There are probably enough moments to satisfy hard-core fans, but for the rest of us, this amounts to the Middle Earth equivalent of “Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones,’’ a space-holding, empty-headed epic filled with characters and places (digital and otherwise) that are hard to keep straight, much less care about.

American Hustle is a movie that was built backward, or inside out: It puts actors’ needs before the audience’s. There’s no heart under those polyester lapels, and what all that Aqua Net is pasting together is a few sparse strands of wispy story.

Except for a couple of isolated, mildly subversive moments, Hanks is basically playing the genial host of “The Wonderful World of Disney’’ rather than an actual person.

Highly entertaining documentary.

It’s all terribly talky and low-energy; that wonderful noirish title, it turns out, was just a front for a history lecture.

The film strains credulity as it hurtles toward its conclusion.

Despite all its problems, The Last Days on Mars serves up a deliciously shivery hypothetical: Wouldn’t we all secretly love it if the Mars rover sent back footage of a “walker” or two?

About the only reason to stay with this increasingly histrionic film is to satisfy curiosity about exactly how Diego will (as we learn at the outset) die, but long before we learn that Twice Born chokes to death on its own melodrama.

The Coens, so cutting to so many of their characters, are gentler with Llewyn, inviting us to wander and wonder along with him as he ponders why he must forever play the jerk.

Out of the Furnace is much longer on style and belligerence than actual substance.

It only seems plotless. Momentous things happen, one of them tele­graphed in a single heartbreaking shot. The sense of time and place is so intense that Jules’ way of life seems to be disappearing even as we watch him.

Despite being named “Gator Bodine,” Franco seems like something Statham would scrape off his boots. Put it this way: Franco needs a baseball bat to be intimidating; Statham just needs to be Statham.

Provides a different take on its subject than many of us are accustomed to: Nelson Mandela is no Martin Luther King Jr., and he was far more radical than even Malcolm X. If you’re under the impression that his ideas got him imprisoned for 25 years, think again: It was his bombs.

A family-friendly, Hallmark Channel-ready musical dramatic fable whose plot more closely resembles Spike Lee’s “Red Hook Summer.’’

The feel-bad movie of the holiday season, Spike Lee’s often-repellent Americanized reimagining of Korean director Chan-Wook Park’s twisty 2004 revenge thriller Oldboy is relentlessly gruesome, self-consciously shocking and pretty much pointless.

Tiresome cavalcade of bickering — which feels like it lasts even longer than your typical Thanksgiving dinner.

In one of Hugh Hefner’s least creepy moments ever, he describes how they became friends later in life; with his help, she finally obtained the legal rights to her rampantly used image.

Technically, the film isn’t terribly exciting: talking heads interspersed with shots of young people making their symbolic “leap of faith” from the walls. But the directors have chosen eloquent interviewees, and the passionate attachment they feel for their city gives the film heart.

Ultimately, this throwback, made-for-TV-style film takes the easy way out in a cheesy climax, but its resolute quaintness may appeal to the kind of viewers who regard electricity as disturbingly newfangled.

A great big snowy pleasure with an emotionally gripping core, brilliant Broadway-style songs and a crafty plot.

With Philomena, British producer-writer-star Steve Coogan and director Stephen Frears hit double blackjack, finding a true-life tale that would enable them to simultaneously attack Catholics and Republicans. There’s no other purpose to the movie, so if 90 minutes of organized hate brings you joy, go and buy your ticket now.

Delivery Man trades the abrasive comedian’s trademark snark for schmaltz — an experiment that actually works better than you’d guess.

Yes, it’s the middle chapter and feels like it, but it’s never dull.

There’s an exhilarating sadness to it all that amounts to cinematic poetry.

Touching and unexpectedly funny moments (such as McCartney busting out the theme song from “The Monkees”) mingle with highlights from the show for an unusually compelling keepsake from what might well be the last time many of these ’60s rockers perform together.

Like the rest of Dear Mr. Watterson, it’s a good-hearted gesture. But unlike Calvin’s alter ego Spaceman Spiff, this film never manages to achieve liftoff.

It’s slightly tough to get onboard with the regal Naomi Watts sporting badly sprayed hair and frosted lipstick; surely there are more flattering shades at the Walgreens?

A likable cast and interior-­décor porn worthy of Martha Stewart Living are the highlights of The Best Man Holiday, but the mix of raunchy sex comedy and Christian faith doesn’t quite come off.

Bob Nelson’s original script, a sort of unlikely cross between “The Last Picture Show’’ and “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek,’’ offers a biting satire of Midwestern life that Payne sometimes allows to border on condescension.

At Berkeley casts a nonjudgmental eye on everyone from cement layers to students discussing Thoreau to administrators complaining about budgeting. If only everything were interesting.

An honorable, sober but completely unnecessary take on the Dickens novel, Great Expectations serves as a fine introduction to the story but won’t excite those familiar with previous versions.

It’s a mildly interesting thriller — Paris through the eyes of a director who doesn’t know how to make its beauty menacing.

Not surprisingly in this tale of desperate men, the only women are top-heavy cartoon characters — literally, animated sequences illustrate Frank’s stories — or live-action betrayers, like Dakota Fanning’s Annie, Frank’s ex-girlfriend. I found the cartoons more interesting.

The element that really makes it work — when it does, which is not always — is Edward James Olmos, playing to perfection a weary retired police detective.

Overall, Gibney does a fine job documenting the timeless nature of Armstrong’s fall from grace. It’s undeniably satisfying to see the man himself lay it out: “It’s very hard to control the truth forever,” he says, awkwardly. “This has been my downfall.”

Miyazaki offers a vivid, at times fantastical view of Japan between the wars, wracked by the Great Depression, a fearsome earthquake that leveled Tokyo in 1923, a tuberculosis epidemic and the rise of fascism.

Overall, it’s engaging and serves its young audience well — a rare Holocaust movie that doesn’t strain to become Oscar bait.

"Dark World” is low-stakes, low-emotion, lowbrow.

To keep this one-man show visually engaging, director Sophie Fiennes places the professor in sets and costumes from the movies, talking about “Full Metal Jacket” from atop a barracks toilet and “Brief Encounter” from a 1940s British train.

It’s Margaux, the tragic supermodel and failed actress who took her own life at 42, who emerges as the film’s fount of heartbreak in several stunning scenes.

The second half is therefore much more interesting than the first; even so, the whole movie suffers from a lack of narrative momentum and a surfeit of wordless shots of men exchanging deep, meaningful glances.

This Belgian drama is the real deal, an alternately wrenching and ecstatic viewing experience, adapted from a play by lead actor Johan Heldenbergh.

A forgettable — and occasionally borderline offensive — animated tale of turkeys trying to take back Thanksgiving.

For all its glutinous cuteness, damn if About Time doesn’t sneak up and sock you in the tear ducts. I tried not to fall for it. I failed.

The film at least achieves the level of mediocrity thanks to the professionalism of two slightly younger participants — Kline and Mary Steenburgen, who also have Oscars on their mantels but go well beyond phoning it in here.

A big, dark film that should satisfy the many fans of the Orson Scott Card novel and engage newcomers, too.

It’s a remarkable story, vividly and urgently told by French-Canadian director Vallée (“The Young Victoria”) from a pointed, schmaltz-free script by Craig Borten and Melissa Wallack.

The schmaltzy Diana is directed at a dirge-like pace by German director Oliver Hirschbiegel, whose film “Downfall’’ depicted the final days of Hitler and provided one of the Internet’s most enduring memes.

Mostly a routine love story elevated by one of the year’s most magnetic performances.

Jeffrey Schwarz’s documentary is a fine, touching tribute to John Waters’ larger-than-life drag diva, Divine.

Like “Traffic’’ on a massive dose of downers, Ridley Scott’s The Counselor is a great-looking and star-filled but lethally pretentious, talky, lethargic drama.

This whole movie is pretty much a mental colon blow.

The film is still a gripping experience, though, with its circling sharks, its sun-dappled beauty and its agonies of shattered hope. At one point I was convinced that Sandra Bullock would splash down next to our man in her space capsule and Hanks’ Maersk ship from “Captain Phillips” would steam by to pick up both of them.

Any prison-break yarn that includes Arnold Schwarzenegger delivering the line “You hit like a vegetarian” is OK by me.

Danny Huston looks and sounds like his celebrated father, John, more and more each year, so I enjoyed watching him play a flamboyant and womanizing legendary director not unlike his old man in Bernard Rose’s modest little comedy.

This overlong drama plays like a threefold infomercial: for Christianity, the cheesy resort chain Sandals and Jeff “Ja Rule” Atkins, the rapper-turned-actor playing drug kingpin Miles Montego.

Juliette Binoche, as Claudel, is occasionally touching, but as soon as interest flares, the movie suffocates it via endless takes of her suffering through daily chores.

It’s a baggy movie, with some things (such as whether Idris taking Ritalin in high school improved his performance) unexplained, and it may appeal most to those raising kids themselves.

Well-meaning films like “Lincoln’’ and “Lee Daniels’ The Butler’’ merely scratch the surface compared to the deep and painful truths laid bare by 12 Years a Slave. It’s about time, Scarlett O’Hara.

Hire “Dreamgirls” director Bill Condon to tell the story of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks? Sure, and next let’s hear from Lady Gaga on the Higgs boson particle.

Teen Lisa Johnson (Abigail Breslin) is trapped in a kind of undead, unfunny “Groundhog Day,” living one particular 24 hours with her family over and over.

Cody’s satiric knocks on Christians couldn’t be more blundering and obvious. Yet her dialogue is often funny, and the unusual three-way friendship is refreshing. Even former star Brand has learned to dial back his manic mugging, though maybe not quite enough.

Hollywood’s ongoing campaign to remake every horror movie of the 1970s and ’80s has finally caught up with the Stephen King-Brian De Palma classic “Carrie,’’ and the results are distressingly anemic, pig blood and all.

It’s much more lively than “On the Road,” last year’s snoozy adaptation of the Kerouac novel that presented fictionalized versions of some of the same characters.

Drifts awkwardly between popcorn entertainment and angsty mood piece.

As Franco dilutes the drama with first-year-film-student gimmicks, like split screens and slow motion, it just seems like a dull collection of pointless monologues from actors who can’t even be bothered to match up their accents. Franco is a dilettante, and it shows.

If Broadway shows had DVD featurettes, the unexceptional documentary Broadway Idiot would be perfect for one.

Though it boasts an eye-catching roster of supporting performances — Jennifer Hudson, Jordin Sparks, Jeffrey Wright, Anthony Mackie — most of the running time is spent with Mister (Skylan Brooks) and Pete (Ethan Dizon), and both child actors hold your attention impressively.

The most distressing bad choice in CBGB, a movie entirely composed from them, is that those brilliant songs are repurposed studio recordings.

Basically, the whole thing can be summed up as an epic midlife crisis.

Italian director Carlo Carlei has a background in TV movies, and this film, plodding and earnest, seems meant for the small screen, too.

Entertainingly gruesome in parts, and not without a certain anarchic wit, it’s the kind of movie you pause to watch when it’s on TV, but after half an hour, you’ll click over to something else.

The closing subtitle says that no one was ever prosecuted for this madness. The pure-archive approach leaves a taste of despair; civic governance, it seems, can’t even promise not to kill you.

Their misadventures in the Big Apple, including Giamatti’s involvement with a Russian house sitter (a bizarrely cast Sally Hawkins) are neither funny nor touching, just tedious.

Remember the old Ben Affleck, the one who made 28 consecutive bad movies before he turned out to be a pretty good director? He’s back! Behold, the second coming of . . . Badfleck.

All of this is secondary, even tertiary material, even if much of it is interesting and even wrenching to behold.

Leong’s film isn’t particularly stylish, but it makes the most of the climactic Knicks footage, as well as showcasing a sweetly goofy side of the 25-year-old, now playing for the Houston Rockets.

A Touch of Sin is by no means subtle, but it is composed with a passion and sinuous grace that makes it far more effective than many other sincere message movies.

A contrived comedy that could have made an especially weak episode of “Everybody Loves Raymond.”

Director Anthony Leonardi, in his feature debut, litters the film with inconsistencies.

Compared by some to “2001: A Space Odyssey,’’ Cuarón’s relatively intimate space epic is equally groundbreaking in the spectacular way it depicts space.

This comedy is cringe-inducingly lame and the dramatic turns are visible as far in advance as utility poles on the prairie.

Can’t somebody come up with a monster that does something more interesting than run at you screaming, “Yeeaaaarrrrgh”?

After Tiller is groundbreaking in giving voice not only to the doctors, but to those who always seem to get overlooked in the high-volume political debate about this topic: the women themselves.

Rush, though it will win no trophies, is fine filmmaking, a smart, visually engorged, frequently thrilling tale of boyish competition — inspired by a true story. At heart it’s “Amadeus” on wheels, only this time Salieri is the Austrian.

Is torture ever justifiable? A twisty, compelling, brilliantly acted (if sometimes difficult to watch) thriller, Prisoners, asks this question not in the usual contemporary context — anti-terrorism — but instead as a gruesome option deployed as a response to every parent’s worst nightmare.

At the risk of sounding 100, I think it’s regrettable this film had to be shot in digital 3-D. Both those formats actually do a frustrating disservice to the depiction of the action, making them look choppier, more flickery and occasionally blurrier than they would otherwise.

The film also drags a bit toward the end, but neither of these is a major flaw in a movie with more funny lines than in most of Allen’s movies these days — not to mention a saner, clearer moral perspective.

What makes the movie so delightful is that Wadjda isn’t trying to make trouble; she’s just being herself. A shot of the system of wire hangers attached to her radio so she can pick up Western music stations sums up her can-do attitude.

Darci Picoult’s script renders all of these characters, if not always sympathetically, humanly and fully.

Overall, the rambling Jayne Mansfield’s Car is almost as big a wreck as its namesake.

Blue Caprice takes a minimalist, documentary-style approach that proves harrowingly effective.

Gorgeous location filming on Italy’s Amalfi Coast and a voice-only performance by the great Claire Bloom as an elderly woman remembering World War II are the main attractions in Kat Coiro’s familiarly snoozy romantic drama.

At the start of Insidious 2, a young woman opens her mouth to speak and someone else’s voice comes out of her. Demonic possession? Nope, just some inexplicable dubbing to kick off this clunker of a horror sequel.

Remember when Robert De Niro was an interesting actor? These days his talent, like his character in The Family, is in the witness protection program, never to be seen again.

As a distinctly not-insider, though, I would have benefited more from a broader portrait of the woman herself, and how she became such a legend.

The sweet-faced Kelly is a lovely and humble storyteller, and her enduring affection for John, Paul, George and “Richie” is palpable.

The birth of the titular infant — what the whole movie’s leading up to — is just an anticlimactic mess.