Clive Owen stumbles around the scenery doing unfortunate drunken-writer shtick in Words and Pictures, a formula movie whose script is yet more unfortunate.

The jovial, hyperverbal comic has played against type before, but his presence feels like epic miscasting in this underwritten dramedy.

Manages to be excruciatingly unfunny despite the presence of Pierce Brosnan and Emma Thompson in the lead roles.

This is the sort of movie that gets called “hallucinatory,” but it is strongly grounded in the New York in which 99 percent of us live. Fleischner gets his uncanny effects simply by showing what this city looks like to a child who has a different filter.

Barrymore is still cute, and she and Sandler at least seem to like each other as they get on with the grim business of rom-com contrivance.

Bryan Singer’s whip-smart and witty time-travel romp X-Men: Days of Future Past blows a breath of fresh air through the musty Marvel universe.

The film, like the man, is never boring.

The second half of Godzilla is definitely more fun than the first part of a film I enjoyed overall, if less than last year’s similar dip into giant monster blockbusterdom, “Pacific Rim.”

Cédric Klapisch’s film is meandering and cutesy, but his characters are endearing and every so often he comes up with a deft insight, such as how this city’s streets are like a flayed zombie.

Writer-director Schwarz has a lot of fun with this nutty premise. And more important, the twisted dynamics of this particular family ring true.

It makes so little sense on-screen that all you can do is nod along vaguely sympathetically at its sheer creative bravado.

A remarkable attempt to portray what might turn soccer-playing boys into fanatical murderers.

Rookie filmmaker Michael Maren’s script isn’t deep, but it’s heartfelt without being sticky, suggesting that the best way to deal with aging parents is to savor every tender frustration while you can.

Nobody does the rebellious-elder thing as well as Duvall, and whenever he’s center stage in A Night in Old Mexico, this scrappy film from Spanish director Emilio Aragon is entertaining enough.

Phoenix, who was so subtle in “Her” and brilliantly tortured in “The Master,” has lapsed back into the shouty bombast style of his “Gladiator” days, but his efforts to make the character seem layered are to little avail, especially given that Gray waits until the end to try to make him a tragic figure instead of merely a sleazy one.

Fatally mild, slow and factory-made, Million Dollar Arm belongs somewhere less competitive than the multiplex. Like the ABC Family Channel — the entertainment industry minor leagues.

In a move sure to infuriate “nanny state” critics, director Stephanie Soechtig names the US government and food corporations responsible for a campaign to get Americans addicted to junk food — particularly, and most dangerously, sugar — as early as possible.

Based on a lesser-known Dostoyevsky work, Brit director Richard Ayoade’s breathtakingly realized oddity will appeal to fans of David Lynch and the comic surrealism of Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil.”

Colin Firth plays a real-life investigator whom the script renders as noble as Atticus Finch. Reese Witherspoon does haunting work as a victim’s mom. But the stately pace and the faultless art direction add to the impression that truth was not only stranger, but more dramatic.

A central problem: Efron isn’t funny.

Consistently stale but not altogether unpleasant.

The result is a thoughtful, dreamlike (at times, nightmarish) tour through the day-to-day lives of several suburban California teens.

Stage Fright starts out as a funny musical mashup — “Glee” meets“Friday the 13th” — but winds up indulging slasher-flick clichés instead of spoofing them.

As for Hoffman, the shambling Everyman naturalism he shows here gives God’s Pocket an added elegiac layer that makes its bitter ironies that much more painful.

James Franco, all is forgiven. His woebegotten “Oz: The Great and Powerful’’ is practically a masterpiece compared to this eyeball-gougingly ugly, charm-free animated musical sequel.

He’s great as a celebrity chef who’s forced to re-examine his priorities in this extremely funny and big-hearted comedy that Favreau also wrote.

Vanity, thy name is Kevin Spacey.

Both actresses are extraordinary, but Kulesza — bitter, sarcastic and tragic — carries the movie’s soul.