The film's anthropological interest in Indonesia is the smartest thing in an otherwise familiar scramble of kidnapped babes, expensive jewelry and millions of bullets.

One Direction: This Is Us is not the raw confessional that title might imply but rather both a primer and new product presentation.

Passion will only rekindle your love affair with De Palma to the extent that his luridly artisan chiller classics are readily available afterward for another viewing.

Even given the character's extreme introspection and withdrawal, Tautou's performance is too often opaque.

Chen's excessive propriety veers treacherously close to barely disguised repulsion.

What the movie could use is a little more faith — in the power of its message and the art of filmmaking. Instead, Heaven is sincere to a fault, and the closer it gets to heaven, the more it wavers.

Some instances of impiousness work better than others.

Laguionie's animation is a lovely jumble of thick lines and saturated pastels...But while the artist-as-deity concept was flattering enough to get The Painting nominated for a 2012 Cesar Award, its big ideas about equality and friendship are flatly 2-D.

Statham's broody charisma and veteran cinematographer Chris Menges' ("The Killing Fields") eclectic views of contemporary London help hold interest, even as we ponder what Knight is really trying to say.

MacFarlane is a very funny dude, and there are times A Million Ways to Die is indeed funny. But too often the movie feels half-baked.

The problem is that Antal and Metallica took two different movies — a fine live-band document and a supernatural end-of-days romp — and smashed them together to make both of them more boring.

Writer-director siblings Jen and Sylvia Soska allow their film to turn slack and unfocused after an enticingly lurid, wickedly tense first half.

The film is helped by Costner's self-deprecating, aw-shucks charm. The actor is game whether he's being asked to fight off truculent teens or treacherous terrorists.

From the Head settles into an enjoyably miserablist episodic rhythm.

For all his attention to the exactitude of creating righteous cocktails, Tirola never quite nails a specific structure, focus or theme.

It's a tortuous, unsatisfying movie, but it's not like any other film I've ever seen about an artist, and it has sequences of blinding intensity.

Far too conventional underneath all the trappings, you wish it would howl.

A challenge to eco-orthodoxy, Pandora's Promise subscribes to its own dogma. The lack of opposing voices diminishes the film, even as Stone raises issues that shouldn't be discounted out of hand.

At the moment, modestly amusing does not stave off that desire for a really great live-action family film after years of watching the terrain land-grabbed by animation.

Without Davidson Stargate might seem clunky and routine, but he gives it a weirdo charge. It may be a lousy movie, but it's a more enjoyably lousy movie than most.

Fifty Shades encourages us to buy into this credulity-straining scenario because the actors go well together (casting director Francine Maisler did the heavy lifting), Dornan's steely resolve facing off nicely against Johnson's engaging feistyness as each tries to make this cross-cultural relationship work on his or her own terms.

As a showcase for accomplished performers tugging heart strings in a holiday awards season, it's perfectly serviceable.

Thanks for Sharing is a bit like the recovery scene it digs into — filled with intoxicating highs and dispiriting lows.

The best you can say about the over-the-top Filth is that it's a brisk wallow, with enough elbow room to marvel at McAvoy's sinkhole aria of a performance.

The frustrating thing about the British heist flick Wasteland is how it creates two admirably entertaining storytelling strands — one a friendship saga, the other a robbery caper — yet can't merge the two successfully.

The result is as sugary as a fatal toothache, though it's hard to hate a film that merely wants to give the world a hug.

This is Shakespeare lite, which ultimately makes for Shakespeare slightly trite.

Though it's built around a kernel of tender feeling, the comedy never transcends its basic contrivance.

Director Anais Barbeau-Lavalette builds a persuasive sensory immediacy in Inch'Allah, even as her story grows increasingly contrived.

Unfortunately, the film doesn't show its subject's creative process as much as that of her collaborators.

It's just all too breezy to have any real effect.

The overall sense is of a rushed, simplistic installment in a well-worn biography franchise.

In trying to say everything, Plus One reveals it doesn't have much to say at all.

Flat jokes, uneven performances, and a predictable romance help make Bounty Killer a lot less fun than it should be — a killer shame, given its boldly gonzo premise.

Ray Ray's belated journey into manhood never feels sentimental or precious. But it also never strikes an emotional tone that's more than blandly agreeable.

Despite the linked advantages of generous helpings of the man's high octane music and a star performance by Chadwick Boseman that's little short of heroic, Get on Up is more frustrating than fulfilling, a disjointed film that suffers from having a more ambitious plan than it's got the ability to execute.

The real treasure in "TV Man" is Kosareff's impressive collection of old print and television ads, archival footage and big- and small-screen clips illustrating TV-set culture.

The film offers disappointingly little insight into the music itself.

As violent act begets silly exchange begets another violent act, Sweetwater squanders its noteworthy resources — a cast enjoying themselves (especially Isaacs and Harris), and some effectively brooding outdoor cinematography.

On the surface, Anderson seems to have all the necessary pieces for a surreal psycho pop. But the fear factor eludes him, leaving Stonehearst Asylum more insipid than insane.

No matter how he shuffles the pieces, Mr. Benson can’t shake free of the old storytelling ideas, from his steamroller plot to his programmatic characters and narrative beats that, by their very existence, signal that everything will slide into place as expected.

Although What If nobly attempts to honor and embellish the tropes of the genre rather than reinvent them, the filmmakers get tripped up on their own good intentions and uncertain comedic instincts.

Light, frenetic and anecdote-rich, it's the kind of back-patting Hollywood toast to the guy behind the guy that's breezy good fun if you don't examine it too hard.

The plot is lean, the dialogue is spare and there are some intriguing stabs at intellectual and emotional terrain. But the pacing is deadly, so slow there might be time for a catnap or two without missing anything important.

The film's overall presentation...feels a bit too cloistered and the subject perhaps too limited for feature-length attention.

The genre elements of the romantic comedy Wedding Palace attempt a transpacific transit, but get lost in translation.

The whale is wondrous but the drama not so much in In the Heart of the Sea.

Regrettably, the subtitles fail to capture Sul and Moon's witty wordplay — but their snappy, prickly chemistry is obvious to all.

The movie has a fan's heart, a sense of loving every goofball moment, but as directed by Mike Mendez it also seems perpetually caught between being a spoof or playing it straight and winds up falling between the cracks rather than rising above.

A Case of You is perfectly enjoyable as far as indie rom coms go — just not particularly original.

A film rich in atmosphere but emotionally as blunt as its title.

Make no mistake, despite some well-earned laughs, "Horrible Bosses 2" is not what qualifies as a good movie or even a particularly good R-rated comedy. But there is more to laugh at in "2" than the first, so let's go with less horrible, shall we?

There are stretches of tedium in this lumpy and derivative mythology, to be sure. But there are also immersive IMAX 3-D backdrops, striking ambiguities and irresistible moments of straight-faced lunacy. The line between hack work and labor of love may be perilously thin, but you can sense the difference in the way Jones earnestly, wholeheartedly embraces the magic that powers this realm.

The overall effect here is of parallel biographies juiced to feel important whenever they intersect, and an undercooked paean to lost masculinity.

Honest and unadorned though the film may be, it's ultimately just not that involving.

Garcia and Farmiga have such an easy, natural chemistry that their on-screen sparkle helps mitigate the film's weaknesses. At others times, it serves to underscore what might have been. It's a feckless conundrum.

This drama, about an ordinary guy trying to keep his infant daughter alive in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, is sincere but struggles as much as its hero.

Billy and Buddy manages to maintain the kind of brisk giddiness that many animated films struggle to achieve. But as family fare with a few unsettling Gallic touches, the boy-and-his-dog escapade is an odd fit.

With verbal jabs and sight gags in equal measure, the script proves serviceably funny. As the film progresses, though, the hilarity does not escalate along with the outrageousness.

The movie is handsomely mounted with upscale production values, but it feels sluggish and disjointed.

The result, while sincere and nicely evoked, feels choppy, familiar and, despite the script's heavily stacked deck — and a few harrowing episodes — lacks sufficient momentum.

If Fantastic Four is pleasantly different in its introductory segment, once those super powers kick in, the whole film goes into a more standard gear.

Part outer-space romantic comedy, part science-fiction thriller, Passengers leave us feeling we’ve been taken for a ride.

The sequel sometimes feels like a series of gags ginned up by a gaggle of writers who are not always on the same page.

The Purge: Anarchy is a good deal bloodier, but also — gulp — a good deal better than its predecessor. Make no mistake, a good "Purge" does not equal a good movie, but the post-apocalyptic thriller is slightly more interesting because it takes itself, and its menace, more seriously.

Between the heavy-handed lines, director Adrian Popovici provides telling glimpses of a provincial, aggressively retrograde attitude toward women and the seedy nightclubs where they're preyed on. He elicits uneven performances from a cast working in several languages.

Gimme Shelter, a ripped-from-real-life story of a pregnant teen's journey toward hope, is filled with very good intentions, very bad dialogue and a surprisingly affecting turn by its star Vanessa Hudgens.

The man was not, by most accounts, pedestrian. In trying to follow so closely in his footsteps, the film, however, is.

The Mummy does have elements that are effective, especially Sofia Boutella in the title role, but with all the hurly-burly on screen the virtues get lost in the shuffle.

When it becomes apparent that the seemingly linear narrative is in fact woven with several parallel story lines, one might even be inclined to excuse the plot's too many convenient coincidences.

The first half is a cautiously dread-inducing tour de force as the suspicious interlopers parse the shiny, happy members for signs of a darker version of paradise... The second half, however, when all hell breaks loose a little too quickly, is the disappointment.

This meandering lark about a corrupt, spiteful and hopelessly distracted police force in a decriminalized, sun-scorched city never quite finds the funny bone.

In practice this mélange of imagery is aimed more at the inside of Reggio's head than anywhere else. Unless you are able to get on his quasi-experimental wavelength, a dicey proposition at best, Visitors will miss your solar plexus entirely and instead put you right to sleep. With one exception.

The heat that should saturate the film as betrayals mount and boundaries are broken flickers and dies many times over Miss Julie's languid two-plus hours.

Some eerie answers are revealed, and there are a few decent left-field jolts en route. But the plot is hardly airtight — at times the holes are downright gaping — and viewers will likely have their fair share of questions once the film's final corner is turned.

The screenplay by Lane Shadgett and director Trevor White relies far too much on telling rather than showing.

A focused, if at times melodramatic, take on the play's beating heart.

The aesthetically misguided idea of breaking the final book into two films, commercially remunerative though it might have been, has ended up making the dragged-out proceedings feel anti-climactic and emotionally static.

Unfortunately this "Story" never finds its footing as either a creepy morality play or a performance-driven two-hander.

While the cast and crew's competence well exceed what anyone would expect from this breed of B movies, they cannot compensate for the flawed internal logic in the screenplay.

A feature-length lampoon needs more than rubbery performances, so-so silliness and the constant thrum of meta humor to make it a consistently amusing variation on a theme.

Despite the visual and cultural accuracy, Ping Pong Summer is missing an elemental magic and vibrancy; a kick factor that makes the picture's endless pop throwbacks (break dancing, cassette tapes, giant boom boxes) seem more tackily forgettable than sweetly nostalgic.

The script, written by director John Slattery and Alex Metcalf, drifts too quickly into blue-collar cliches, leaving its interesting collection of characters only half-drawn at best.

Stars Aubrey Plaza and Dane DeHaan are game, as is the lineup of mostly wasted supporting actors. But what might have been a snappy short is interminable at feature length, the mayhem-in-suburbia conceit generating few laughs as it stomps along.

On the face of it, tackling the warring sides of science and the spirit seemed a good fit for the writer-director, who continues to be drawn to existential themes. There are occasional flashes of the exceptional, but the film's dodgy story can't sustain them.

Had the movie itself been more focused as a story of messy loss — and not played tonal Twister with its high concept — it might have better served its freshly oddball lead.

In the absence of a more conventional storytelling approach, this series of brief, fragmented glimpses of the harsh challenges that shaped Lincoln's early life never allows you to get sufficiently close to its celebrated subject.

One just wishes the scaffolding of indie tropes around Paul and the better parts of Hellion weren't so shaky.

By boiling too much down to black and white, Camp X-Ray's ability to say something significant is diluted.

Given the routineness of the chase itself, what jumps out here is the pervasive desperation shared by just about every character.

In adapting Dean Koontz's series, Sommers nails the hero but bungles the world-building.

With its developers-versus-ranchers intrigue and touches of magic realism, the movie ends up playing like a mild-tempered oddity.

Life Is Strange is unfocused yet intermittently effective as an illustrated oral history.

The emotional moments never land.

The film often defies expectations but also winds up sidestepping the kind of trapdoors and quicksand that might have made the ride more exhilarating.

It’s an unexpectedly radical, if otherwise rather rote animated sequel.

With Cooties, what starts as recess fades all too rapidly into movie detention.

Although Whiteley's unrestricted there-ness effortlessly yields an avuncular striver... it means little when the viewpoint is so hermetic.