There’s gold in the premise of “The Purge” and its dismissal of subtlety. But like the residents of its world, when given the opportunity, it drops restraint and goes for blood.

A darkly tense drama that rarely hits anything resembling an emotional beat.

What ultimately holds the film back, I believe, is its tendency to err too far on the side of that sweetness — it indulges too often in the hallmarks of the mediocre indie, the stuff a press release might call quirk, to level its more substantial points with real seriousness.

While the film certainly targets a particular audiences, those viewers who don’t fall squarely into that demographic should nevertheless find the film pleasant enough, its pastoral ambitions compensating for its lack of finesse.

While Bad Words is a little too dopey to take seriously, this is compensated for with a handful of truly amusing sequences.

This long-distance love story is comfort food in any language, perfectly agreeable and unlikely to surprise.

A nicely-made action-thriller, one with analog car chases and non-digital explosions, like a long tall glass of cold water in a world that mostly offers you Bud Light or Crystal Pepsi.

A Stallone / Schwarzenegger film that isn't completely beneath them.

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

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

[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.

As the anticipated follow-up to Roman Coppola’s marvelous 2001 film “CQ,” this is something of a letdown, but as a breezy romp it could be far, far worse.

Mama is one of those pictures that holds you aloft on its vaporous mood of dread – the occasional silliness of the plot mechanics don’t matter so much.

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.

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

Educational content, clever and photorealistic dinosaur CGI, and John Leguizamo voicing a prehistoric bird. What else would one need for a fun movie stew?

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.

Worth making a little noise about if you’re a horror fan.

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.

We’re given fairly straightforward talking-head accounts complemented with an increasing amount of archival material as the narrative progresses further towards the present, all coated in a VH1-suited slickness that belies the reported funk of the studio itself. Fortunately, that slickness is in service of tales from some substantial musicians.

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.

You won’t be upset you saw it, you’ll have some fun, you’ll see Wolvie beat the living hell out of a helicopter. These are good things, and it’s why studios are provided huge budgets to play with in the first place.

It’s minor LaBute, but nonetheless short and bittersweet.

Maniac is a bit like watching an amputee play hopscotch: there’s no way that it’s polite to stare for this long, but you just have to see if this guy’s gonna make it to the end.

Little chance of finding realism or romance but the laughs are there.

It’s the odd touch of local color — like the backdrop of an abandoned amusement park, or the arrival of a Civil War steamer crewed by Confederate zombies — that makes these routine acts of derring-do a bit easier to bear.

With its painfully plain-spoken conflicts and eventually oversold gestures of kindness, Camp X-Ray may offer frustratingly little insight into the hazy world of wartime morality, but if nothing else, it suggests that Stewart may escape her own “Twilight”-shaped prison yet.

RoboCop has sound and fury to spare and even an inspired idea or two lurking beneath that polished exterior, but much like its upgraded namesake, this watchable mess ultimately lacks a prime directive to call its own.

One terrible sub-plot away from being a legitimately good movie.

Since it took 28 years to get it to the big screen, the fact that the end result feels rushed and hasty probably qualifies as irony.

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

At best, White House Down is a sure-fire way to kill two hours, if not countless brain cells.

Though its uncluttered simplicity and refreshing lack of cliches render it sublimely enjoyable, the film never digs deep enough to give itself much weight.

Where The Banshee Chapter thrives is the overwhelming claustrophobia of the film.

The film has much more talking than acting, so McDonagh is wise to give it all the zest he can muster... But McDonagh, for all his agility as a writer, stumbles in fleshing out the story.

Over-plotty, convoluted, full of unanswered questions and unquestioned assumptions — is a big part of the problem here, but director Neil Burger (“Limitless”) pulls off a neat trick here, in that Divergent is a pretty diverting piece of moviemaking pulled from a not-especially-good story.

While it’s only modestly effective at the serious stuff, at least it’s free of sanctimony and preciousness.

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.

Afternoon Delight will both depress and engage an audience, usually just depending on the minute of the movie you find yourself watching.

Murdoch’s film is fraught with ambition and aspiration, but a little thin on talent and technique.

More focused and less preachy than its exploitation-riffing predecessor, the comparably shoddy Machete Kills nonetheless peters out in the homestretch (and, for some, surely sooner).

Riddick is a fractured skeleton of a script, with each distinct installment scratching its own itch.

Full of truth that's ultimately diluted by a lack of focus.

An amiable cast and a satisfying enough story make The Hundred-Foot Journey stick to your ribs, even if it’s hard to swallow early on.

I’ve given A Field in England two tries now and each time found it to be occasionally ferocious and funny, severely trippy for stretches and at times outright tedious. With that said, I still can’t wait to see what the man does next.

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.

Drug War is by no means a bad film, but it doesn’t do much to push the needle of originality, and doesn’t glide enough to represent perfection of the genre.

This is not a film in need of creativity, passion or energy; what it needed was restraint, consideration and direction. This is not saying that Birdman is awful, or a debacle; there are superb scenes here, as well as excellent performance moments, but they get drowned out in the flood of Iñárritu’s ambition, energy and fantasies.

Despicable Me 2 is fun, especially near the culmination. Structural issues aside, it’s impossible not to like these characters, all of them, rendered with love, always entertaining even when the story around them doesn’t make much sense.

Ride Along is a strong recommend when Hart is talking, but merely a mediocre attempt at a movie when he’s not.

It certainly doesn’t hurt that Douglas, De Niro, Freeman, and Kline are just plain fun to watch together. As predictable and occasionally uncomfortable as Last Vegas can be, it’s an assured crowd-pleaser.

Not many side-splitting jokes, but a goofy glee is smeared across it all.

The film is starved for the kind of nuance Kore-eda wields effortlessly elsewhere. What’s left without it is something merely schematic.

Parkland mines some interesting scenes, if not in an entirely coherent fashion, resolving as more of an interesting concept than a fully rendered and effective film.

Baena takes a well-tread road, leaving behind the guts of his promising story and never capitalizing on the charms of either romance or his leading lady.

The Other Woman eschews plenty of standard genre expectations to make an unexpectedly friendship-friendly film.

While Draft Day is a very agreeable and predictable movie, it is also very timely.

Either I’m getting dumber or the “Transformers” sequels are getting more coherent.

It's solid, if ultimately uninspired, July entertainment.

The surprising part is how, once you get over the crude humor that the teen-movie genre demands, Get Over It is a nice little movie.

Like memories of your latest high, it's all briefly amusing, mildly embarrassing, and - ultimately -- completely forgettable.

Gibson's performance is robbed of his customary humor, and he flounders around in search of the character's core.

Little of this is plausible, but it is beguiling.

Perhaps you have to have lived through the 1960s to relate.

Isn't a must-see, but it's definitely worthwhile.

The effects never really get ahead of the characters or the script's layered personality.

The film's light success really comes down to Shannon, though, the exuberant "SNL" star whose alter ego actually seems more real and sympathetic here than she does in brief TV skits.

If only this movie were rich enough, strong enough to be worthy of this (Dafoe's) performance.

A cool and rather detached movie...Heat generates lots of energy but gives off little light.

The best thing about this new Godzilla is that it spares no expense or effort to deliver big, burly IMAX-ified action... The worst thing about this new Godzilla is how that’s the best thing about it.

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.

Far from perfect, and at 122 minutes it's way too long, but after surviving an overly schematic and even hectoring first half, finally delivers the emotional goods.

An unexpectedly adult emotional rollercoaster with some very cold and unsettling things to say about men, women, marriage, and the lies we so often tell each other.

A magic-realistic fable whose lows soon prove as infuriating as its highs are intoxicating.

One Day in September does "being there" very well -- I just wish director Macdonald had spent a little more time explaining why we should want to be there in the first place.

It's all overblown: too much music, too much cutting, too much zooming, too much computerized special effects, too much clanky symbolism that never works.

An OK debut effort, but like so many "Pulp Fiction" wannabes, it lacks freshness and energy.

This relationship might be strong enough to carry an observational novel, but the movie feels like it's missing something.

Burdge is left to do much of the heavy lifting in terms of inviting the audience into her protagonist’s shaky state, and her performance boasts a remarkable emotional precision throughout — if ever there’s a reason to seek this one out, it would be for her.

An occasionally powerful, always heartfelt drama.

There’s just too much good stuff to dismiss White Bird in a Blizzard out of hand, even if it does have a somewhat dull and desultory plot.

Doesn't go the distance in either story or style, unwilling to liberate itself from real or presumed expectations about what it takes to sell a movie featuring teenagers.

A snoozy-but-diverting, lightly constipated B-movie.

Look to the cast as the best reason to see this film.

It's sumptuous, archaic, and longer than a firehouse ladder.

It’s merely somewhat better than last year’s meandering dud — a slight improvement on a movie that should have been pretty easy to improve upon.

An exercise in outrageous style over substance.

If anything saves this movie, it's the acting.

I really wish a younger man than Clint Eastwood had directed it.

Boyd would be smart to add a little sound and fury next time around. War is hell, after all.

While there are some okay side stories (stuff with the daughters and daughters’ friends) it kinda feels like attending a dinner party and checking in on the first world problems of a friend you kinda like, but don’t like enough to ask any follow up questions.

Looks like a very cheerful and imaginative accident.

When the film is sexy, it's truly sexy, assuming that you believe sexiness has something to do with the exploration of a connection between people.

Somewhere around the beginning of Hour Two, the narrative loses momentum, and Pino Donaggio's molasses-thick score begins to drag everything down with it. The ending also lacks the surprise twist that seems to be promised .

About two lives in which transformation is a constant, destabilizing threat to freedom and sanity. That's a very provocative premise, though halfway through the movie Doyle and Walsh abandon its potential to go for easy laughs.

A difficult, ambiguous film.

Actually funnier than the first movie, but getting to those parts requires a little bit of patient mental fast-forwarding.

Kusama understands her subject intimately, and it shows.