The Captive may appear to bite off a little more than it can chew but it's one of the most satisfyingly baroque thrillers of the year, and thanks to a perfectly judged performance by Ryan Reynolds, it's quietly heartbreaking, too.

Still, I laughed — enough to feel mortified at myself.

Kirkland does some fine work here, but her Margaret deserves a better script and a better movie.

To Marcello and and co-writer Jay S. Arnold’s credit, there are a handful of surprises that defy some of the more expected youthful rom com tropes. But the rest is a lot of the same teenage romantic tribulations we’ve seen before.

This movie is atrocious, never making a lick of sense, wearing its “message” on its sleeve like a bad term paper, and then ending in a way that should make you angry more than eager to see if it makes any sense.

By widening the scope of their based-on-a-true story, the makers of Revenge of the Green Dragon make their subjects look like the products of unimaginative cultural assimilation.

There's something off-kilter about it, in a good way. It has a confidence that might not be earned but is still enjoyable to see. It's tapping into something true and knows it.

It’s not a film so much as a lecture punctuated by a patronizing moral, and more importantly, it’s not much fun.

Unfortunately, more bland than broad humor otherwise stands in for Polsky and Herzog’s personalities.

A disjointed and at times off-putting mess that veers wildly and unconvincingly between a road movie, a family drama, a violent crime film and an offbeat sci-fi thriller before arriving at a finale so loopy that even if I spoiled it here and now, many of you would just assume that I was kidding.

It’s not involving; it’s not scary; it’s just kind of miserable.

A genre movie that's at war with itself.

Coffee & Kareem is stock R-rated buddy-cop comedy shenanigans by way of cuteness, and it ain't "Stuber."

Beyond some effectively icky make-up effects, Contracted: Phase II sells nothing that viewers absolutely must buy.

You might come to Camera Obscura expecting nothing more than a kite-high concept like "camera that photographs future murders." But you too will be disappointed if you expect anything more from the film since its creators do not offer satisfying cheap thrills and/or thoughtful consideration of a veteran/artist's tortured post-war psyche.

How can a movie this visually glossy be so devastatingly uninteresting and dull?

If you liked “Frozen” but wish it had been angrier, The Huntsman: Winter’s War is for you.

A middle-aged bromance tucked inside a French crime thriller, a slick and brutal B-action picture that finds writer-director Edgar Marie channeling Nicolas Winding Refn channeling early Michael Mann.

Grudge Match belongs to a fast-growing genre I'll call "Senior Citizen Action Porn," or SCAP. Proud members of SCAP include "Red" and its sequel, "Red 2," the "Expendables" series, and the best of the 2013 crop, Arnold Schwarzenegger's "The Last Stand."

Judy Greer assembled a monumental cast for her directing debut, A Happening of Monumental Proportions. Then she stranded her fellow actors with material that doesn’t even begin to tap into their talents.

This second sequel is escapist in a next-level way: it escapes from drama as well as life.

Sadly, Jones’ passion has not made it to the screen in a way that’s likely to make viewers feel the same excitement he had about the project so many years ago.

The movie is a very sincere and good-hearted adaptation, but it loses focus by trying to include too many elements of the real-life story.

The film makes one damning if unoriginal observation—the "reality" presented on reality TV is manufactured—and then does nothing to expand on it.

It's a PG-rated movie about a goofy genie and a dad who learns a life lesson, so the bar may be low for families looking for a bit of Hallmark-esque escapism this holiday season. But that doesn’t mean one can’t wish this was better.

Awake has just enough scares and strangeness, plus a sense of dread and paranoia, to make its horror creepy and enjoyable. It’s not a flawless thriller, but enough different elements click into place, like Rodriguez and Greenblatt’s performances.

So of course, Hardy applies that same intensity to the comic-book anti-hero origin story, Venom. And his fully committed performance is pretty much the only reason to see it.

As well-paced and cleverly deployed as all of the slapstick is here, it's hard to watch Jeff get slammed in the head or Pam step on Legos without wincing more than we laugh.