Andy Webster

A Lego Brickumentary might be a resounding cheer for a brand, but it’s an eye-opener, too.

The trouble lies in Tyler Hisel’s script, which teems with wheezy conventions.

Only You is served very well by Ms. Tang (a star of Ang Lee’s “Lust, Caution”). Whether playing elated, sorrowful, coy or petulant, she consistently provides the spark the movie could use more of.

Mr. Diez, a former effects specialist, skillfully blends viscous textures with cheesy digital flourishes. The screenwriter, Adam Aresty, also earns points for the dialogue’s blithe hit-or-miss humor. But it’s Tilman Hahn’s sound design, with its unsettling buzz, that will burrow most unforgettably into your memory.

Having painted Victor as a transgressive offender, Mr. Senese backpedals furiously with a coda asserting the potential rewards of genetic manipulation. It isn’t convincing.

Impressive acting (especially from Mr. Suliman and Yael Abecassis as Yonatan’s mother) enhances this thoughtful drama, directed with a sure hand by Mr. Riklis, a film veteran.

The pieces don’t entirely cohere, but Ms. Smith has a promising sensibility.

Onni Tommila, Mr. Helander’s nephew, has an expressive face and marvelous understatement. And Mr. Jackson has never seemed so unblustery; his scenes with the younger actor have ease and humor.

For all the movie’s flashy pyrotechnics and pulverizing techno-ish musical numbers, gleaning an emotional pulse can be challenging.

Besides a clever, blithely ribald script by Bradley Jackson, the movie benefits from a potent “Saturday Night Live”-empowered cast.

Mr. Chi, making his feature debut with Tentacle 8, lavishes attention on his characters at the expense of the through line binding them.

The movie may suffer from a surfeit of excesses, but it does have arresting, if overwrought, things to say about domestic abuse in India.

The movie benefits greatly from Mr. Amoedo’s largely steady direction and the uniform acting skills of its Chilean cast (performing in English).

Freedom does not remotely approach, say, “12 Years a Slave” in its production values or dramatic impact. But it does offer Mr. Gooding, whose weathered countenance is no longer the exuberantly cherubic face featured in “Jerry Maguire.” In its place is something more interesting: a quiet, rugged and arresting conviction.

Ms. Shaye gives Insidious more than sufficient reason for a Chapter 4.

Ms. Hammer’s gauzier sequences notwithstanding, the film’s most commanding image is the housekeeper’s description of the ruthless monasticism Bishop maintained and the compulsive writing she practiced in her studio. Amid excesses and entanglements, that concentration ensured her place in literary history.

There’s solid acting in Childless, but mostly there are words — torrents of them.

Despite its sense of mission, the film suffers from soapy excesses and narrative disjunctures.

[A] short but bluntly powerful documentary.

The film may leave you hungry for deeper insight into some its most renowned purveyors.

You won’t find much offensive in Kevin James’s slick, innocuous vehicle Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2. You won’t find much prompting an emotional reaction in general, so familiar are the jokes and situations. If Mr. James’s character thinks of safety first, so does this movie, to its extreme detriment.

An enlightening documentary.

The emotional dynamics in domestic violence, for the abuser and the abused, are often too disturbing and complex to be treated as superficially as The Living does.

Desert Dancer explores fascinating aspects of present-day Iran but suffers mightily from simplistic and sentimental tendencies.

This candy-coated confection is so irresistible that you’re captivated by its sentiment even as you acknowledge its manipulations.

A spare trifle carried largely by its leading actress.

It taps into something universal, and very precious, about loss, art and adolescent rebellion.

An intermittently diverting stew of low-budget effects and potty-mouth humor.