The only thing this second-rate scarefest truly succeeds in doing, however, is giving Sweeney a hell of a showcase.

This new take on horror is more of the bloody same.

DeMented is Waters the way we like him--spiked with laughs and served with a twist.

Dogfight doesn’t sum up an era; it merely romanticizes it. What could have been an incisive movie about alienation deteriorates into a conventional romance.

Matthew Michael Carnahan's caffeinated script isn't much concerned with balance, but it gets some anyway, from the resonant images of culture clash that Berg catches on the fly and a remarkable performance from Ashraf Barhom.

No judgments here if you just want to hang back and let nonstop gore, gunfire, and explosions numb you into submission. Take that, COVID-19.

What the true legacy of Jenkins’ addition to the catalog may end up being, however, is a template for honoring the past while still managing to move things a few steps ahead. The circle of life, indeed.

Adapting Robert O'Connor's novel, director Gregor Jordan slaps us with keen wit and purpose.

The flaws don't cripple what is a fiercely funny, exciting and provocative detective story about the crimes of corporate culture — crimes that transcend race and geography.

In the doldrums of January, the movie pulls out every trick in the suspense-thriller book to keep us grinning at each new absurdity. Silly? You bet. Irresistible? Totally.

What you get in this cop drama is NYPD Blue lite. That's not bad. In fact, it's compulsively watchable. But there are no leaps, just fits and starts.

Brosnan, in his fourth time up at the Bond bat, hits this one out of the park.

The 24th has its share of unevenness. It also has the blessing, and the curse, of necessity. It’s a story that has to be retold.

It’s clear that a verité, fly-on-the-wall record of these SNL livewires on vacation would have made a hilarious documentary. What we have instead follows the Sitcom 101 formula.

The humor is slight, but the actors make the blarney go down easy.

This tale of self-involved millennials, a mystery machine, and a whole mess of purposefully mistaken identities is the kind of mashup of high-concept horror and ham-fisted satire that mistakes complicated for complex and a pile-up of confusing plot twists for storytelling.

What keeps Adrift from feeling like just a travelogue tacked on to a tragi-sploitive star vehicle is, ironically enough, its star. Shailene Woodley has always been great when it comes to bringing the radiance – she's like a sunbeam made sentient – and even better when she can use that California Dreamin' glow semi-subversively a la "The Spectacular Now" or "The Descendents."

The movie is so soggy and anonymous, I had to remind myself that the Farrelly brothers, Peter and Bobby, directed it. It's sad to watch the kingpins of gross-out try to dial down to cute. Swung at and missed.

At times, Jolie rises to the pulpit when she should stay on the ground. Her theme is too complex for her scattered screenplay to encompass. It's as a director that Jolie shines.

As a movie, Tag is all over the place, with gags too hit-and-miss to cohere into anything truly memorable. But the partytime atmosphere – as if "Dodgeball" mated with "Game Night" – might be just what you're looking for on a hot summer night. With these actors, there’s no downside to watching them let it rip.

A potently acted, buoyantly funny film that trades on emotion without making you gag on it.

To call it trippy would be an understatement. Your head might explode. Just don't accuse Taymor of playing it safe.

Knoxville and his boys seem to be saying goodbye. To which I can't help thinking, fondly, it's time.

It's a dumb summer movie done with smarts.

Whether you regard Stella's getting her groove back as a feminist battle cry or as a silly wish-fulfillment fantasy, the movie delivers guilt-free escapism about pretty people having wicked-hot fun in pretty places.

A Dirty Shame is Waters unleashed, and wicked, kinky fun for anyone except the twits who rated it NC-17.

Towne doesn't weave all the elements as deftly as before, and his political observations seem secondhand.

Schumacher could have exploited those tabloid headlines about solid citizens going berserk. Instead, the timely, gripping Falling Down puts a human face on a cold statistic and then dares us to look away.

What if director Joseph Ruben didn't resort to B-movie suspense tricks? What if the fine cast wasn't saddled with a shamelessly contrived script by Wesley Strick and Bruce Robinson? Then Return to Paradise would be a better movie, that's what if.

As Van Peebles turns the western into an equal-opportunity genre, his voice occasionally fades in the din. But be assured: It’s a voice spoiling to be heard.

Hamm is first-rate, his nuanced portrayal lifting the movie to the winner's circle.

The result is an uncommon intimacy, the kind you find in a Judy Blume novel. Her grit and grace are all over this heartfelt adventure of a movie. She gives it a spirit that soars.

Maher can be a smartass, but his attempts to apply reason to religion are more a challenge than a threat.

Keaton, a sorceress at blending humor and heartbreak, honors the film with a grace that makes it stick in the memory.

Hollywood has a knack for sanitizing books that deserve better. In the case of The Glass Castle, it's a damn shame.

It didn't grab me. Not at first. A documentary that tracks the winner of a reality show -- in this case Bravo's Project Runway -- after his victory. Huh? But Eleven Minutes busts a few fresh moves.

First-time director Eli Roth turns this cheapie into a greatest-hits of horror. It's a blast of good gory fun that just won't quit.

Never mind the curveballs that Radioactive throws audiences on its defiantly unconventional journey into a defiantly unconventional life. Maria Salomea Skłodowska Curie has been done proud.

Race is at its best when it fills in the corners of a story we only thought we knew.

A dash of Tarantino might have juiced up Walter Salles' wrongheadedly well-mannered take on Jack Kerouac's 1957 Beat Generation landmark. Kerouac's semi-autobiographical novel comes to the screen looking good but feeling shallow.

In his debut as a writer-director, Sean Penn shows a sure hand with actors and a knack for setting up a scene visually and dramatically. But he’s a bust at following through.

There is a sense that it could have gone farther out and pushed even more boundaries, especially before tying everything back up with a “happy” ending that feels mostly but not quite completely earned. But there’s still a bark and a bite here in the way that its allowing a specific strain of too-often stifled female rage to really bloom.

Stumbles and sometimes falls on its top-heavy ambitions. But there are also flashes of visual brilliance and performances, especially from Haley and Crudup, that drill deep into the novel's haunted soul.

The Deadpool movies were once a much-needed counterpoint to all those dead-serious MCU sagas. They still act like the foul-mouthed class clown in the back row, but now it’s just more white noise dressed in red, yellow and black.

Hardwicke whips up a frenzy of crazy-cool board action, with Alva choreographing the stunts. Even when the slippery-slope-of-success cliches halt the film's momentum, the ready-to-rock actors rev it up again.

I'm a sucker for caper movies in which impossibly clever con artists do impossibly dangerous things while looking impossibly gorgeous. I could feel Focus trying to be that caper. I'm not asking for nirvana, such as Hitchcock's "Notorious" or David O. Russell's "American Hustle," just a taste of sexy escapism. A taste is all you get in Focus, but it'll do till the whole enchilada comes along.

What a bold notion for a movie, and what a bust in terms of execution.

Leatherheads is most on its game when it's in the game, and in the zone of Clooney's no-bull affection for the faces of his actors.

There may be nothing fresh left to find in teens coming of age, but director Jake Schreier (Robot and Frank) fakes it with genuine sincerity.

It's not the trite talk that sends Cruel Intentions into a tailspin, it's the lightweight casting.

You don't want to miss Depp in this movie -- he knocks it out of the park.

The Fate of the Furious doesn't have a thought in its head to match the best of Bond and Bourne. What it is, in every sense of the term, is insanely entertaining.

Derivative and blindingly dull, Quick Change is an occasion for a quick nap.

Luckily, Non-Stop has a way-above-average cast for this kind of nonsense.

It’s too bad the script never allows their ethical battle over human guinea pigs to rise above the level of plot device. With these actors, the debut film from Grant and Hurley should have soared above TV mediocrity. What the hell were they thinking?

Tom Cruise starring in the fact-based story of a plot to kill Hitler by Nazi Col. Claus von Stauffenberg sounds like Oscar bait. It isn't. And the sooner you accept it, the more fun you'll have at this satisfying B movie.

With Del Toro's name in the credits, standard chills aren't enough. We want imagination to run riot.

You’re left enduring a bumpy ride on a road to nowhere, in other words, and neither the film’s wane familiarity nor its welcome, pro-smut good intentions can make the journey worthwhile.

Stay for the outtakes – they’re improv delights, suggesting the movie that might have been if they had just left it all to Carell and Fey.

Director Paolo Sorrentino’s gorgeously gaudy, chalice-runneth-over satire, is really about one person: Silvio Berlusconi.

There’s a words-escape-me, tingling, offbeat something about this movie that reels you in — a something dimmed, maybe, by the brunt of the film so clearly guiding us toward this impression. Once it gets there, it doesn’t quite know where to go. Wit gives way to enervation.

Paltrow looks glam even in death, which only supports the notion, raised by Plath’s daughter Frieda Hughes, that the movie would be about a "Sylvia Suicide Doll." Good call.

Deliver it does, big time.

I am really sick of people going easy on this dud remake...Instead of the luminous Audrey Hepburn as Sabrina, the awkward chauffeur's daughter who goes to Paris and comes back a swan, we have Julia Ormond, a decent actress without an ounce of the movie-star glamour the part demands. Instead of Humphrey Bogart as Linus, the elder boss-man brother on the Long Island, N.Y., estate where Sabrina's father works, we have Harrison Ford at his most dour.

Vikander, the sexbot in "Ex Machina," is having a hell of a year. And you can see why. Gaby isn't much of a part, but Vikander makes her a live wire. Her impromptu dance with Kuryakin that ends in a wrestling match is, well, something to see.

Foster is electrifying as ego and id clash and the movie fires up with genuine provocation.

The questions is: Can the minions carry a movie all by their mischievous mini-selves? 'Fraid not. This origin story, while being utterly harmless and far from despicable, wears out its welcome way too soon.

Sugar Ray Leonard helped with the motion-capture, and it shows. Good stuff. But the tear-jerking in Real Steel is as shameless as its product placement. We're being hustled.

The too-blunt comedy defangs the film. As does the irritating voiceover from the Rolling Stone reporter, played Scoot McNary, which breaks a cardinal rule of filmmaking: show, don't tell.

ignore the pileup of implausibilities and Unknown becomes a diabolically entertaining con game. Does it jerk you around? Yes. Suck it up. The ride's worth it.

At best diverting, at worst drearily conventional, The Rum Diary is pre-gonzo Thompson, before the fusion of fact and trippy fantasy that flowered into a brilliant delirium.

Even when the film falls to pieces, McAvoy's bonkers brilliance will blow you away.

The skate-rink action, which culminates in an apocalyptic death match, remains rabble-rousingly brutal.

The actors, especially Binoche, do their damnedest to bring urgency to their roles. But despite Minghella's admirable attempt to tackle major themes on an intimate scale, the film goes down like weak tea. There's no kick in it.

A frustratingly uneven satire with undeniably sharp teeth, isn't afraid to shoot comic darts at its targets until blood is drawn.

Hereafter, set to a resonant Eastwood score, truly is haunting.

A potent thriller that grows in intensity as the audience realizes that the character it likes most is most likely a nut job.

Writer-director Roman Coppola is trying to capture a time he's too young to remember, when the French New Wave reinvigorated film art.

Passes muster as an old-style biopic with its heart in the right place. There won't be a dry eye in the house.

Farrell is a dynamo. And Kiefer Sutherland, whose sniper role is essentially a voice on the phone, matches Farrell subtle shift for subtle shift.

They turn what could have been an acting stunt into an intimate and compelling study of bruised emotions.

It's as if the brothers admired the Swiss-watch precision of the original and wanted to take it apart to see how the pieces would work in a new setting. As an experiment, it's fascinating. But damn if the fiddling doesn't suck the life out of the laughs.

Troy lacks the focus of Gladiator, not to mention that Oscar winner's scrappy wit. But why kick a gift horse when you're in summer-movie heaven?

Let Clarkson and Fanning take you to the rabbit hole of seductive enchantment that defines this movie. And don't ask what to do -- jump.

It’s a numbing collage of fiery, stitched-together spectacles. You can feel your IQ draining with each passing minute.

Jolie comes to this party ready to bite, but the movie muzzles her. Even at 97 minutes, Maleficent is still one long, laborious slog.

It's a winner. And not just for oenophiles. Director Randall Miller, who co-wrote the script with his wife Jody Savin, keeps the plot brimming with spirit and wit.

The Pale Blue Eye is heavy, and not always to its advantage. Its glumness, meant to come off as a good-looking take on American gothic, gets in the way of its juicier, freakier bits. The offense is that it does so in service of a mystery that barely matters.

For all of the multiplex-friendly fun Wright’s conjuring with this over-the-top spin on dystopian sci-fi blockbusters, the prevailing feeling here is dread. Most filmmakers would have diluted the grit and genuine sense of moral free-fall. Wright doubles the dosage. Every adrenaline rush comes with a chaser of low rage and simmering despair.

When Hollywood decides to remake French farce by Francis Veber, the result can be a champagne cocktail (La Cage Aux Folles spawning The Birdcage) or pâté de merde (Les Compères degenerating into Father's Day). Dinner for Schmucks, adapted from Veber's Le Dîner De Cons, falls somewhere in the middle.

As a thriller, The Recruit is merely an entertaining ride. But remember: Nothing is what it seems. It's the subtext -- two actors from different generations faking each other out with skill and affection -- that counts.

In story terms, Dinosaur lays an egg.

Carrey knocks himself out trying to make The Cable Guy different, then neglects the quiet, telling moments that would make it real.

Alive draws considerable power from staying more human than heroic.

The 25-year-old supernova (Lawrence) again proves she can do anything, moving from comic to tragic without missing a beat.

The Stooges were always better in short doses. And 90 minutes of PG nyuk-nyuk-nyuk can seem like an eternity.

A sweet, soft-centered pastoral drama that’s never as tough-minded as you want it to be. Thankfully, in her feature debut as a filmmaker, playwright Jessica Swale shows a genuine flair with actors.

No use fighting it. this laugh-getting, tear-jerking, part-affecting, part-appalling display of audience manipulation is practically critic-proof...The result can best be described as shamelessly entertaining.