This unholy mess replaces the artful ambition of "The American" with torture, blood spray, kinky sex, twisted fun and a bizarro critique of U.S. policy on illegal immigration.

It's Hanson's astute directing that makes the film's life lessons go down painlessly, turning the smartly entertaining In Her Shoes into a comfy fit for both sexes.

Brad Bird's Tomorrowland, a noble failure about trying to succeed, is written and directed with such open-hearted optimism that you cheer it on even as it stumbles.

What saves Point Break from wipeout is Kathryn Bigelow's direction. Though the film lacks the formal beauty and allure of her Near Dark and Blue Steel, Bigelow keeps the action percolating in high style.

Screenwriter Robert Towne has certainly not challenged his gifts -- the script is loaded with stock cars and stock characters -- but he does deliver what's necessary: a workable setup for exciting NASCAR racing footage shot on sixteen Winston Cup tracks from Daytona to Watkins Glen.

Following his surprisingly subtle work in "Sleeping With Other People," Sudeikis again shows real skills as an actor.

When it’s working, Three Thousand Years is an old curiosity shop of a movie, a cache of curios and strange conceits, many of which, when the movie isn’t working, are submerged into the bland uniformity of Miller’s stylistic approach to large stretches of this film.

And suddenly, amid the claustrophobic compositions and shadowy hallways and tick-tick-tick of inevitable sickness, Sea Fever goes from being a monster movie to an eerily timed example of pandemic horror. Coming to a TV screen in a near you in the middle of a quarantine, this exercise in it-came-from-below suddenly takes on a whole other level of resonance.

A long slog of a movie that insists on hitting the high spots like a Wiki page, which leaves little room to investigate the political and personal changes that altered Mandela's thoughts about violence and its uses.

Nonstop mayhem follows in a stampede of comic terrors ready made for Halloween. Sure it's exhausting. But Goosebumps, knowing its audience, lets it rip.

This sequel tries to expand into tonier genre horizons and gin up a sort of Den-iverse mythology, yet simply ends up playing tourist in smaller, more previously colonized territory.

It's clear that Beatty, who has studied Hughes for decades, has an instinctive understanding of the man, from getting stuck on phrases he repeats endlessly to making deals he can't wait to run away from. No kids. No roots. Sex, movies and aviation are the only constants. Why? Beatty hints, but never tells us. But his performance, filled with comic bite and aching confusion, teases a much deeper portrait.

Imagine David Mamet rewriting his political satire "Wag the Dog" -- in which a president and his advisers declare war to distract the media from the prez's horn-dog activities -- as a joke-free kidnap drama.

It's Bettany's portrait of the monster as a young man that rivets attention. So remember the name, or don't. Just watch Bettany strut his stuff. You'll know a star when you see one.

Toothless satire relatively inoffensive and relentlessly mediocre.

Robert Wise's adaptation of Michael Crichton's novel about a deadly space pathogen trades in the genre's cosmic pulp and head-trippiness for a procedural-like seriousness. Germaphobes, proceed with extreme caution.

Watching De Niro take Paul through his first panic attack ("I'm crying like a woman") is an unalloyed joy.

Thanks to the comic tornado at its center, Isn’t It Romantic is still your best bet for a Valentine’s date at the movies. You could do worse.

Suffers from franchise fatigue. Its rote suspense is strictly a business proposition.

The Beaver, directed by Jodie Foster from a script by fearless first-timer Kyle Killen, is operating on a plane far above multiplex formula. This flawed but heartfelt movie has the power to sneak up and floor you.

An uneven blend of mirth and malice.

The Aeronauts is hobbled time and again by the attempt to add the juice of fiction to a story that could and should have stood on its own. The truth, in Hollywood terms, is never enough.

Imagine "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" for the age of antidepressants — that’s Little Joe, the seventh feature (and first in English) from Austrian provocateur Jessica Hausner (Lourdes, Amour Fou).

Not even the haunting images and Garfield’s haggard intensity can disguise the gaping void where the film’s soul should be. There’s no there there.

Whatever this is, it’s not a movie — it’s a product more deserving of a road test than a review.

Like the best war movies, Lone Survivor laces action with moral questions that haunt and provoke.

What started as cute becomes cloying and bloated. Charm should never feel like it weighs a ton.

With House of Gucci, you get a jumble of stories jockeying for screen time, and then you get a supernova blazing at the center of all of it that burns everything superfluous away. If the film is remembered for anything, it’s for being Exhibit A as what a great actor she is. Forget Gucci. Long live the house that Gaga built.

Ribisi and Macht are sleaze incarnate. James Caan, as a conniving lawyer, and Rade Sherbedgia, as a Russian crime boss, are even more cootified. Best of all is Wilson, digging into his juiciest role in years and putting a human face on this mesmerizing morality tale, a journey into the toxic heart of the American dream.

As with his Trial of the Chicago 7 film, Sorkin seems to view history as the fodder for working with A-list stars and scoring ideological zingers. Mission accomplished, we guess. At a certain point, however, you really wish the film would stop ‘splaining its creator’s viewpoints and start actually being about its subjects.

The movie cops out by going soft in the end, but it's still hardcore hilarity for stressed moms looking for a girls night out. Guys should also check out Bad Moms — you just might learn something.

The last part of the movie, which brings the whole cast together on “Super Trouper,” is almost worth the price of admission. Millions will happily get drunk on the film’s infectious high spirits. For the rest of us, who can’t get with the program, Here We Go Again will go down as more of a threat than a promise.

The intensity of Leto and Hayek goes deeper than the script into revealing what makes these two sociopaths in heat impervious to bloody murder. When Hayek and Leto are onscreen, you do not look away.

The blistering confrontation scene between Hopper and Walken -- both in peak form -- will be talked about for years. It's pure Tarantino: a full-throttle blast of bloody action and verbal fireworks.

What really lifts Celeste and Jesse Forever above the rom-com herd, besides breakout star performances from Jones and Samberg, is the movie's willingness to replace clichés with painful truths. It's irresistible.

Of all the World War II movies about the plots to kill the architects of the Third Reich, Anthropoid is guilty of being the dullest.

We Live in Time is an actor’s movie, by necessity if not always by design. You know where the destination ends before the movie’s even begun. Pugh and Garfield make the endgame worth the journey, no matter where you place it.

One for the time capsule.

The Rock has a flair for action and comedy; he's a real movie star.

It's shocking, considering the talent involved, the The Perfect Storm looks and feels fake.

Zemeckis springs so many pow 3-D surprises you'll think Beowulf is your own private fun house.

The Humbling is a dark dazzler shot through with mirth and delicious malice. But be warned. It is not Roth's novel.

While it doesn’t fall prey to grabbing the GoodFellas brass ring and turning into just another story of crime and irony, the film isn’t saying much about the Reagan-era War on Drugs, the hypocrisy that characterized it or the notion that crack was really cocaine cut with pure capitalism that you have not heard before.

In substance and style, the movie is more than a few tears short of Jordan's "The Crying Game." But Murphy is an actor to watch. Even in heels.

There are delicious bits aplenty in Spider-Man 3 for those who care to notice.

Keeps the pulse pounding without sacrificing laughs or logic.

Jolie has an army of craftsmen in her corner, notably camera poet Roger Deakins (No Country for Old Men). But it's her vision that gives Unbroken a spirit that soars. In honoring Louis' endurance, she does herself proud.

Rozema's minimalist approach pays dividends until a final third hobbled by overdone effects and a thrashing musical score. Too bad. The story being told on the faces of Page and Wood had eloquence and power enough to hold us rapt.

Dalton has training in classical theater; he has pedigree, looks, class. But as Bond he is – face it – dull as dirt. Too much spoofing is bad (see Moore), none is deadly (see Dalton).

While this nailbiter sure as hell ain't swimming in the same classic waters as "Jaws," it gets the jolting job done.

For a long stretch, Italian Studies turns this trip down memory-loss lane into a low-wattage livewire, an unpredictable stroll into the unknown. Its hero will slowly, eventually come back around to remembering her life before the reset. The movie itself, however, is unforgettable from the jump.

Gorden teases out some affecting scenes, but not enough to carry a film that promises more than it delivers.

How many movies these days leave you wanting more? The funny and heartfelt Home is a small treasure.

Outlaw King does stumble. Its tension-and-release game is not exactly tight, and its dramatic rhythms have a way of losing the beat.

You can accuse Lemon of a lot of things. False advertising in the title, however, is not one of them.

Silverman, digging so deep into her character that we can feel her nerve endings, is like nothing we've seen before. She's fierce and unerring. No showing off; she just is. This is acting of the highest caliber.

There's not much to say about a jerry-built caper comedy, except that this one has timeliness on it side, and some first-rate clowns.

The Rain Man-Dying Young elements in Tom Sierchio’s script are pitfalls that Slater dodges with a wonderfully appealing performance. His love scenes with the dazzling Tomei have an uncommon delicacy. But it’s Tomei and Perez who give Untamed Heart its bouyant wit. Their friendship could have sustained an entire movie. It’s certainly the best part of this one.

Talk about beating a dead orc. In dutifully completing his prequel trilogy to his three-part Lord of the Rings triumph, director Peter Jackson has sadly saved the worst for last.

The film is a mesmerizing erotic odyssey given gravity and heart by Cruz.

Branagh’s performance is a triumph of ferocity and feeling that shuns Shakespeare the literary rock star to find the flawed, touchingly human man inside.

Formula mother-brat stuff...It's only the deft teamwork of Portman and Sarandon that keeps the triteness at bay.

The movie, from the 1992 best seller by Olivia Goldsmith, isn't deathless art. But as pure entertainment, this witty revenge romp is sinfully satisfying.

The plot of Godzilla vs. Kong matters far less than the basic fact that it’d be a much better movie if it stuck, firmly, to its title.

With the help of Hamilton, Ross and Olmos, sublime actors who radiate grit and grace, Sayles has made Go for Sisters a movie that stays inside your head long after you see it. It's a keeper.

Not even J-Law off the nice-young-lady leash can save something this lazy and desperate to offend, however. The movie simply isn’t on her level. Or really much of any level at all.

Doctor Sleep relies way too much on borrowed inspiration and eventually runs out of — pardon the word — steam. But this flawed hybrid and King and Kubrick still has the stuff to keep you up nights.

Until The Contender slips into partisan politics and platitudinous piety, it's a lively, entertaining ride.

Even when the film trips on its tall ambitions, you can't shake it off.

I never rooted for them as a couple, never felt a chemistry in their bond. And in a romance, even one with tragic notes, that really is the end of the world.

If Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) had more surprises and James Cameron's Aliens (1986) more thrills, David Fincher's austere, low-tech, darkly funny Alien 3 has more sharply observed characters.

Disney deserves praise for raising the ante on its ambitions in animation. Next time, though, a little less civics lesson and a little more heart.

Sing doesn't have the grit or the grace notes of Zootopia, which it resembles only in its concept of an animal kingdom.

This gifted clown has found the right vehicle for his souped-up silliness. Carrey is the ultimate party dude, and like the masked man says, this party is smokin'.

What Cooper has given audiences here is way more compelling than a live-action greatest-hits compilation.

The Lovebirds knows how to send out a laugh with a sting in its tail. That’s what they call inspired lunacy.

Forrest Gump lives in spirit in this overbearing tear-jerker that takes two and a half hours to cover three baby-boom decades in an effort to prove that nice guys finish first, at least in the hearts of academy voters.

Call it RBG: The Early Years.

We Own the Night is defiantly, refreshingly unhip.

Brought to the screen awkwardly but ardently by Mamet-actor supreme Joe Mantegna in his feature-directing debut.

Follow Shyamalan's Signs. It will take a piece out of you.

Sounds godawful in title and concept — but which in execution is a fizzy delight.

It ain't fact, but it is damn entertaining fiction.

Witherspoon -- though miles from the keen satire of "Election" -- stays one sharp cookie even as her film crumbles.

The result is inspiring, which isn't something you associate with this series.

Saunders and Lumley are all about keeping the party going. So grab your Bolly, darlings, and party on.

Scenes with Burns crackle with the toxic energy that makes Confidence a game worth playing.

There’s a sense of sniggering that lurks behind all of the provocation, which thankfully never crosses the line into full 4chan territory. But the fact that so much hinges on the poking of a wound doesn’t automatically make it audacious in a way that’s taboo-breaking. It’s the sort of too-edgy-for-the-mainstream movie that’s not nearly as edgy as it thinks it is.

It's a wet dream for anyone who's ever dreamed of getting an edge on the information highway. The worst side effect is that you won't believe a word of the damn thing in the morning. Fair exchange.

The universal rule of sequels dictates that you give viewers another helping of the same thing yet somehow make it different, the sort of koan that only makes sense to lifelong Zen masters and studio suits. Yet, against the odds, the creators of this continuation have managed to do more than just produce a carbon copy with a new number after the title.

This state-of-the-art dino epic is also more than a blast of rumbling, roaring, "did you effing see that!" fun. It's got a wicked streak of subversive attitude that goes by the name of Colin Trevorrow.

Ah-nuld’s swollen belly is the joke — the only one — but director Ivan Reitman (Dave) takes it for a few deft spins.

It’s feels like the New Puritanism (recently repped by the outcry over Janet Jackson’s "wardrobe malfunction" at the Super Bowl) is seeping in. But in the barbershop? Say it isn’t so.

The actors nail the comic sting in every line, punctuated by eleven prime Elvis Costello songs.

Maybe money never sleeps, but this missed opportunity of a movie will have audiences dozing.

The film swings from melodrama to sermonizing, both blunting the human drama that needs to come to the fore.

The vigorous young cast enhances the excitement of the flight sequences, which are spectacular. Movie rah-rah has rarely been this entertaining.

I imagine that, for some, the movie’s structure will play unevenly, seem a little weird in its jumping and drifting. But the contours of this story, and the tinges of genuine melancholy thrown into our path along the way, are very much to the point. They make it all work, and make it worth it.