Dennis Harvey

Gyllenhaal, in her most substantial role since "Secretary," does a fine, unshowy job of limning Sherry's faults without alienating the viewer or pleading for sympathy.

Emerges a surprisingly in-depth, wistful look at outgrowing a youth-only subculture.

While seemingly insoluble divide between personal identity and collective belief lends the documentary an intense focus, it's also a narrow one.

Surely the least excitable beauty-meets-Bigfoot film ever made.

Though the darker tonal shift toward the end is a bit jarring, director/scenarist Gilady demonstrates a deft, confident hand with the storytelling, cast and general packaging, and makes assertive use of the dramatic desert setting.

Undeniably entertaining for its zippy presentation.

Well-crafted picture has a nice sense of place and rudderless youth, though in the end, simply too little happens for the story to have much resonance.

Prows and company don’t simply play the often outrageous (and occasionally grisly) content for tasteless sensationalism, comic or otherwise. They treat it with an interesting, empathic yet slightly detached tone somewhere between the respectful and the droll.

Mixes satisfying dollops of fun, tears, travel, romance and lesson-learning in a handsome package whose two hours pass faster than many a grownup entertainment.

The film’s edge, if not its worthiness, is slightly dulled by an over-slick approach that in the end makes it feel less like reportage than a first-class fundraising video.

The modest pic’s laughs get bigger as it goes along, and so does its surprising warmth.

Despite some strikingly accomplished elements, the awkward whole never quite gels, sewn-together parts from “Red Dawn,” “Independence Day,” et al., failing to cohere amid major logic gaps, not to mention lead characters more off-putting than interesting.

A pleasant romantic drama that works best when focused on the romance -- or on the waves, since the principal characters spend a lot of time surfing.

Plays out in quite a different offscreen context than did last year's similarly themed sleeper "Startup.com."

It goes down as easy as a cherry Coke.

A most enjoyable flashback. Laura Archibald's documentary about Ground Zero for the 1960s folk explosion -- and its enormous influence on the shape of rock music to come -- isn't assembled in a particularly distinctive manner, but the materials and voices culled offer more than enough reward in themselves.

While this free-ranging agenda might easily have seemed overly random or pretentious, Olson’s confessional tenor lends it all a stream-of-consciousness intimacy.

Little in the way of a unified theme emerges to turn Joseph Levy’s feature into something more than a semi-random survey of restaurant life.

What’s ultimately less impressive is Stevens’ script, which to varying degrees draws on the templates of “The Amityville Horror,” “The Shining,” “Eyes Wide Shut” and other conspicuous predecessors, but lacks the original fillip or three that might have turned an enjoyable exercise into something really first rate.

Eden Lake doesn't feel like torture porn so much as a rural-jeopardy thriller in extremis.

A real-life inspirational comedy that should beguile viewers regardless of their operatic taste (or distaste).

It’s another effective use of a simple premise and modest means to create a nicely nerve-jangling thriller.

Cutter Hodierne makes an accomplished feature debut with this very well-crafted, empathetic hijacking drama.

Those already well-versed in Georgia’s recent history will get the most from a series of real-life character sketches occasionally cryptic for their lack of contextualizing explanation. But the docu’s ample human interest and handsome lensing, despite much visual evidence of a struggling economy, will hold interest for most viewers.

Daryl Wein's engrossing portrait of Richard Berkowitz is freshly engaging largely due to the subject himself.

An eerie suspense exercise that starts out looking like a supernatural tale — one of several viewer presumptions this cleverly engineered narrative eventually pulls the rug out from under.

While many movies these days feel stretched too thin to sustain their few real ideas, Rounding emerges in the end as a project that ought to have shed some surplus ideas to better focus on a few. Either that, or the compact pacing should’ve been eased to allow them all more breathing space.

Despite its new thematic wrinkle, the five segments here feel familiar in ideas and unmemorable in execution. It’s a middling addition to a variably inspired anthology brand that will no doubt trundle on through more installments yet.