While the movie’s theme is familiar, even a little stale, the vivid details help to freshen the story, and the actors sock the movie home.

In Chadwick Boseman, it has a galvanic core, a performance that transcends impersonation and reverberates long after the screen goes dark.

There are so many witty touches and sharp little observations here that The Strange Little Cat can be forgiven for ultimately making no dramatic statement.

Fronted by an outstanding performance from Catherine Keener, who is onscreen, often by herself, at almost every moment, this challenging but not difficult second feature from Mark Jackson parcels out its information in gradual increments, forcing the viewer to infer rather simply receive most narrative information.

Good-looking but not very effective adaptation of the seedy classic by "Grifters" author Jim Thompson.

The plus-sized comic delivers a solid set of often highly personal material that’s consistently amusing even if it never quite hits the level of hilarity.

Paltrow shows a capable hand with the actors... However, the characters only intermittently engage our interest.

Whether they’re filing ridiculous complaints about each other to the unflappable mayor (Michel Blanc), arguing over the proper presentation of ingredients or sharing a cafe table, Mirren and Puri bring an effortless command to their roles.

When a filmmaker is capable of exploring a series of frankly outlandish filmic, thematic and moral propositions with absolute conviction and sureness of touch, the results are usually memorable. Such is the case with Manuel Martin Cuenca’s Cannibal.

There’s a terrific central idea at the core of the film, but it’s lost amid the endlessly repeated nightmare episodes, the banal subplot concerning the couple’s domestic problems and the clunky exposition and visuals.

The reductionist plot eventually forces both the protagonists and the filmmakers into a blind shaft without a productive exit strategy.

Overall, the writers have crafted a well-articulated universe with distinct settings and relatable, compelling characters devoted to a thrilling quest for redemption.

Always interesting, frequently explosive, but also sprawling and unfocused.

It may sound like a backhanded compliment to praise this sometimes cheesy movie for never taking itself too seriously, but in a summer of bloated spectacles, this modesty should not be underestimated.

With such well-tuned performances and scattered intensity, it's unfortunate that the technical aspects of the film are not always up to par.

The film earns a few laughs thanks to the energetic efforts of its hardworking cast, but they’re decidedly of the hit-or-miss variety.

Lucy plays more like a big dumb superhero flick than sci-fi.

Indeed, all this teeters closely to all-out tastelessness, but what makes 3.0 even more unbearable than its predecessors is the sheer ineptitude beneath the glossy surface: the laughable narrative, scatterbrained storytelling and inconsistent characterizations basically magnify the previous film's flaws to an improbable extreme.

A clumsy high-school sex comedy which tries too hard to be both shocking and endearing, falling short on both counts.

Has some clever ideas up its sleeve, but otherwise fails to provoke much interest in the travails of its 40-something central character.

The wistful pleasures are stretched awfully thin at almost two hours in a film that blurs the line separating self-irony from tiresome self-consciousness.

Magic in the Moonlight does have a not-disagreeable expensive-vacation vibe to it. But the one-dimensional characters are mostly ones you’d want to avoid rather than spend a holiday with.

Despite what sounds, and sometimes plays out, like a working-class soap opera, Pagnol’s genius is evident in the way emotions are often distilled through the characters’ winsome Southern attitudes, creating an atmosphere infused with playful humor, innate wit and an endless flow of alcohol.

Fanny is definitely a worthy companion to Marius, although it’s also more claustrophobic in terms of staging, confining the action to a handful of interior sequences that feel less like a movie than like filmed theater, albeit of a rather high order.

Featuring unlikeable characters, preposterously contrived plotting, ham-fisted dialogue and strained attempts at poeticism, Among Ravens is a misfire on every level.

The not so fair and balanced film might have made its religious themes palatable if it worked reasonably well as a thriller. But director/screenwriter Lusko shows no flair for the genre, his muddled execution lacking any sense of pacing or suspense.

The Purge: Anarchy efficiently exploits its high-concept premise while delivering far more visceral thrills than its predecessor.

The film’s scattershot approach proves more enervating than enlightening, with the barrage of information presented in such a haphazard manner that continuity and coherence become lost.