The true audiences for Fifty Shades of Grey are gluttons for punishment — by boredom.

This kind of pandering FX padding, unnurtured by humor or heart, is what shifts Jupiter Ascending from a shambles to a fiasco. In an effort to win back audiences by lowering their standards and their daring, the Wachowskis wind up where you never expected to find them creatively: on the ropes.

Flaws aside, Kill the Messenger inspires a moral outrage that feels disconcertingly timely.

First-time filmmaker Kate Barker-Froyland trusts the silences that occur when two people aren't talking. That's a good thing. What's not so good is when the talk grows enervating.

Writer-director Mike Binder, who worked beautifully with Costner on 2005's "The Upside of Anger," finds himself on the downside of juggling stereotypes.

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

Here's the thing about Mommy: Even when Dolan gets self-indulgent and works his themes into the ground, he's a one-man fireworks display. His images jump off the screen and stick in your head.

Red Army deserves a big boo-yah from audiences for being illuminating and hugely entertaining. And if some of the talk is in Russian, live with it.

Macdonald uses the "Das Boot"-like claustrophobia for maximum tension, then deadens the thrills with flashbacks to Robinson and his estranged wife. Ah, jeez. Law and the scrappy cast work best when submerged and going at one another like beasts.

If you can't see where this is going, you've probably never seen a movie before. But the script plods on, complete with an ending that futilely tries to tidy up the scenario strands. Miraculously, Aniston maintains our rooting interest.

Moore shows us acting at its best, alive with ferocity and feeling and committed to truth.

It's funny. So is Nicole Kidman, very Cruella De Vil as Millicent Clyde, a taxidermist with an eye on adding Paddington to her stuffed collection. It's an excuse for some chase scenes and physical comedy (Paddington gets his head stuck in a toilet bowl) that manage to suggest both the Marx brothers and Wes Anderson. I mean that as a good thing.

Best of all is the excitement of watching Mann use his kinetic powers as a filmmaker to tackle the new face of 21st-century warfare.

To try and wrap your head around the plot of Predestination can only lead to madness. Don't get me wrong: The movie itself is a trip. Just jump off the cliff and go with the Spierig brothers, Peter and Michael, as they whoosh into the labyrinth of their own fervid imaginations.

Be warned, sequel fanboys: This thing sucks!

Wyatt keeps the action coming at a fast clip, but watching Jim repeatedly pursue a path of self-destruction for reasons never made clear grows wearying.

From the theme of global downsizing, the filmmakers wring humor, heartbreak, suspense and stirring social drama. Cotillard, a consummate actress, fits like a natural into the workaday world of the Dardennes (Rosetta, The Son, The Kid With a Bike).

A recent showing of Burton's artwork at New York's Museum of Modern Art attracted long lines and critical brickbats. Maybe that's why Big Eyes, for all its tonal shifts and erratic pacing, seems like Burton's most personal and heartfelt film in years, a tribute to the yearning that drives even the most marginalized artist to self expression no matter what the hell anyone thinks.

Evocatively shot by "Selma" wizard Bradford Young, A Most Violent Year reflects a world where nothing is held sacred. You watch with nerves clenched, holding on tight.

Yes, the sets and costumes elicit swoons, but it's the peerless Sondheim score, however truncated, that makes this Woods a prime destination.

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.

The sad fact is that racial injustice is timelier than ever. Righteous fury is in the air. And that fervor to stand up and be counted is all over Selma.

Eastwood, working from a script that Jason Hall adapted from Kyle's 2012 memoir, fuses the explosive and the sorrowful as only he can. That's why his film takes a piece out of you.

It's stupid. It's in bad taste. It impossible. I know all that. Look, Quentin Tarantino killed Hitler in "Inglourious Basterds" and the neo-Nazis stayed quiet. It's a farce, people.

Why should you suffer through a 140-minute Russian film that is basically a contemporary remake of The Book of Job? Because it's a stupendous piece of work, that's why, and because it represents the kind of challenging, intimate filmmaking that transcends language and borders.

Leigh embraces the contradictions in Turner. And in tandem with cinematographer Dick Pope, a master of light, he shows us the world as Turner sees it. The effect is harsh and ravishing. Leigh's beauty of a movie touches the heart not by sentimental gush but by the amplitude of its art.​

When a stage musical as beloved as Annie hits the big screen and falls ignominiously on its fat one, you might ask: WTF? For starters, updating the Depression-era tale to NYC 2014 is a really dumb idea. The strain of the shoehorning is evident in every scene.

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.