The problem with Men, Women & Children — and it’s a big one — is that the movie isn’t telling us anything we don’t already know.

Fury aims for history, and the contrived resolution shows a timidity by Ayer that is uncharacteristic of his previous work. Still, the action sequences, which use actual vintage tanks and little CGI, are pretty extraordinary and, at times, incredibly gruesome. War is hell. That’s entertainment, folks.

The less you know about Gone Girl going in the better, but even knowing what’s ahead doesn’t prepare you for the movie’s tone, which is funny yet curdled and cynical and black. This is a satirical antidote to the feel-good pap most Hollywood movies about relationships push on their audiences - here’s the perfect date movie for someone you want to break up with.

Unfortunately, Life After Beth starts feeling more conventional the wilder and darker it gets, and the laughs become more sparse as the movie winds to its bizarre and but unsatisfying conclusion.

Sometimes, love can feel like hate or annoyance — it is, as the title states, strange. But sometimes, more often than not, it can be a wonderful thing.

Filmed around stunning County Sligo on Ireland’s west coast, Calvary is a thoughtful, atmospheric movie despite the awkward parade of suspects and the fact that everyone seems a little too conveniently hostile.

There was, however, another question the screenwriter should have asked: Why does the script focus on the wrong couple?

A trifle bland, but with enough virtues to make it palatable to audiences who want comfort food, not a challenge, when they go to the movies.

Stories about scientists doubting what they know to be true — "Contact," for example — can be provocative and engaging, on an intellectual and emotional level. But I Origins challenges too little and ties up things too neatly for it to register as anything more than well-made, well-intentioned hogwash.

Once the premise has been established, the film goes absolutely nowhere.

Gunn makes this huge entertainment accessible to the converted and the neophyte alike, and he has only has one goal: To send you out of the theater with a fat smile on your face. Mission accomplished.

The concert scenes in this biographical picture are some of its best moments — you’ll wonder just how long the actor had to practice to perfect all those splits — and Boseman’s charisma is irresistible.

Like most of le Carré’s novel, A Most Wanted Man has a veracity most spy thrillers lack, and the suspense is of the intellectual, not visceral, kind.

Not entirely unwatchable.

The good news is you’re feeling stuff, you know? And you’ve got to hold on to that. You get older, and you don’t feel as much, your skin gets tough.” This remarkable, wonderful movie helps you remember.

Even the most ardent fans of Braff’s first feature film, the charming Garden State, will struggle to warm up to this self-indulgent, uninvolving drama about an immature, almost-middle-aged guy trying to find himself with questions he should have had answers to long ago.

The cinematic equivalent of herpes, Sex Tape is an uncomfortable embarrassment to raunchy comedies everywhere. Fortunately, no medication is required after being exposed to it: The effects are not permanent, only painful.

“Movies are a machine that helps us generate a little empathy,” Ebert said about films. Life Itself is a lovely, eloquent tribute to a man who devoted his existence to showing us just that.

Watching an army of apes riding horses heading into battle is undeniably cool, but that’s the only thing the movie gives you: Neat eye candy. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is written at a level so low, even 8- year-olds will find it lacking.

Pay attention, Michael Bay: This is what thrilling summer movies look like.

Begin Again manages to be romantic and cynical about the music industry, which Carney touches on but never allows to take center stage.

Derivative and self-important, Third Person is a concept and not much more, precisely the sort of film that makes you wonder why anybody would bother to see it at all.

[A] visually stunning, technically impressive and crushingly dumb and overlong picture.

After an exciting high-speed car chase reminiscent of the Mad Max pictures, The Rover settles into a two-character drama between Eric and Rey, but Pearce is so one-note that their relationship is never engaging.

The undeniable star is the diminutive comedian. He’s the glue that holds the movie together when it wanders into the weeds and starts believing it’s a serious meditation on relationships.

That built-in nostalgia is part of the reason for the success of Jersey Boys onstage and for its appeal as a movie.

Palo Alto is a pale imitation of the early novels of Bret Easton Ellis, who wrote about young ennui and misdirection from the inside out.

De la Iglesia’s knack for offending audiences while showing them a good time is stronger than ever: Witching and Bitching isn’t much on substance or logic, but man, is it fun.

The Signal is too ambitious for its own good: The movie is built on shells of ideas and concepts that haven’t been fully thought out, and once it’s over, the movie collapses the more you think about it.

The movie offers just the right amount of spectacle.

The movie wouldn’t work, of course, without the chemistry between Hill and Tatum, an unlikely duo who share a tremendous charisma.

The Dance of Reality, which deserves a place along Amarcord as a fantastical take on coming of age, is the work of a wise and experienced old soul with the heart and curiosity of a young man in love with life.

Best of all, the film never makes its characters into stoic or tragic heroes, choosing instead to highlight what makes them human — their hopes, their fears, their anger, the way they learn to live with knowing they’re going to die.

Edge of Tomorrow isn’t good, but it’s also forgivable. Just please stop the "Top Gun 2" rumors, Tom. Please.

Don’t expect Hitchcock or De Palma here — Reichardt is much too low-key and modest for such crowd-pleasing pyrotechnics — but one long, sustained shot near the end seems to suggest that people who are convinced they are doing the right thing are capable of great evil.

By film’s end, everyone has been transformed for the worst. Heli is a troubling and upsetting picture, a portrait of a broken country that seems to be beyond repair and a depiction of how violence and corruption, when left unchecked, taints saints and sinners alike, sparing no one.

The things that stay with you are the dull, boilerplate love story, the laziest performance of Liam Neeson’s career as a murderous gunslinger and the distracting amount of makeup Seth MacFarlane sports in the film.

The result is a rare live-action Disney movie that merits comparison to its beloved feature-length cartoons.

This movie couldn’t be more fantastical if dragons swooped down and incinerated London, Paris and the south of France.

This is the first film Gray has made with a female protagonist — he wrote the part specifically for Cotillard — and he gives the character the same resilience and resourcefulness usually reserved in movies for men.

Blended isn’t Sandler’s funniest movie or his best, but it is a big step up from the dregs he’s been churning out, a messy, shaggy dog of a comedy that you can’t help but like even as it sheds all over your house.

The deep cast (look out for a slew of crowd-pleasing cameos) play this borderline-silly stuff so well, there isn’t a single unintentional laugh in the entire thing.

As intriguing as Hardy is to watch, the picture can’t overcome its cinematic-stunt vibe.

It still feels a little like a lesson you’re supposed to learn before you can enjoy anything truly satisfying.

Favreau worked hard to replicate an authentic restaurant world, and it shows in every frame that involves chopping, dicing, slicing, sautéing or otherwise cooking (he also finds an ingenious way to visually portray Twitter, so vital in the marketing of food trucks).

Due to its good humor and terrific story, Million Dollar Arm is always engaging; its power lies in its feel-good charm.

Here, finally, is a giant monster movie made in the anything-goes CGI era still capable of making your jaw drop.

A wan gloss on a horrific nightmare.

The casting of Hiddleston and Swinton was a stroke of genius: They emanate a particular sort of cool only they seem privy to, accentuating their alienation.

Efron makes you believe he’s capable of anything. Neighbors is rude, brazen and merrily offensive, and the movie mines the homoerotic undertones of fraternities to fine (if lowbrow) comic effect. But Efron, of all people, gives the film a curious edge.

In Fading Gigolo, writer-director John Turturro turns what could have easily been a crass and unpleasant comedy into something soulful and substantial — with a lot of laughs, too.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 grows stronger and more engrossing as it unfolds.

Grandly entertaining documentary.

We may not understand her, this strange, solitary woman, but we know in our bones her desire for a place in the world.

Definitely funny. Goofy, ridiculous, with more gross-out humor than is strictly necessary but still funny.

Dom Hemingway is often viciously funny in unexpected ways, and every time you think the movie has run out of steam, Shepard spins things in a new direction, keeping the energy from flagging (including one of the most startling car crashes I’ve ever seen in a film).

Transcendence is "Her" for dummies.

Green’s movies rarely play out in conventional ways, and Joe, too, surprises in the end.

One of the problems with director Mike Flanagan’s occasionally involving but ultimately dull thriller is that the whole movie hinges on a reflective piece of glass.

Miraculously, the new picture makes the old one feel like Evans was just warming up.

Although the premise sounds gimmicky, Rob the Mob is based on a true, incredible story, and the sense of mortal danger is palpable every time Thomas goes in to score some loot (these men were not to be trifled with).

Much like the first film, Nymphomaniac Vol.2 isn’t remotely erotic or a turn-on — it’s a curiously intellectual experience that doesn’t move you below the neck, including the heart.

That rare biopic that’s shorter and swifter than it should be. This turns out to be both a blessing and a curse.

The movie, however, is the sort of picture in which people run around doing everything except the most logical thing to do, because that’s the only way to keep the nonsensical plot spinning.

Will Noah anger some rigid purists and scholars because of the liberties it takes? Perhaps. But the point to take home is the message the movie leaves you with, which works regardless of your faith (or lack thereof). Humans are inherently flawed. How we deal with those defects is what truly matters.

Thoughtfully directed and co-written by Arie Posin, the film is not a ghost story, nor is it played for campy laughs, but its melodramatic subject matter flirts with Douglas Sirk territory — and sometimes just dives right into it.

Like most movies about the Middle East conflict, Omar is ultimately about the futility of violence and how it feeds on itself.

The movie is so grand in scale that you can’t help surrender to the spectacle, even if the stuff that’s going on with the people in the film is often close to risible.

Unfortunately there’s far too little magic in this clumsy attempt to marry fantasy and realism; the film doesn’t have the grace or imagination to bridge the gaps between the two.

The screenplay for 7 Boxes is a beautiful example of how to craft a tense and increasingly complex thriller out of a simple scenario.

If you can get past the ludicrous fantasy — well, wait, that’s the problem. You can’t get past the ludicrous fantasy.

The movie is filled with graphic sex scenes that leave nothing to the imagination — this film would make even John Waters blush — but there’s more at work here than shock value and sensationalism.

In The Monuments Men, director George Clooney takes a wild, stranger-than-fiction true story and turns it into a dull, prestigious slog.

A manic and at times surprising comedy that has more imagination and creativity than all the Transformers pictures combined.

The movie lets you make up your own mind about this vivacious, likable woman, who is doing her best not to surrender to her inner loneliness.

You expect something far different and better than the same-old.

Unlike "A Separation", in which Iranian culture and mores played critical roles, the theme in The Past is more universal and spelled out in the title.

As a film, though, Gimme Shelter is unremarkable, a predictable story of redemption that happens awfully fast, to a girl who only seems to be in peril briefly — and has a rich dad to bail her out.

Screenwriter/director Tornatore is best known for his nostalgic "Cinema Paradiso," which won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 1990. But The Best Offer is completely different in style and tone; it’s dark instead of light, a psychological thriller of sorts, only with Virgil’s heart and orderly life in peril instead of his life.

The Invisible Woman offers a compelling glimpse at a life once hidden.

Ride Along sabotages itself, although I suppose that doesn’t really matter — there are already plans in the works for Ride Along 2.

Pine, who has been so good and so instrumental in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek series as Captain Kirk, turns out to be a decent Ryan.

The arsenal is empty, and there’s nowhere for The Truth About Emanuel to go except — unfortunately — downhill.

August: Osage County is easier to watch on screen, and maybe for that we should be grateful.

Her argues that sometimes, crazy can be wonderful.

Shirley MacLaine pops up as Walter’s ever-forgiving mother, and Wigg kills in an elevating sequence in which she sings David Bowie’s Space Oddity at a karaoke bar. Penn only gets one scene, but it’s a great one, and it reminds you how funny of an actor he can be.

A better primer-for-the-uninitiated than an in-depth, fresh and insightful examination of a famous and remarkable life.

If it had been a drama, The Wolf of Wall Street might have been unwatchable: There’s simply too much of everything. But Scorsese and screenwriter Terence Winter (The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire) hit on the genius idea to turn the story into a riotous comedy, one that keeps topping itself everytime you think it can’t possibly get crazier.

The lack of effort, right down to the unimaginative title, is dispiriting.

Saving Mr. Banks is two movies crammed into one cumbersome, overlong drama.

Like his con artists are prone to saying, American Hustle works from the feet up, and the fun is intoxicating.

Inside Llewyn Davis is one of the Coens’ smallest movies — this one doesn't have the broad appeal of "True Grit" or "No Country For Old Men" — but like Llewyn’s music, it comes from the heart and it is deeply felt. It is also one of their best.

Go for Sisters is minor Sayles, and the movie occasionally meanders. But the characters stay with you, particularly Bernice and Fontayne, whose relationship is beautifully transformed over the course of the film.

Jackson has become too distracted by his digital toys to give his characters the same weight and importance he used in the Rings trilogy.

The Broken Circle Breakdown manages to pull off a small miracle, using joyous music and tenderness to tell a tragic story that moves you but doesn’t depress you.

Page, who died in 2008 in Los Angeles at the age of 85, makes for a blunt but engaging narrator who’s refreshingly candid about sex and her own inner demons.

Scott Cooper, who directed and co-wrote Out of the Furnace, empathizes with people who feel their lives have hit a dead end (his previous film, "Crazy Heart," earned Jeff Bridges an Oscar as a washed-up country singer who had given up on himself). These are difficult characters to dramatize.

The movie has a longing melancholy that leavens the humor — it’s a surprisingly sad, gentle comedy.