Jason Reitman’s adaptation of Joyce Maynard’s Labor Day is as consistently assured a piece of filmmaking as any we’ve seen from the filmmaker and very much in keeping with the decreasingly glib nature of his output.

Ejiofor’s tightly clenched conviction perfectly embodies hope and righteousness against all odds. He gives the best performance of his career to date, and what’s more, he gives “Slave” its bruised, beating heart with every scene.

There are some laughs – and a few moments worthy of tears – but there’s a breaking point of believability in here somewhere that keeps Nebraska merely good as opposed to great.

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

The film blinks too fast to maintain a coherent vision.

The whole picture is lifeless and without consequence.

This is a story that has everything you’re looking for, provided that you’re looking for absolutely nothing.

The Walt Disney World-set Escape From Tomorrow is both a great gimmick-dependent story and a remarkable piece of filmmaking. It is a radical, transgressive departure that exploits new technology in heretofore unseen ways.

Frankly, no one in this ensemble is done any favors by Jason Hall and Barry Levy’s screenplay, a “Duplicity” for dummies filled to the brim with double-crossing cliches.

This is a story told in shards; Wong is so obsessed with visual details – faces refracted as if in a broken mirror, or fragile arcs of blood being traced out on the pavement by the feet of two feuding kung fu masters – that the story he’s trying to tell is partly obscured by them.

Faithful to the superficial thrills and flaws of the original.

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

A visually colorful but otherwise vanilla continuation of the series.

A.C.O.D. proves to be both a solid debut for Zicherman and a worthy vehicle for Scott and company, one that provides plenty of awkward laughs and generally gives the American farce a good name again.

The point of this film is the spell it weaves and, by and large, it is successful. It’s the music, it’s the cinematography, it’s the score, it’s Casey Affleck’s hollow speaking voice — they all add up to something that resembles a fever dream facsimile of an eventful movie.

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.

It’s half of a good movie, and another half that no one asked for or wanted.

Frankly, Elysium is a bit of a liberal’s wet dream: the good guys want accessible healthcare, while the bad guys want to do away with undocumented immigrants.

The premise is provoking and well-conceived, confidently moving things forward until the increasingly knotty rules of the film’s universe eventually come to overbear the experience a bit in the homestretch.

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.

In a season stuffed with empty eye candy, 2 Guns comes along as something of a welcome burrito — plenty satisfying and hardly nutritious.

The Smurfs 2 is not so much of a film as it is a collection of images and sounds that bludgeon you.

From a distance The Spectacular Now is mere soap opera, but it is one of those films that grow more fascinating upon inspection.

Boasting a compelling cast of characters, Wasteland” is a very smooth feature film debut from director Rowan Athale, and one that invites repeat viewings.

The Canyons has all the elegance and depth of a daytime soap opera, peppered with flashes of name brand nudity for a tantalizing hook. It’s a slog.

Much like Brandy, “List” tries and tries and tries to get the job done, but frankly, the satisfaction only ever comes in spurts.

The Wolverine reveals itself to be a film in desperate need of a point, in dire need of consequences and in a wandering search of any semblance of emotional weight.

When Allen conceives of a character this great, it’s hard not to wish for him to slow down and maybe write that extra draft to refine his creation, but Blanchett – at once both repellant and eminently relatable – uses the casual tone to her advantage, the same way that monster movies use miniatures for scale.