The movie won’t carve a spot in the classic action-comedy canon, but it’s easily digested fun, which is no bad thing.

There’s much here to appreciate, not least of which is the admirable attempt to simultaneously provide belly laughs for children and emotional resonance for adults. IF may be guilty of trying too hard, but it’s a refreshing change from so many family movies that barely seem to be trying at all.

Any viewers actually interested in the topic would be well advised to search elsewhere for information.

Much like its central character, the film at least proves honest in its intentions.

Transformania remains sufficiently goofy-sweet to please its target demo; those who find the humor toothless should at least appreciate the distinctive animation, which can be as energetically wacky as classic Looney Tunes.

The film conjures a strong sense of atmosphere, with the gritty NYC locations — yes, there are still some in the gentrified city — well captured by cinematographer Juanmil Azpiroz. And the performances are first-rate.... But by the time it reaches its hoary climax...Wolves has reached such an absurd level of schmaltz that it practically feels like a parody of itself.

What could have served as a colorful episode in a more expansive film about the famed singer has instead become the premise of a mildly entertaining but overextended road movie that doesn't succeed on either dramatic or comedic terms.

A thoroughly mediocre retelling that feels like an unnecessary footnote.

It's telling that the film's original Danish title, which translates to "Suicide Tourist," has been changed for its U.S. release. Exit Plan sounds much more dynamic, indicating the sort of action thriller that the star's fans probably expect. They're likely to be quite disappointed by this stylish, cerebral drama that doesn't really have anything profound to say.

The Watchers, sadly, is less disturbing than dull, less harrowing than hackneyed.

Despite the strenuous efforts of all involved, Every Secret Thing never manages to overcome its overwhelming air of artsy pretension.

Diez's effects teams have tremendous fun with the gory ways they tear through their hosts' bodies when it's time to leave the chrysalis behind.

If there are any dadaist cinephiles out there, perhaps they can reclaim Second Act as a multilayered masterpiece of illogic. Certainly the film seems destined to survive all future nuclear winters, enduring as a time capsule of humanity at its most pitiably pedestrian.

Salty, sweet and fun to chew over — sort of like taffy, but not so hard on the dental work — Fun Mom Dinner is a palatable addition to that growing subgenre of bawdy, female-centric comedies.

Unfortunately, the music is as irresistible as the tired story of a musician succumbing to substance abuse is resistible.

Carrey's most satisfying live-action effort since "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."

A damning account of institutional dysfunction whose ability to stoke indignation is undercut by its filmmakers' misguided comic antics.

This cleverly conceived, behind-the-scenes tale features fine lead performances and enough nods to the epic group's early days to interest fans outside the U.K.

Cannily exploiting #MeToo themes and the opportunities for cinematic mayhem provided by technology-driven smart homes, Held proves an uncommonly thoughtful and provocative suspenser.

The film is competently made and absorbing at times, but there’s a workaday quality that slows its momentum. It’s a handsomely made project, but a story about such a complicated set of characters should make us feel more strongly, and Rust struggles to accomplish that.

While Levin’s writing is sharp and observant, it’s also often overwrought and eventually just plain tiresome.

This mildly engaging comedy drama has enough quirky charms to compensate for its rough spots.

It’s all a bit much, really, and the constant tonal shifts from a sort of demonic Fantasia to bouncy musical numbers proves more than a bit jarring. It doesn’t help that none of the songs are particularly memorable.

Farrelly brothers films are looking better and better, but aren't nearly as funny as their grungy early films that hit with the stealth and vigor of guerrilla commandos. Maybe there is a kind of heartbreak here after all.

Thanks to Martin and Hunt, who both have a seemingly casual flair for mining laughs from even the most generic lines of dialogue, Cheaper by the Dozen works better than it might have in less capable hands, but even they're challenged by some of the picture's forced mood swings.

Chases romance and comedy across Europe for nearly two hours without ever quite catching either. Essentially a teenage rendition of William Wyler's immortal "Roman Holiday."

Unfortunately, the back story behind FireDancer is ultimately more interesting than the finished product, a thematically ambitious but rough-hewn combination of love story and examination of cultural dislocation.

A less than satisfying cinematic experience.

A good-natured Indian-American romantic comedy in the style of "Bend It Like Beckham."

The film is a cream puff about a mother-daughter relationship, masquerading as a raucous return-to-campus comedy, most of it predictable.

Neither dull enough to be painful nor fun enough to be engaging, it’s simply too bland to make much of an impression at all.

The storyline, familiar-feeling as it is, could have made for an effective thriller. But writer/director Whedon (brother of Joss) bogs down the pacing with too many routine flashbacks.

Writers and directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland have crafted a solid script... Holding the enterprise back, however, is a terribly restrained directorial approach and academic visual style that prevent the lubricious story from truly coming to life.

This would be an interesting subject to explore at length, with a host who didn't seem to be padding an opportunity for self-promotion with the trappings of science. Unfortunately, Friedkin goes overboard in the short film's final scenes, describing a second encounter with the possessed woman that was far more dramatic than this one.

Stallone provides just the right amount of world-weary gravitas and deadpan humor to put over the hokey material. And he still has the requisite imposing physicality to make the sight of his character beating up men a quarter of his age fairly convincing.

Fails to exploit the myriad comedic possibilities, settling instead for broad, unconvincing slapstick aimed at 12-year-olds and gags Shakespeare would have rejected as ancient.

Reiner again demonstrates compassion and insight into young people's battles to acquire self-knowledge, but in his new film, too many clearly fictional characters and contrived situations bog down his story.

The Point Break-style plotline is merely an excuse for an endless series of scenes showing off the parkour practitioners in action.

The story is told in a hammer-on-anvil manner that evinces no gift for social satire or sharp cultural insight.

Maybe it was too much to have expected something fresher than the totally 80s feel-good vibe that Drivers’ Ed is content to deliver, but considering the source, the comedy can’t help but feel unmotivated. It’s what the kids today would call mid.

Whereas Peckinpah managed not only to raise hackles but to get under the skin, Lurie manages only the former, which reduces the material to the level of sensation-mongering.

Black and White never panders too easily to sentiments, creating characters who are riddled with flaws but likeable all the same.

It’s comic-book material, but it has been brought to the screen with imagination and a delightful sense of tongue-in-cheek humor. Daniel Haller’s direction is perfectly in tune with the lighthearted script and he progresses the action with an infectious spirit.

Formulaic and often hard to swallow, the picture offers little beyond the familiar pleasures of Duvall's old-coot mode.

Grashaw's convincing drama distills this underexposed world into the story of a single young man trying to survive a system designed to break him.

Though the movie is rife with too-convenient coincidences and relies on another iffy plot point or two to make its emotional arc work, the monster-killin’ functions well enough that few will complain.

Keith Gordon's brave attempt to make cinematic sense of Potter's 1986 BBC mini "The Singing Detective" at least has the advantage of a screenplay finished by Potter before his death. But problems of style and tone bedevil the earnest effort.

Works better than one might think, thanks to the group's modus operandi, which combines a fundamental reverence for the target material and a sly irreverence that's key to their skewering technique.

Rote characterizations and a trite, even condescending, attitude toward that era's misguided mores robs the film of the satiric punch Todd Haynes delivered in "Far From Heaven."

Featuring long stretches in which little is said or happens, the film never quite burrows into the viewer's skin in the way in which it was obviously intended.

Built for action, like its title character, the movie packs a muscular, bloody punch, but mainly it’s a well-oiled diversion.

What a cast but what a disappointment.

The stunt work is amazing, and the pace is breathless enough to keep one watching right up to the somewhat ambiguous conclusion.

Another deep disappointment for fans of the raw, exciting "Ong Bak."

Director George Hickenlooper captures the energy and ultra-irony of Warhol's scene, but his attempts to give the film a conventional biopic arc end up wallowing in dime-store psychology.

This is Jackman’s movie. He makes Peter’s helplessness intensely moving as he keeps trying, against mounting odds and false breakthroughs, to communicate with a child who remains out of reach. Sadly, that goes for The Son, as much as the son.

This silly film does nothing to enhance Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang's reputation. The acting is below par, the mise-en-scene is clumsy and the structure is lazy.

It all plays as artificially as it sounds, but as tautly directed by David Yarovesky (Brightburn), Locked manages to maintain its silly but arresting premise throughout its fortunately brief running time.

Completely lacking in visual, narrative or stylistic coherence, the film also suffers from cheap-looking visual effects and poorly staged and edited action sequences that will not exactly please the fanboys.

The fragile film’s bid for poignancy is so aggressive and its sensitivity so studied that it eventually drowns in syrupy banality.

It might even live up to that title: When it ends, you wouldn't mind a bit more, please.

Features enough genuine laughs to give it decent commercial traction.

It might have been inspired by actual events, but End of the Spear is, literally and figuratively, simply too dull to make any impact.

Hoodwinked occupies some considerably shaky turf situated uncomfortably between "Shrek" and dreck.

There's nothing terribly new under the sun about any of what transpires. But writer-director Gleason has crafted a film that manages to be simultaneously funny, touching and sensitive.

It never rises above formula fare.

The film features plenty of photogenic real-life locations and some genuinely exciting action sequences.

The screenplay, credited to the five original Blazing Saddles writers as well as Ed Stone and Nate Hopper, is relentlessly silly but only intermittently funny.

When under water, the action-adventure Into the Blue has genuine thrills. Above water or on dry land, this is one dead fish.

Unfortunately, Love Object, which uncomfortably totters from psychological suspense to black comedy to pull-out-the-stops horror, never quite lives up to its bizarre premise, and despite its audacious subject matter, it will even have difficulty attaining future cult status.

While it does render scientific and philosophical principles in a highly accessible format, the film is nonetheless a real chore to sit through.

Largely devoid of the sex-farce style comic wit to which it aspires, the film is palatable largely because of the charm of lead actress Cheung.

The film, well made in every way, smartly focuses on an unlikely friendship between Gretel and the athlete who ultimately replaced her -- a high jumper who was later revealed to be a man!

Imagine a teenage lesbian love story directed by David Cronenberg and you'll have some sense of the weirdness of Jack and Diane. Bradley Rust Gray's attempt to weave horror elements into a fairly conventional narrative yields diminishing returns in this overly stylized effort.

An involving sci-fi action-thriller, probably longer on chase sequences than the original director wanted and shorter on the "ick" factor than the studio wanted.

Although he makes an amusing comic foil, Spurlock is ill-equipped to either evaluate or report on Middle East foreign policy. His methodology is disturbingly casual and conclusions woefully simplistic.

The saving grace to the utter predictability in Christina Mengert and Joseph Muszynski's screenplay is reasonably personable characters and spirited acting by director Bruce Beresford's cast.

Boasts an uncommon stylization and some first-rate comic performances. But its provocative setup is undercut by its lengthy depiction of an all-too-familiar game of cat and mouse between the culprits and a dogged detective.

It’s a lot to handle and also a bit silly, but Besson often pulls it off — thanks in no small part to a commanding performance by the chameleon-like Caleb Landry Jones (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), who manages to be touching and slightly terrifying at the same time.

Hank and Asha takes an unremarkable situation and renders it completely banal.

There are guilty pleasures to be had in this frenzied B starring Zoe Saldana (Avatar, Star Trek), who gives an acrobatic performance that makes the overcooked material watchable, if not entirely enjoyable.

An improvement of sorts over the lifeless 2005 edition.

Garishly unattractive to look at and lacking the spirit that made Wonder Woman, which came out five months ago, the most engaging of Warner Bros.' DC Comics-derived extravaganzas to date, this hodgepodge throws a bunch of superheroes into a mix that neither congeals nor particularly makes you want to see more of them in future. Plainly put, it's simply not fun.

In the end, given how little goes on in Breaking Dawn - Part 1 despite the major plot points, what you're left with is to gaze at the three leads, all of whom have their constituencies and reasons for being eminently watchable. The only hope is they'll have more to do next time around.

For all its biographical truth, Get Rich's journey into a ghetto of hustlers, gangstas and mindless violence is all too familiar.

The amount of enjoyment one gets out of the Harrison Ford crime-action thriller Firewall depends on one's tolerance for watching thugs terrify an innocent family for most of the movie.

Everyone's comments are thoughtful and articulate but everyone stays "on message" so steadfastly that no dialogue ever ensues. It's 20 people giving the same lecture.

This lugubrious indie drama is affecting in parts but never gels into a satisfying whole.

The film feels sleazy and nasty --- but without the pulp kick of filmmakers who know how to do sleazy and nasty.

The film is best appreciated as a showcase for the hugely popular titular character, with Perry tearing into the role with hugely entertaining comic gusto.

Kill Your Friends remixes a brutally funny novel into an entertaining if somewhat familiar big-screen tale of amoral, chemically-fuelled decadence.

The film wastes several talented performers with its low-key, rambling humor and one-dimensional characters.

For all its effective atmospherics and performances, Don't Go has an inevitably familiar feel.

This directorial debut from C. Jay Cox is a sometimes comic melodrama.

Despite the sterling performances by the two main actors, the movie tends to lose pace in the second half and needs more secondary characters. But for a first time in the director's chair, Samuell shows a deftness of touch that bodes well for the future.

Told with a tender vigor, the film explores relationships on a number of levels. It will ring true with mature teenagers of all classes.

A plucky little bird that just won't fly.

A film with none of the heart that has characterized Weitz's best work and none of the freshness of his most successful.