In a summer of antiseptic effects spectacles, Elysium stands out for its grime and intensity, as well as the bluntness of its class allegory.

This "Percy Jackson" is a gentler-spirited, less flashy enterprise, though it still presents a natural world that can morph at the whim of a god. I like that.

Needless to say, the shapely Aniston pulls it off without a hitch — even if she never actually appears without a stitch. If this gutsy performance leads to better opportunities—a remake of Demi Moore's ill-conceived "Striptease," perhaps — I might sleep better at night.

Despairingly bland.

Brian De Palma is one of the great seducers of the cinema, and he proves it with Passion, a spellbinding thriller.

Maybe the joke’s on us, and all the pre-release hype suggesting that a micro-budget train wreck was barreling our way was merely part of the marketing strategy.

The beauty of Ecuadorian director Sebastian Cordero's film is the simplicity of its approach.

You've seen all this before, and many times. 2 Guns works because it's essentially several riffs on familiar material. Cliché is not a bad thing if it's done right.

The Artist and the Model is a simple, straightforward film about the wonder and awe that the natural world inspires in us.

What an affecting film this is. It respects its characters and doesn't use them for its own shabby purposes. How deeply we care about them.

The half-ingenious, half-ludicrous third act makes observations about class and legacy worth thinking about. It calls to mind Jeff Nichols's "Shotgun Stories."

A good Woody Allen flick is a thing of joy these days and, at times, Blue Jasmine is even a great one, close to being an equal to 2005's "Match Point."

The best kind of anti-war propaganda film, calm in feeling and mood, yet truly terrifying in showing the scourge of our age: terrorism, which can strike anybody, anywhere, at any time. It's also a love story, and a film about having it all. And then in an instant, losing everything.

Imagine the most overdone, Philip Glass-style horror movie music playing over glossy footage of a university art class, and you have some idea what your eyes and ears are in for while attending The Time Being.

A certain sloppiness prevents The To Do List from entering the female coming-of-age pantheon of "Sixteen Candles," "Clueless" and "Mean Girls."

The film's flintiness and initially subdued nastiness set it apart from most other action films about the thin line separating cops from crooks.

It has such a strong aesthetic about it, it's almost as if The Wolverine functions as its own stand-alone film, rather than as a piece of the "X-Men" mythology.

Mostly loud and graceless, despite some arresting hyperbolic visuals that deserve an action film of actual soul and purpose. It's simply too generic at heart to justify director Schwentke's delirious, sidewinding, arcing, snap-zooming and whip-panning anti-gravity camerawork.

This masterpiece about propaganda, cinema and vanity as instruments of power and terror ends on an excruciatingly sustained, righteous money shot: a monster who could have been a good man suffocates on the truth.

The two leads are appealing, and the pace is brisk, but the movie never aspires to be more than a cookie-cutter creature feature — the kind of film that can be washed back with a pint and then forgotten in the morning.

An absorbing coming-of-age drama that suddenly, pointlessly self-destructs with an onslaught of cheap ironies and overkill.

Not only is this take on human relations unoriginal, it's also sophomoric and blatantly untrue.

The desperate straining for laughs isn't nearly so off-putting as the abrupt tonal shift Girl Most Likely makes as it trudges toward its conclusion.

The Conjuring is as toothless as it is because it's two different kinds of boring. The film's plot is explained exhaustively whenever loud noises aren't blaring, and random objects aren't teasingly leaping out at you from the corner of your eye.

I did my homework and watched the original "RED." It was just as stupid as this movie, yet I liked it a little more.

Ultimately, Beneath is better than your average Roger Corman clone because it is more serious than trivial.

As an achievement, Computer Chess is laudable. As a film, it's missable.

Turbo is just strange and lively enough to make you wish it were better.

If I were nine years old, I would see the monsters-versus-robots adventure Pacific Rim 50 times. Because I'm in my forties and have two kids and two jobs, I'll have to be content with seeing it a couple more times in theaters and re-watching it on video.

Like so many horror films in recent years, V/H/S/2 appears more lightweight the more it tries to impress with its inventiveness and grotesquerie.

This is thematically rich material; unfortunately, like a few too many dramas from the past decade, The Hunt resists expressive uses of style, opting instead for gently bobbing handheld camerawork. It's an actor-friendly approach.

More disappointing, the performances just aren't quite as funny and focused as they should be. Willard and Kind are both very funny guys when they are used right, but they both seem a bit at sea here, and their characters never come into sharp focus.

The result is a movie that ambles and takes its time, never revealing where it's going.

In many ways, Fruitvale Station is as green and earnest as "Boyz N the Hood," a debut film made by another alumnus of Coogler's alma mater, USC: John Singleton. Yet its ambition is closer to that of the most important American indie film in at least a decade, Patrick Wang's "In the Family," a must-see that's now available on DVD.

As Roger Ebert noted in his review of "Grown Ups," they are "well-meaning people you don't want to see again any time real soon." My guess is we won't.

Wait for this to show up where it belongs — on cable.

For all its miscalculations, this is a personal picture, violent and sweet, clever and goofy. It's as obsessive and overbearing as Steven Spielberg's "1941" — and, I'll bet, as likely to be re-evaluated twenty years from now, and described as "misunderstood."

While I remain disappointed that the sequel gives me a subdued Gru and an uneven pace, I keep remembering things about Despicable Me 2 that make me smile. For every meh moment, there's almost 2 well-conceived gags or lines.

At least audiences who hang in there will be rewarded with Arthur in concert doing a gravelly yet stirring version of Billy Joel's "Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)". It's one of the rare instances when Unfinished Song achieves a heavenly state.

A trip recommended strictly for Almodóvar's hard-core fans. Throughout the movie, I wished not so much for the plane to land, as for the movie to finally take off.

Don't see this movie if you have a weak stomach, or if you don't like movies that mix horror-movie violence and cornball humor. Don't see if it you're expecting production values beyond a couple of vehicles, a farmhouse and about twelve buckets of gore. Don't see this movie if your definition of a great or classic film is one that bowls you over with the importance of its subject or the awesome scope of its vision. Do see if it you want to be be reminded that it's possible to make a relaxed, engrossing, funny, sometimes scary movie on almost no money.

The Heat is violent, with some pretty gruesome moments and some questionable police work. That's part of the fun. Cagney and Lacey these two ain't. When they finally join forces, they go rogue with a gusto that is refreshing.

White House Down is still too gun-happy, and too long, but however you feel about the Oval Office, our country, or some of the movie's jingoism, young Emily is worth rescuing.

A gifted writer, Dolan likes to give his characters poignant mouthfuls, and you can tell the actors revel in his language.

Ultimately, while this character-based drama proves consistently engrossing, it leaves various pertinent and fascinating issues frustratingly unexplored.

Would the magic hold? The magic holds. It holds from beginning to end.

Coppola's approach to the subject is largely impartial; depending on the viewer, this can seem refreshing or off-putting.

True to the spirit of the original film, "Monsters Inc.", and matches its tone. But it never seems content to turn over old ground.

Just bloody eye and ear candy.

The reporter's story doesn't just hold water, it proven solid enough to provoke mainstream media appearances and Congressional investigations. As a result, even though the tale is urgently important, one still comes away with the sense that something valuable has been lost in the telling.

Its ending leaves the door open for interpretation and post-viewing discussion — just as the best sort of movie-going experiences often do.

This is the End finds a balanced tone most horror comedies fail to deliver. Grossout humor melds easily with grossout horror, sometimes at the same moment.

The most striking and curious aspect of Man of Steel is the way it minimizes and even shuts out women.

The film is flat-out ludicrous from beginning to end.

Starbuck is one of those high-concept yet formulaic, sitcom-like comedies that gets by on charm and speed. It is manipulative and ingratiating but totally worth your time if you manage to pass one crucial test: Does French-Canadian actor Patrick Huard's smile make you happy?

Gimme the Loot is thrilling, although there aren't any stereotypically "thrilling" sequences. The thrill comes from the compulsively watchable dynamic between the two leads (non-professional actors, both of them), the excellent supporting cast (also non-professionals), and the fun use of multiple locations throughout the bustling metropolis.

A relentless and largely unrewarding descent into an ostensibly personal hell.

If you can look past the sputtering conclusion — or the pseudo-intellectual banter about memory, modern art, and other assorted nonsense — what you'll find is a brisk, breezy, style-heavy crime flick that happens to be one of the most purely entertaining movies Boyle has made in a long time.

A genuinely nasty and disturbing piece of work, but its cumulative nerve-shredding effect is not just the product of effective direction. Sheri Moon Zombie delivers her best serious dramatic performance yet (before marrying Zombie, she used to be a porn star).

Oblivion is a special effects extravaganza with a lot of blatant symbolism and very little meaning. It starts slow, turns dull and then becomes tedious — which makes it a marginal improvement over the earlier film. It features shiny surfaces, clicky machinery and no recognizable human behavior. It's equally ambitious and gormless.

Nair has made a very smart film, whose ambitions sometimes exceed the piece's depths.

As ambitious and vibrant as it is ugly and scattershot, Pain & Gain is the most charming Michael Bay movie in a long while.

The movie is bland hackwork; its crime isn't incompetence, but indifference.

A slight, but very satisfying, and at times, surprisingly moving, documentary.

Some of the twists the film takes, particularly in its final third, strain the powers of belief, but the ending, thankfully, does not soft-pedal all that came before.

While the wind goes out of its sails a few times along the way, this is a ravishingly photographed, old-fashioned man-against-the-elements adventure epic propelled by human-scaled heroics.

Iron Man 3 builds on the first film's political cynicism by suggesting that politicians and arms dealers dream up foreign policy crises to consolidate power and make money, but it doesn't develop this notion in detail, because if it did, the audience would tune out.

Even when the movie's not working, its style fascinates. That "not working" part is a deal breaker, though — and it has little to do with Luhrmann's stylistic gambits, and everything to do with his inability to reconcile them with an urge to play things straight.

Director Wheatley has already shown his aptitude for sardonic horror-commentaries, and Sightseers is his best film to date. Sightseers is dark, gruesome, blithely amoral and thoroughly entertaining.

Chism's cast is game for her shenanigans, and the biggest pleasure of "Peeples" is watching them cut loose under her direction. This movie has one hell of a cast.

Abrams and his screenwriters (Robert Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof) are so obsessed with acknowledging and then futzing around with what we already know about Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Scotty and company that the movie doesn’t breathe.

[Baumbach's] collaboration with Gerwig has a freshness that may or not owe something to first-blush romance but that renders this bittersweet comedy occasionally inspired, frequently charming and always watchable.

The East prizes an initial air of mystery over consistent drama, and as a result ends up squandering its intriguing premise.

Gandolfini's quietly magnificent performance is the only reason to see Violet & Daisy.

Instead of being a creepy B-movie about the necessity of suppressing one's animalistic urges, The Purge is just an uninspired film.

The Kings of Summer flirts with profundity, seeming to yearn for it and fear the honest expression of it at the same time. There is much here to admire, but the overall impression is of a film that does not have the courage of its convictions.

The moments of sentiment, when they come, feel fully earned, and they come out of characterization.

A powerful and thoughtful film, it is also not what it at first seems, which is part of the point Polley appears to be interested in making. Can the truth ever actually be known about anything?

The Hangover Part III plays more like a caper film — “Alan’s Eleven,” perhaps — than a comedy. While Phillips ably handles the action sequences, he and co-screenwriter Craig Mazin can’t juggle both genres in the screenplay.

Fast 6 is solid entertainment, but it might have been great if it recognized that a human touch is a rare thing, and when you have it, there's no need to keep clenching it into a fist.

The ratio of humor and action and parent-child bonding is so formulaic, and the character design and molded-figurine-like animation so typical of the genre in the age of Pixar (and Pixar imitators), that Epic evaporates from the mind within minutes of leaving the theater.

Before Midnight is moving because it acknowledges that even love stories that began as beautifully as Jesse and Celine's must still endure the wear and tear of real life.

Much of what makes Now You See Me so entertaining — in a gaudy, disposable, Vegas act sort of way — is its ever-escalating ridiculousness.

After Earth is ultimately too thin of a story to support all of its grandiose embellishments, but so what? It's better to try to pack every moment with beauty and feeling than to shrug and smirk. The film takes the characters and their feelings seriously, and lets its actors give strong, simple performances.

It captures so well the insanity of the contradictions we–particularly women–have to live into daily.

Her thrilling mastery of slow-burn tension, insightful examination of power dynamics in business and personal relationships, and creation of exceptional performances prove Domont to be a director with a singular voice.

Lake of Death is a slow burn that fizzles out under the weight of its influences. The tech elements are significantly better than average B-movie fare, but the writing never matches them.

It fails to rise above certain clichés, dulled further by stiff performances and a clumsy handle on the movie’s interwoven time periods.

Police Story is one of the great 1980s action films. It’s also one of the most 1980s action films.

It is in every frame a beautiful and powerful film — a masterpiece.

The flywheels of the plot machine keep it churning around, but it chugs off onto the back lot and doesn't hit anybody in management. Only Penn and Willis are really funny, poking fun not at themselves but at stars they no doubt hate to work with.

Towelhead presents material that cries out to be handled with quiet empathy and hammers us with it. I understand what the film is trying to do, but not why it does it with such crude melodrama. The tone is all wrong for a story of child sexuality and had me cringing in my seat.

You have to be prepared to see a film like this, or able to relax and allow it to unfold. It doesn't come, as most films do, with built-in instructions about how to view it. One scene follows another with no apparent pattern, reflecting how the lives of its family combine endless routine with the interruptions of random events.

Bad acting, bad writing, bad directing, bad music, bad sound and bad fight choreography can only take a film so far. A film must be entertaining on its own terms in order to be worth recommending, and Dangerous Men is, for the most part, a bore.

There are so many themes that could be unpacked through the details of the true story of The Watcher, but Murphy and his team don’t trust the facts, adding more and more ridiculous twists with every episode, until the whole thing collapses under any suspension of disbelief.

This is a film with a dread fascination. McKellen occupies it like a poisonous spider in its nest.

Start to finish, the movie is delightfully dorky, irreverent and scrappy, the exact kind of project a young filmmaker would make if they just wanted to make fellow nerds laugh and were pretty good at doing so.

The kind of meandering apathy that Reichardt is going for in River of Grass can be tough to connect to as a viewer, and it’s interesting that her films became more resonant when they switched from what is kind of a comedy to drama.