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.