There’s nothing wrong with being a brainless B-movie, but this one is funless and lackluster, a grinding mess of pulp clichés with dull characters, perfunctory violence and dim plotting.

Linklater ambitiously shot his new effort over a period of 12 years with the same cast, showcasing what turns out to be an astonishing performance by newcomer Ellar Coltrane, who grows up from 6 to 18 before our eyes over the course of 164 minutes.

A refreshingly naturalistic depiction of the dynamic of traveling companionship — at any age.

Expertly serves shivers, buckets of gore — and pretty much every cliché of the genre.

This pastiche of sitcomy episodes never gels into a plot.

Roger Ebert makes an unusual candidate for a documentary: He was a writer, which isn’t cinematic, and not the swashbuckling kind. He didn’t go to war zones, just movies.

The film doesn’t wallow in grief; it’s a thoughtful and nuanced portrait of a stage of life we often choose not to see.

Its sentiment is appealing, though, and its sincerity doesn’t cloy.

More a tribute to youth and its discontents than a fresh exploration.

Even at a cramped and frenetic 82 minutes, the movie feels long. That’s what happens when the audience can guess everything that’s going to happen in advance.

Saint Laurent was known for an almost monk-like focus on his work. And so this film springs to life — the actors, the camera, the editing — when we see his creations the way they were meant to be seen: in motion, and worn by beautiful women.

You get the feeling the guy who wrote Transformers: Age of Extinction used the entire script as a passive-aggressive running joke on his boss, director Michael Bay.

Despite the dramatic dystopia, performances here are uniformly low-affect, which isn’t helpful given the exposition-heavy dialogue and unremarkable set (though Nick’s extraterrestrial visions have a pleasantly kitschy look). Also puzzling is the fact that the pivotal song is not actually performed by Morissette.

Don’t miss it — this is enormously fun visionary filmmaking, with a witty script and a great international cast.

If “Once” was a bracing blast of cool spring water, Begin Again is a can of Fanta. If “Once” was a piano, Begin Again is a keytar. If “Once” was Otis Redding, Begin Again is Bruno Mars.

This one-sided documentary, told entirely by supporters, paints Swartz as a hero pursued by malign forces.

So why isn’t They Came Together more uniformly hilarious? Perhaps it’s that elusive problem of trying to explain why a thing is funny in the first place: Spelling it out deflates the joke.

Roughly a more broadly comic French version of John Favreau’s “Chef,’’ this film stars veteran Jean Reno as a longtime celebrity chef who may lose control of his Paris restaurant because the young new CEO thinks he’s old toque.

This is a handsome movie, rich in period detail, but the stately pace slows to a crawl in the second half.

Writer/director James Ward Byrkit, in his feature debut, achieves effective chills with only eight actors and a living room, intermixing quantum physics (shout-outs range from Schrödinger’s cat to “Sliding Doors”) with the very mundane human tendency toward bad judgment calls in a crisis.

Paul Haggis’ Third Person has nothing to say and spends 2 ¹/₂ hours not saying it. Its combination of pretentiousness, vanity and vapidity suggests Alain Resnais directing a triple episode of “Guiding Light.”

An explosion of images, mixing seedy, hand-held reality with groovy grindhouse imitations. Most of the shots are vivid, some are even thrilling.

If Think Like a Man Too was a man, he would be the world’s worst date: humorless, shrill, speaking primarily in clichés (“what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas!”) and absolutely terrified of women.

It isn’t quite as clever as it thinks. This is one of those man-written feminist parables that looks an awful lot like a Penthouse art director’s idea of a feminist parable.

Jersey Boys tells a familiar story, yes — but rarely told this well and with this much heart and soul.

In Devos’ hard-charging performance, she’s also fascinating, and that’s all a film requires.

Offers some stunningly beautiful sequences and an engaging, if at times quite dark, story line.

Lawless outback, shotgun-toting banditos and even roadside crucifixions somehow add up to an experience that’s about as thrilling as your average trip to the post office.