There are scenes I dug and a few set-pieces that work, and there’s an overall level of intensity that I like from director Paul Greengrass. Taken as a whole, though, this is very familiar territory, and I just don’t care when the stakes are this low and the violence is this rough.

This film says everything the first two films tried to say, but better and in a more coherent thematic way.

Whatever affection I once held for this story was ruined by this documentary, and I hope that these guys are, once and for all, finished with Raiders and remaking it. I certainly am.

Warcraft errs in how much it asks the audience to juggle, and as a result, the things that the film does well (and I think there are many) are muffled somewhat.

From scene to scene, there are some beautiful images in the fantasy world where this is set, but frustratingly, it never adds up to something that comes to life. This feels like terrific production design and costuming in search of a story worth telling.

While Bercot's intentions are admirable, she and co-screenwriter Marcia Romano have conjured up too many moments that play out like thousands of courtroom scenes you've seen before.

I’m not sure how a filmmaker whose work normally speaks to me as clearly as Snyder’s does could deliver something that feels this confused, this impersonal, and this corporate. It is a confounding mess of a movie, and while there are individual sequences that I enjoyed as isolated moments, it is almost breathtakingly incoherent storytelling.

Overall, it is false, both narratively and visually, in a way that just doesn't sit right with me, and it feels like a lesser effort from Howard, an itch he scratched but that hold little interest for anyone else.

While [Lawrence] does robust, heartfelt work in the lead in his new film Joy, this is the most miscast she's been in a while, and it's such a strangely imagined film in the first place that it never really gets its bearings.

There are a number of moments where Doughtery introduces something truly interesting and then never returns to it. Yes, the movie is perhaps overstuffed with interesting ideas, but that can be just as frustrating as a film with no good ideas at all.

They have tried, with this Daniel Craig run of films, to elevate the Bond movies so they are more than just acceptably silly spy movies, and one of the reasons SPECTRE is so frustrating is because it feels like the collapse of that ambition, and it is in one moment that you can see the entire thing burn to the ground.

To the bitter end, the series manages to wring some fun, solid scares out of something other invading something utterly familiar.

The Program works when it has you questioning how on earth this secret could be kept so quiet for so long when so many people knew exactly what was going on.

The movie wants to make a statement about the intersection of art and family, but it’s all too muddled to add up to anything that astute.

Cranston has his moments and you have to laud his attention to detain in channeling Trumbo’s unique voice and mannerisms. Unfortunately, he’s so committed that his character borders on being a caricature.

An impressive cast and significant real-life events can’t trump the fact it’s a badly made movie.

All the actresses do their best with the material, but only Mulligan truly transcends its limitations.

Its admittedly interesting source material, but the movie’s tone is all over the place and not in a good way.

The pacing on this one is flaccid, and while I think he has some interesting points to make, the framing device to the film is a total bust.

Despite the worthy efforts of stars Tom Hiddleston and Elizabeth Olsen, the Hank Williams biopic I Saw The Light is a shockingly bad movie.

If this was someone's first film, I'd be okay with the small signs of life that make this merely an annoying film instead of a completely dreadful one, but for this to be the latest work by a guy who made his first impression on the general public by sticking to his guns and refusing to compromise his voice… unthinkable.

Neither the disaster the fanboy nation seems to be itching to attack nor a significant improvement over the Tim Story movies, Fantastic Four seems doomed to please no one.

Watts co-wrote the screenplay with Christopher D. Ford (“Robot & Frank”) and, frankly, it’s not as clever or compelling as it wants to be.... The filmmaker does deserve credit, however, for conjuring up some nicely tense cinematic moments.

The biggest problem I have is that the film seems determined to push the outrageousness as far as possible, and there comes a point where it just stops working because it's all so outrageous.

The film feels 30 minutes longer than its 109 minute run time mostly due to the fact that “Paper” seems distinctly like three different films.

Unfortunately, Southpaw descends into a tedious exercise of formulaic filmmaking that leaves you feeling worse for Gyllenhaal and Whitaker than the characters they play on screen.

Like most comedy sequels, it is too long and too indulgent in calling back to the original film.

There's a slightly muted quality to the film, though, which keeps it from being a complete pleasure, but considering how rarely we get a new film from Dante, I'll take something slight over nothing at all.

There's nothing particularly wrong with the ghost story itself. It makes sense, there's an internal logic to the way things happen, and Whannell does his best to keep a certain pace up so there are near-constant ghost attacks punctuated by scenes of the characters trying to figure out how to handle them. Quinn's just not a very interesting character.

The resulting film is yet another example of a Black List script that does not work on the screen. And, frankly, we're not sure an auteur other than Van Sant would have fared any better.

Hou and cinematographer Ping Bin Lee (“Renoir”) produce some stunning images on location (one conversation takes place as a fog beautifully emits from the bottom of a valley), but it’s hard to find a thematic connection between the directing style Hou has chosen and the story.

Demoustier is charismatic enough to almost help Donzelli pull it off, but Elkaïm is so stiff as Julien you never understand why Marguerite is willing to risk her life in the first place.

Poltergeist is professional and slick and entirely fine. It's also unnecessary in every way.

His characters may spout Kant and debate the ethics of different human interactions, but it's only sugar coating on top of what is effectively a simple and familiar story.

Tomorrowland may be well-made, but whether you're talking about it thematically or dramatically, this is a profoundly mixed bag.

The film feels very tiny, and intentionally so. This isn't a horror film at all, which is an odd thing to say when you're talking about a movie with zombies in it.

I'm baffled by the screenplay credit. Richard Price is a muscular writer, and he's done some great work in the crime world over the years, but this feels like a screenplay by someone who has never written a film before, full of first-draft dialogue and weird structural and tonal issues. It's almost amazing how tone-deaf it is.

It would not surprise me if most reviews for this film are openly hostile. It is a wretched piece of writing, and an absurd final product. It almost seems pointless to pile on, though. The audience who loves Sparks is going to go see this film and they'll no doubt walk away satisfied.

Visually uninteresting, dramatically inert, and remarkably silly no matter how seriously it tries to play things straight, Insurgent is franchise management and little more.

Run All Night starts off on the wrong note and never recovers. It is entirely too serious and entirely too thin, and that combination turns what might have worked as a pulpy action romp into this po-faced, overly somber march from one unlikely plot point to another.

Chappie feels like Blomkamp and his co-writer Terri Tatchell had three or four different films they wanted to make, and instead of figuring out which one actually worked, they just made them all at the same time.

It helps that Gelb shoots this less like a horror film and more like a drama. When the film does finally kick into overt horror, it becomes more familiar and less overall effective.

The best moments in this film are the moments where it feels like they're just throwing jokes at the screen. The moments that are toughest are the ones where they try to create some sort of emotional beat, because the moment we're supposed to invest in these guys at all, the movie crumbles.

It's a very slick film. But in the end, that slick becomes suffocating, and there's no real pulse here.

No one who sees I Smile Back will question if Silverman was right for the role, they will simply question whether this was a story that needed to be told in the first place.

Beyond the logistics of the screenplay, Beckwith makes some stylistic choices that hinder the story's cinematic opportunities.

While Longo's actions were horrifying and his connection to Finkel is unique, Goold somehow can't make this material as interesting as you'd expect it to be.

As a theatrical experience, I Am Michael is fairly forgettable, but it does manage to pierce in places, and it carries a cumulative charge that is bigger than any of the individual emotional pieces.

Taken 3 is formula filmmaking at its most formulaic, a film that exists only because it makes sense financially.

There's a slightly lurching quality to the way things play out here, like Cross knew what he wanted to do, but he wasn't committed enough to any of the characters to make them more than the joke.

Whether it's past its pop-culture expiration date or not, Into The Woods deserved a more visually inventive director to help make it work, and instead, we get something that feels somehow reduced by its translation to the screen.

The real problem for me is that every one of the films feels exactly the same, and this is where I think I'm at odds with what the studios want from these films.

It is a perfect example of marketing driving the machine. It's also a profoundly silly movie that really isn't even trying to play by the conventional rules of family animation.

There are gags that work, that pay off in a big way, and gags that fall flat, derailing entire sequences. Because the world around them is so absurd, the film's attempts at creating some genuine heart for Harry and Lloyd doesn't really work.

There are laughs in the movie, but they feel like they are isolated gags, not sustained runs, and in order for this to work as character comedy, they'd have to be playing better defined characters and not just heightened versions of themselves.

Overall, American Sniper is a solidly-staged but unexceptional picture, filled with overly familiar dramatic situations and a surprisingly blindered view of the world around its central character.

Leonetti doesn't seem to have any particular knack for the staging of suspense or fear.

Intermittently playful, consistently confounding, finally petrified, it's a film of fussy, cultivated austerity.

As a biopic for Fischer, Pawn Sacrifice can certainly encourage viewers to research more about him. It’s just unfortunate Zwick couldn’t bring a slightly more understated approach to the entire endeavor.

Ferrara is openly inviting comparison with Pasolini’s work in this ambitious but messy and flawed piece, where reality bends and stretches and sensation rules.

A Little Chaos earns one compliment, but it's unfortunately a backhanded one: it’s watchable.

Jackie & Ryan is, in the final analysis, perfectly serviceable cotton candy.

It's a dull film.

It's a film with one foot in the past, and that's not necessarily a criticism, but unless you're actually doing something interesting with your chosen nostalgic framework, it seems like a slightly artificial way to try to induce that Saturday matinee glow.

Where Imitation Game ultimately falters is in tackling Turing's later years and subsequent demise. In some ways, this period is meant to bookend the film, but instead just leaves unanswered questions while diminishing actual historical events.

The script by Luke Greenfield and Nicholas Thomas makes too many easy choices, and it simply doesn't work in terms of maintaing credible audience sympathy.

The film barely services the main characters and their arcs, so there's really no room for the sort of delicate etching needed to make supporting characters live and breathe. The film is at its best when it embraces the goofy nature of disaster films in general, and when it gives the audience the red meat it craves so desperately.

The film is a mild pleasure at best. There's nothing necessarily wrong with it, and it's well-crafted, but the screenplay by Steven Knight is so remarkably free of anything resembling actual drama that I'm almost mystified by it.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is about as predictable as movies get these days.

There are moments of real wonder and even beauty amidst the slam and the bang and the big bada boom, and while Lucy is a mixed bag, it's been mixed by a master, and it is delightfully, happily insane.

There's plenty of potential there for really sharp comedy, but Allen's script just lobs softballs.

The Purge: Anarchy improves upon the original, but it's still a long way from being the sort of smart, savage satire it would have to be to fully exploit such a socially charged hook.

These self-actualization stories, while certainly well-intentioned, get exhausting after a while, and it also starts to make storytelling for kids feel like it's all wrapped in this language of affirmation, and it smothers the simple joy of creating good characters we want to spend time with.

The film wants to be wild and dark and crazy, but it's also a big studio summer movie, and so it feels like it flirts with truly insane material, but without ever really committing to it.

Eastwood is rarely a careless director, even when his handling on the material is this badly fumbled, but even his typically astute command of period and place feels off here.

Heli executes its shocks with sleek, gasp-inducing effectiveness, but neither its politics, nor its shifts in physical perspective, ever surprise or disorientate us.

While I can see how there is a version of this film that might be able to successfully grapple with its central metaphor, I'm not sure Stromberg is the guy to make that movie.

A Million Ways To Die In The West certainly has merits, and in some ways, it is a step forward for MacFarlane, but it is also deeply undisciplined, and it undercuts its own best instincts in ways I find almost unbearably frustrating.

Lost River is a beautifully dressed minor effort, a movie in which all the muscle in the world can't transform the thin, thin script into something more.

Julianne Moore seems to be the one person in the film that truly gets the tone right, playing Havana like a person walking a tightrope over a yawning pit of psychosis, her every emotion bubbling up and threatening to knock her off.

While there are some very strong performances in the film, the movie is inert, dramatically speaking, and covers such familiar ground that I can't really recommend it.

It's a completely average film that makes a few terrible choices.

There is nothing in this version that make any of this feel urgent or even important.

The film plays with some funny ideas about time travel, and like any good time travel movie, it flirts with paradox and what happens when you violate the rules of time and space. It doesn't really go far enough with those ideas, though, and the end result is too often timid instead of brash and silly.

The script by Keir Pearson is admirably restrained in many ways, but it is also almost completely devoid of anything that would give the film the feel of actual life.

Rio 2 is a perfect example of franchise maintenance in place of storytelling.