Movie Reviews

'Daring' isn't a word you would use very much to describe 2011's 'The Hangover Part II,' the disappointingly lazy, beat-for-beat rehash of the wild and wildly successful original 'Hangover' from 2009. And yet, 'The Hangover Part III,' runs a different sort of risk by going to darker and more dangerous places.

The message behind most romantic comedies is the simple-minded sentiment that love is all you need. So when Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier takes that title for a departure from sombre drama to romance, you might expect her to deliver it with some serious irony.

'Star Trek Into Darkness' is faithful and steeped in 'Trek' mythology. It's also an excessively derivative what-if rehash of themes and interactions that came before.

'Great Gatsby' is all about the glitter but it has no soul -- and the fact that he's directed it in 3-D only magnifies the feeling of artificiality.

In "At Any Price," Ramin Bahrani plants a sweeping Midwest tale of fathers and sons, fields and seed. His camera floats over cornfields listening to the rustling of the stalks, but the somewhat graceless stabs of grandeur in "At Any Price" don't register in this uneven but respectably ambitious heartland drama.

The people of 'Peeples' make a better impression than most collections of oddballs in the weary mould of comedies centred on meeting the prospective in-laws. They still overstay their welcome, though.

In the galaxy of big-screen superheros -- a rather glum lot -- Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man is the snappy one. No matter how much of a scrap heap of metal-twisting mayhem the franchise piles on (and it's a lot), Downey's sheer charm -- his unsentimental, offhand yammering -- is the only real super power in Marvel's 'Iron Man' trilogy.

With effective immediacy, the directors dramatize some incidents from Heyerdahl's 1950 Oscar-winning documentary about the trip, and cinematographer Geir Hartly Andreassen pays tribute in re-created B&W footage of the building of the raft.

Michael Bay's true-crime caper 'Pain and Gain' lacks the visual-effects mayhem and sci-fi cacophony of his 'Transformers' blockbusters, yet the movie uses all the shock and awe and noise and bluster the director has in his utterly unsubtle arsenal.

Early in the sleek sci-fi thriller "Oblivion," Tom Cruise, as a flyboy repairman living a removed, Jetsons-like existence above an invaded and deserted Earth, intones his home sickness.

'Wonder' has always been the word with Terrence Malick. He might be the most sought-after, high-budget art-house filmmaker on the planet, a director whose talent for cinematic poetry and freeform improvisation gives him virtually the pick of Hollywood's A-list litter.

Over two-plus hours and across three connected stories, it will become clear that everything is very dramatic and everyone is doomed. You can try to redeem yourself but it’s no use; the past always catches up with us.

Writer-director Brian Helgeland's Robinson biopic '42' is a class act itself, though not always an engaging act. It's such a familiar story that any faithful film biography almost inevitably will turn out predictable, even a bit routine.

Danny Boyle's 'Trance,' a mind-bending neo-noir with continually shifting layers but little beyond its flashy plot machinations.

'Blood-drenched' barely begins to describe Fede Alvarez's remake of 'Evil Dead,' a gore-for-broke affair that strips the flesh off Sam Raimi's cult-beloved comic-horror franchise and exposes the demons at its core.

'The Sapphires' is missing a lot -- detailed characters, a unique narrative arc, half-plausible scenes of the Vietnam War -- but it's got two uncommon things going for it: genuine charm and Chris O'Dowd.

If a big, dumb action movie knows it's a big, dumb action movie and revels in that fact, is that preferable to a big, dumb action movie making the mistake of thinking it's significant, relevant art?

Harmony Korine seems to want it both ways, all day, with "Spring Breakers," his super-stylized descent into a sunbaked hell where bikini-clad, gun-toting college babes serve as our guides.

The animated adventure features a strong, star-studded cast and dazzles visually in wondrously colorful, vibrant 3-D, but the script doesn't pop off the screen quite so effectively.

What should be a hilarious, long-overdue pairing of two hugely likable, superstar comedians ends up being a major disappointment with 'Admission.'