Battle looks like the last gap of a dying series, a movie made simply to wring the dollars out of any remaining ape fans.

The movie has slick production values and a few clever lines, and is an invaluable illustration of the Principle of Evil Marksmanship. This principle, you will recall from my Glossary of Movie Terms, teaches us that in the movies the bad guys can never hit anything with a gun, and the good guys can hardly miss.

The production design deserves Academy recognition. But at the most fundamental level, Toys is a film not quite sure what it's about.

There’s no defending Jupiter Ascending. There’s no explaining Jupiter Ascending. There’s no way Jupiter Ascending isn’t making an appearance on my list of the Worst Films of 2015.

This is a well-made thriller traveling over awfully familiar turf.

The entire movie comes across as if the screenwriters had gathered the scripts for dozens of similar films in the genre, dropped them into some sort of software blender — and whipped up one big bland smoothie of a story.

More times than not, The Benefactor takes the less interesting fork in the road.

The great looming presence all through this movie is the memory of the Challenger destroying itself in a clear, blue sky. Our thoughts about the space shuttle will never be the same again, and our memories are so painful that SpaceCamp is doomed even before it begins.

Why do they persist in making these retreads? Because RoboCop is a brand name, I guess, and this is this year's new model. It's an old tradition in Detroit to take an old design and slap on some fresh chrome.

This is an amazingly ambitious movie, not so much because of the time and space it covers (a lot), but because Potter trusts us to follow her heroine through one damn thing after another.

Competent formula entertainment, but doesn't make that leap into pure barminess that inspired "Anaconda."

The movie cuts back and forth between two preposterous plot lines and uses the man on the ledge as a device to pump up the tension.

Jack Frost is the kind of movie that makes you want to take the temperature, if not feel for the pulse, of the filmmakers.

This is Matt Dillon's first film since Drugstore Cowboy, and demonstrates again that he is one of the best actors working in movies. He possesses the secret of not giving too much, of not trying so hard that we're distracted by his performance.

You can enjoy the way they create little flashes of wit in the dialogue, which enlivens what is, after all, a formula disaster movie.

White Men Can’t Jump 2023 is the second remake for director Calmatic this year, following the disastrous “House Party” from last January, and while it’s not as clumsy or weirdly tone-deaf as that bomb, the screenplay by Kenya Barris (“black-ish”) and Doug Hall misses a couple of major opportunities, including the decision to have the most dramatic development of the entire movie take place offscreen.

Porky's is another raunchy teenage sex-and-food-fight movie.

All concept and no content.

All this is presented in an expensive, good-looking film that is well-made by Scott Derrickson, but to no avail.

Scream, Blacula, Scream is just an interim exploitation effort, and a warm-up for the better vampires in Marshall's future.

It spirals downward into a ludicrous, dumbed-down horror story more concerned with grossing out the audience than in providing any compelling reason for this long-running franchise to keep chugging along, leaving a trail of blood in its wake.

Space Cadet wraps itself in the trappings of a female empowerment story, but it actually celebrates using deception and taking shortcuts. Rex Simpson is no Elle Woods, and this story is more “Illegal, Need Bond” than “Legally Blonde.”

It's one of the best films of the year.

Has little islands of humor and even perfection, floating in a sea of missed marks and murky intentions.

The adults at the Hotchkiss reunion are played by an assortment of splendid actors.

Sometimes in an imperfect movie there is consolation simply in regarding the actors.

Nothing here about human nature. No personalities beyond those hauled in via typecasting. No lessons to learn. No joy to be experienced. Just mayhem, noise and pretty pictures.

Mike Nichols’ The Day of the Dolphin trips on its own stylishness and tries so hard not to be a conventional science-fiction thriller that it fails, alas, to be anything.