Ben Kenigsberg

This vague, arty horror film from Jason Banker (“Toad Road”), who shares a story credit with his star, Amy Everson, is at once underwritten and overconceptualized.

The movie’s snap and affection put other recent zombie-related entertainments to shame, and the in-jokes...are a Dante signature. But the freedom of the director’s best work is missing.

At the time of a fervent national debate on race and justice, part of what is impressive about 3 ½ Minutes is the cool temperature at which it is often served.

While "Room 237" sought evidence for its most outlandish conceits, The Nightmare declines to delve. As the testimonies grow repetitive, the strategy suggests willful ignorance.

While the results are more creepy than charming — too childish for adults, though not necessarily too dark for children — it is hard to fault Mr. Goodwill for trying.

While it lacks the richness of some of Ozu’s masterworks, “The Japanese Dog” steers clear of sentimentality — an impressive feat, given that the title somewhat preciously refers to a toy dog. The movie depicts a hopeful side of Romania, peeking through even Costache’s lonely world.

It is possible to admire Mr. Kalman and Ms. Horn’s ambition and at the same time have no idea what they were trying to achieve.

The droll, shape-shifting Two Shots Fired, the newest movie from the Argentine filmmaker Martín Rejtman (the subject of a current retrospective at the Film Society of Lincoln Center), accomplishes the strange feat of constantly thwarting expectations without ever varying its tone or moving the needle of excitement.

Digressions involving suicide, child abuse, immigration and unions muddy the film’s meaning rather than illuminate it.

Mr. Nossiter’s main point is that traditional farming methods have become revolutionary in a country that, we’re told, has grown progressively less agrarian. Mr. Nossiter champions that activism in this mellow, unfocused film.

Each narrative fissure further thwarts meaning. The most you can ask from a movie as nullifying as this one is that it offer wit and visual panache, which it does.

The Great Museum, in comparison, feels like a cursory guided tour.

Laugh Killer Laugh is a tired parody that seems to have been constructed from received notions of noir and mob movies. Even the jazzy score sounds like an affectation.

Antarctic Edge illustrates its points effectively, providing vivid evidence of how shrinking ice at the South Pole affects climates across the globe.

Lost River ponders people and places left behind in the name of progress. Slyly political, it observes the mortgage crisis through a warped looking glass. The cinematographer, Benoît Debie, finds a perverse beauty in the decline.

The Hand That Feeds is an effective portrayal of the intricacies of activism — and of a situation in which victories seem all too brief.

Even if this minor coda plays to an increasingly closed circle of admirers, it gives the trilogy a pleasing, moving symmetry.

The director, Oren Jacoby, who made the Oscar-nominated short “Sister Rose’s Passion” and the feature “Constantine’s Sword,” doesn’t give My Italian Secret much structural or chronological organization. The anecdotal presentation sometimes seems more suited for museum browsing than for viewing in a theater.

[An] inert, exasperatingly proportioned phantasmagoria from Roland Joffé.

While the oafish men come off poorly, the treatment of women as nothing more than schemers and monstrous Martha Stewart clones seems woefully past its expiration date.

This documentary goes heavy on the schmaltz, in all senses.

Despite eclectic casting and occasional experiments with objective camera, the director, David Gelb (“Jiro Dreams of Sushi”), can’t breathe similar life into this risible mix of pseudoscientific hokum and supernatural freakouts.

Farewell to Hollywood is moving yet queasily unsettling, even if Ms. Nicholson’s enthusiasm mitigates the veneer of exploitation. Watching it feels like judging a last will and testament. The movie is an intimate dialogue from which viewers may prefer to recuse themselves.

Even in this would-be subversive comedy. Success means getting the guy. Getting good grades (as Bianca does) is not enough, nor is writing the front-page article in the school paper.

Whether the material is “Much Ado About Nothing” or “When Harry Met Sally,” if your story requires keeping true loves apart, it is often polite to pass the time with a steady flow of comedy.

On the Way to School never wavers in its bland uplift.

These fond recollections of derring-do hail from a different era, and the movie’s one-sided view of history is bound to start arguments. The film is best appreciated as a straightforward testimonial: old war buddies’ hurrah against anti-Semitism.

This derivative comedy, in addition to not being particularly funny, gives off a sense of telling us more than we needed to know.

For a film rooted in a personal story, Salvation Army feels awfully remote.

At once disarming and calculated, Strange Magic is a film of commodified feelings, evoking memories of other experiences — whether of Shakespeare, the original songs or authentic enchantment.

The narrative has been fashioned mostly in Mr. Pacquiao’s favor, although there are mentions of overwork, infidelity and gambling. Banal, stentorian narration by Liam Neeson (“Once victory is stolen from you, what are you left with?”) mostly gives the sense that it’s the viewer being carried around the ring.

Mr. Ostlund’s 2004 debut, begins as a free-floating portrait of mischief and compulsion — a cousin to Harmony Korine’s “Gummo” that comments obliquely on fascism and violence.

It is provocative simply in showing how trust is gained and kept, even after the swindled kids have understood their robbers’ motives.

The bitterly funny, multistrand Involuntary, from 2008, is a step forward in the director’s ambition.

The movie has no apparent destination in mind; it ends with a complacent shrug having barely reached feature running time. Ms. Tomei, Mr. Rockwell and Mr. Geraghty get stray laughs, but “Loitering With Intent” mostly plays like an excuse for its makers to hang out.

This low-key drama so insistently resists epiphanies that it verges on bland.

Although the narrative contains echoes of “The Godfather” and “The Godfather Part II” — and perhaps “Casino,” in that much of it is structured as a flashback from an assassination attempt — “Gangs” lacks the poetry and character interest of those films.

The movie pulls the rug out from under the audience several times, but in the end there is not much underneath.

Vessel becomes a film not just about abortion but also about activism. It raises provocative questions about the power of laws to police information in an increasingly globalized world.

[A] dryly funny, enigmatic new work.

The finale, in which blood rivalries are redressed in an absurdly literal manner, fatally strains credulity.

The movie has a nationalistic, didactic flavor and a tiresome devotion to spectacle. Even the climax is staged two ways.

The director, Tom Harper, seems less interested in allegory than in monotonous, conventional goosing, the kind that involves flickering lights and a creaky rocking chair.

The North Korea scenes are often very funny, with many of the jokes coming at the expense of the fish-out-of-water visitors.

Unfortunately, poor execution prevents the movie from achieving an authentic throwback feel. Although the principal cast members are Broadway veterans, here they struggle with technological and tonal issues.

The movie starts by noting Leonardo’s intent to leave a memory of himself in the minds of others. That’s a benchmark Inside the Mind of Leonardo won’t meet.

Employing bursts of Bach and English-language narration, this lulling, informative documentary never fully grapples with its topic’s complexity.

The humor of this situation — or of any of the movie’s strained wackiness — doesn’t particularly translate. It also does little to illuminate the more serious commentary on immigration, the legacy of colonialism and the tensions within the country’s Algerian communities.

Cartoonish in its depiction of class disparities, A Little Game gains some subtlety from its performers: Mr. Abraham, an old pro, does fine work alongside Ms. Ballard, a newcomer.

Maidan is a film of scale and immediacy, finding artistry, for better or worse, in bearing witness.

The logistics of raising money and securing permits for the cause are not the most compelling or irreverent subject. The movie’s goal is straightforward advocacy.

In its graceful superimpositions and its use of water to evoke a more idyllic time (particularly in a rainy flashback set to Neil Young), Inherent Vice is very much a companion piece to "The Master."

The answers aren’t satisfying, and The Pyramid, despite an unpretentious matinee vibe, is mostly interesting in seeing how little light can be on screen before a bare minimum of suspense and coherence dissipates. There is, truly, not much to see in this movie.

Lacking a formal script, the actors struggle with a plot so elemental that it might have played more persuasively as a silent-screen melodrama.

The notion of an undercover agent with an untrustworthy mind is a great gimmick — and on a commercial level, Dying of the Light sometimes plays as just another high-concept vehicle for a comically overacting Mr. Cage. But Mr. Schrader’s vision is strong enough to rage against the hackier calculations.

The film is accessible and often hypnotic on an intuitive level.

What Touch the Wall lacks is an inventive or compelling presentation. Heavy with platitudes about goals and attitude, it could easily be a short special on ESPN.

This affectionate documentary is more of a bonbon for longtime fans than an entryway for a broader audience.

The film ultimately lands uneasily on the line between inside and insular, recalling an old saw about universities: The fights are so fierce because the stakes are so small.

The decision to focus on the series’s comic relief has resulted in the loosest and perhaps funniest film of the brand.

Few moments in recent nonfiction cinema are as piercing as the one in which Ms. Schwartz asks her mother if she might have settled down with Mr. Parker had he not been black.

This superficial movie plays like a fashion shoot with robes.

In its humor, its fairy tale origins and the characters’ rounded features, it plays more like a vintage Disney work, only nimbler and freer.

[A] preposterous ensemble piece.

In its feel for nocturnal light, this is one of the most refreshing New York independent features since Ramin Bahrani’s “Man Push Cart.” Both acoustically and dramatically, Mr. Mumin is a winning performer.

Driven by mostly Spanish-language folk music, the movie provides a potent if piecemeal counterbalance to the sensationalism of “Breaking Bad.”

Mr. Pailoor (who wrote the screenplay with Anu Pradhan) shows a taste for blunt metaphor... It’s hard to find fault with the performances, though, particularly Mr. Seth’s.

Saving Christmas seems determined to win any perceived war on Christmas through brute force.

This is crudely mounted, earnest advocacy, getting its points across at any cost.

It’s a testament to Williams’s energy that even in an unfortunate part as Virgil, an angry, alcoholic dad, he comes across as the most vivid member of the cast.

Jessabelle is depressingly rote.

Nonstop scheming and some grimy New Orleans locations prevent The Lookalike from being boring. But the movie, instead of embracing its budgetary limitations, gives off a distracting sense of trying to punch above its weight class.

Even with a few late twists, concept exceeds execution.

Only during a brief scene of a man catching a fish outside his flooded house does the movie seem interested in anything more than raising awareness.

The film is both a generous primer on the band, which grew out of the punk movement in Leeds, England, in 1977, and a celebration of its longevity.

Tiger Lily Road aims for the bleak humor of a Coen brothers film, but a jaunty sitcom score spoils the tone. There’s barely an action that doesn’t strain credulity.

The movie is an object lesson in how a remarkable subject can be turned into a less remarkable film.

What Ouija lacks in wit and originality, it makes up in volume — a trademark of the “Transformers” director Michael Bay, who is one of the producers.

There’s much more dead air than laughs, despite a certain anything-goes enthusiasm from the leads.

The film is stronger with its moment-to-moment tension than with its cynical, shallow media satire.

Nasty for nastiness’s sake, Kite drags to achieve its brief running time; you wonder whether the slow motion is an artistic device or a stalling tactic.

There’s so much great vintage footage of Ali... and he’s so charismatic, it would be hard to watch the movie and not take something from it.

Looking for plausibility in a movie called Dracula Untold is as pointless as looking for humor or personality in Mr. Evans’s dour performance.

The appealing Mr. Corden manages the not insignificant task of maintaining interest in a story whose climax has already been passed around on YouTube.

The narration promises surprises (“This story may challenge what you think you know about the roles men and women play in Mormon homes”), but the movie might have started by examining its straw-man conception of the audience.

The Hero of Color City cannily distills the children’s movie to its lowest common denominator: bright colors flashing on screen.

The main drawback of Inner Demons, no matter how skillful the presentation may be here, is the overriding sense that this has all been done before.

The fates of several of the movie’s bitcoin entrepreneurs are unlikely to send viewers rushing to exchange their dollars. But The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin nevertheless functions as an entertaining portrait of the unshakable optimism that governs what’s been called a financial Wild West.

Annabelle is less cluttered with creepy bric-a-brac than “The Conjuring.” (The original director, James Wan, produced here.) But Mr. Leonetti embraces the potential of negative space.

The film is at once overly eccentric and underdeveloped. It starts as an exercise in bleak absurdism and ends as a Frank Capra Christmas special, with little originality in between.

It’s hard not to root for this couple — and, more to the point, these actors — to get together again.

It’s hard to escape the sense that Plastic is itself a cheap knockoff, but the point is not to look too closely.

Mr. Pegg, normally a live wire, makes an affable hero, but the movie often forces him into blandly earnest mugging.

Life’s a Breeze is ultimately about as cutting and memorable as its title.

The movie goes beyond alarmism with solutions that on the surface would seem to find common ground between environmental advocacy and unfettered capitalism.

A perfectly serviceable entry in the young-adult dystopian sweepstakes.

Even without Mr. Rice in the news, No Good Deed would be damaged goods: an inert “Cape Fear” rehash that can’t seem to choose its favorite contrivance.

It’s both a credit to, and a shortcoming of, the movie that it suggests an illustrated bibliography. It makes you want to stop watching and, instead, read or reread all of the pieces mentioned.

At the Devil’s Door is reasonably absorbing but never scary or satirically sharp (despite references to mortgages and foreclosures). It mostly settles for inducing sensation.

For the right age group, though, the film hits its marks: It’s wholesome, engaging and rife with impressive aquatic photography.

This movie’s earnest infectiousness is tough to deny.

Watching it means waiting for the other shoe to drop: anticipating the moment when this already tacky weepie will resolve itself in horrific, exploitative fashion.

The only urgent message in Gringo Trails would seem to be the screamingly obvious one: Visitors should behave themselves.

As a late-summer caper movie, it hits the spot. The film offers the intriguing contrast of actors and a director (Daniel Schechter) taking a different approach to known material.

Preposterous as it is, The Calling remains stubbornly suspenseful until near the end.

While The Naked Room may raise awareness, it often feels voyeuristic in less productive ways.

The issue of national atonement is a sprawling topic, one ill served by the film’s unfocused and amateurish presentation. At times, the movie seems less like a full-fledged documentary than like a pitch session.

There is something to be said for a thriller that rips along with no regard for anything other than its own pace, coasting on Mr. Brosnan’s blunter-than-Bond suavity and Ms. Kurylenko’s beauty.

The hand-wringing and revelations are familiar from many wedding movies, but May in the Summer gains added potency from its cross-cultural tensions and the drama the characters face in reconciling tradition with modern life.

Acknowledging Hurricane Sandy, Jersey Shore Massacre reminds viewers that it’s hardly the worst disaster to hit the region. But it gives the Hindenburg stiff competition.

[An] endearing muddle, which flails in search of an identity.

Shedding light on the filmmaking process would have only enriched this well-wrought but limited extreme-sports portrait.

A turgid, foursquare naval epic.

Jake Squared combines the most grating tendencies of meta navel-gazing with the sexism of reality television — pushing the limit of viewer tolerance to zero.

It’s possible to admire the four directors’ unflinching depiction of the dying process, but the film is mostly unilluminating and grim — not least because almost all of the deaths discussed are untimely.

The Word is never boring, though that has as much to do with the mounting absurdities and ripe acting as it does with the resourceful use of crosscutting by the director, Gregory W. Friedle.

Step Up All In, directed by the dancer and choreographer Trish Sie, signals a slight retreat from the bonkers, protest-themed “Step Up Revolution."

The Maid’s Room has much to recommend, including the versatile Mr. Camp (“Tamara Drewe,” “Compliance”) in a Machiavellian role. But it doesn’t marshal its twists toward a convincing or satisfying conclusion.

The insight that social media fosters false intimacy is old news. The film shows only a half-formed sense of how careers have changed in 30 years.

There’s a way to tell this story that wouldn’t come across as soggy or manipulative. However well intentioned, Louder Than Words doesn’t find that tone.

Less methodical and witty than its predecessors, Patient Zero often turns its infected characters into mindless, lurching zombies.

Mr. Zürcher has concocted something intimate yet otherworldly with this highly original debut.

The film is earnest, formulaic and sentimental. But, like Humpty, it has enough charm to wear down defenses.

The exuberant staging and Ms. Balan’s sly performance are the show here.

As the plot clogs up with foreseeable reversals, wisecrack duties go to Mr. McShane, whose oracular character keeps wrongly predicting his own death. Like Hercules, the movie is plagued by a split identity: It’s half-slog, half-Mel Brooks.

Come Back to Me has seamier goals, employing a quasi-religious conceit to justify its shocks of gore and sexual assault. In that regard, at least, it is grotesquely predictable.

Firth and Stone are terrific, but they’re cast as screwball leads. Given only intermittent opportunities for levity, the two end up serving as mouthpieces for Allen’s dubious self-justifications.

Mr. Auteuil’s passion project is sincere but not successful, honorable but not alive.

In 3-D, the firefighting scenes are visually striking — with plumes of smoke and chemical dust — though the backgrounds, like other aspects of the film, lack dimension.

Among Ravens claws itself to death with sophomoric symbolism.

Straining to find a correlation, even metaphorical, between teenage hedonism and economic collapse, Affluenza never coheres.

While it’s heartening in one sense to see this youthful, offbeat take on two men’s determination to stay eternally fresh, there’s something about the ease with which the characters reorder their lives that makes Land Ho! seem both a little slight and a little precious.

It’s not entirely clear what this faithful, slightly creaky new rendering, adapted and directed by the actor Daniel Auteuil, has to offer.

This absorbing account of the first recorded summit of the world’s highest mountain is a rare documentary for which re-enactments make complete sense.

As an absurdist suspense film, Jackpot mostly hits its marks. As a comedy, it’s less successful, stronger on sight gags than on the detective’s sarcasm.

Viewers unencumbered by nostalgia will probably see this zippy, occasionally funny movie as no more frantic or pop-culture-addled than the average multiplex fodder.

La Bare takes its title from the club it chronicles, a male strip joint in Dallas. The name proves unfortunately apt for a rambling, superficial documentary that straddles the line between exposé and infomercial.

Mr. Chan’s skill with actors — particularly with Ms. Mei and Mr. Pang’s persuasive, easygoing banter — compensates for the story’s limitations.

For a film about mouthwatering cuisine, it offers only fleeting delectable sensations.

This is the kind of sleek, precisely constructed genre work that’s gone missing from American summer movies.

The movie maintains a relentless grip all the same. Unlike the junior kingpins who bear witness to the film’s big blaze, audiences won’t watch in a passive state.

Like its narrative, this gripping film rarely veers in the expected directions — and is never easy to pin down.

Known for his genre pastiches, the director, Álex de la Iglesia (“El Crimen Perfecto”), rarely lets the pace flag, and the buddy comedy, gross-out humor and horror elements make for a harmonious mix.

This New York shaggy-dog story from Sujewa Ekanayake is an example of extreme-makeshift filmmaking — but not, unfortunately, a successful one.

Teetering somewhere between audacious and offensive, the stylistically voracious Filmistaan only intermittently reveals any sense of danger in its comedy.

Disorientation is a double-edged sword, especially when the ostensible reorientation is as unsatisfying as it is here.

The Case Against 8 functions as a valuable record of the nuts-and-bolts conference room side of advocacy — an aspect of civil rights work not often seen on screen.

The actors — the deft Mr. Brühl and the charming Ms. Herzsprung — add what levity they can.

Some wonderful actors add class to the material, which struggles to find a consistent register of cartoonishness.

Mr. Schwarz falters with his ending, which feels overly tidy. Still, it’s not the destination; it’s the journey.

Half of a Yellow Sun, adapted from the 2006 novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, emerges on screen as a well-acted, finely wrought epic that nevertheless struggles to balance the requirements of melodrama with its drive to capture a historical moment.

It’s inspired enough to draw attention to ways that it doesn’t realize its potential.

The more Chapman reveals, the less seems to be going on, and the more its quirkier developments... play like independent-film clichés.

Devil’s Knot is an inert exercise, visually and dramatically on par with "Drew Peterson: Untouchable."

Judicious editing helps to maintain the illusion of two actors, though the quick-speaking Wasikowska, as the twins’ flighty, mercurial object of desire, in some ways has the subtlest task—and often steals scenes from her co-star(s).

Constant close-ups give the sense that the movie itself is violating viewers’ personal space, while an earnest moral suggests that online communication can’t substitute for face-to-face interaction: a topic Friended to Death doesn’t seem to know much about.

Muddy sound contributes to the atmosphere of confusion, while the script (credited to the director, Nick Gaglia, along with Mr. Gallagher and Ms. Donohue) goes nowhere.

Amid the overheated, sometimes amateurish histrionics — Mr. Nizzari shoots a lengthy father-son blowout in a single, theatrical take — Grand Slammed contains inklings of a serious point about immobility in America.

Visually, Walking With the Enemy resembles a TV mini-series, a sense enhanced by the director Mark Schmidt’s habit of cutting away from bloodshed. Constant title cards introducing historical figures suggest the work of a completist rather than a filmmaker who has focused the material.

Vanishing Pearls is most illuminating when offering a historical perspective.

From a dramatic standpoint, the movie can be unconvincing... From a formal standpoint, though, the movie impresses, maintaining a sense of anxiety through tight shots and a sound design that favors overlapping voices and constant clatter.

Mr. Farina gives Authors Anonymous a sharpness it otherwise lacks.

The Final Member boasts a stranger-than-fiction subject so odd and funny it almost couldn’t miss. But Bekhor and Math make the film much more than a limp gag.

Fading Gigolo is not an entirely coherent film. It is, for the right and wrong reasons, a distinctive and memorable one.

Lightness of touch is missing from the film, which features animated graphics and an ominous score.

A derivative but efficient chiller that cribs from “Solaris,” “The Shining” and “The Amityville Horror” yet also shows glimmers of imagination.

The Raid 2 takes a substantially different tack from that of its 2011 predecessor, adding a convoluted plot and only intermittently attending to the sort of acrobatic ass-kicking for which the original became a global smash.

The scowling Pitt proves no match for the Tony-winning Arianda, whose brassy, thick-accented positivity could probably cut down the gangsters as mercilessly as any gun. While the pair is robbing the mob, she’s stealing the movie.

While it’s heartbreaking that the movie never got made (son Brontis Jodorowsky, who would have played Paul Atreides, is particularly poignant imagining his alternate life as a superstar), Jodorowsky’s Dune posits that the raw materials nevertheless left an enduring mark on cinematic sci-fi, providing the basis for famous aspects of "Alien," "Star Wars," and "Contact."

Like adolescence itself, Teenage is educational, scattered, and over much too quickly.

The end of Le Week-End reveals it to be the thoroughly ordinary melodrama a description suggests — a portrait of former ’60s fire-starters who are perfectly happy to settle for embers.

It’s hard to think of another movie in which Jesus’ followers are so clearly shown as Jews themselves. There’s a quietly powerful post-Crucifixion scene in which the disciples say Kaddish for their fallen leader.

The Lunchbox ultimately registers as a too-hesitant portrayal of hesitancy, and its pleasures are largely incidental.

If it weren’t for the costumes, the basic plot could be mistaken for a 19th-century version of "The Postman Always Rings Twice" or "Double Indemnity."

Knotty and tense for most of its running time, Omar becomes muddled in its closing minutes, conflating personal and political treachery.

The film largely lacks the urgency its subject demands. It’s an extended news segment in the form of a feature film.

The Last Of The Unjust is demanding but fascinating, both as history and as an intellectual volley on the lure of power, the ambiguities of perspective, and the difficulty of claiming moral high ground in a context where matters of life and death are so precarious.

Whatever reservations it prompts, the film is innovative, original, and queasily effective.

As withholding as it may be in terms of narrative, Stranger places rare faith in the viewer’s visual sense. Guiraudie presents his widescreen long takes with little inflection, conjuring suspense simply from the sounds of crackling leaves and other hallmarks of the natural (or is it au naturel?) realm.

What’s hypnotic for five minutes at the Whitney Museum does not necessarily carry over to an 80-minute movie, and Visitors might conceivably run half that length without the slow motion. Reggio’s film premiered in Toronto with live musical accompaniment, a gimmick that probably enhanced the experiential aspect of what’s otherwise a glorified installation piece.

By conveniently exempting its protagonists from ideology or culpability, Generation War feels less like a reckoning than a dodge: Yes, your grandparents may have been Nazis—but they could have been these nice people, too.

It’s not so much a mangled movie as it is an unfulfilled, forgettable one: unnecessary for anyone who’s seen the play, yet sufficiently watered-down that newcomers won’t be able to tell what all the fuss was about.

Abandoning its more original elements, the movie opts for a banal carpe diem conceit that turns Mitty into a globetrotting bystander.

All of McKay’s movies improve on repeat viewings, as they become familiar and meme worthy. If Anchorman 2 seems hit-and-miss now, there’s a significant chance that it will get funnier over the long haul.

This is all fascinating for art-history buffs, and while a documentary is the ideal vehicle for illustrating Jenison’s process, Tim’s Vermeer plays more like an extended PBS special than it does a movie.

Basically, Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy? amounts to two men having a mellow discussion about the nature of ideas; it’s formally limited, yet wide-ranging in its material and ambitions. Call it a case of cognitive dissonance.

In a film this hapless, it’s hardly a surprise that no one can keep Bucharest and Budapest straight.

An exhilarating, four-hour immersion in life at the University Of California campus.

Those who want to see Armstrong sweat may leave disappointed. Calm and seemingly well rehearsed in interviews, Armstrong shrugs off years of public statements without ever seeming truly remorseful.

"Life Is Beautiful" may or may not have set a benchmark for tackiness in Holocaust cinema, but The Book Thief offers a hypothetical way in which the former might have been worse: At least it wasn’t narrated by Death.

As philosophy, Mr. Nobody seems sillier than it is profound. But in a parallel reality, more movies would have this degree of insane ambition.

Despite its modest proportions and chilling finale, Sal is foremost an affectionate tribute, conjuring ample warmth out of relatively little.

Giving the kind of mannered performance that seems predicated on careful mimicry of 60 Minutes, Cumberbatch impresses without ever coming across as more than an abstraction.

Ultimately, American Promise seems split between a personal perspective and a broader one. It’s a bold experiment that’s also a textbook case of filmmakers being too close to their material.

Rush, in other words, is a foursquare sportsmanship movie, offering little in the way of surprises but plenty of earnest, satisfying thrills.

The setup promises more intrigue than the film ultimately delivers.

The entire film unfolds in a recognizable register of ominous hesitation; the results are a bit schematic but nevertheless hit on something real.

As history, The Butler’s parade of famous moments and figures is superficial to the point of trivialization, reducing years of turmoil to glib sound bites. But in its square, melodramatic way, the movie has a serious point to make.

Seyfried expertly balances the girl-next-door star power that made the real Lovelace an unlikely casting choice with a more subtle strain of fear; Sarsgaard is as terrifying and hiss-worthy as he’s been since "Boys Don’t Cry."

Loud and annoying? Occasionally. Funny? Sometimes. Likely to be noticed by filmgoers six months from now? Not really.

As in "Contraband," Kormákur offers a hint of a political statement, in this case about the inherent potential for corruption whenever competing government agencies are operating in international territory. But it doesn’t quite make it. On almost every level, 2 Guns is content to be as flavorless and forgettable as its title.

Unlikely as it may seem, though, Blue Jasmine finds Allen charting bona fide new territory.

With casting this unconvincing, no one is watching to get a lesson in the horrors of war.

After establishing a jaunty tone with its candy-colored, Saul Bass–style opening credits, the film racks up a high strain-to-laugh ratio; there’s a sense Almodóvar can’t quite keep track of all his gags.

Part of the point here is to stake a claim on a genre that’s traditionally been a boys’ club, and in that regard, The Heat delivers: In a bonding moment, this odd couple goes on a bender as epic as anything in "The Hangover." Their enthusiasm with weapons should alarm viewers across all demographics and species.

The most counterintuitive enviro-doc of the year, Pandora’s Promise makes the case that nuclear power may be the closest thing Earth has to a sustainable, realistic supply of energy.

The movie captures a moment when the lines separating anonymity, fame, and notoriety are finer than ever. And as Watson’s social climber prattles on to reporters about what a great “learning lesson” her criminal experience has been, it’s easy to see another star in the making.

Ironically for a movie about the ratings value of shock, Évocateur suffers from its own lack of red meat.

As a polemic, Dirty Wars is provocative and productively depressing, raising doubts about the effectiveness of military missions that have the potential to create ideological enemies, as well as the degree to which elected officials can—or are willing to—place checks on secret ops. (Obama gets no more points than Bush in any of the matters discussed.)

Even the sitcom stylings might not matter if the movie were funny, but in spite of the potential for Guffman-esque comedy, The English Teacher boasts few surprises—except perhaps its message, which seems to be that selling out isn’t so bad. Chalk it up to a case of “write what you know.”

Above all, Frances Ha is a wry and moving portrait of friendship, highlighting the way that two people who know everything about each other can nevertheless grow apart as their needs change.

The relentless contrast of banality with horror seems to be Wheatley’s signature move, and like his "Kill List" (2011), Sightseers can claim a sizable fan base, especially in its native U.K. But the humor here, ironically, doesn’t travel well.

Like Romeo + Juliet (1996), Luhrmann’s version of The Great Gatsby emerges as a half-reverent, half-travestying adaptation that’s campy but not a betrayal, offering a lively take on a familiar work while sacrificing such niceties as structure, character, and nuance.

Alternating scenes of the psycho-as-family-man with an increasingly grisly and desperate series of hits, it makes for a surprisingly monotonous sit for a movie that also features a killer named Mr. Freezy.

Cast with winning actors (particularly Molly Blixt Egelind as Dyrholm’s daughter) who seem determined not to distract viewers from the coastal backdrops, Love Is All You Need proceeds in all the expected directions short of actually including The Beatles.

An "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" retread told from a postoccupation vantage point, this adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s YA romance novel unfolds in a dystopian future when alien parasites have nearly won the battle for Earth.

Both the martial arts and the slightly dull narrative patchwork are too choppily edited to gain much of a foothold.

This Nickelodeon production may be designed for short attention spans, but must the characters have them as well?

In drag or out of it, the soft-spoken star has rarely been less convincing than when locking and loading from his home arsenal or dangling from a decaying Detroit edifice.

Apart from a hi-def night-vision gimmick, returning directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman don't take advantage of either upgrade.

The Apparition turns out to be nothing more than a series of feebly constructed "Boo!" scenes tacked together to achieve (barely) feature length.

Depending on your POV, it's either the ne plus ultra of Hollywood calculation or a comedy simply intent on pushing its crassness to the point of surrealism.

Cringeworthy feel-good weepie, which finds Kate Hudson's vivacious ad-pitch whiz questioning her life choices after being diagnosed with terminal colon cancer.

Alas, unlike the duo's Crank films - also about a hero on the verge of explosion - Spirit of Vengeance lacks a solid gimmick to unify their transgressive gambits.

All Apollo 18 has to offer is endless radio crackle and visual incoherence. And what's out there, tormenting the astronauts? The answer is dumber than a box of moon rocks.

The impression is less of calculated ineptitude than of seasoned professionals (director Tod Williams made The Door in the Floor) playing dumb, as a checklist of household items-frying pans, endlessly shutting doors, a pool cleaner with a mind of its own-test viewers' reflexes.

The Aristocrats is a veritable talent show itself, albeit one that feels inescapably slight. To rejigger another ancient joke: The food at this place isn't terrible. But the portions are really small.

For a movie that revolves around a notoriously violent sport, Michelle Walshe and Justin Pemberton’s profile takes a soft, superficial approach. It makes a rote installment of ESPN’s “30 for 30” look like Pulitzer-worthy muckraking.

Often laughably overwrought rehash of "An Officer and a Gentleman," ekes out enough of a subtext on competition to qualify as a non-fiasco.

Roos forecasts and explains every development with a title card, a device not unlike having someone yammering in your ear throughout the entire feature run time. In a more self-effacing director's commentary, he might have asked us, at least, to forgive the pun.

When our hero finally does get his moment in the sun--c'mon, would someone have bought the movie if he didn't?--My Date With Drew offers the surreal spectacle of pursuer and pursued pleasantly gabbing, obliviously immersed in a mutual PR stunt.

Exist is prone to posturing. Demonstrating a noble if wishy-washy faith in activism's power to save the world, the film amounts to a brief, earnest howl against apathy--easily dismissible for those unsympathetic to its views and basically useless for everyone else.

Its Saul Bass-y credits suggest an Almodóvarian flamboyance, but this impotent '70s-set comedy mostly skimps on discoteca stylishness.

Entertaining enough that it leaves one wishing for more in the way of android mythology—a pint-sized Blade Runner or A.I. The screenplay goes on autopilot, grinding toward a happy ending just when it has a shot at something darker and more memorable.

The lack of energy suggests the film might as well have been constructed from outtakes.

As absorbing as The Legend of Swee’ Pea is, it might have been even better if May had pulled back the curtain more on his off-camera interactions with his subject

His closing dedication—“For my daughter”—turns this into something actively creepy, as opposed to merely brainless, boring and inept.

At two hours, the documentary is overstuffed, possibly by design. But it matches a kaleidoscopic form to a kaleidoscopic life story, honoring its subject without simplifying him.

Mr. Young’s slapdash style, which suggests a Roger Corman movie crossed with dinner theater, extends to the clanking sound effects and flagrantly fake backdrops.

Find Me Guilty is overlong and often sitcomy, but it's also pleasantly old-school, with a tone, soundtrack, and even a title-card font that suggest a mellow but not senile Woody Allen.

Davis strives to keep himself out of the film, favoring a harrowing yet compassionate you-are-there aesthetic that underscores the hardship of the migrant workers' struggles.

Pleasant even without reaching much of a destination, Transamerica leaves the basic impression that it's not as self-satisfied as it could have been.

Interjections from perennial second bananas Kathryn Hahn (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days) and Kal Penn (winning even when not conjuring vivified bags of pot) generate the only sparks.

A high school send-up more gleefully incorrect than "Heathers" and considerably less articulate than "Election," Pretty Persuasion is a hand grenade lobbed at no place in particular.

For more than an hour, schmaltzmeister Luis Mandoki (Message in a Bottle) directs as if on assignment for Miramax.

A mockumentary that exhausts its best joke with its premise.

By the time it is over, Disco has crossed the line that separates being productively ambiguous from being simply cryptic.

Tepid lesbian comedy.

Is this an allegory against blind deference to fascism? It might be, but the root-for-the-Aryan-jock dramatics seem mildly fascist themselves.

Based on characters created by Rodriguez's then-seven-year-old son, Racer Max, the film doesn't belong in wide release. It belongs on a refrigerator door, alongside "100%" spelling tests, old lunch menus, and notices from the PTA.

Werner Herzog's "Wheel of Time" was, in a sense, the Buddhist equivalent of this film, as well as a more illuminating look at the power and transience of ritual.

Fuu . . . cryin' out loud, this movie's dumb.

Qualifies as the most indulgent kind of homemade project, laden with tediously inspirational dialogue and visuals that seem shot through half-fizzled Yuengling. Kudos to Gores, at least, for acquitting himself as an actor.

"It is a study of the psychopathologies of perversions," co-director Federico Sanchez says in the press notes for Eternal, which is certainly one way to rationalize a trashy lesbian vampire flick.

The Rules of the Game is among the most perfectly balanced of films: a movie about discretion that is in every way a model of it.

Pre- credits, Date Movie runs a mere 70 minutes, which increasingly seems like seven minutes, repeated 10 times.

Ironically, Leiner's two monuments to pothead delirium seem vastly more coherent than this hazy attempt to mine the zeitgeist, a film every bit as pointed as its nounless title.

A clever but aesthetically murky remake of Haskell Wexler's scorching McLuhan pastiche "Medium Cool" (1969).

Because the metaphysics driving it are so fuzzy, this is the rare horror film where even sludgy viscera elicit only yawns.

Not without its moments of elemental dread, Apocalypse is also obviously padded, too long on action, and painfully short on irony. The satirical element still packs a minor jolt.

The usual pop-culture jokes, disco tunes, and sarcastic narrator are on hand to prevent atrophy, but by the time the sky really does start "falling"--courtesy of an alien invasion-- Chicken Little's frantic efforts to stay farm fresh have started to wear on the nerves.

Inspired by a 1997 "Voice" article on ex-members of the Satmar sect, Mendy is cast largely with Orthodox or former Orthodox actors, who are utterly credible with dialogue that necessarily teeters between the candid and the offensive.

It’s contrary to the movie’s spirit to judge Bert, but the evasive treatment of his wartime experiences plays like a dodge: His past exists as a kind of amorphous trauma, reduced to shorthand in shamelessly placed flashbacks.

There's no guiding power at work here; it's Evolution without a shred of intelligent design.