Owen and Riseborough play their characters awfully close to the vest, not investing in anything that would allow this story to take the romantic or melodramatic turns we expect. But truthfully, that hamstrings the movie.

What gives it’s juice is the supporting cast. John Bernthal (“The Walking Dead”) is credibly wary as the ex-con John begs to get him in the door of the drug world. And the terrific Michael Kenneth Williams is the first dealer he meets, a guy who pulls a gun on him just to test him.

Mumford and O’Leary get beyond the cardboard character “types” and make these people more interesting and conflicted than they first seem. And the claustrophobic milieu, just two people staring at long range video, punching buttons, maneuvering their Reaper and trying to make snap decisions that won’t haunt them, serve the movie well.

Oculus earns its frights the old fashioned way — with convincingly traumatized characters, with smoke and with mirrors.

So it’s no “Starbuck,” which most people won’t mind because Americans don’t read subtitles. But even in this form, Delivery Man and the guy who plays him still deliver where it counts.

Through it all, Washington’s stillness is emphasized, so much so that the film slows down just to make sure we appreciate the presence and the talent behind it.

The design... is stunning, an improvement over 2006′s “300.” And the action never disappoints. It’s a pity this colorless cast doesn’t hold a candle to the Butler/Headey/Michael Fassbender/David Wenham crew of the original, that the writers couldn’t conjure up thrilling speeches to match the original.

Divorce Corp is a lot pointed outrage that damning as its seems, feels suspect.

There’s more than a hint of the ‘90s Roddy Doyle adaptation “The Commitments” in all this – people far removed from Memphis and Detroit connecting to soul music on a spiritual level.

Coarse, crude but often cute, The Big Wedding serves up the spectacle of its title, and the bigger spectacle of four AARP-eligible Oscar winners cursing like sailors.

What holds our interest and holds the story together is this winning cast in these familiar, lovable (somewhat) roles. A dozen years on and this exercise in globe-trotting, in “We’re growing older, but not up” reminds us that what’s true in life is just as true in casting movies — pick your friends carefully enough and they’ll entertain you for a lifetime.

Manipulative, contrived, melodramatic — all labels we slap on that most perfectly titled movie genre, “the weeper.” All fit If I Stay like original packaging.

A perfectly adequate superhero comic-book movie, all explosions, chases, gunfights, sword fights and blood feuds. There’s even a little humor in it.

Cage, without having to play a ghostly motorcyclist or hot rod driver from Hell or sorcerer or sci-fi hero or kinky cop, reminds us that he used to know subtlety. So even if Frozen Ground breaks little new ground in the serial killer thriller genre, there’s hope Cage will leave the ham behind before Alaska freezes over.

The setting and old fashioned structure of the story won’t be to every taste. But The Physician is quite good at recreating its era and reminding us that once, long ago, it was the West that was backward and always looking East for enlightenment, education and a way out of the Dark Ages.

Fey plays this inner-outer conflict well. But at her most wide-eyed and vulnerable, she still has trouble making a romance credible, even with Rudd, edgy comedy’s puppy dog of a leading man.

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints feels like a fresh and poetic treatment of a prosaic story that should be utterly worn out by now.

Not every cute movie about the mentally ill is Oscar worthy, but this touching and riotous one from Down Under works well enough.

Robert Redford delivers one last lecture on ’60s idealism and passes another baton to Shia LaBeouf in The Company You Keep, an engrossing thriller about the last anti-Vietnam War radicals still underground.

If you liked “Scrubs,” and I did, for a few seasons, anyway, you’ll be happy Braff got to make his movie and happy that you got to see it.

A clever and claustrophobic thriller that will trip you up and leave you with a wicked, blood-stained grin.

An old fashioned romantic mystery that benefits from a wizened, much-honored cast and a still-exotic setting.

Eisenberg, perfectly, pliably put upon, is the engine that drives this picture.

Is this Evil Dead (no “The”) any good? Yes and no. It several genuinely hair-raising moments and presents, for your edification and enjoyment, some of the most graphic horror violence ever presented on the screen.

An amusing, well-acted and sharply-timed holiday comedy, old friends getting together to prove that careers, families and kids aside, they’ve still got their R-rated edge, just as they did in college.

Spring Break – it’s every bit as much fun as you think it is. Until it isn’t.

It’s just too much — too much graphic violence, too many plot wrinkles, too much stupidity, too many supporting players to track...For a movie as physically fit as this one wants to be, Pain & Gain is carrying way too much extra weight.

An engrossing but frustrating movie, so subtle in its depiction of a teenager struggling to come to terms with a world and worldview utterly upended that it almost trivializes the tragedy that Lore, we suspect, is just beginning to feel responsible for.