Often frustrating and at times incomprehensible, the Bourne/Bond clone keeps the pulse racing but ultimately fails to satisfy.

Ultimately, Kink has an undeniably voyeuristic quality - it's a glimpse into a mostly forbidding world, and there's value in that.

More in the tone of the big screen "Friday Night Lights" than "Rudy" or "The Blind Side," it succeeds as mainstream entertainment without relying on a conventional storybook framework.

It's probably the only love story you'll see this decade that will make you half-expect the camera to swerve and pick up the sight of Rod Serling, standing there in a black suit.

Moretz is an appealing young woman whose star is rising. She'll probably have an exceptional career, but If I Stay won't be a highlight.

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is still a visual buffet, but adding 102 more minutes of double crosses, slow torture and hookers with hearts of gold just exposes the tediousness of the exercise.

The film is good enough to inspire viewers to learn more about Fela, but it should be better than that.

Just in the last few months, we've seen "Snowpiercer" and "Divergent," which also deal with what happens after a civil collapse. The Giver, the latest in this weird trend, approaches a now-familiar topic from a new angle, and, of the three, it's the most visually arresting.

Really, The Expendables 3 has only one thing going for it, beyond the unremarkable novelty of seeing lots of celebrities in a lousy movie. It has Mel Gibson, who is at his grim, tormented and quirky best here, playing someone who has crossed a moral line and has no regrets.

The narrative is a mess, and the overly long action sequences are easily forgotten.

The result is that this is one of those rare movies that gets better as it goes along.

It's hard to imagine any movie ever topping this one's depiction of killer tornadoes laying waste to the Midwest.

One of the smartest and most impassioned films about Christianity in recent memory, though to say that might give the wrong impression. In tone and strategy, the film is low-key and subtle; and the story can be appreciated both for its surface qualities and its deeper intentions.

Fortunately, What If rights itself well before the finish and finds its way back to the truth and the light.

Questions of politics and policy, even urgent ones, seem pretty dry after watching Henry and the other elderly patients come to life. Those scenes are a revelation.

All in all, though, A Five Star Life (which was a hit in Italy) remains a hard film to dislike, and many will savor the fabulous locations where Irene arrives as a "mystery guest."

It exemplifies the same appealing style, which strives to show life as it's lived and people as they really talk and act.

This is all good movie material, so far as it goes ... but Get on Up can't go any further. Sometimes damaged people stay damaged, and sometimes popular artists make their contribution and then stay in one place forever. It's a big letdown for everybody, but in a biopic, it's poison.

The scope of the film can be frustratingly narrow. But even this limited view into the events of the Maywand District murders is gripping cinema.

Guardians of the Galaxy is pretty much where action movies are these days - a combination of comedy without wit, action without drama and elaborate visuals that are nothing much to look at.

I'm as reluctant to stop writing about this movie as I was to stop watching it: At 166 minutes, it flies by, and you don't want to leave that world. But one thing is certain: This isn't the last word. People will be writing about this film for years - and looking at it to discover the lost history of our time.

It looks spiffy. It has an attractive cast. Marcel Zyskind's cinematography seethes and shines. And it's a crock.

You realize fairly early in the film that there will be no emotional payoff. Just an hour and a half of vacation photos in motion.

I Origins is at its best when it's a personal story about relationships, and it has a strong first hour.

Now, thanks to A Most Wanted Man, we discover that it's really boring - practically sleep-inducing - to be an international spy.

Perhaps the movie's use of the past is more than cosmetic in this one regard: Watching Woody Allen revisit his old themes and obsessions already feels like a nostalgic experience. Actually setting the movie back in time deflects this and makes a virtue of a shortcoming.

A full-out action movie - and a sober rumination on the nature of existence. It is both things, effectively and sincerely.

A little too corny to endorse fully, but no one should be discouraged from seeing it.