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.

With Elysium, Blomkamp has made good on the promise of "District 9" and proven that working on a bigger canvas doesn't mean compromising on smarts or aspirations to deliver tentpole sized stories with a thoughtful backbone.

There’s nothing about 2 Guns that doesn’t feel prefab, like someone poured a packet of Insta-Movie into a glass of water.

The Smurfs 2 doesn't even pretend to be anything more but the most base, sugar-coated family entertainment, the kind of things that parents won't even be able to comprehend, much less enjoy.

The cavernous emptiness of The Canyons cannot sustain itself, and it makes for a mostly flat, strained and uninvolving experience (not helped by the pace which makes 90 minutes, feels like a sluggish two hours).

There’s a youthful energy running through Una Noche that threatens to overwhelm, from it’s sun-kissed first image to its final moments on the sands of the beach.

Lethargic and not particularly invigorating or fresh, you can skip Wasteland and wait for the next Brit crime flick that will be following before long.

The gore was laughable and the script was blood curdling. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

After Tiller is not an important film just because of its political and cultural relevance, but because of its humane and compassionate approach to telling the stories of these doctors, their work and the women that they seek to help.

This film reveals not just how integral casting directors are to the creative process of filmmaking, but really how important they have been in shaping the history of American cinema.

The Wolverine wants to have it both ways: a dark character story and an action-packed superhero film. But it never reconciles the two notes, and thus becomes more and more atonal as it wobbles towards its symphonically jarring ending.

What really sets this film apart from nearly every other teenage sex comedy ever made, from "Porky's" to "American Pie" to "Superbad," is that this isn't about some dude trying to get laid.

As a film whose central theme emphasizes the dangers of living in the past, Wright, Pegg and Frost become fatally distracted by nostalgia, eventually paying too much homage to previous classics—especially their own—to create another film that deserves to stand alongside them.

Drive works as a great demonstration of how, when there's true talent behind the camera, entertainment and art are not enemies but allies.

The endlessly surprising, often riotously funny Computer Chess basks in the details of a group of men who, at a key point in history, are asking themselves not only if they can accomplish something, but why, and what it means to their current generation.

This expensive misfire runs a little less than ninety minutes, which means that there’s likely a 105-110 minute long version that the producers hacked up in order to get the maximum amount of 3D showtimes to not embarrass the studio on opening weekend. Judging by the released product, that version is likely even worse, if such a thing were possible.

It’s part raw and ugly character study, part ensemble comedy, but it’s that first element that is so striking, bold and unnerving, while the latter element is sometimes amusing, but familiar.

There are occasional laugh-out-loud moments, for sure, and the winningness of the leads makes the inevitable climactic clinch actually rather affecting, but Grabbers could have been so much more than the derivative me-too it turns out to be.

Broken simply can't get it together on any level, delivering a tedious drama, that for all the characters and over-emoting, doesn't have much to say.

Overall, this is an action-comedy that should be as full of laughs as it is explosions (So. Many. Explosions.), but there’s little joy other than letting Mirren be (super) sexy and Malkovich deliver a few good lines.

An illuminating and often hilarious portrayal of the man and his myth, and those who surrounded him.

One of the more disappointing big studio animated features this year, a movie can't even muster the energy to be visually engaging, let alone give you anything to care about story-wise.