Occupies an odd middle ground between their Apatow-produced bromances, the giddy gruesomeness of the recent “Aftershock” and the confined social abrasiveness of “It’s a Disaster.”

Wish You Were Here goes to a dramatically gripping place of guilt and doubt; if only its grip had held just a bit tighter.

Pussy Riot: A Punk’s Prayer is about an interesting topic, but the film itself is not quite up to snuff.

The film itself is sly and smug in kind, fleetingly enjoyable for all of its old-school showmanship and high-tech hokiness.

After Earth stupefies us with nonsense, such little thought and logic went into this idea that it can’t even be considered a rough draft, this is a movie almost daring an audience to emotionally detach throughout. For shame!

Fill the Void is, in the worst sense of the word, a “women’s picture,” in which people wring their hands and worry, wail and weep over marriage and maintaining the status quo.

Naming aside, Epic could have been good, except that it wasn’t, it was stone cold terrible, something even a six-year-old might scoff at. I know, I’m just as sad as you are about the whole thing.

A damn near perfect film.

The Past is just about as good as a relationship drama is ever going to get. The plot is teased out with deliberate grace, the performances are sublime and the revelations, even the most melodramatic, feel right and true. It’s big canvas stuff painted by a new master.

Only Lovers Left Alive is an exhibit A example of how to use style to enhance substance, not overwhelm it.

Chandor delivers pure cinema. Thrilling and adventuresome, this is a career highlight from the uniquely sympathetic Robert Redford.

The first half of “The Congress,” while still fascinating, does suffer a bit from keeping its focus on the gripes and accusations between Hollywood actors and producers...Once the Philip K. Dick-meets-”Inception” second half kicks in, the implications grow more universal.

The franchise is sent off in style, a reminder of why it earned such praise and affection in the first place, the wolfpack giving us one final howl at the moon.

There’s no way to overstate the gorgeous look of this film, but the mannered dialogue and deliberateness of pace becomes less of an homage to Asian revenge films than a parody.

It’s a character piece, and one of the best and most understated movies I’ve ever seen about the grieving process.

The film is so engaging because it's so damn funny.

S-VHS isn’t as pants-pooping scary as the first, but it is funnier, tighter and slicker.

Not as touching or boldly transgressive as its ultra-violent peers.

This is a franchise entirely comfortable with what it is, what it’s not, and what it has to offer. It has a whole mess of “Fast” for us all, and woe be the souls who enter this film hoping to go slow.

The beats and trappings are all standard-issue, but the gags are funny enough, often enough, to offset such routine proceedings.

Despite a lead performance by the always welcome Julianne Moore it is rudderless in its presentation and outright stupid in its central conceits.

Peeples saves itself from a complete belly flop, by the barest of margins, by leaning heavily on its initial strength of good-natured charm.

In the end, his (Luhrmann) Gatsby takes the fitting form of a cocktail glass, at once undeniably polished and unfailingly empty.

The film doesn’t come into focus contextually until the closing moments, but as the bullets fly the rhythm is established right from the outset.

Two Buckleys for the price of one, but the real star here is Penn Badgley.

Irresistibly entertaining and beautiful to look at it, the film is pleasant at worst, and – at best – wisely defies its slapped-on American title, a warm reminder that love isn’t a solution so much as it’s a brilliant way of embracing life’s problems.

Post Tenebras Lux works so well because – even at its most random – it always feels like more of a single portrait of a man in crisis than it does an impish bouquet of provocative incidents.

It proves that the screen is the place where a memory can be reborn.

This is a movie that proposes a genuine, intelligent solution, both for the main character and for us. It comes at you kinda quickly (and economically, in about three wordless shots), but it hit me like a bag of dumpster-dived apples to the gut.

I spent the bulk of Paradise Love mimicking Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” It’s been a long time since I’ve seen such a disturbing film.

Downey, Jr. remains a rightfully cherished smartass figure, having as much a ball with Black’s one-liners as he had in “KKBB,” and he sells Tony’s newfound post-traumatic vulnerability more credibly than the film does.

Discordance, meet The Iceman, a film so wrong-footed it should take Eugene Levy out for a coffee.

The rare example of a film that had to have been a tonal mystery to everyone involved for the entire process of scripting, shooting, and editing. The lingering issue? They never managed to crack the case.

Although The Reluctant Fundamentalist raises some complicated questions, in the end, it doesn’t challenge that much.

In a World… is pretty much a perfect movie, chock full of fun, endless laughter, realistic love and that all-important magical movie ingredient — originality.

In a film about how hard it is to know what you want, and then to express it, Swanberg gets to the heart of the matters of the heart with disarming doses of both charm and wisdom.

As a movie, quite frankly, it stinks. As an “entertainment object,” it will no doubt find its boosters.

Subtlety is hardly at home here, with Quaid’s especially earnest performance a well-suited mask for Henry’s desperation that nonetheless amplifies the phoniness of the entire enterprise.

The film’s final shot ranks among its least graphic and yet most puzzling, a slap-in-the-face piece of punctuation that reminds the most accommodating viewers that, even on his good days, Mr. Zombie is really only making movies for an audience of one.

The emotions the Shinoharas’ story inspire are all over the road. It is at times triumphant and warm, then sad and even enraging.

In the House is crafty and juicy and ought to delight anyone whose ever thumped their chest about being a storyteller. I must confess, however, that somewhere in the third act the air started to leak from the balloon.

Glaringly indebted to several earlier works and the film overall remains beholden to one established brand above all others: Tom Cruise.

Prince Avalanche occupies a strange space between [Green's] broadly comedic fare and devoutly character-driven dramas, and while we’re happy to see him closer to the latter mode once more, let’s hope that he’ll be back in a bigger way the next time out.

Scary Movie 5 is so massively un-enjoyable, a hate crime against cinema, a ringing indictment of the depths commercialism will go to in search of the lowest common denominator.

Like the political turmoil which inspired it, Shadow Dancer is fueled by the fire to do the right thing and the sacrifice that must follow, and for 100 minutes, it’s a crackerjack ordeal to behold.

A kind and decent film, but doesn't add to Robinson's legacy.

A funny, sly directorial debut

The prolific 76-year-old British creator of character-rich, social dramas steeped in natural realism (usually) has whiffed it and whiffed it hard with this one. It’s not that it’s just “lesser Loach.” It is, in my opinion at least, humiliating.

[Brie Larson's] performance is something of a quiet revelation, and in turn, the same could be said of the film itself.

The screenplay is far too obsessed with the setup, and not at all concerned with making the villains even the least bit believable or scary.

It is a shaggy dog road movie, and a drug-hazy one at that, but beneath the silliness and character-based gags, Crystal Fairy is, I feel, an unusually insightful look at self-imposed false identities and group dynamics.

Austenland is as light and airy as a cream puff, and as entirely unfulfilling. Fans of the book may find it amusing, but those looking for heartier romantic comedy fare would do well to look elsewhere.

Simply put, Sightseers is a deliciously inappropriate and hilariously weird comedy.

At first, it’s all fun and games whenever somebody gets hurt, but that’s not enough in and of itself to sustain the movie’s tension. We’re left waiting for characters to die off without much of a vested interest in anyone’s survival.

Fruitvale is outstanding, a telling portrait and testament to the life of one man and the complicated relationships to race and class that still exist within America today.

From the concept on down, Cronenberg’s film inevitably resembles the ‘80s body horror with which father David made his name, but Brandon brings his own antiseptic eye to this queasy noir mutation, like “D.O.A.” for a self-serving near-future.

Despite the numerous patchy moments The Brass Teapot by and large squeaks by as an enjoyable entertainment.

A shapelessly propulsive mess of pop psychology and poor drama.

Wrong is more absurd and more laugh-out-loud silly than “Rubber;” it’s also less focused and more pointless.

An energetic mix of Scream-like dark comedy, senseless violence, satisfying surprises, and good old-fashioned mayhem

By any measure, 'Temptation' ranks amongst Tyler Perry's worst.

The Host gets bogged down in its “who’s kissing whom now?” dynamics, and it becomes all too easy to snicker at it.

It pulls off the tricky feat of being both commanding and subtle, emerging with its dignity intact.

The Sapphires may be your stock triumph-over-adversity show-biz story – but then, how is it that we never get tired of seeing that story?

[The Kings of Summer] is a wonderful mix of innocence, laughter and beauty that is enjoyable in the moment, yet it’s almost entirely forgettable. With too many odd asides and complications, what should have been a straightforward journey into self-discovery and the difficulties of growing up is waylaid by unnecessary moments and slightly self-indulgent filmmaking.

This Chris Sanders fellow knows how to craft a heart-warming animation, and if not for a few minor problems this would have had a legitimate shot at the best animated movie of 2013.

The action is the real star here, and it’s all good enough. It isn’t great – the aerial special effects are distractingly cheap – but at least there’s lots of it on display.

A true New York City movie, alive every minute. There’s some Woody Allen in its veins, but it’s driven more by the free-for-all spirit you find in pictures like Peter Sollett’s 2002 “Raising Victor Vargas” and Spike Lee’s 1986 “She’s Gotta Have It.”

The remarkable storytelling that eventually emerges in Eden is something you should see, providing you feel that you can stomach it.

With a jaunty musical score by Alexandre Desplat and a pleasant visual style aided by Marco Onorato’s colorful cinematography, Garrone delivers a story that’s part fairy tale, part religious allegory and part scathing indictment.

An active affront to logic, placing us in a world we firmly know doesn’t exist.

It isn’t just the bright colors and the costumes but every visual aspect of Byzantium that sings. Neil Jordan knows where to put the camera. It’s just a shame he wasn’t able to inject a little life inside that frame.

The Company You Keep at least manages to maintain an audience’s interest for a solid 80 percent of the film. The ending is a slight flop, which keeps the film from an overall recommendation, and in the stark light of day, it seems fairly evident not everything adds up.

The downright gnarliest mainstream horror release in recent memory, Evil Dead is certainly a considerable and occasionally commendable dose of the ol’ ultra-violence, but Fede Alvarez’ Raimi-sanctioned update of 1981’s cult favorite only really has that demented determination going for it.

Like the back half of its namesake, Wonderstone isn’t terribly hip, edgy or new itself, just amusing enough to pass the time. While Scardino and friends do manage to end the film on an admirably nutty note, this gathering of comedic minds ultimately fails to produce any true movie magic.

This tiny friends-and-family production has the vibe of a project done on weekends and after school. That’s no knock. It is vibrant and bubbly and just clever enough to engage people who wouldn’t normally watch a black-and-white micro-budget Shakespeare adaptation without any big movie stars.

This funny and touching film could do with a bit of editing. It tends to drag a bit, especially near the end, and though we’re privy to the thoughts and feelings of Polley’s family, we’re given scant verbalized insight into her own thinking.

Dead Man Down is actually mildly entertaining, without being particularly fun.

Even at thirty seconds a piece, 26 shorts would feel, fittingly, like overkill. The ABCs of Death has no shortage of inventive, ironic and gruesome sketches, but the novelty of its successes just barely outweighs its stillborn stuff.

Actions do have their consequences, though, and Weitz doesn’t try to end things too tidily for their own good. Were only that he had succeeded in committing to one of those films over the other, then Admission might have been this year’s “Liberal Arts” rather than this year’s “Smart People.”

Emperor may not be the most dazzling of history lessons, but it never treats the past as a dusty, deserted place.

Raimi manages to keep things engaging, which is a very real act of wizardry in and of itself.

There is true beauty in the despair that pervades The Place Beyond the Pines, a film plotted out in triptych, a treatise on the moral compromises we all make to protect and provide for our loved ones.

It’s shallow, it’s boring, it’s poignant, it’s clever, it’s poorly acted, it’s intentionally poorly acted, it has no story, it has marvelous scenes, it is artful, it is hallucinatory, it is shoddily put together. All response is valid.

Assisted by passionless central performances and dull dialogue, Mungiu succeeds only in exhausting our patience, not in conveying a message.

To the Wonder is distinctly lacking in oomph and, without an emotional connection, without anything interesting happening on the screen, the beauty can only take you so far before the endeavor falls like a house of cards.

The idea of the film is certainly clever enough, it’s the execution that lacks finesse.

A Place at the Table is a fairly no-frills effort, but the ideas behind it are sound.

At the end of the day, it’s a sure-handed sequel, but not a terribly thrilling one.

Yes, surely for them, the lucky few and probable many, 21 and Over will be the Best Movie Ever. For the rest of us, though, it’s something of a chore.

It is highly likely you’ll forget the movie by the time you go to bed.

It does a marvelous job at giving us an impressionistic taste of horrific circumstances without using them to beat us into submission.

The most frightening thing about the franchise at this point is that it just keeps on going, undaunted by the characteristics by which the first film made its name. Family is still family and a brand is still a brand, but the blade… well, it’s only grown dull.

Its ultimate merits may be few, but if nothing else, it stands on its own sweaty terms.

Struck by Lightning may appeal to fans of Colfer’s work on “Glee,” but as a film it’s utterly lacking in scope, depth or meaning beyond an immediate chuckle or two.

Zero Dark Thirty is precise, definitive filmmaking, yet Bigelow refuses to hand over easy answers. Some people call that evasion. I call it the ultimate despair.

The violence is so indifferently presented that it has no kick; it’s not grim or graphic enough to shock, but it doesn’t rev us up, either. The picture’s various shoot-’em-up sequences are so generically conceived and shot that each one is indistinguishable from the next – by the movie’s end, they may as well all collapse into an exhausted heap.

A Haunted House, its despicable bigotry aside, is also a not-very-good comedy.