An exhausting pièce d’indulgence from the veteran video/feature director, who can never quite shape all the bric-a-brac, not to mention an all-star Gallic cast, into a workable whole.

Though it mostly summarizes available arguments instead of uncovering new facts, it's an accessible primer.

It’s impossible to buy into the film’s plea to be taken seriously at the end, just as the upbeat finale feels false.

To kill time between action set-pieces, del Toro has done an above-average job of avoiding tedium via some flavorsome casting, passably interesting plot contrivances and, above all, by maintaining strong forward momentum. Unlike so many similar crash-bang action spectaculars, this one feels lean and muscular rather than bloated or padded; the combat is almost always coherent and dramatically pointed rather than just splashed on the screen for its own sake.

[A] claustrophobically discomfiting but quizzically comic study of social unease and embarrassment.

By the time the proceedings reach their "Paranormal Activity"-style violent conclusion, the viewer’s interest has long since waned.

The film's diagnosis -- money's corrupting influence, the tendency of powerful people to entrench themselves -- is hardly new, but it's voiced here with enough smarts and conviction to earn respect from non-plutocrat viewers of all political stripes.

Diverting but not enough to expand Kevin Hart's fan base much.

With a keen sense of the thrills of snowboarding, a cultivated understanding of the demands of the pro circuit and genuine compassion for the casualties of the sport, Walker’s particular talent in this film is in making the general more specific.

A moderately amusing but very uneven revisionist adventure with franchise and theme park intentions written all over it...This attempt by Verbinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer to plant the flag for another Pirates of the Caribbean-scaled series tries to have it too many ways tonally, resulting in a work that wobbles and thrashes all over the place as it attempts to find the right groove.

Garant and Lennon’ script, with its insistence on constantly repeating the same gags, rapidly wears thin.

Too much of what happens as the characters undergo their various brushes with failure and redemption feels predetermined, slapping what aims to be a much savvier film with a debilitating touch of the formulaic.

Director Drake Doremus confirms his knack for pinpointing subtle emotional tremors on fragile personal landscapes, even if some too-easy coincidences and pat dramatic moments chip away at the compressed story's credibility.

Everything is spelled out literally and at a stultifying pace, in a story that might have worked onscreen as either heightened melodrama or farcical comedy. Instead Fontaine, who is not exactly blessed with a light touch, opts for misplaced sincerity.

Features a top-notch cast, a few beautifully observed moments, and some amusingly bitchy dialogue. But its rambling, episodic structure and gallery of troubled characters will ultimately prove too off-putting to attract theatrical audiences.

The script's simpleminded shenanigans notwithstanding, the two stars sync up better than their characters do, especially with some rough-and-tumble physical slapstick, resulting in a crude, low-brow audience-pleaser that will hit the funny bones of both performers' fan bases.

Melbourne-based brothers Cameron and Colin Cairnes show impressive discipline in their modestly budgeted feature debut, mixing gore and chuckles in equal measure and creating unusually fleshed-out characters that have the film knocking at the door of above-average splatter comedies like "Shaun of the Dead" and "The Cabin in the Woods."

Part somber character study and part revenge thriller, Steven Knight‘s debut feature lacks the thematic depth necessary to take it seriously while not featuring enough of the high-octane action that its star’s fans have come to expect.

Named for a slur used against Northerners who opposed waging war on the South, the film works best when focused on Abner Beech (Billy Campbell), whose conscience-driven minority opinion makes him a pariah in his upstate New York village.

An action thriller that doesn’t know when to quit. For the most part, though, it remains preposterously entertaining.

The film is an important step toward repairing the broken links and resurrecting almost a century of music and the women who made it.

The film is absorbing on a scene-by-scene basis. But it connects the dots of Raymond’s life in a perfunctory way, without locating a fluid through-line or gaining emotional access to its elusive subject.

Gideon’s Army is an eye-opening insight into a judicial hellhole world that ordinary citizens can never imagine.

While the new edition doesn’t quite catch that inspired spark, there’s still plenty to enjoy here courtesy of those zippy visuals and a pitch-perfect voice cast led by the innately animated Steve Carell.

Laughs come less frequently here than in Humpday and Your Sister's Sister, but the writer-director's empathy for floundering characters is intact.

This stiflingly restrained French dirge about morality, guilt and atonement is chilly and constipated, mistaking ponderousness for intensity.

Despite its successful attempts to show how oil has affected everyday citizens in nearby Nigeria, the film remains fairly dry.

A film whose fascination with bees and their mammoth impact on the global food chain extends far beyond the subject of colony collapse disorder. Arthouse audiences will eat it up.

The execution, however, leaves something to be desired, as this effort seems more visually muddled and choppier than previous installments.

A deeply dispiriting portrait of the systemic persecution of the LGBT community in Uganda, the country that seems to be ground zero for homophobia.

A wrong place/wrong time actioner stupid enough to damage the art-house credibility of actor Paul Walker.

A broken-family melodrama with a minimum of histrionics, Scott McGehee's and David Siegel's What Maisie Knew begins from scenes that will be familiar to most viewers who've witnessed a custody battle. Things get pretty orchestrated from that familiar scenario onward, but never to the point of unbelievability.

As much spectacle and action — minute-by-minute, frame-by-frame — as any movie anyone could think of. Zack Snyder’s huge, backstory-heavy extravaganza is a rehab job that perhaps didn’t cry out to be done but proves so overwhelmingly insistent in its size and strength that it’s hard not to give in.

Director Daisy von Scherler Mayer and a strong cast do right by Neil LaBute's script (based on his play), but the soullessness of the story is a turnoff overpowering the intriguing moments scattered within these one-on-one encounters.

Wajeman is particularly skillful at obscuring the lines between right and wrong, setting his story in a a dog-eat-dog world whose moral compass is slightly askew.

The film’s restricted scope of analysis and limited selection of sources threatens to undermine its conclusions.

Images and metaphors whimsicially combine in a fine, fast-flowing documentary introducing the Baha'i faith.

Deeply unpleasant to watch with little edification to offer in compensation.

It all barrels along with a certain good-natured brio, even if ultimately falling short of bringing much that's new to what's already an overstocked table.

A humdrum straight line of a film, Monsters University never surprises, goes off in unexpected directions or throws you for a loop in the manner of the best Pixar stories. Nor does it come close to elating through the sheer imagination of its conceits and storytelling.

The film will attract the attention of a public that's increasingly educated about gourmet matters, but leave the most serious viewers unsatisfied. Fatally for a film of this sort, it doesn't leave the viewer wanting a drink.

Familiar faces in supporting roles don't do much for the commercial prospects of this modest film, which feels like a made-for-TV version of the prototypical Sundance-aspiring quest for identity.

An amusing premise yields few yuks.

Davey’s tortuous emotional distress, while generically relatable, seems more appropriate to a younger teen rather than a young woman who’s practically a college freshman. This curious disjunction impacts the performances as well, which are adequate but rarely persuasive.

This fascinating show-business documentary brings its subject to life, warts and all, in a way that would no doubt have thoroughly pleased him.

An ordinary look at four extraordinary kids, Scott Hamilton Kennedy's Fame High sticks firmly to convention but will please viewers who can't help but want the doc's sympathetic teens to escape the heartbreak most would-be artists face.

Brad Pitt delivers a capable performance in an immersive apocalyptic spectacle about a global zombie uprising.

Focusing on the notoriously aggressive orca Tilikum, this gripping film presents a persuasive case against keeping the species – and by extension any wild animal – in captivity for the purposes of human entertainment.

Plot details turn out to be secondary to the cheap visual effects and abundant gore that Reeder frequently manages to incorporate by taking the narrative on some inexplicable and queasily violent detours. Overall, performances are just perfunctory enough to convey the concept of acting.

It also expresses the anxiety and insecurity of comics conscious of the big issues in life they are expected either to avoid or make fun of in their work. Rogen and Goldberg take the latter approach here, in an immature but sometimes surprisingly upfront way one can interpret seriously. Or not.

The visceral fireworks of the characters’ arguments and the disintegration of trust among them are observed with unsettling intimacy in the script and in the emotional honesty of the performances...This is terrific stuff.

The actors do what they can to supply the texture missing from the script. Vaughn and Wilson riff together with pleasing professionalism.

This reflection on the past, love and death through the prism of layers of theatrical endeavor is both serious and frisky, engaging on a refined level but frustratingly limited in its complexity and depth.

A vital, gripping film.

What should be a clammy exercise in claustrophobic, queasy tension becomes, in the hands of writer/director James DeMonaco, an underpowered compendium of over-familiar scare tactics and sledgehammer-subtle social satire.

Featuring a plethora of unsavory characters, undeveloped subplots and a confusingly jagged narrative, this extremely low-budget effort is mainly notable for its willingness to get down and dirty.

Manages to be reasonably diverting even as it proves inevitably minor in its impact.

Despite some shortcomings, Pussy Riot remains a significant contribution to the ongoing dialogue assessing the current state of Russian society and culture, as well as the sometimes tenuous status of free speech in the free world.

A superficially diverting but substance-free concoction, a would-be thriller as evanescent as a magic trick and one that develops no suspense or rooting interest because the characters possess all the substance of invisible ink.

Featuring murky visuals, an even murkier narrative that lamely sputters to its conclusion, and frequently amateurish performances — the effectively low-key Isabelle is a notable exception — the film never explores its undeniably disturbing issues with enough thematic depth to compensate for its ragged execution.

Attempting to be a meditation on the nature of creative passion and the emotionally liberating effects of physical labor, Triumph of the Wall is as much of an exercise in frustration for the viewer as for its hapless protagonist.

The disappointingly generic film, which strands a father and son on Earth a thousand years after a planet-wide evacuation, will leave genre audiences pining for the more Terra-centric conceits of "Oblivion," not to mention countless other future-set films that find novelty in making familiar surroundings threatening.

No legitimate distributor would bother with a film "whose crackpot elements aren't even exploited in a way that will appeal to those watching solely to make fun of them."

The sometimes forced if well-intentioned social proselytizing is alleviated by the well-drawn relationships among the central characters.

Omirbaev fails to invest either the murder plot or its political subtext with much suspense or conviction.

There's plenty of time for the viewer to muse on what The Wall might or might not symbolize -- when events finally take an abruptly surprising and violent turn, the tonal shift is unsatisfyingly awkward.

Whimsically combining elements of sci-fi, drama and musical comedy, J. Anderson Mitchell and Jeremy Kipp Walker’s debut feature is a unique mashup that succeeds more by sheer originality than any singular reserve of talent.

Less concerned with classic storytelling than with creating virtual performance pieces on screen, the film features dozens of extended sequences of Adele and Emma both in and out of bed—scenes that are virtuously acted and directed, even if they run on for longer than most filmmakers would allow.

A fascinating contemplation of adolescent sexuality that will be a star-making platform for its young lead, Marine Vacth.

There’s a masterfully light touch at work, both from the director and his two wonderful actors. They make this chamber piece lip-smacking entertainment, giving the dense text the semblance of more intellectual heft or sexual transgression than it ultimately contains.

Tonal inconsistency, lethargic pacing and a shortage of fresh insight dilute the storytelling efficacy of this quartet of loosely interconnected episodes involving ordinary people pushed over the edge.

[A] solidly effective addition to Britain's social realism tradition, elevated by excellent performances by the young leads and some unexpectedly poetic touches.

Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi pursues his exploration of guilt, choice and responsibility in a superbly written, directed and acted drama that commands attention every step of the way.

Only Lovers Left Alive is an addictive mood and tone piece, a nocturnal reverie that incidentally celebrates a marriage that has lasted untold centuries.

Enhanced by a splendidly atmospheric recreation of the Lower East Side, the intimately focused work is anchored by another superior performance by Marion Cotillard.

The sleepy-paced, elementally simple plot initially requires a degree of patience, but the story ends up gently absorbing.

Though Sorrentino’s vision of moral chaos and disorder, spiritual and emotional emptiness at this moment in time is even darker than Fellini’s...he describes it all in a pleasingly creative way that pulls audiences in through humor and excess.

An old-fashioned, Robin Hood-style revenge tale that favors self-serious storytelling over action and suspense, Arnaud des Pallieres’ Michael Kohlhaas provides a few quick thrills and some beautifully photographed landscapes, but never really convinces as an intellectual’s swords-and-horses period piece.

The whole project is saved largely thanks to the subtext of ethnic discrimination that runs through the film, and two riveting central performances, which overcome a wobbly start to find emotional balance by the final reel.

The jittery storytelling and indifference toward illuminating character or plot detail would already be tiresome even without the gratingly actor-y performances, the director herself being the main offender.

A quirky study of the unrelenting grip of evil, the film is beautifully made, though stronger in its intriguing setup than its muddy resolution.

The ‘70s recreation is reasonable -- there are plenty of vintage cars and pop tunes of the moment -- but the characters never register beyond the surfaces of the scenes despite being equipped with long-festering resentments and grudges.

A stylishly made but unyielding drama.

Franco, employing diverse cinematic techniques from split screen (mostly early on) to direct-to-camera address, makes the Bundrens’ time of trial more immediately coherent than it is on the page without disrespecting Faulkner’s oblique style.

Redford, who can’t avoid exuding charisma, plays this role with utter naturalism and lack of histrionics or self-regard.

This subtly engrossing psychological thriller plays like an intellectual version of Fatal Attraction, minus the sex and the dead bunny. And that’s meant as a compliment.

[A] wryly poignant and potent comic drama about the bereft state of things in America’s oft-vaunted heartland.

Sleek and engrossing, though awfully drawn out and short on psychological complexity, this is a straight-up police action thriller that adheres to a very familiar Hollywood template.

A lovely film that makes little emotional connection.

Heli is undoubtedly made with serious intent, but it is also relentlessly depressing and curiously uninvolving.

Barely managing to fill its brief running time despite its surfeit of smuttily vulgar gags, 3 Geezers! proves a less than subtle argument for euthanasia.

Might not boast stylistic expertise, but it should please aficionados while providing an entertaining primer for the uninitiated.

While it might not amount to epic animated filmmaking in terms of scope and invention, Epic, a 3D, CG adventure-fantasy from Blue Sky Studios, nevertheless makes for pleasantly engaging viewing.

Ambition markedly outstrips achievement in The Congress, a visionary piece of speculative fiction that drops the ball after a fine set-up.

Only God Forgives is a hypnotic fugue on themes of violence and retribution, drenched in corrosive reds.

Young viewers looking for unbridled raunch will be sadly disappointed, and so will other moviegoers expecting more than a few wan chuckles. This picture is like a brightly colored balloon with all the comic air seeping out.

The film repays patient viewing as it evolves into an engrossing, nuanced, philosophical drama.

This is a gorgeously made character study leavened with surrealistic dimensions both comic and dark, an unsparing look at a young man who, unlike some of his contemporaries, can’t transcend his abundant character flaws and remake himself as someone else.