music – and the spirit of the thing – one son’s obvious devotion – transcend the film’s technical shortcomings.

Snap! That’s the crack of people teetering on the verge in each of the six segments in the perversely entertaining Argentinian film Wild Tales, a more-than-deserving recent Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language film.

So many follow-up questions are left unasked. The film is at its liveliest when the filmmaker and his subject discuss the twofold presence of human monstrosity and artistic gifts or the human propensity to value talent over craft.

It is filled with unsettling imagery and a paranoiac atmosphere, and has a wicked slant on the horror genre’s obsession with burgeoning sexuality. You’re not likely to shake it anytime soon.

If overly familiar and uninspired, Home is nevertheless agreeable, especially for young viewers who haven’t been down this road countless times.

Beyond a leper’s handful of jokes that actually connect, this might as well be Ferrell’s most abysmal piece of work since the disastrous "Land of the Lost."

It’s an enchanting work, heartbreaking yet wryly amusing.

Insurgent exists primarily to either validate or defy the imagined depiction of events in the heads of countless teen fans.

Sometimes the most thrilling thing a film can do is shake the shackles of its own preordained genre as you're watching it. The result might turn out to be a deal-breaking tonal trainwreck, but when such a hybrid works – and Spring, the second feature from directing team Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson, does work – it can make for an improbably lovely experience.

The U.S. won the Olympic gold, but as seen here, the Russians’ story is by far the more genuinely Olympian, making this a handy victory over all previously told accounts of that so-called miracle.

Remarkably, the film is composed entirely of point-of-view shots. Although she’s in the room, Viviane is not even part of the image during the early minutes of the film.

With the documentary Ballet 422, Lipes’ first return to dance after notable narrative cinematography work (on TV’s Girls and the upcoming Trainwreck, among other projects), he’s somewhat boxed himself into a corner with the cinema verité directive to capture the moment and keep out of the way.

When Bardem is onscreen, the emotional stakes are high, engaging you in a way the principal storyline fails to do. It’s a masterful turn by a masterful actor, one that’s blissfully on-target in The Gunman.

The result is a well-cooked serving of meat-and-potatoes action filmmaking, but its main failing is an ultimate inability to distinguish itself by more than minor flourishes.

Take the politics out and you’d still have a powerhouse action film. But please, don’t take the politics out.

Deli Man needs more meat on its rye.

Mention must be made of James’ guileless turn as Cinderella. Like the beautiful crystalline-blue ballgown worn in the film’s centerpiece section (you can’t take your eyes off it; it literally dazzles), she looks as if she’s lit from within.

The result is about as memorable as an evening spent shitfaced at your local Applebee’s.

Now, with Chappie, the director/co-writer returns home for an uneven showcase of impeccable visual effects and lackluster emotional affect.

The film is a magnificent document of secular humanism.

The appearance of Richard Gere as a new guest whom everybody assumes is a plant from the multinational hotel chain that Muriel and Sonny have been wooing is straight out of the “Hotel Inspectors” episode of Fawlty Towers. Where’s John Cleese when you really need him?

As the down-on-his-luck Roth, Orser gives the darkly comic performance of a man barely able to keep his head above water.

A Frankensteinian combination of "Flatliners," "Carrie," and just about any possession flick that comes to mind.

This con artist caper from the writer/director duo behind "Bad Santa" and "I Love You Philip Morris" bears some superficial resemblance to the 2005 romantic comedy "Hitch."

Vladimir Putin’s Russia – brutal, carnivorous, delusional, but monstrously well-evolved for crushing both spirits and lives large and small – is taken to task in this excoriating portrait of the state’s omnivorous hunger for control in a far-flung northern fishing community on the Barents Sea.

A la Mala coasts on its style and charm, and that may be enough for this kind of romp. Mala’s roommates Kika (Aurora) and Pablo (Arrieta) provide enjoyable interludes as something of a Greek chorus to Mala’s dilemma. Nevertheless, a bit more originality in the script by Issa López and Ari Rosen would be a welcome diversion.