Though the story’s midsection, with its shifting alliances and reversals, feels distended, the movie offers well-defined characters and an inventive sense of earthbound fun, as well as poignant moments.

A blend of cornpone commentary and tongue-in-cheek exposition, Nuts! is consistently very entertaining.

Seductive and repellent by turns, it’s a title that will provoke fierce love-or-hate reactions, but there’s no question it augurs the arrival of a powerful, audacious new directorial talent.

Individual scenes are charged with energy, tense confrontations are numerous, and Hillcoat and Cook's intentions were undoubtedly partly to tease and taunt viewers with uncertainly about where they, and the characters, stand, to figure out who's got the power and who doesn't. If it was possible to give a damn about any of them, it would help.

The film’s shrewd sense of humor, its way of underlining the absurdity of life’s foibles, is fully carried by Huppert’s disarming performance, which never panders to easy sentiments but doesn’t shy away from showcasing raw emotion.

Boasting a pitch perfect voice cast led by a terrific Ginnifer Goodwin as a righteous rural rabbit who becomes the first cotton-tailed police recruit in the mammal-centric city of Zootopia, the 3D caper expertly combines keen wit with a gentle, and very timely, message of inclusivity and empowerment.

Midnight Special confirms Nichols' uncommon knack for breathing dramatic integrity and emotional depth into genre material.

Much like its characters' romantic lives, How to Be Single is more enjoyable when it's being casual.

Sure, it's a kick to see Stiller and Wilson back in the shoes of these camera-ready cretins, but for every joke that sparks there are several that just lay there.

It's Goldstein's performance that truly impresses.

An explosive family drama whose intense performances can't always compensate for such a heavy-handed scenario, Bad Hurt nonetheless marks a promising directorial debut from playwright Mark Kemble.

Ashley Benson gives a striking performance as the target of an anonymous hacker in Branden Kramer’s ingenious debut feature.

The film embraces ambiguity in the end, with a coda that places Marco and Carla on the same level but not in the same place. The scene's unsettled but peaceful mood seems an honest reflection of its characters' lives.

Before anyone has even said anything, the economy of Barrett as a storyteller is abundantly clear.

It takes a little while to get in gear — or perhaps just to adjust to what's going on here — but once it does, Deadpool drops trou to reveal itself as a really raunchy, very dirty and pretty funny goof on the entire superhero ethos, as well as the first Marvel film to irreverently trash the brand.

Southbound should well please genre fans nostalgic for the likes of Tales From the Crypt and Creepshow.

Wearing its multiple influences heavily on its sleeve, Monday at 11:01 A.M. is too déjà vu for its own good.

It may never be quite solid enough for us to be truly worried about its inhabitants' happiness, but watching them pursue that happiness is a uniquely diverting experience.

A gay auto mechanic comes out to his straight buddies in Fourth Man Out, but the shortage of dramatic texture, psychological insight or credible sexual tension in this toothless brom-com means he might as well be telling them he has a cold.

The Choice is the cinematic equivalent of staring at a Hallmark Card for two hours.

It's the sort of by-the-numbers, forgettable thriller, starring actors whose marquee days are behind them.

There is amusement to be had, engaging actors to admire and beautiful craftsmanship to behold, but the entertainment quotient is below their usual standard when it comes to the films they target for a mass audience, of which this is one.

A few bright moments aside, these annoying characters don't grow on us anywhere near as much as the filmmakers expect them to, and the shoestring-budget FX work, which would be more than good enough in a film buoyed by some wit, just underlines the movie's pedestrian qualities.

It’s entirely to the directors and the two lead actors’ credit that what sounds like a bunch of overextended body humor gags of the most juvenile variety evolve, by sheer repetitious attrition, into something bizarrely poetic and strangely touching.

Even fans who've stuck with Smith for two decades may draw the line at this outing, which offers ingredients just as inexplicable as those in Tusk (it's a sort of spinoff of that film) without the captivating weirdness that sometimes brought that midnighter to life.

Life may be as unfair and arbitrary as Solondz portrays it, but it is arguably more diverse in its moods and its ups and downs. The pic may not be a dog, but nor is it likely to become anyone’s best friend.

It's an invigorating chance to experience from afar an ordeal that, unless your name is Eliot Spitzer, you and I will never have to endure.

Anvari deftly builds and sustains tension throughout, crafting a horror movie that respects genre conventions...while firmly establishing its own distinctive identity.