Andy Webster

A “EuroTrip” with balance sheets, the slick, innocuous comedy Unfinished Business fails to seal the deal.

While Faults glances at the narcissism of cult leaders, its most penetrating investigation is into the root emptiness within disciples, the desperate hunger to relinquish personal initiative.

The movie revels in multiple film stocks (with hairs or threads often on the camera lens) and self-conscious “Last Movie” flourishes (long intervals between credits, “scene missing” title cards, a version of “Me and Bobby McGee”) while maintaining its blithe humor.

Mr. Holsten, was a maker of the winning 2012 documentary “OC87,” a study of obsessive-compulsive disorder. His gift for portraiture shows only further refinement here.

The film’s director, Liz Tuccillo — a former writer for “Sex and the City,” an author of “He’s Just Not That Into You” and now developing a sitcom for Lauren Graham — is predictably facile with comic rhythms, though her dialogue tilts toward the glib, and her characterizations toward the familiar.

Underlying this overlong and overheated enterprise is a surfeit of ambition. Maybe too much.

With strong assists from the cinematographer Zachary Galler and her ex-husband, the composer Sondre Lerche, Ms. Fastvold, previously a director of music videos, has painted a resonant tableau of dysfunction.

The luminaries in “21” pay deserving tribute to Mr. Linklater. Soon, perhaps, so will the Academy

This winning movie — directed by Daniel Ribeiro, making his feature debut — dexterously weaves the social challenges of adolescence into a story of broader self-discovery.

Shah Rukh Khan’s seasoned authority is a steady anchor amid the frantic contrivances.

There is nothing remotely salacious about Bitter Honey, an agonizing documentary examination of polygamy in Bali, Indonesia, from the U.C.L.A. anthropologist Robert Lemelson. There is only vivid evidence of a society that, despite limp efforts at discouraging domestic abuse, remains mired in ancient patriarchy, sanctioning polygamy and, implicitly, often attendant violence.

It’s all very solemn, convoluted and a bit bloody, but not engrossing, despite impressive cinematography by Jasmin Kuhn and Mr. dela Torre and the best efforts of a hard-working cast.

Mr. Payet, who is one of the film’s directors and screenwriters, is a comedy star in France, and this movie is facile with its comic rhythms and dramatic flow.

The directors, Dallas Hallam and Patrick Horvath, are fluent in the genre’s staples (creaky interiors, slamming doors, yada yada yada), lighting schemes and startling edits. And they draw decent work from their actors, who commit to the wispy, subtext-free material.

Anne Hathaway made a splash in Disney’s “The Princess Diaries,” and the rangy Ms. Kapoor (who descends from a Bollywood dynasty) shares some of her early incandescence, along with a Julia Roberts-like smile.

It’s all high-end flash, but less romantic than wearying.

While the director, Peter Askin, employs an all-too-customary suspense arsenal (vertiginous stairway perspectives, foreboding thunderstorms, ominous headlights), Mr. King’s script offers a wealth of behavioral details.

It’s Arhoolie’s musicians — Big Mama Thornton, Flaco Jiménez, Michael Doucet of the Cajun band BeauSoleil and others — who are the true stars. I dare you not to tap your feet.

This isn’t activism; it’s by-the-numbers suspense.

Best of all, Mr. Law doesn’t skimp on wide-screen compositions; this is one movie designed for the theater, not the couch.

Just keep your eyes on the old folks; they are where the heart — and the sweet soul music — of this movie lies.

It is Ms. McAllister who is the brightest light amid the talky, often sentimental exchanges. She lends charm and conviction to a character who might otherwise have proved insufferable.

For all its gloss, “Kundo” fails to resonate. You appreciate the execution, but the film is hindered by its lack of novelty and metaphorical weight.

Mostly, Last Weekend is an elegiac ode to affluence.

In her pursuit, Shivani pistol-whips perps, performs a flying tackle on a criminal astride a motorcycle, shoots an assassin at point-blank range and stabs an assailant through the hand. Her final confrontation with Walt is a sweaty aria of hand-to-hand martial arts combat.

Kabbalah Me, which distinguishes between “narrow consciousness” and “expanded consciousness,” merely walks the middle ground.

[A] disposable comedy.

The humor, when it isn’t overcooked, can be downright insulting or worse.