Malek’s twitchy brand of anti-charm makes him an unusual lead for a film like this, and his outsider energy works better as the tormented killer-to-be than the doting husband. Heller is not always easy to root for, which can make The Amateur a chilly experience.

There’s righteous fury here, and while Winterbottom and Coogan’s sincerity isn’t in doubt, it feels like they’re coasting a bit. There are laughs, but no surprises and not much heart. They have no love for this guy, but as a result, we’re left with something a little one-dimensional.

One problem here is that the jokes aren't funny; another is that Sally Field is funny by mistake.

The script shoehorns in more identity-grappling this time—half-baked and sub-Westworld though it is—and the squelchy synth score (by Black Swan’s Clint Mansell) supplies a playfulness that’s unearned by the visuals. Find a handy film geek to tell you all about how Ghost in the Shell was a massive influence on The Matrix. Better yet, just rewatch The Matrix.

While the film's interviews with students, parents and educators tend toward the repetitious, the hammering of the same bullet-point ideas time and again only lends greater urgency to this exposé of an increasingly rotten system.

You can see the sweat on stage, but it’s harder to detect in the filmmaking.

The movie is one big scream, clichéd and hardly credible as an oblique call to civility.

Swiftian satires on popular taste can backfire badly, and Spike Lee's attempt at black consciousness-raising through the armature of Animal House movies almost dies of the contusion it is trying to lance.

None of this is particularly well wrought, and only a bizarre gas mask worn by the séance leader counts as an inspired (if slightly silly) touch.

Did we really need this Dracula footnote to set sail at all? Perhaps not, but while Øvredal’s expansion on the world isn’t as fun as the grim fables from which it draws blood, it still has some bite.

It’s a waste, for sure — of talent and your time.

Such niceties as a plausible plot and three-dimensional characters are trampled under Weejun-shod foot, but sheer energy, a handful of good tunes (including a great theme song from the Four Tops), and some very funny one-liners save the day.

This iron lady of cinema deserves better.

A favorite at this year's SXSW, Kyle Smith's real-time look at curdled relationships is a modest take on indie psychodramatics - and little else.

A Euro gloss on "Pretty Woman" suddenly turns into "Occupy Gaul."

The real problem here is technical; Eastwood the director is far less sure-footed than he was with the likes of Play Misty for Me or The Outlaw Josey Wales.

This is Seagal's best movie since Out for Justice.

I can’t fault Ridley Scott for wanting to stage a version of this saga, just as I can’t ignore the fact that my dad tells the same tale every spring, but much more engagingly, in half the time and drunk on Manischewitz.

Surface stuff, with neither actor up to the ambiguities, but entertaining enough around the car chases.

From its flash-forward framing sequence to its glossy black and white images, the film emulates "Raging Bull" in nearly every particular, while failing to capture even a sliver of that tortured-soul sports-movie's insight or visceral power.

Medina is simply content to let the film’s sub-Jarmusch vignettes slow-fizzle to their finishes.

This is a movie too enamored of its own tawdriness, turning every violent act and violation into gratuitously salacious grindhouse set pieces.

The second part in the ‘Harry Potter’ spin-off provides twists and glorious visuals, but has too much plot to truly soar. These beasts are overburdened.

As billion-dollar Hollywood franchises go, this is one of the drawn-out dumbest. The stake through the heart comes not a moment too soon.

A wanton, playful film, belying the stated despair by its boiling energy.

The company's effects team have excelled themselves in the creation of spectacular settings and holograms, but the script reads as though they simply ordered up a melange of Forbidden Planet and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (with a little bit of R2D2 on the side). Next time around they ought to pension off a few designers to pay for a decent screenplay.

Despite the testosterone-charged violence and jaw-dropping sexism, the tone is one of self-conscious excess - a strategy which constantly undercuts the film's celebration of male bonding conventions.

If director Stephen Fung's frenetic visual style is the Red Bull in this cinematic cocktail, then the dozy plotting is the vodka - leaving you feeling momentarily excited but ultimately narcotized.