In the end, Besson’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is a mixed bag: a ripe visual adventure of limitless imagination hamstrung by an undercooked plot propelled by lackluster heroes.

Proving again that her Best Actress Academy Award for playing Edith Piaf in "La Vie en Rose" was no fluke, the marvellously sensual Marion Cotillard, with her wounded doe eyes and look of permanent unfulfilled longing, delivers another kidney punch as a double amputee in love with an illegal bare-knuckle fighter in the French shocker Rust and Bone.

The honesty of the actors and their commitment to each other bails the movie out. They manage to find truth in a highly manipulative situation, and that’s something even the least stardust-sprinkled among us can appreciate.

Not a great movie, but satisfying enough to hold attention and win your affection - a rare blue-plate combo on today's overcrowded menu of movie chaos that sticks to your ribs and stays there.

If it all seems a bit familiar, that doesn’t mean it isn’t also funny and pleasingly transporting, thanks to a game and attractive supporting cast and a transfixing setting that seems cut out of the pages of Conde Nast Traveler.

The result is half docudrama, half suspense thriller with the constant threat of seeming artificial and fictional. Amazingly, the actors are so engaging and believable, and the facts are so riveting, that the movie, despite its flaws, held me spellbound.

It's a slow, repetitive, meandering, mostly overacted little picture - perfectly agreeable but nothing special, and directed with a steamroller by David O. Russell. Go figure.

This futuristic tale of teenage violence is so not my kind of movie that I approached it grudgingly, so imagine my surprise when I ended up being totally exhilarated and enjoying it immensely.

Unlike many of the other films of its ilk, The Rhythm Section never feels the need to move beyond Stephanie’s sadness and sense of loss. This is really a tragedy thriller more than it is a revenge thriller.

Playing the cello is such a pleasant change of pace that he (Walken) eventually grows on you, scene by scene, proving for the first time since his role as Leonardo DiCaprio's troubled father 10 years ago in "Catch Me If You Can," that he really can act. He - along with the rest of the elegant cast - keeps A Late Quartet in tune when it threatens to go flat.

If your own expectations are not too high, you crave period-costume drama and you’re one of those unfortunate people who refuses to watch anything in glorious black-and-white, this Great Expectations is worth the time and effort.

Although they are no longer together and are living their own separate personal lives, their story, fictionalized but still autobiographical, bonded them for life. Apparently, they are best friends whose dedicated collaboration was the only way they could tell this harrowing story. It's a brave effort any way you slice it.

A middling attempt to peek through a lace curtain for a glimpse of the other Upstairs/Downstairs staff members only leads to too many distracting social functions that fail to relieve the film's otherwise solemn pacing.

This is a movie that’s back-loaded to the extreme: all of its action takes place in the last 20 minutes. Not that Leigh would ever be confused with Tarantino, but it would have been considerably more engaging to have started with the main event and moved backwards to how we got there.

It’s a forgettable film, but what it says about the debilitating effect of technological abuse is sickening enough to make you think twice about upgrading your smartphone.

In this overly familiar and ultimately meandering exercise in tedium, Mr. Burns also plays the lead.

After Words is part adventure, part love story, part travelogue, and all as synthetic as rayon.

It’s a movie that knocks itself cross-eyed trying to be hip, clever and today about acerbic seniors, but instead it only makes you long for old ladies in aprons exclaiming “Land sakes alive, I smell something burning in the oven!”

While Vengeance doesn’t always rise to the level of its ambitions, it is admirable to see Novak spit acid towards the privilege systems that make careers like his possible...But by repeating the same reductive and representational mistakes of the media it so pointedly criticizes, Novak’s film unwittingly becomes yet another part of the problem.

If you have already begun to suspect that Something Borrowed may be something less than the sum of its parts-all of which do indeed seem borrowed from other movies and TV rom-coms too numerous to mention-you are right.

It's a Clint Eastwood role that only proves you can't send a boy to do a man's job.

The generic title In Secret is as uninspired as the movie itself.

Far from the offbeat satire on the American dream gone sour it aims to be, The Brass Teapot is more like a dark flirtation with the American nightmare that backfires.

Admirable and respectable, it engages you while you’re watching it, then leaves you empty and wanting more.

It's when the music stops that we run into problems. For starters, there are so many questions left unanswered.

Godzilla: King of Monsters is a film that seems to paint with sound — sometimes Pop Art, but more often large canvas Jackson Pollock splatter.

It’s not about Peter Pan, but about what happened before Peter Pan. The noise you hear is J. M. Barrie turning over in his grave.

Dirty Girl is a bad movie with no insights that is broadly drawn and genuinely plagued by filthy dialogue. You don't laugh. You just wince, and wonder how the whole thing ever got financed.