Jeff Baker

It's an odd concept, turning a zombie movie into a downbeat actor's showcase, but first-time director Henry Hobson gets great work from a subdued Schwarzenegger and an even better performance from Abigail Breslin in the title role.

Everyone is in top form. Pearce, the Australian who's elevated everything from "L.A. Confidential" to "Mildred Pierce," sinks his gleaming teeth into the comic aspects of Trevor and doesn't let up. Smulders, now part of the Marvel universe, is edgy and fun. Corrigan is best of all.

A tight little thriller that recalls the good old days of "Fatal Attraction" and "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle," back when suspicious packages appeared on the doorstep, no affair went unpunished, and the family dog was never safe.

Baumbach loses his grip a little in the third act and gives Stiller too much babbling and ranting. The denouement at a tribute dinner for Leslie is unsatisfying for all concerned but is redeemed by a coda that assures everyone that happiness is possible in this crazy world.

It doesn't all work. The energy and the performances by Cannon, Parris and Hudson can't carry a movie that careens from camp to tragedy to farce without taking a breath. Several scenes could have been cut, particularly a long, dumb take on sex and the Civil War that ends with a horny old goat in Stars-and-Bars skivvies.

The tone -- deadpan, wistful, silly but never stupid -- is just right and puts What We Do in the Shadows next to "This Is Spinal Tap" as a mockumentary that shows its subjects as human -- in this case, inhuman -- in their hopes and fears.

Mistress America is a different kind of channeling, straight through the screwball comedies of the 1980s, "After Hours" and "Something Wild," back to "Bringing Up Baby," where Katharine Hepburn sang "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" to a leopard while Cary Grant looked for the last bone (the intercostal clavicle) for his Brontosaurus skeleton.

All Things Must Pass is a labor of love by actor Colin Hanks, a Sacramento native who grew up on the store.

Just when you think all the great rock and roll stories have been told, along comes Lambert & Stamp.

Heaven Knows What is a hard movie to recommend because of its unrelenting intensity and hideously depressing subject. It's a hard movie, period, but it's exceptionally well-made and beautiful in its execution.

I'll See You in My Dreams takes its time getting to unexpected places and makes you glad to follow along.

That this is a documentary, this family lived in New York for decades in almost complete separation from its neighbors, is astonishing.

Me and Earl is smart and appealing, but it spends way too much effort saying "I'm not like that" when it really is.

It's fun to watch The New Girlfriend the way it's fun to drink a glass of Champagne, and about as memorable.

The 82-year-old director has a light, assured touch and wrote a script that gives his actors space to shine.

Legend offers two Hardys for the price of one but delivers less than a satisfying whole despite the efforts of its star(s).

It's overlong and sanitized but succeeds in presenting an important part of contemporary American culture to a mainstream audience.

Rather than explore and embrace the contradictions within Jobs ("he had the focus of a monk but none of the empathy" is the best he can do), Gibney puts the hammer down.

Dope has energy and smarts and a heart in all the right places.

It feels more like a retreat for all involved, a chance to kick back and bounce some ideas off each other and the surrounding mountains. Several of them stick and give Youth an emotional core that covers the bare spots. Caine and Keitel, old pros on the home stretch, deserve nothing less.

The rare movie that improves as it goes along, shedding its cliches and getting down to what matters.

Kyle Patrick Alvarez, whose previous movie was the filmed-in-Oregon "C.O.G.," stages the many torture scenes in a tight, claustrophobic way that works to heighten tension.

A highlight of Sunshine Superman is archival footage of Boenish attaching a homemade ladder to the side of the cliff, extending it 20 feet out into nothing, climbing out and sitting on a bicycle seat, and facing back toward the cliff with a movie camera.

Stick around for the credits, when the real Trumbo talks about the effect of the blacklist on his daughter. It's the real thing.

This time the talk was cheap, not witty or sharp. Tarantino the writer let his gift of gab get away from him and didn't give his script a close enough edit. Tarantino the director didn't do enough with the static setting; the flashbacks don't help and the big timeshift that's meant to explain everything that's happened feels incomplete.

Jason Schwartzman is upstaged by his dog in 7 Chinese Brothers.

There's too much head-butting between human battering rams Diesel and Jason Statham, too many noisy explosions and generic special effects, and not enough car races and chases.

The music they made is timeless, and Denny Tedesco deserves credit for giving them the credit they deserve and for working through the music rights issues that delayed a theatrical release for seven years.