Will probably divert kids with ease, given its manic exertion and pace...[but] we find out the hard way that these waddlers are better in small doses.

We're meant to feel the weight of Katniss' situation, and we do, but the picture can also fairly be called leaden...

With its equation tantalizingly out of reach, winds up being by the numbers.

Above all, and not surprisingly, media icon Stewart shows his deep belief in the almost holy power of media to bolster political change, and he's not wrong.

While the borderline silly material could easily have sunk like a lead balloon, Shelton and her actors sprinkle enough pixie dust to make Laggies fly.

Love is what's really between the stars, y'all.

Are you a nihilist? Trouble finding a way to bring satisfaction to a Friday night in the void of meaningless suffering that is your universe? Well, do I have the movie for you.

The stealth allegory of the insidious nature of gossip as a tool of domination, and the scathing class satire of misbegotten and socially unjust personal goals, carry a productive sting that should leave kids smarting but a bit wiser...

This intelligent, funny, articulately hyper-verbal campus comedy-drama...serves up tart satire...

The crackpot Birdman on some level tells a relatable story of one person's attempt to get, for once, something right, while functioning as a useful cultural critique of the disconcerting inextricability of commerce from art on stages and screens.

An indie Amadeus...it's the career-best performances by Simmons and Teller...that make Whiplash unforgettable.

A throwback combat movie that offers tanks for the memories, along with vivid performances.

Runs on clichés and ultimately earns more credit for what it doesn’t do...than for what it does.

Rather than a fiercely intelligent, live-wire exposé, the well-intentioned picture comes across as weak-tea drama that never fully justifies its docudramatic form.

Pays heartwarming testament to the flexibility of solidarity.

Once the chaotic adult-fairy-tale elements override Fincher’s otherwise meticulous style, one suspects this tawdry tale of marital fury signifies nothing more than a nihilistic view of heterosexual marriage.

The star makes the film something like a guilty pleasure, but he and touches like the film-opening Mark Twain quotation form little more than a gilded cover wrapped around pure pulp.

What’s best about A Walk Among the Tombstones is atmospheric...What’s worst about the film is its sense of generic luridness...

How relevant or relatable viewers will find all this is questionable, but fans of the actors will take true pleasure in their tart verbal sparring...

Wiig and Hader's shared history beautifully informs their entirely credible screen relationship, which can be as testy as it is loving, as distressingly haunted as it is funny...

One could wish the picture were less thematically anemic...but there's something to be said for the nifty concept and pure adrenaline, when it kicks in.

Wait—is this a lesbian dolphin dating movie?

Technically qualifies as a true-crime tale, and seems to exist mostly out of a sense of marketable prurience: hallmarks of Lifetime’s infamous cable movies.

Comedy sequel The Trip to Italy is almost exactly like its predecessor The Trip, and for the most part, that's a good thing.

The film may seem to be doing very little, but it evinces great sensitivity...as it explores a universal theme of dealing with life's unexpected derailments and trying to get back on track.

We've seen the 'Full eyes, clear hearts, can't lose' ethic before on screen, and more winningly dramatized, but When the Game Stands Tall does a good, and family-friendly, job of encapsulating Ladouceur's 'winning' approach...

Shamelessly engineered and sappy, but swoony romantics (c'mon, you know you are one!) may not much mind.

The resulting mystery-play-goes-mystery-movie allegory may have a heavy hand, but it also has its finger on the pulse of the struggles facing the [Catholic] Church and the emotional needs of its drifting parishioners.

It's a bit like watching old friends drunkenly mud wrestle: it's good to see them, but not like this.

Too bad that this junior version of Fahrenheit 451 turned out drippy...It's odd to watch a film about the rediscovery of love, faith, passion, and color, and for the film to be so by-the-numbers colorless.

This GMO hybrid of foodie drama, culture-clash comedy, travelogue, and romance gently establishes, in middlebrow just-go-with-it fashion, the tone of a fable.

To be fair, this isn't War and Peace. It's a movie with a nunchuk-wielding reptile standing over six feet tall, drooling over pizza, and making boner jokes about Megan Fox.

It's ironic but true that Twister remains more palatable by being a consciously entertaining action fantasy, a cinematic roller-coaster, rather than a hellish 'you are there' safari tour through death and destruction.

While it's not unpleasant, this Magic disappointingly fails to capture the imagination.

Lurches along a bit awkwardly, but always with utterly dazzling visuals and a goofy gag at the ready.

Besson reminds us how limber he can be...The material is always cheeky in its sense of humor and stylistic and cultural allusions...and frequently, if not fundamentally, provocative...

A sometimes amusing R-rated comedy that never quite hits the spot.

Were you to sit down and write a movie with the instruction that it be funny, sad, and inspirational, you're likely to come up with better ideas than...this tepid Generation X version of a James L. Brooks film.

McCarthy delivers another all-in performance, but so much so as to be more sad than funny much of the time.

The tasteful austerity of style and solid performances can't overcome a script that largely stands between emotional humanity and the viewer.

A movie-movie, with edgy cred and a vivid dystopian vision that, while ostensibly futuristic, speaks harshly to the class divide already defining us.

Neither theatrical fish nor cinematic foul...literalized on film, the theatrical reduction of the [Four Seasons]’s story has an anemic complexion.

Robespierre has conceived something you don't see every day: a feminist rom-com that unapologetically allows its flawed protagonist to let it all hang out...But [it's] one of those pictures that's just good enough that you dearly wish it were better.

Purposely blurs the lines between the actors and their characters for 'meta' gags, but it doesn't change what the movie is: just another dumb sequel.

While delivering the epic goods, the How to Train Your Dragon franchise continues to keep its eye on helping kids become better people, and that's a cause worth fighting for.

A fairly eye-popping futuristic war story with a clever (to a point) structure.

Almost certainly wouldn't have been made were it not for Angelina Jolie, whose extraordinarily striking presence recalls the Old Hollywood potency of Garbo. If only the film around Jolie were worthy of her.

Within spitting distance of good...lesser than the sum of its parts due to deficits of ambition, invention and commitment.

This otherwise wispy two-hander-plus-one could easily collapse under a sociopolitical weight it isn't all that interested in lifting...so it's no surprise that the play has returned very much as a star vehicle, with old-pro actors...

What makes [it] more than just a thrilling science-fiction actioner is the past-present poignancy allowed by time travel and astral projection, indulging everyone's fantasy of telling a younger self what he or she needs to hear.