The film’s true MVP is Cusack, delivering a wittily subtle and acerbic turn that well displays his gift for deadpan comedy. He elevates the material whenever he’s onscreen, providing hints as to the more interestingly subversive film Adult World might have been.

Both Chastain and Farrell are resourceful, intelligent actors who can be riveting together moment to moment. But the disconcerting thing about Ullmann’s blandly handsome movie is that neither of these key characters comes fully into focus.

Writer-director Rowan Joffe’s adaptation of S.J. Watson’s bestseller honors the lurid spirit of the page-turner enough to satisfy fans, but he doesn’t transmute the material into something richer and deeper the way.

Despite a premise with broad appeal and a script boasting plenty of laughs among its misfires, the high school fable falters.

In a movie built on the idea of walking in someone else's shoes, shouldn't learning to see others as more than stereotypes be fairly central to the plot's development?

Rahim has a great face but isn’t given enough opportunity to make it clear to audiences what his character is going through beyond the most basic emotions.

An intensely sophomoric and rampantly uneven comic takedown of an easy but worrisomely unpredictable target.

Malick's most distinctive ambition here is his attempt to create an almost pointilistic portrait of a man by evoking acute moments of his past and present, and this sustains real interest for a while, as you wait to see how it all might come together. But as the film just keeps offering more of the same...it doesn't build or pay off with what it seems designed to do, which is to provide either a dramatic or philosophical apotheosis.

As gratifying as it would be to report that the effortless touch, the livewire rhythms and the sparkling wit remain in evidence, those qualities prevail only intermittently in this strained though mildly enjoyable ensemble comedy.

Has sturdy production values, a tony cast and middlebrow tastefulness up the wazoo, but barely any soul, bite or genuine passion.

Much of what transpires is wholly unconvincing, although the proceedings are made palatable by the highly appealing performances by the two leads, who display a genuine onscreen chemistry.

A great many of these individual scenes are funny... But the film fails to do what those rare, immortal rom-coms get right: take all its individually pleasing ingredients and make a satisfying movie out of them.

The delicate drama is sweet and sincere but a tad thin to resonate.

The film only intermittently displays the snap, precision and stylistic smarts a mixed-tone project like this requires; a half-good effort is not enough where buoyancy and a sly-to-mean spiritedness are required at all times.

For high-concept melodrama that's low on complexity, this very solemn film takes itself way too seriously. But it's not entirely without interest, thanks to sleek visuals and decent chemistry between alluring leads Nicholas Hoult and Kristen Stewart.

The actors' raw honesty and the unvarnished authenticity of the Southeast Texas environment lend weight to this slow-burn drama about responsibility, even if its storytelling is unrelentingly downbeat and lacks muscularity.

Amusing but not as funny or suspenseful as it could be.

While that let’s-band-together-and-save-the-park setup clearly isn’t the freshest acorn on the tree, director and co-writer Cal Brunker (2013’s Escape From Planet Earth) at least manages to keep all the ensuing chaos at a reasonably brisk clip. Drawing similarly energetic performances from his voice cast is another matter.

Distinctly and proudly old-fashioned in its retro, film noir vibe, A Walk Among the Tombstones is notable for its dark atmospherics and strong performance by Liam Neeson.

Despite its shameless manipulations and unsubtle approach, it’s an ambitious and well-intentioned feature debut from a director whose future efforts bear attention.

Beautiful to look at, this is nothing more than a Little Engine That Could story refitted to accommodate aerial action and therefore unlikely to engage the active interest of anyone above the age of about 8, or 10 at the most.

The film is elevated by the quality of the performances, with Breslin and Henley movingly affecting as the closely bound sisters and Sorvino convincingly conveying her character’s inability to function.

The film’s attempt at blending humor, poignancy and melodrama results in an awkward mish-mosh. But it has heart to spare, and the performances by the multi-generational ensemble are very effective, with particularly moving work by the veterans in the cast.

The convoluted, cliché-ridden storyline, apparently inspired by the director’s father’s real-life experiences in the drug trade, is the least interesting element, while the brief, perfunctory action sequences no doubt reflect the low budget. But the film certainly looks and sounds good.

Less exploitative and a bit smarter than its seedy adult-film setting would suggest, the shoestring-budgeted film is nevertheless a niche outing that will rely on a stunty premise to attract voyeurs to its debut this Valentine's Day.

Baron Cohen and Strong are both robustly physical performers, and their finest moments are when they’re grappling with each other, producing a great tangle of limbs and teeth. But the script, credited to Baron Cohen, Phil Johnston and Peter Baynham (based on a story by Baron Cohen and Johnston), is not especially generous to the other members of the cast.

This ultra-slick, fantasy-inducing visit to an international wonder world of wealth and deception plays more like an inventory of thieving and gambling techniques than a captivating diversion, even if it's hard not to be voyeuristically pulled in by some of its ruses.

A passably silly but lowbrow buddy comedy.