The heavy plot sauce weighs down the movie. Director Lasse Hallstrom had similar buoyancy problems in 2000's bewilderingly Oscar-nominated "Chocolat." Here he lucks out big time with Mirren and Puri, two pros who know how to lift an audience over plot hurdles and turn a merely digestable diversion into a treat.

Eastwood and Adams are just so much damn fun to watch.

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.

A tart, terrific comedy that gives Harrison Ford his best and funniest role in years.

For all the clanking armies of iron knights on display to dazzle the eager kid in each of us, this summer epic rings hollow. There's no one home inside the suit.

The Dictator leaves you laughing helplessly. It starts at outrageous and rockets on from there. Screw the occasional sputter.

Predictable stuff, energized by some spiffy scare effects from cinematographer Marc Spicer who works wonders with underlighting. But the on/off tricks would grow tiring without actors who perform well beyond the call of fright-house duty.

Here's a hit-and-miss farce that leaves you wishing it was funnier than it is. Why? Because it wussies out on a sharp premise.

Tusk is a mesmerizing mess that will make Joe Popcorn yak. Jay and Silent Bob will love it.

Even at its hokiest, Far and Away is never less than heartfelt.

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.

The pleasures here come almost exclusively from Schumer and Hawn playing off each other like the rock stars of comedy they are.

Vaughn and Favreau are so money, just like they were in "Swingers."

End of Watch gives you the savage whoosh of being on a job that can get you killed. Sins of cop clichés can be forgiven when a movie pays honest tribute to police on the line.

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

Audiences looking for emotional resonance in Indy 4 are doomed to the temple of disappointment. Spielberg and Lucas aren't upping their creative game -- they're taking care of business.

Exodus is a biblical epic that comes at you at maximum velocity but stays stirringly, inspiringly human.

Pine is driven and touchingly vulnerable. And Banks, heartbreakingly good, nails every nuance in a raw wound of a role. Thanks to their teamwork, we believe we are watching people like us.

Only landlubbers would resist the rousing action of man versus leviathan. Sure it's old-school. So what. Howard puts heart, soul and every computerized whale trick in the book into crafting a seafaring adventure to rock your boat.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit has no personality of its own. It's a product constructed out of spare parts and assembled with computerized precision. It's hard to care when Jack turns operational and becomes a CIA robocop. The movie feels untouched by human hands.

It's the Mob connection that allows Eastwood to add shading and a sharper edge.

The film rambles, but rambling with the mischievous Roos is still a tricky and winning proposition.

The subplot involving a tragic romance between a soldier and one of the living statues (the lovely Kelly Reilly) is hell on the humor and on a movie that stays content to do the trite thing.

The movie is full of possibilities. Frustratingly, only a few of them are realized.

It would be easy to write off Before I Fall as the Groundhog Day of teen weepies – but something raw keeps breaking through the formula to pull us in.

Working from a deft script by Delia Ephron, director Ken Kwapis labors hard so that guys won't cringe (too much) as four teen girls, of different body types, pass along the same pair of lucky jeans during a summer of love and loss.

The laughs come and go, but Ferrell makes NASCAR his bitch funny. Funnier. And more fun. And then the fun skids to a stop. You know how it goes: Plot gets in the way.

Black is expectedly hilarious, but the beauty part of his performance is that, instead of exaggerating or patronizing this Instagram princess, he finds her vulnerable heart.