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.