Gabe Toro

Young Bodies Heal Quickly is a haunting film, mostly because the title remains forever in doubt.

Director Johanna Hamilton should be credited for getting these faces in front of the camera, to humanize political rebellion of an early era not as some sepia-toned memory, but a story of very human individuals.

The fashion mogul feels as if she’s learning bit by bit how to tell a story cinematically, how to complete transitions and flash back and forward, how to set a mood and tempo. It’s basically the rough cut of a student film which, to its credit, is also often more interesting than most student films outright.

This is Stewart's show, and it's a dynamite role for anyone, never mind the screen's beloved Professor Xavier. The actor slips away and Tobi ultimately dominates the screen to the point where you lose track of the film proper and become Tobi's guest.

It's the sort of film where music montages are used like wallpaper to take narrative shortcuts and minimize messy conflict.

Much of the credit must go towards the makeup crew. It's a Fangoria funhouse up in here: Cabin Fever: Patient Zero has some of the most disturbing, disgusting gore effects of all-time. This is a movie made by people who have studied some of the worst injuries known to man.

It can't be overstated what kind of a marvel these Turtles are onscreen, however. As crude and unpleasant their design might be, they feel like living, breathing things, not special effects.

It's mythmaking for dummies, a Hercules with no poetry, only incompetent brute strength.

The Kill Team doesn't saint Winfield at all, instead, smartly casting responsible, impartial questions as to what his options could have been.

It's basically the perfect summer movie, because it's designed to be.

You wish Evelyn Purcell's action thriller just had a bit more character, and not a budget-cutting location that looked great in front of a camera.

This one veers further from actual horror into an action picture. “The Purge” tries to unsettle. The Purge: Anarchy wants you to cheer.

It's all fist-pumping anti-thought, consisting of baseless revisionist history and idle contrarianism.

About Alex is about too much and too little, a sandbox for its considerable cast, but ultimately just following the reunion rulebook.

It feels like this is a short film idea stretched to feature length, and the padding doesn't work.

This is a laughably bad movie, but an amazing drinking game waiting to happen.

It's ludicrous genre fun even if you didn't take into account the properly-bewitching Ms. Bang.

An end-film tease for a laughably unnecessary part two feels emblematic of the entire film: McKee and Sivertson aren't interested in laying any groundwork regarding cogent themes or diverse characterization, because there are skulls to be split and blood to be drank.

Being played by Gregg himself makes the transition more organic than it was for Rockwell in "Choke," but it still rings false.

What's distinct about Mr. Jones is that it lengthily utilizes three separate storytelling techniques... Given the sloppiness of Karl Mueller's directorial debut, it feels less like innovation and more like an attempt to cover up shortcomings.

The film is borderline installation-worthy, and would probably work just as well if the scenes were drastically re-arranged.

Buzzard is a quiet, introspective film, but it trumps all generic blockbusters in that it very much is a roller coaster ride, one that thrills, upsets, and makes one queasy, all in surprising ways.

This is a unique, strange, unforgettable film, a half-remembered dream that will trouble and beguile the subconscious long after you’ve moved on.

With its rock doc trappings, it’s impossible to ignore that Mistaken For Strangers delivers on that front, with thrilling and candid on-stage footage that allows the band’s music to come alive: if you weren’t a fan before, you will be after the film.

Devos keeps her character’s unreliability and self-disappointment relatable, and falling backwards into a new lover is something that Devos captures beautifully with her uncertain facial expressions and hungry eyes.

When Lotz is not onscreen, Stephens is miserable company. But James does reveal a deep fascination with the robotics that suggests the threadbare story was a chance for him to explore the very real advances in artificial intelligence.

Ultimately, the picture becomes an old-fashioned Bible Belt actioner, a shift towards genre that works on its own, but is tonally a peculiar place to take the events of the film following a string of several shocking and not-so-shocking revelations.

Black Out ultimately limps to feature length, burying its intriguing leading man underneath endless mishaps and shenanigans.

This is easily more exciting and tense than any genre film 2014 has seen thus far.

Karr came up through documentary filmmaking, and he knows how to turn the switch on an event to make it feel immediate and dangerous. Unfortunately, the picture strands its characters in the middle of this event, building to a climax that seems open-ended if only because the story, and its skimpy characters, has nowhere to explore.

The film’s dismal action staging and over-complex story can’t seem to overcome Mr. Fairbrass’s lo-fi presence.

Van Damme’s an arresting presence in his old age... His performance is a wonder, showcasing a man who has never found his physical equal, and how amuses himself by telling stories that ultimately mock opponents.

For being a kids-centric film, the picture is relatively slow and joyless.

Despite the affecting drama and performances, Run and Jump just never feels more that perfunctory in this regards.

Wanting to create a leading character worth rooting for, and experiencing the schadenfreude that comes from her failure, is a complex balancing act, one that Adult World simply cannot pull off.

He (Fishburne) rips into his dialogue like steak, savoring every word as if he were paid by the syllable. For a moment, we’re in a different movie, one where someone has decided to singlehandedly deconstruct a cliché. It’s a very short moment.

The picture isn’t plotted with story beats, only shock moments.

You get the feeling that if there were less fighting and more character work, not only would Bell knock it out of the park, but Raze would be a better, more interesting movie.

It’s easily the most suspenseful American film of the year, a thriller that feels like lightning across a quiet night sky; sudden, terrifying, and excitingly singular.

It's all very cheap, wholly unconvincing, and loaded with dull narration.

Caught In The Web grows slack as its premise evolves.

With its broad, ambiguous title, S#x Acts reminds us, with heartbreaking power, that sometimes vigilance just isn't enough, and all it takes is an "act" or two to change a life forever.

Ultimately of course, this is Statham’s show, and as always he doesn’t disappoint.

Lenny Cooke isn't a documentary, it's an autopsy, detailing exactly why Cooke vanished off the map and why he struggled to get back into the game, a focus that goes micro where other sports docs go macro.

The Starving Games is the sixth directorial effort from Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, and they are nothing if not consistent.

LaBute has consistently made intriguing, often idiosyncratic films in his career, but he hasn't made anything this unsettling and unforgettable in a very long time.

Takes the standard gangster movie template and blasts it out of the water.

It’s as if “The Man Of Steel” was ninety minutes of supervillians shit-talking Superman, then casually sticking kryptonite in his face without even pretending it’s a surprise.

Escape Plan deserves some credit for gradually rising from abysmal to almost-mediocre, though it’s needlessly complicated in every step of the way.

Forgetting the Girl ends up building towards a massive revelation, one that suddenly gives up the ghost and allows the film to define itself as one specific genre. Not romance or thriller or comedy, mind you, but that type of indie that plays peek-a-boo with its topics for long enough before springing something that allows the final twenty minutes to be occupied by bargain-basement pop psychology.

It’s an ugly, unpleasant viewing experience, one that sees geek culture as a hateful cesspool of exclusion and juvenility, miserable to experience first-hand.

Like its predecessor, Machete Kills is never less than busy with ridiculousness.

This is a frequently titillating film, and Weigert can’t help but add dimensions to that onscreen intimacy and vivid exploration of intimacy, not just seduction but also the shared sensuality of a post-coital chat.

Bad Milo! is ultimately a fairly pedestrian film, but in those moments where Milo takes action, if you squint, there’s just a little bit of that old-fashioned movie magic.

This is the sort of movie that should be playing in the background on an episode of “Tim And Eric,” and yet instead it’s being released by IFC Films. Bring alcohol.

The workmanlike precision of On the Job carries through to its action scenes, none of which are shot with any flash or style, but are edited with a propulsive pace and performed by a watchable cast enough to make them engaging.

Michell’s handling of the relationship between the two is touching in how little judgment he passes.

Exceptionally gorgeous and exceptionally silly.

About Time, inadvertently, reveals itself to be About Men, and how they devise lies in order to create the illusion that all women supposedly want to see.

About an hour in, if you haven’t walked over to the nearest stove and shoved your head inside, the sinking feeling sets in that you’re stuck with this unpleasant asshole.

The film is so po-faced that you wonder what the point of all this is, let alone what we should be hoping is the outcome. Struggling to bring gravity to the proceedings are Wakefield and Hinshaw, who give off the heat of two slabs of baloney slapped together.

It's unfortunate that commercial considerations seem to play into the third act, adding a more concrete representation of a very abstract idea.

Director Shaka King has made a film of big laughs and big heart that makes one long for one long green detour without pandering to the pot-hawks who, unrelatedly, also like the lowest-common-denominator appeal of most pot films without realizing they’re being patronized.

Washington’s performance is one of the best of the year, a high-wire act that is careful not to dip into survivalist caricature.

The Family is ultimately a headache, nearly two hours of baseball bat beatings and dull witticisms, with zero inventiveness or energy.

As an affecting romance between a woman caught between two worlds, it very nearly sticks the landing. As a showcase for Ms. Bosworth, never better, it's often sublime.

It's a film that plays equally to both sides of the political spectrum, and it feels like pandering either way.

It seems like a statement that Il Futuro presents simple but intriguing conflicts that nonetheless resolve anti-climactically, denying us an organic end.

A crude sketch of a film that could barely withstand a short-form, but instead has been stretched to agonizing feature length by directors Robert Wilson and Jason Lapeyre.

The intensity of Burdge’s excellent performance—and Fidell's intense, often claustrophobic filmmaking—carries the picture far, but when she turns away from the camera (and she does often), you can almost feel Fidell reaching for spare ideas.

Hell Baby works as a joke factory first and foremost, a collection of tropes (some mocked) second, and a movie a distant third.

Plummer adds another comfortably unreliable character to her gallery, turning Abigail into an older woman with a schoolboy crush.

The sloppy reveals of the third act can be seen from miles away, turning this into a low-impact actioner where characters are turned into chess pieces, and the narrative’s aim is to strategically assemble the parts like a play set.

For Scenic Route, it doesn’t seem to be the journey as much as the destination: seeing two sorta-friends wailing on each other feels like the shortcut a better movie never made.

Ultimately, the cumulative effect is deadening, just another chapter in an endless battle between overtasked and underpaid good guys, and cowardly baddies; the only real humanity in the film comes from Hudgens’ Cindy, who seems like a wild card of sorts, her character’s dimensions suggesting a world outside of the lurid details of this case. Refreshingly, she’s the only one in the film who refuses to be defined by the death and tragedy surrounding her.

The crime isn’t that Kick-Ass 2 is vulgar (which it is), but that it’s for so little gain.

The focus is spread too thinly on the various colorful local voices, all of whom openly campaign against Recchia’s intentions with zest and flavor.

The little action in 'Percy Jackson' wouldn’t be out-of-place in a superhero film, which is to say it’s mostly functional, and sometimes quite diverting.

As a movie, it’s quite an effects reel: Cockneys Vs. Zombies is a greatest hits package of your least demanding expectations given such a title.

There’s nothing about 2 Guns that doesn’t feel prefab, like someone poured a packet of Insta-Movie into a glass of water.

There’s a youthful energy running through Una Noche that threatens to overwhelm, from it’s sun-kissed first image to its final moments on the sands of the beach.

The endlessly surprising, often riotously funny Computer Chess basks in the details of a group of men who, at a key point in history, are asking themselves not only if they can accomplish something, but why, and what it means to their current generation.

This expensive misfire runs a little less than ninety minutes, which means that there’s likely a 105-110 minute long version that the producers hacked up in order to get the maximum amount of 3D showtimes to not embarrass the studio on opening weekend. Judging by the released product, that version is likely even worse, if such a thing were possible.

Even given the shapelessness of the picture, Hoback does the best he can in providing an imperfect timeline to a possibly worsening issue.

The Conjuring, at points, is terrifying. Wan really understands how active, acrobatic camerawork can enhance the storytelling without breaking the fourth wall, a technique abused by today’s horror craftsmen.

Director Mark Steven Johnson can’t seem to balance a tone here, which is a pity because for the most part he stands back and lets the two stars go at each other.

Basically, it’s a film made for brainless grunts who like to hang out all day making sub-literate jokes about boobs and gays while watching the game. No wonder the first movie was such a success.

It’s all very first draft, with a layer of supernatural permeating the events that suggests added attempts to connect three wildly disparate storylines.

One character dares to open up a debate about sex roles in the workplace; because he does so indelicately, Feig expects you to cheer when he takes a bullet to the head. To his credit, he is correct.

Directors Kramer, Miller and Newberger prefer embellishment, allowing personal stories about Downey to fuel animated re-enactments that trivialize rather than penetrate.

The Wall seems to be telling the story about assimilation, about a woman who accepts her lot and attempts to persevere through the cruelest of conditions, an unspoken martyr. Perhaps it would carry much more power had she not been so chatty.

Ultimately, American Mary simply reveals itself as a film with little on its mind, content to scare rubberneckers into contemplating the backstory of the more outlandish body manipulation jobs they’ve seen in public. A documentary would have sufficed.

The film progresses to the point where it feels less like father and son, and more like a young boy listening to an inspirational audiobook.

A couple of shootouts and chases are impressive, giving the film a little bit of momentum it sorely lacks, but it’s heartbreaking that ultimately the film doesn’t work.

Nancy, Please begins as a deadpan slacker comedy with existentialist undertones, and Will Rogers' Paul is a ball of unsettled twentysomething nerves. It's a subtle shift in Semans' first feature, both in tempo and in Rogers' performance, that we don't realize the film taking on a slightly more diabolical undertone.

Despite a lack of access to Manning and Assange, We Steal Secrets is a vital document of a pivotal moment in world history that we’re still experiencing as we speak.

The project seems compromised by a meager budget and limited scale.

What’s obnoxious is that it’s never in doubt where Assault On Wall Street is headed, and it seems to believe there’s a certain poetry to taking its time turning Baxford into a non-verbal Travis Bickle.

The cast alone deserves to be recognized more than the notes of “Speak It, Don’t Leak It.” And yet, here I am, humming it.

There’s a ton of truth and ugliness to You Will Be My Son, and the minor digressions into soapy territory keep threatening to derail. It never does thanks to Arstrup, a force of nature who grabs his scenes by the throat and never lets go.

The cumulative effect is dramatically effective to the point of being soul-crushing.

Mezmerizing in fits and starts, Graceland doesn't coalesce into the "important" thriller it seeks to be.

Oconomowoc seems like a cartoon pilot that IFC doesn’t pick up, only to be turned into a film.

42 is excessively retro, neglecting the urge to pepper scenes with comic relief or oppressing, flashy conflict.

Most of Tomorrow You’re Gone moves incredibly slow for a ninety minute movie.

Down The Shore at least deserves credit for its strong performances.

You don’t need to know the resume of Maribel Verdú to know that the “Y Tu Mama Tambien” star is this film’s meal ticket. With an equal division of screentime with her co-star, Verdú’s ferocious sexuality projects that she was meant to become the fairest of them all by sheer force of will.

Tedious effort.

It’s as if Weitz knows he’s got a corpse of a film on his hands -- never trust a movie when it feels as though you can see the director clasping the defibrillator.

Gimme The Loot involves drug-dealing, constant foul language and vandalism, but Hickson and Washington, both attractive and charismatic enough to be stars, carry the film with an air of lightweight pleasure, keeping it light and bouncy.

Up until the very very end (which uncorks a CLASSIC cop cliché that seemed long dead by now), The Sweeney is straight dumb procedural, no chaser.

The experience of Leviathan is wholly singular, without context, enveloping and immersive. In some ways, it might very well be the most terrifying picture of the year.

At its worst, the film is a panoply of ersatz camera placement and terrible scene blocking, actors having no clue how to interact with their surroundings as they rifle through dialogue that stands as a series of historical checkpoints rather than a cohesive story.

Unfortunately, Would You Rather is content with being a risible borderline torture porn horror film.

It's like stocking a team with proven performers and hoping that everything else will work itself out at the end, including a rickety script, indifferent direction, and a plot that pretends its final act is anything other than a cliché-hugging inevitability.

There is a lived-in quality to Supporting Characters that comes from either a strong cast or days of rehearsal – unclear as to whether they had the latter, though they definitely have the former.

An oddity recommended for only the most fervent, undemanding comedy junkies.

For those of you who felt "Ides Of March" was entirely too cerebral and challenging, here comes the dunderheaded Knife Fight. A political satire that treads no new ground, this name-heavy comedy wastes an engaging central performance by Rob Lowe.

The film similarly boxes itself in when it feels the need to mimic the third-act occurrences of "Paranormal Activity" when it's obvious that improv had the film going in an entirely less predictable direction, clearly pointing out the fallacy of A Haunted House: you can't parody something and also try to emulate it as well.

Like another Tribeca hit given a quiet release, last year's "Puncture," Any Day Now feels the need to take its compelling true story and stack the deck in favor of what we know is the outcome, presenting all obstacles as engineered by sneering, callous villains with disdain for those who would trumpet a more progressive cause.

What Addicted To Fame lacks in nuance, it makes up for in insight and honesty.

It may very well be the best action movie of the year.

Price Check never successfully makes the shift into a higher-stakes scenario, and the chief culprit is a detour to Los Angeles. The tension between Susan and Pete suddenly lapses into a far more conventional direction.

You wonder if Hollywood is trying to make a point: sex is joyless, and best experienced by recognizable, and recognizably obnoxious people.

Makes sense as a picture focused on spectacle. The story almost seems secondary to the flights of fancy.

Holy Motors keeps kicking into a different gear, much like an eternally waking dream.

It's an audaciously broad topic, and at less than eighty minutes, you wonder what exactly Split gives us that we haven't received from countless other political documentaries.

The Thieves is less interested in the characters than it is the elaborate stunts and gimmicks.

Unfortunately, there are few screens small enough to properly convey how inessential another deadpan suburbs satire is in 2012.

It's not a surprise that he most resembles an older Charles Bronson in Taken 2, as both found the enthusiasm to soldier on in the action genre well into their old age. Bronson had a bit more patience with these films: after this, it's doubtful Neeson will.

Special notice should be given to Billy Campbell, who takes a stock character and gives him a new spin.

17 Girls is mostly fueled by grrl-power, from it's nineties-era femme-centric alt-rock, to it's marginalization of boys as sperm-deposit devices, unfair but a natural corrective to years of women onscreen as purely sexual objects.

It is a credit to Snowman's Land that it's plot twists are, for the most part, not entirely predictable, nor do they ever come across as far-fetched.

In other words, here's the same slop you've seen before, only with brand new accents. Also, more pooping.

Temple and Panabaker are quite good in their lead roles, to the point where you start to hate the fact that the movie's thesis thrives on the girls being damned if they do, and damned if they don't.

Silly, distracting, and undeniably entertaining.

Comes to you courtesy of WWE Films, though it's a considerable departure from their recent family-friendly approach. But it does make sense that the audience for post-apocalyptic films will start out with the Speak & Spell version of this premise, a knuckle-dragging time waster you could predict with your eyes closed. But hey. It's a movie.

Just as the film is about to deliver it's package, it sends the viewer an I.O.U. instead, botching two-thirds of what may be Koepp's most entertaining film as a director.

What dooms Hit and Run, which, charitably, is not as generic as it's name implies, is that the film itself comments on its own sincerity.

Made with a chip on its shoulder and a generational insight that would put most Oscar bait to shame, this completely daft film deserves to be seen by anyone who remotely supports the potential of the horror genre, to frighten, to disgust and to anger.

An outlandish fantasy that surrenders to overheated melodrama, but nonetheless titillates the eyes like a grand feast.

It's well-acted, certainly, though these performances belong in a film with sharper pacing, one that breathes easily. But, this directorial debut from Phil Dorling and Ron Nyswaner breathes like a frequent smoker: in fits and starts, peppered with coughs and dry heaves.

The Campaign is insidiously stupid, a laugh-free water balloon lazily tossed at the institution of politics, and one that makes "Semi-Pro" look like a lost Robert Altman film.

'Never Sorry' feels borderline unfinished, as it never draws that line between Ai Weiwei and the generation of successors to his throne that he has inspired. Perhaps it doesn't have to. Perhaps you're already one of them.

Of course, it's because of the film's casually profane tone and commitment to pushing the boundaries of taste and acceptability that makes Klown a step above "The Hangover," a lack of fear towards the lawlessness with which those films only flirt.

It shows a concern for spatial discrepancies, between characters, between action and intention, between life and death. It’s one of many reasons why The Hurt Locker is one of the most exciting movies you’ll see this year.