Frank Scheck

Featuring an excellent performance by veteran British actress Sheila Hancock (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas), who is clearly up to both the challenging emotional and physical demands of the title role, Edie earns points for good intentions but never quite succeeds in managing to scale its thematic summit.

Itsy Bitsy works well enough on its own terms, providing some genuine jolts and benefiting from the excellent performances.

The unfortunate result is that you wind up thinking how much more you'd prefer to be rereading that contemporary classic than watching this tedious exercise.

This is a documentary that will best be appreciated not by fans of The Little Prince but rather by linguists and ethnographers.

To truly be effective, Angel of Mine would either have to be far better or far worse than it actually is.

While one of the first rules of writing is to write what you know, Sabet's romantic comedy demonstrates that not everything that actually happens to you can be mined for comedic gold. The picture starts out promisingly enough, but eventually sinks under the weight of its implausibilities.

The story takes place in 1953, and the relentlessly artificial-feeling film feels like it could have been made then as well.

Unfortunately, Every Time I Die doesn't quite have the cinematic polish to live up to its considerable aspirations, resulting in a frustratingly opaque viewing experience.

Ode to Joy fails to live up to its title by attempting to wring comic mileage from a medical condition that sufferers probably don't find very funny.

Socrates is a haunting slice of Brazilian neo-realism that marks its tyro director/co-screenwriter as a talent to watch.

Ladyworld proves as much of an endurance test for viewers as the central characters.

The coming-of-age theme doesn't mesh entirely well with the more lurid elements, and Coyote Lake doesn't quite achieve the narrative tension sufficient to lift it above the story's slow spots. The film is carried along by the strength of Mendes' emotionally complex, restrained performance that makes clear that Ester is as much victim as accomplice.

The movie, which will inevitably spur comparisons to such similar efforts as "Argo," works well enough on its own terms, with Mychael Danna's synthesizer-heavy score providing a suitably retro vibe.

None of the performers are able to bring life to their schematic characters, although Nelson appears to be having fun as a modern-day pirate. You do get the feeling, however, that he would have much preferred to play the role with a patch on his eye and a parrot on his shoulder.

The ensuing melodramatic plot developments, which include Lana's little boy suffering a potentially fatal brain injury and Ryan being asked by the Make-A-Wish Foundation to visit sick kids in a hospital, are the stuff of which truly bad movies are made. By the time Ryan makes a death-defying leap over a drawbridge and then makes a spectacular comeback at a championship soccer match, you'll be unlikely to hear the dialogue over the guffawing of the audience.

The resulting biographical drama squanders its compelling central storyline with a lengthy subplot involving crooked cops. Even if the incident is true, it lends an unnecessarily melodramatic tinge to what could have stood on its own as a powerful inspirational story.

Despite its very brief running time, the film feels plodding, never quite managing to land either the intended dark humor or scares to which it aspires. You can admire its ambitions but lament the missed opportunities.

Supervized is never quite as inspired as it should be, but it offers some amusing moments along the way.

The Cat Rescuers can sometimes feel manipulative, with its endless shots of adorable felines calmly and happily responding to being petted and embraced.

Fortunately, its talented and appealing young ensemble make it go down as easily as a cold beer on a hot…well, you know.

Lying and Stealing might have been more effective if its two leads had more charisma, but James is mostly bland and Ratajkowski never quite convinces as a woman of mystery. This is the sort of lighthearted exercise that requires genuine star power to overcome its triviality, and the lack of it here seriously diminishes its impact.

While Asbury Park: Riot, Redemption, Rock 'n' Roll too often feels like a promotional video created by a local tourism organization, it nonetheless provides an engaging history of the town and its once-vibrant music scene.

Orson Oblowitz's Trespassers, the latest horror film to illustrate this principle, doesn't add anything particularly original to the home invasion genre. But it does provide some cheap thrills along the way.

It sounds like the plot of a classic '50s film noir, but the movie squanders its potential with a lackluster approach that sacrifices thrills for uninvolving character study.

The latest indie effort from writer-director Jérôme Cohen-Olivar (The Midnight Orchestra, Kandisha) modestly succeeds in its modest genre goals, particularly benefiting from its exotic locations. But don't look for anything particularly original in The 16th Episode (originally titled Little Horror Movie), which mainly traffics in overly familiar tropes.

Diluting its powerful themes with overcooked melodrama and unnecessarily distracting subplots, The Other Story would have benefited from a simpler, more direct approach.

Aside from its novel premise, however, Madam Yankelova's Fine Literature Club proves a darkly witty effort that weaves insightful observations about female sexuality and aging into its provocative mix.

Frustratingly timid documentary.