As a showcase for rising young star Michael Angarano and Christopher Plummer, pic offers the pleasures of connecting Hollywood traditions and generations in the spirit of Peter Bogdanovich's films about and inspired by the movies.

Moves along at a clip and provides a terrific action lead for Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson.

Attention is retained by the commendably unhistrionic leads, who convincingly etch the pair’s enduring devotion even when passions run dry.

The term “crowd-pleasing” is frequently overused, but it applies to this — the latest in a line of so-so baseball movies, which serves up its corn so unabashedly it’s hard to take offense at its sappiness.

A ghastly concoction of razzle-dazzle circus maximalism, poorly CG’d supernatural whimsy and sentimentality so cloyingly sweet you can feel it in your fillings, “Freaks Out” is, however, almost admirably unaware that its over-egged, unironically “Springtime for Hitler” production design, and its lazy invocation of the Holocaust as a narrative shortcut to high emotional stakes, might be in questionable taste. Instead, this is a sincere, if deeply misguided attempt to fabricate weepy wonderment amid the ruination of World War II.

Foolishness in the right hands can be sublimely funny, and combo of star John Candy and director Paul Flaherty (former SCTV cohorts) puts the perfect spin on Who’s Harry Crumb?, a Naked Gun-style farce about a bumbling private eye who succeeds in spite of himself.

This mangy, dimwitted gender switch on "The Last Detail" won't even have the benefit of trial before being sentenced to the video brig, since it's virtually there already.

The film oscillates, rather awkwardly, between grandiose cartoon heroics and a kind of dutiful flatness.

Hal Ashby's Lookin' to Get Out is an ill-conceived vehicle for actor (and co-writer) Jon Voight to showcase his character comedy talents in a loose, semi-improvised environment.

A cringingly syrupy tale of overdue bonding between an estranged father and his only offspring.

Brit sitcom The Inbetweeners, which tracked the travails of four male misfits in their last years at high school, makes a satisfying leap to the bigscreen in summer holiday adventure The Inbetweeners Movie.

Marshall has tried to do too much, dealing with certain subplots too sparingly to deliver on their promise.

Foe wants to end with a big “Whoa.” Instead, it leaves us going “Huh, interesting” and “Whuuut?” at the same time.

A really small movie done up in a big, moody package, Saawariya entices, fitfully springs to life but finally outstays its welcome by a good half-hour.

Serves up a bland recycling of cliches and archetypes from just about every youth-skewing, dance-centric picture to hit the megaplexes since "Flashdance."

While there’s no great originality on display here, Beijing Love Story handles its full range of stylistic and tonal gambits with impressive assurance. A strong performance or a well-placed sober moment always brings things back to terra firma whenever they turn a bit over-the-top.

Don’t Swallow My Heart, Alligator Girl! aims for poetry yet, like its ridiculously clumsy title, manages only an odd mix of magical realism with over-heated Lynchian touches.

Director Tom Gries and the entire cast perform as though they all had better things to do.

Culturally rich story is aided throughout by the pic’s all-Israel shoot, nicely highlighting the different worlds these two lovers come from.

Cena makes it impossible to imagine another person in the part. He’s game to go big, which fits Rod’s frustrated-actor persona, while also having the capacity to play vulnerable and sincere.

The circumstances may be contrived, but the characters feel refreshingly genuine.

A perfect example of the sad trend in contempo Latin American filmmaking to imitate old Tarantino with only a fraction of the stylistic cojones, frantic comedy dealing with two pairs of confused guys and one pair of kidnap victims is an empty exercise that loses its juice before first reel's end.

Uneasily pivots between comedy and drama, with its best parts strongly reminiscent of Schepisi's previous, British-made drama about aging and dying buddies, "Last Orders."

A fairly sexy, serious-minded drama hobbled by its lack of real conceptual ambition.

More interested in finding fresh ways to stage execution scenes than in finding meaning behind the human urge for self-appointed righting of wrongs, (the film) is stuffed with effects that have no lasting impact.

The idea is to have a good time, and Waititi knows how to give audiences that.

Has more flash than finesse.

Watching an estimable quintet of character actors do their thing is the chief pleasure of Cut Bank.

Director Tina Gordon crafts a musical that’s carried through by a charming cast and highly entertaining ensemble performances.

Voyagers is a dutiful thriller about the beast within, but there’s not a lot of surprise to it. Even when the characters let themselves go, the drama remains in lockdown.

With Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder in the lead roles, See No Evil, Hear No Evil could only be a broadly played, occasionally crass, funny physical comedy .

Filmmakers Sean S. Cunningham and Steve Miner scored hits with several simple Friday the 13th films but tackle a more complex story here with embarrassing results.

As shocking and deliberately manipulative as the original movie and -- some may reckon -- even more pointless.

Planetarium is an inert and slipshod movie — messy and aimless, a period tale told with zero period atmosphere (you have to keep reminding yourself that it’s not taking place in 2016), built around a situation with enough possibilities to make you wish that the director, Rebecca Zlotowski, had taken advantage of at least one of them.

Spinning Man, like a film noir turned into a video game, winds up crafting a rickety atmosphere of deception out of the question of guilt or innocence. The result keeps you guessing, but it forgets to keep you caring.

Obvious and derivative in borderline-shameless fashion, it’s a B-movie knock-off with little originality and even less flair.

Ultimately less dependent on suspense or even scares than on squirm-inducing grossouts, this tale of Yank hardbodies vs. carnivorous creepers should flower briefly in hardtops, then spread like an invasive weed in ancillary.

Made with obvious passion and drive, but also a nagging predilection for Holocaust-drama cliches.

The film never captures the bonkers, go-for-broke energy that made the ill-fated likes of “Cloud Atlas” or “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” such enjoyable noble failures, too caught up in hitting the same old blockbuster beats to stop and wonder where the story’s weirder threads might have lead.

It’s not as if we needed to see “Dracula” remade as a blood-soaked Valentine’s Day movie.

Amandla Stenberg carries the magnetism she brought to her breakthrough role in the YA romance “Everything, Everything,” but she’s betrayed by a stilted rendering of a rarely illuminated piece of history.

First-time helmer Patrick Tatopoulos (who designed creatures for all three pics) offers a satisfyingly exciting monster rally that often plays like a period swashbuckler.

Silly, childish fun and as relaxing to watch as good American TV fiction -- and with a very similar world view.

As appealingly humanized by Collins and Claflin, Rosie and Alex are sufficiently flawed, three-dimensional beings for their continued attachment to each other to convince.

So beneath the considerable talents of its star, Chris Rock, it's dismaying to note Rock is also the movie's director, producer and co-scenarist. Not unlike Richard Pryor a generation ago, Rock has yet to land a movie vehicle that captures the sparky energy and subversive bent of his excellent stand-up performances.

Into the Storm can make it rain like nobody’s business, but when it tries to be smart, it comes out all wet.

Shrewdly made with an eye for the global market, where the Belgian star is more of a draw than he is Stateside, pic features visually exciting set pieces in alluring tourist sites, putting the audience in a pleasantly mindless state of disbelief.

The Raven is a squawking, silly picture that never takes flight.

Robin Hood: Men in Tights marks a return to the wild, anarchic scatological comedies that made Mel Brooks a marquee name around the world. It is a film for his diehard fans and for a new generation who only know Mad Mel from legend.

A slight but lightly amusing sitcom-style comedy, strongly recalls dinner theater fodder of three decades ago.

Spinning a wry, tall-tale version of his autobiography, the septuagenarian audaciously plays himself at every age and every stage of his improbably picaresque adventures.

The philadelphia Experiment had a lot of script problems in its development that haven't been solved yet, but final result is an adequate sci-fi yarn.

Grivois’ purpose is not to force a conversation about France’s colonial past or a comparison between Africa then and now. As the body count increases in this tense but troublingly context-free drama, he mistakenly believes we’ll gladly put politics aside to revel in the French gift for the kill shot.

If you choose to focus on the family connections, then it’s clear that Helgeland has something to say.

More problematic, even if we accept the film as pure fiction, is its pedestrian construction and ill-conceived script, unlikely to spark interest in one of the most innovative and influential performers of the last century and a quarter.

Even a premise this stupidly contrived stands a fair chance of working if there are a few decent yuks to be had, but absent any such inspiration, We’re the Millers falls back on the sort of lazy but desperate, sexually fixated non sequiturs that have become de rigueur in studio comedies, jabbing repeatedly at the human groin in hopes of eventually hitting something funny.

Even at 73 minutes, the film is, well, too damn long.

Fans of Winona Ryder will definitely want to catch her in an offbeat role as the town rebel in this teen-oriented smalltown saga; unfortunately, the rest of the production doesn't quite match up.

The rote professionalism on display verges on cynicism, and despite some occasional sparks, this ranks as a considerable disappointment.

Wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is the most valuable player here, revealing impressive comic chops and megawatt charisma even while serving as a human punchline for many of the pic's predictable sight gags.

for all the talk of centuries gone by, “The Old Guard 2” feels like a time-tripping action fantasy made on the cheap.

Writer-director John Hamburg does everything he can to pair up Ben Stiller's stiff, safety-first corporate man with Jennifer Aniston's free spirit in Along Came Polly, but the two are so fundamentally incompatible that story loses credibility long before the gags stop coming.

That original was split between charms and minuses, suffering primarily from careless scripting. Here, those faults are indulged wholesale, with so little attention paid to overall narrative development or individual scene-shaping that the bloated pic often suggests a crowd-funded venture existing solely to pay back (and showcase) the crowd.

Director and cast do their best — well, maybe not their best, but their competent professional duty — with a formulaic, contrived screenplay. Still, the results do no one much credit, landing closer to overripe cheese than taut suspense, or even guilty-pleasure terrain.

[A] muddled mix of melodrama and horror.

While the film initially exercises commendable restraint in braiding its separate narratives, its second half grows increasingly reliant on pat connections and coincidences.

Half-intriguing, half-tedious.

Boasts a perceptive script, rich performances and date-movie appeal.

A heaping serving of metaphysical gobbledygook wrapped in a physically striking package.

Fails to draw any conclusions and, thanks to legal issues, leaves too many questions unanswered.

Mia and the Migoo boasts a handsome, folkloric look that is often undermined by a ham-handed script.

Neither as striking nor as fundamentally scary as its predecessor, this pumped-up, robustly crafted pic is still quite a ride.

In any decade, the film’s bevy of unexplained details, dropped subplots, paper-thin characterizations and fright-free mayhem would disappoint.

Paul Schrader hits a low water mark with Forever Mine, a strenuously straight-faced film noir wanna-be that edges perilously close to self-parody.

Arguably the most critic-proof picture of the decade, Barney's Great Adventure will delight everyone who can't wait to see it and be a grin-and-bear-it experience for those who must accompany members of the former group.

Brand has assembled a cast of world class improvisers, yet doesn't take advantage of their own particularized, inflected rhythms, as each ritualistically experiences a jump-cut fragmentary flashback in front of the same bathroom mirror.

A scenic summer-wind romcom that was presumably a good time for everyone involved. Saying the same for the audience would be a stretch, but on the spectrum of late Woody Allen clunkers, it registers on the mild, instantly-evaporating end of the scale, unlikely to change the positions of any loyalists, detractors, ex-fans or distributors with regard to the controversy-tailed filmmaker.

Firefox is a burn-out. Despite the tense mission being depicted, there’s no suspense, excitement or thrills to be had, and lackadaisical pacing gives viewer plenty of time to ponder the gaping implausibilities.

Achieves a modest degree of tension and dark humor before tilting into gory overkill, while its diffuse central ideas — about materialism, the dangers of playing God and the latent human capacity for violence — never really take plausible shape.

Snyder has set a Sisyphean task for himself. That this very long, very brooding, often exhilarating and sometimes scattered epic succeeds as often it does therefore has to be seen as an achievement.

If the movie never quite masters the feel of messy, grown-up life, it at least makes a few promising salvos in that direction... The actors help a lot.

As with many a Bollywood epic, you can bring the kids, your lunch, your cell phone, your unfiled taxes. There's so much here, and in such heaping, lengthy portions, you could probably weave a sari before the end credits.

Jeff Daniels' gleeful misanthropy and Lauren Graham's emotional openness are poorly served by the pic's transparently phony story and therapeutic uplift

It takes chutzpah to borrow from comedy maestros Billy Wilder and Blake Edwards, and Nia Vardalos would seem an unlikely candidate to get away with it unpunished.

A watchable film for awhile that unravels in a muddled last act likely to send many opening-weekend filmgoers home head-scratching and grumbling.

Second time round, Bridget is still fat, funny and endearing -- but "all a bit, um, familiar, actually."

Bottom-drawer plot of a South Boston bad boy returning to tie up loose ends reads like every other "Mean Streets" knockoff in the past decade, with no scene, development or performance standing out from undifferentiated din.

Despite a few continuity problems, this rough-edged, low-budget drama impresses with spot-on performances, perfect-pitch dialogue and an overall sense that something bad might happen at any moment, unless something worse happens first.

The latest in a line of documentaries decrying the destruction of viable working-class businesses and residential neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Su Friedrich’s film bypasses sadness and indignation for flat-out anger and well-aimed sarcasm.

Revenge of the Nerds shows more than enough smarts to deserve a passing grade.

Preservation ultimately impresses as an arrestingly suspenseful thriller that takes clever narrative twists and turns while moving through familiar territory.

In the end, the project doesn’t really work. The Coen brothers have a touch for the absurd, and a gift for dialogue, that’s lacking here, and without those two qualities, Jesus wears out his welcome relatively early in the journey.

Daring and unique on the one hand, but hard to swallow on the other, Prophecy is a fantasy thriller about murderous angels waging a war on Earth. First-time director Gregory Widen deserves a pat on the back for attempting risky balancing act.

Pic has enough gore, suspense and requisite number of shocks to keep most hearts pounding through to the closing credits.

Sheridan and de Armas’s scenes together leave an impression long after the rest of the movie evaporates.

True to the game, the violence is both ghoulishly creative and gratuitously extreme.

Though no one would accuse The Bronze of not being funny, it somehow manages not to be funny often enough.

Plays closer to an after-school special (with HBO-standard dialogue) than a satisfying feature film.