Few people will be surprised by how it all unfolds or by how it all ends. This is a movie about lightweight entertainment and heavyweight fighters, not a movie about surprises.

For most of its two-hour running time, Almost Christmas is merely almost funny.

In a word: Bibbidi-bobbidi-blah.

If nothing else, the dramatic comedy The Last Word provides one thing: It gives Shirley MacLaine a great role in which to sink her teeth. That turns out to be a gift not only to the Hollywood veteran but to audiences as well.

This is a movie that confuses teary with sweet. Mopey with sad. Discomfort with humor. And, worst of all, it confuses weird with odd.

For one to succeed, it should have a certain "emotional intelligence" of its own. It should have a soul. It should bring something new to the conversation. And while Eva dips a toe into those waters, it never really invites its audiences to dive in head-first.

Unwieldy and awkward. If you want to like this story, you'd better expect to have to work for it.

Not only did Hughes shoot a handful of prominent scene-setting exteriors in the Big Apple itself, but he does an exceptional job of camouflaging his New Orleans scenes.

Frustratingly, whenever it begins to get going and pulses begin pounding, Harper brings things to a screeching halt by introducing flashback sequences to tell us the backstory of Jones’ invented character.

Thank goodness for Rainey. Even when the story feels false, he never does, operating with an open-faced sense of easy honesty that is missing from much of the rest of the film.

Along the way, Bleed for This rarely, if ever, surprises. Younger -- working from a script he wrote -- never feints, never dodges, never does anything unexpected. Consequently, his film never delivers anything resembling a knockout blow.

On the one hand, there's a thrill in such experimentalism. On the other, it doesn't always deliver a fully satisfying moviegoing experience.

If not for the "Fast and Furious" franchise, Need for Speed probably wouldn't exist outside of the video game series that inspired it.

With no real beginning and no real ending, the unsatisfying "Mockingjay Part 1" is essentially all middle -- one big, stretched out, watered-down second act. The result is a handsome film, but also a talky one that takes a while to hit its storytelling stride and that, once there, repeatedly stalls to fill time.

The result is a film that is engrossing for stretches, that will raise your hackles -- and maybe the hair on the back of your neck -- especially if you believe in the vital role journalism plays in a free society. At the same time, though, it also feels a bit like a by-the-numbers affair.

I wouldn't expect many people to remember Cold in July come September, when the movie-award season gets underway. But as a guilty-pleasure May release? You could do far worse.

It won't stick to your ribs in the way, say, a shank will -- but it probably won't leave you looking for a way to escape the theater, either.

What we end up with is a film that contains many fine moments -- the young Bolden's discovery of rhythm, an imagined discussion on musical improvisation between Bolden and clarinetist George Baquet, a look at racial politics of the day -- but those moments don't quite coalesce into a consistently satisfying whole.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is not a Meryl Streep movie. She's featured prominently on the movie's posters. She's all over the trailer. But no matter what the studio wants you to believe, the above-the-title star of 2008's original "Mamma Mia!," and the most celebrated actress of her generation, gets all of about five minutes of screen time in the sequel.

What the Duplasses end up with is a film that is amusing at times, a touch repetitive at others, but one that never quite shakes the feeling that it is something of an unfinished thought. And perhaps something they've also grown beyond.

It's hard to escape the feeling that Hopkins left a lot on the table -- and that there's a better Jesse Owens film to be told.

While The Last Five Years isn't a bad movie, neither does it fall into the "must-see" category.

After a "Porky's"-style segment dealing with puppy lust, the film then segues to its better second half, hitting its stride when a ball signed by the revered Babe Ruth must somehow be retrieved from behind the fence.

Never coalesces into anything memorable, much less meaningful.

The Best of Me is full-on Nicholas Sparks, through and through, checking all the boxes in the by-now well-established formula. It's just not the best of Nicholas Sparks.

"The Lost Village" is pure Saturday-morning stuff. And that's both a good thing and a bad thing.

Dialogue is often stilted (and fraught with unlikely outbursts of speechifying) and the ending hardly soars, but Cook, a near-ringer for the young Winona Ryder, has a shyly appealing personality and O'Keefe makes a villainess you'll love to hiss. [29 Jan 1999, p.L24]

Lacks any real sense of vitality. And no matter how worthwhile a film's message is, it's difficult for audiences to care if the path to the payoff so often feels like a slog.