Let us now praise Anna Kendrick, who is positively great in the small-scale The Last Five Years — so utterly wonderful that this adaptation of an off-Broadway musical deserves better than a token theatrical release to support its distribution via video-on-demand.

Scored by Bruce Hornsby, Lee’s film veers all over the place tonally, juxtaposing scenes of spurting gore with soothing jazz. Hess’ WASP-y mansion, with its huge photo portraits of African warriors, is an interesting study in mashing up race and class stereotypes, though the film’s rambling plot may leave your brain feeling a little mashed, too.

As Viviane, Elkabetz is fascinating, wielding an incredible variety of contemptuous looks.

Lawrence’s script for The Rewrite could have used one, and his direction is uneven, but it’s still rewarding watching Grant dispensing his dithery charm surrounded by old pros.

Most of the best gags are in the early going and the film seems ever more stretched and thin as it goes on. It would have made a brilliant eight-minute sketch, though.

Kingsman: The Secret Service borrows the tone, story, characters and humor of “Kick-Ass,” only this time in a 007 world instead of Batman’s. Nearly everything it does, it does poorly: This one is “Weak-Ass.”

The film never pretends to be other than what it really is: soft-core porn for the ladies, diluted with an “R” rating.

An instant candidate for the so-bad-it’s-sort-of-great hall of fame, Jupiter Ascending is totally bonkers, a sort of black-velvet-Elvis mash-up of “Star Wars’’ and every other sci-fi/fantasy movie of the past half-century right up to “The Hunger Games.”

A delightfully immersive look at how a ballet is created, Jody Lee Lipes’ documentary is a stark contrast to the psycho theatrics of something like “Black Swan.”

Seventh Son is not a good movie, but it’s also not a pretentious one, and I call that a fair trade.

A searing, penetrating look inside schizophrenia is exactly what Enter the Dangerous Mind isn’t.

Ryan Reynolds is chillingly perfect as a nice-guy factory worker struggling with schizophrenia and murderous impulses in this tonally wild indie, which is nearly too horrifying to be funny — but not quite.

It’s mainly instructive in that it shows how liberals believe the end always justifies the means.

Ultimately, for the show’s fans, it may not matter if “Sponge Out of Water” shows a hint of mildew. After all, my co-critic’s most enthusiastic note — “Hilarious!” — was written before the lights even dimmed.

I know this is a teen-boy fantasy — it was produced by Michael Bay, after all — but the female characters in Project Almanac are lamely retro, little more than props in short shorts.

Girlhood veers between being a celebration of sisterhood (albeit an occasionally violent sort) and a chronicle of the cycle of poverty.

A sci-fi actioner with the production values of your average porno, Alien Outpost spews clichés like a machine gun set on maximum triteness.

Though somewhat marred by cheesy docudrama re-enactments, the film (produced by Steven Spielberg’s sister Nancy) is nutty, dramatic, surprising and above all inspiring.

Each scene is breathtaking, such as a long shot of a river at a key moment, and an unforgettable soccer game played with no ball. Timbuktu deserves every accolade it gets.

Despite excellent performances by Kevin Costner, Octavia Spencer and other cast members, Mike Binder’s racially tinged custody battle drama Black or White never achieves much in the way of dramatic credibility.

A better cast this time around — Michael Angarano, Milo Ventimiglia, Sofía Vergara and Max Casella, with cameos by Jason Alexander, Stanley Tucci and Hope Davis — tries to breathe life into Goldman’s cliché-ridden plot.

Unintended laughs far, far outnumber intended thrills.

A jaw-droppingly terrible animated musical that mismatches George Lucas’ inane story about a pair of fairy princesses to an oddball selection of the “Star Wars’’ creator’s favorite pop tunes.

Mortdecai is mortdifying, a mortdal sin of a movie that’s headed for the cinematic mortduary.

Dolan embraces passion and melodrama to a refreshing degree, and Dorval and Clément are terrific. But Mommy can be exhausting; the structure and plot rhythms are all over everywhere. A montage to “Wonderwall” (every last note of it) seems to sum up the movie; too much, but exhilarating all the same.

Son of a Gun, from first-time feature director Julius Avery, begins with an enticingly dark first act in jail, but descends steadily downward into a mass of clichés.

It’s not quite “Once,” but Song One, featuring original music by Jenny Lewis and Johnathan Rice, captures a similar, unselfconscious beauty in the way music can make sense of big, ungainly emotions — as James puts it, “for three to five whole minutes.”

Not that a film as taut and exciting as this one needs punchy dialogue, but Black Sea has that, too.