Daniel M. Gold

The movie is choppy and rushed — a bumper-car ride that somehow fits the rough-and-tumble era it recalls.

The Wildlike landscapes are exhilarating, but when the film works, it’s because of the interiors.

Other People tries to lighten its heavy load with mixed results.

None of the concoctions left me salivating (a basic, I’d think, for any food porn), and the exercise seems silly if not decadent. But foodies with a refined palate might differ — de gustibus, after all — and other viewers can appreciate the manic creativity that drives Mr. Redzepi and his crew.

It’s cruel but must be said: Presented in hushed, reverent tones, Jobriath A.D. often comes across as mockumentary material; each ghastly career move is followed by another. Hampered by limited video of Jobriath, the film lacks a sense of him or his music.

Mr. Gotardo uses long, slowly unfolding shots and extended close-ups to aid our familiarity with each set of characters — almost by osmosis, we grasp their domestic dynamics, the rhythm of their routines.

This tribute is overlong and too reverent, conveying little sense of Xiao Hong the person and even less of her talent.

With jokes and computer-generated spectacles diluting the action, this is not one for fight-film purists.

Mr. Trammell’s drug-induced stammers and tics don’t by themselves add up to a compelling portrayal, nor is this drama of the down and out at all gripping.

Mr. Records (the child actor in “Where the Wild Things Are”) is nimble and unsentimental in playing a character who is playing at normal, supported by a solid cast in a well-filmed indie that doesn’t let its low budget get in the way of some true chills.

Free to Run prefers nothing more than an easy jog down memory lane.

Applying ghoulish special effects and atmospheric slow pacing, the film also maintains a dark palette of blacks, browns and ash grays, the better to serve as a backdrop when the blood starts spattering.

Unfortunately, Linsanity, following the conventions of the sports bio genre, ends at its peak, with only a brief nod to these events. Lin raised his game’s possibilities; you just wish that Mr. Leong had raised his.

While 14 Blades grinds on perhaps a half-hour too long, its ambitions and energies show that for a fresh take on the western, go east.

The wooden dialogue gives Liam Neeson little to do beyond bite on his corncob pipe and berate subordinates who dare question him. Still, in perhaps the only instance when this is a compliment, he’s no Olivier.

What starts eerie becomes strictly cartoonish.

The film tries, unsuccessfully, to walk the same eerie, atmospheric trail as “The Village” by M. Night Shyamalan, or any number of Stephen King works.

Less a documentary than a glittering souvenir, but it’s still a record of a legend.

By the end, the accelerating plot twists and turns — love, obsession, family obligations, personal honor — become tangled and knotted; a few threads are simply ignored or discarded.

The only sketch that’s inspired is the final one.

The movie covers almost three decades choppily. But Mr. Camarago and Mr. Miguel convey the stubborn commitment that made the brothers so revered by the tribes.

Refreshingly free of jingoism, that detachment unfortunately winds up working against the movie, which doesn’t engage emotionally.

As entertainment, this is vintage potboiler fare. But the movie is also revealing as fantasy, an artifact of 21st-century China’s youth culture transfixed by its rising fortunes and Western ways.

A chronicle of obsession ought to provide some insights.

The sensibility is more grindhouse gore than spaghetti western, perhaps hoping to mine the same vein as Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight,” but lacking Mr. Tarantino’s lively dialogue and wicked sense of humor.

Directed breathlessly by John Erick Dowdle (“As Above/So Below”), the movie is filled with jittery shots from hand-held cameras, and hurtles along at a pace that is especially helpful in racing past the holes in the paper-thin plot.

Some of this seems like stoner’s paranoia, and some of the film’s talking heads, mainly comedians, don’t make the best advocates. Over all, though, its experts... argue forcefully for decriminalization.

In touching lightly on themes without committing to any of them, the movie falls flat. What should be sweet is saccharine, what might be profound seems trite.