Had the filmmakers shaved away some of the embellished excess, they might have had a minor classic on their hands, worthy of the Anderson and Hughes canon. Instead, they have a very good movie whose reverence ends up bringing it down.

Supermensch is a strong first outing from Myers that plays like that one round of drinks that gets everyone telling stories at the end of a boozy night.

Unfortunately, the film itself is so determinedly middle-brow with little to dislike other than how eager it is to please and how wary it is of offending. Unlike Hortense’s flavorful cooking, Haute Cuisine is aggressively bland.

About an hour in, if you haven’t walked over to the nearest stove and shoved your head inside, the sinking feeling sets in that you’re stuck with this unpleasant asshole.

The film is so po-faced that you wonder what the point of all this is, let alone what we should be hoping is the outcome. Struggling to bring gravity to the proceedings are Wakefield and Hinshaw, who give off the heat of two slabs of baloney slapped together.

It's unfortunate that commercial considerations seem to play into the third act, adding a more concrete representation of a very abstract idea.

Director Shaka King has made a film of big laughs and big heart that makes one long for one long green detour without pandering to the pot-hawks who, unrelatedly, also like the lowest-common-denominator appeal of most pot films without realizing they’re being patronized.

A Single Shot does not add up to anywhere near the sum of its parts.

As a standalone feature, it feels like there’s not quite enough there.

From a procedural perspective, the film is an insightful look into the life of a Secretary Of Defense, but as an exploration into how the war in Iraq was allowed to happen, it’s much, much less satisfying

It is beautifully shot, well-acted by all (especially by Waldstätten, Strauss, and Simonischek), and filled with strong dialogue and a real sense of place. But despite the cast’s best efforts, it is never moving, and rarely surprising.

A very impressive film, one that can only increase the esteem in which both Knight and Hardy are held.

Macdonald’s unique direction and Ronan’s jittery performance makes the film a worthy watch

The whole thing feels sort of tossed off, like it was made by film students over a couple of weekends.

In many ways the film feels like a regression -- it's more juvenile, less polished and feels less labored over than his previous efforts.

For all its flaws, the film offers as compelling and fair a summary of the case and the man for those less well-versed in the tale as you could ask for from a documentary.

Abuse of Weakness is a frustrating experience, yet one that feels utterly unique and relentlessly watchable.

Avranas makes a claim to be considered among the top ranks of international filmmakers.

The 90-minute film feels shallow and, while Rosi has a good eye, not especially cinematic.

Johannson turns out to be perfectly cast, being able to shift from blank alien mode to kittenish seduction without ever letting you see the switch being turned on or off.

There’s much to like, from Waltz’s performance to the typically rich production and costume design.

You Are Here is a shockingly inept comedy.

The filmmaking here is almost impossibly well-realized, right down to the evocative sound design, adding up to an fairly unforgettable experience.

It's certainly a crowd-pleaser...and something close to a triumph, if not an unqualified one.

There's a pleasing egalitarianism to the film's history-through-the-eyes-of-the-ordinary-man concept, but the script rarely makes the case that their versions are compelling enough to warrant a film.

Coppola's screenplay neatly restructures Franco's source material into a deceptively tight narrative, and mostly proves to be raw, authentic and often very funny.

Eisenberg does an enormous amount with what he has, proving to be sinister and vulnerable virtually within the same breath, and expertly putting across the torment he’s going through.

A sly dark comedy that doubles as a very impressive display of wordless storytelling.

It’s not exactly doing anything new, but it’s a muscular and textured piece of work that shifts assuredly through tones and genre, features a rich and rewarding performance from Cage, and another excellent turn from his young co-star Tye Sheridan.

[Fiennes] has rarely been better than he is as the 19th century’s most celebrated novelist, with his chops on screen just about matched by what he’s done behind.

A lack of courage on behalf of the filmmakers to take any position renders the film narratively limp.

Fading Gigolo is mostly an inoffensive trifle, slightly undone by its lack of focus and mishmash of genres that don't quite come together. But it's breezily told and acted, with some decent laughs and unlike many comedies these days, it actually cares and respects the characters and the consequences of what they go through.

Guiraudie creates an ambiance of eerie atmospherics that is at once crisp and observant, and oddly dreamlike, or nightmarish.

Enemy is a transfixing grand slam that certifies Villeneuve as the real deal and one of the most exciting new voices in cinema today.

Totally bonkers, hilarious and wickedly clever, The Double is special and singular filmmaking at its best.

While there's no doubt that Shepard's film is frequently laugh-out-loud funny and impressively, wittily written, with a finely tuned ear for the perfect bit of foul language, it stumbles slightly on the story side.

Like an epic sonnet, with beautiful accompanying music and songs, “Eleanor Rigby” deals with memory, perception and the emotional toll a relationship can have on an individual as much as it deals with the more grandiose themes of love and loss.

Devil's Knot lacks potency or a compelling narrative reason why anyone remotely familiar with the case needs to be watching it.

Despite the fine performances from McConaughey and Leto, tightly coiled editing that keeps the story moving and a nicely measured balance between drama and comedy (McConaughey is often a hoot), Dallas Buyers Club still sometimes feels like it's missing one more grace note.

Since the music doesn't connect like it should, everything else that is underpinned in the story by these songs also doesn't come together with the weight or power Carney surely intended.

Bad Words wants so desperately to be funny that there isn't much time left to make any logic out of the story.

Washington’s performance is one of the best of the year, a high-wire act that is careful not to dip into survivalist caricature.

The movie is sexy, in a very real, occasionally shocking way, and it's interesting to see this kind of frankness in a movie where the characters are all so young.

Enough Said is another tremendously well crafted, intelligent dramedy about people, with complicated lives, who make bad decisions trying to do the right thing.

With the cinematography and its family-centric approach, it takes what could have been a dry subject and broadens its appeal.

Mr. Nobody is simply a failure.

August: Osage County is a film of big, wild gestures, plate smashing, screaming and tears, but not nuance, and it all has the effect of leaving one deadened, not moved.

For all the assuredness behind the camera and in front of it, there's very little in way of edge or even, surprisingly, emotion.

The Family is ultimately a headache, nearly two hours of baseball bat beatings and dull witticisms, with zero inventiveness or energy.

Why, besides a stellar opening weekend, does this extended narrative exist?

It might not be the director's most immediately accessible films, but it's among his most fascinating and beguiling.

As an affecting romance between a woman caught between two worlds, it very nearly sticks the landing. As a showcase for Ms. Bosworth, never better, it's often sublime.

It's a film that plays equally to both sides of the political spectrum, and it feels like pandering either way.

Rush is a pretty thrilling piece of pop entertainment. It's excitingly assembled and moves like a bullet, highly engaging and nerve-wracking when it needs to be and light on its feet elsewhere.

For a story with so much feeling, there’s surprisingly little emotional resonance in Adore.

With a blitz of talking heads and graphs and technical jargon, Money For Nothing can be exhausting viewing at times, and it's certainly not the most cinematic experience... But it's never unclear.

Paradise is neither a good film nor is there any evidence it was a good script.

Semi-flat with only a few jokes and emotional beats that land, the picture is often dull when it should be poignant.

Well shot and well made, Kill Your Darlings is a very competently constructed effort on a whole, but there’s an emptiness and familiarity at its core that it cannot transcend.

It seems like a statement that Il Futuro presents simple but intriguing conflicts that nonetheless resolve anti-climactically, denying us an organic end.

I Am Breathing is not a documentary intended to induce sobbing. It is, instead, a film about dying that is stunningly alive, wildly optimistic, and always insightful and entertaining.

A crude sketch of a film that could barely withstand a short-form, but instead has been stretched to agonizing feature length by directors Robert Wilson and Jason Lapeyre.

The intensity of Burdge’s excellent performance—and Fidell's intense, often claustrophobic filmmaking—carries the picture far, but when she turns away from the camera (and she does often), you can almost feel Fidell reaching for spare ideas.

Hell Baby works as a joke factory first and foremost, a collection of tropes (some mocked) second, and a movie a distant third.

Riddick, as a character, is best when he's alone, fighting against insurmountable odds, with narratives that serve his singular nastiness.

A full-immersion exercise in the old-fashioned women's weepie that skews far closer to Nicholas Sparks' brand of contrivance than Diablo Cody territory.

Given that this isn’t the extended TV mini-series that the subject deserves, Salinger does an effective job of making the writer seem alternately more mundane and more mysterious, almost at the same time.

Plummer adds another comfortably unreliable character to her gallery, turning Abigail into an older woman with a schoolboy crush.

This revolving door of graphically rendered brutalities might feel like its own punishment if not for an array of astonishing performances that’s practically a one-stop Oscar-nomination shopping spree.

The picture is often graphic and pulls no punches in its disturbing violence, but its unflinching nature gives it a memorable sear that won't soon be forgotten.

We Are What We Are is just a great yarn, well-acted, elegantly shot and put together cleverly so that even its more visceral delights feel well-earned.

It's understandable that larger scale movies will want to spawn sequels, but this is about two degrees away from being a movie that premieres on Cinemax on a Friday night, sandwiched between two soft core porn movies with funny titles. Getaway is stuck in neutral. And that's where it'll stay.

Gravity is about as visceral an experience as you can have in a cinema, it’s a technical marvel, and it’s a blockbuster with heart and soul in spades.

The sloppy reveals of the third act can be seen from miles away, turning this into a low-impact actioner where characters are turned into chess pieces, and the narrative’s aim is to strategically assemble the parts like a play set.

One of the best films of the year.

A wholly illuminating look at Muhammad Ali in all his complexity, providing a surprisingly fresh and vivid portrait of a man who played rope-a-dope with history, religion and sport and emerged from the ring as an inspiring, and flawed icon.

For Scenic Route, it doesn’t seem to be the journey as much as the destination: seeing two sorta-friends wailing on each other feels like the shortcut a better movie never made.

For all its abrasiveness, the film is also capable of real tenderness.

Ultimately, the cumulative effect is deadening, just another chapter in an endless battle between overtasked and underpaid good guys, and cowardly baddies; the only real humanity in the film comes from Hudgens’ Cindy, who seems like a wild card of sorts, her character’s dimensions suggesting a world outside of the lurid details of this case. Refreshingly, she’s the only one in the film who refuses to be defined by the death and tragedy surrounding her.

Savannah does attempt to tell the story of the friendship of those two accomplished men, but does so in a manner that is so astonishingly tone deaf, confused and narrowly focused that it leaves you almost amazed at the lack of vision behind the entire enterprise.

No matter how good The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones looks, it's hard to really care about anything that's going on, and not just because we could barely understand it.

[Thérèse] is not the nuanced period drama it should be but is rather more like a banal, pseudo-thoughtful and monotonous episode of Masterpiece Theater.

Moore’s movie may not seem to make much sense...but he does set up bits at the beginning that do come to pay off in ridiculous ways, and cinematographer Lucas Lee Graham pulls off the commendable feat of shooting the film with some margin of legitimate composition in spite of the crew’s apparent guerrilla antics.

Despite some great character work, the film's journey comes across as pedestrian at best.

The bland, boring Paranoia does little to distinguish itself and isn’t good (or even enjoyably bad enough) to be passable even as Saturday afternoon cable fodder.

The crime isn’t that Kick-Ass 2 is vulgar (which it is), but that it’s for so little gain.

While Muscle Shoals and its presentation doesn't reinvent the wheel—this is your standard talking heads documentary—the treasure trove of stills and found footage makes for a compelling and effortlessly watchable film that even the casual music fan should find themselves totally engrossed in.

Lee Daniels’ The Butler could be an important film that comes at a time where race is still a challenging topic for America, but it succeeds less as a film than as a history lesson.

Despite Seyfried’s gameness, we come away a little deadened from the experience and knowing precious little more than before about the person who inhabited the body, the life and the throat of Linda Lovelace.

The focus is spread too thinly on the various colorful local voices, all of whom openly campaign against Recchia’s intentions with zest and flavor.

The little action in 'Percy Jackson' wouldn’t be out-of-place in a superhero film, which is to say it’s mostly functional, and sometimes quite diverting.

When Planes really takes flight, it can be boldly transporting. Other times, though, it feels like it's running low on jet fuel, full of limp characterizations and questionable set pieces.

A smart, well-acted and well-directed picture that adds up to a little more than the sum of its parts.

We're The Millers isn't really a bad movie, so much as its inoffensively and instantly forgettable.

While Sebastián Cordero’s Europa Report is far from flawless, this contained sci-fi thriller is shot through with a devotion to realism and a sense of wonder largely missing in films that overshadow it in terms of scale.

When the final moment comes and it's revealed how the children died, it's less of a surprise than a shrug. Drama robbed of suspense is just dull.

As a movie, it’s quite an effects reel: Cockneys Vs. Zombies is a greatest hits package of your least demanding expectations given such a title.

It's utterly unconvincing and not scary in the slightest.