The Judge is risible Hollywood dreck, a star vehicle with nothing genuine driving it, and at 142 minutes, it is nearly impossible to defend.

Witherspoon does really uncompromising work here, playing Cheryl without any hesitancy or any fear or any ego. It's not a glamorous role, and she doesn't try to make Cheryl seem perfect, and she doesn't sand off this woman's rough edges.

Other than the unsubtle but vivid storytelling, the main joy of 99 Homes is seeing two excellent but very different actors spark off each other for almost the entire runtime, in a brace of performances both brilliant and brilliantly matched.

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.

I can't remember the last time I saw a family animation so visually rich, tightly scripted and charmingly performed which was also built on a sound and progressive message.

Manglehorn is a lush, hazy drama that requires a certain open-mindedness, but there's no doubting the craft of its director, who continues to prove himself one of the less predictable and most skilled craftsmen around.

For sheer craftsmanship, As Above, So Below is the type of horror film you should see theatrically. It's really well-made, even if it ends up feeling a little familiar by the end.

Birdman dares to be ambiguous, but unlike most essays in ambiguity, it is also a hell of a lot of fun.

It's precisely as bonkers as it sounds, and at two hours, both wearisome and claustrophobic... But flashes of fury and beauty remain.

This entire film is like someone raised a kid in a room, cut off from all contact with the outside world, and all he had was a stack of Hustlers, a stack of Soldier of Fortunes, and a bunch of black-and-white stills from old detective movies, and at the age of 14, that kid gets turned loose and spends two hours screaming in your face about these stories he's been writing.

While I think If I Stay has to do a fair amount of juggling to get its premise to work, there is a cumulative power to it that I found undeniable and earned.

Frank rides a really strange tone, and director Lenny Abrahamson deserves credit for how he manages to make the strange and the sad and the funny all feel like it's part of the same film.

[Crudup] responds with a performance that's funny, heartbreaking and confidently musical, anchoring a film with a challenging and sometimes shaky premise that very much requires his steadying presence.

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.

There are some actual big ideas bubbling around somewhere below the surface of the film, but it's so ham-handed, so unable to grapple with the full implications of any of those ideas, that it actually becomes offensive.

It is forgettable fluff, but well-delivered, and it suggests that they'll be able to keep making these as long as they can prop up the cast, and with the younger generation making a decent showing this time out, they may even be able to hand it off when the time comes.

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.

Guardians Of The Galaxy is the most charming Marvel movie so far. The primary ensemble (Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper, and Vin Diesel) is perhaps the most winning group of characters they've introduced in any of these movies.

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.

Everything is written to theme. Everything moves the film forward. When it comes down to the last half-hour, Braff manages a long sustained emotional crescendo packed with both laughs and tears, and it is accomplished work, carefully balanced, beautifully constructed.

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.

While I thought it was gently moving at times, it feels like Gondry is hoping for a much more powerful impact, and the film just doesn't swing hard enough to make that happen.