Joe Leydon

A star vehicle composed of second-hand parts that nevertheless gets great mileage (and big laughs) from its recycled plot.

Although its reach occasionally exceeds its grasp, Catherine Bainbridge’s Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World earns respect as much for its achievement as its ambition.

Filmmakers Andrew Cohn and Davy Rothbart uncover and illuminate a strain of stoic resilience that could be the last best defense against bottomless despair. Unfortunately, as Medora repeatedly suggests, that invaluable resource may not be inexhaustible.

To be sure, the fans will appreciate it a lot more than casual viewers. But it’s also an irresistible hoot for anyone with fond memories of star-studded 1970s musical/variety TV specials.

Boasting strong performances by Jeff Bridges and Justin Timberlake.

A frenetic but undeniably funny follow-up that offers twice the number of singing-and-dancing rodents in another seamless blend of CGI and live-action elements.

Be forewarned: After you see Road Trip, it may be months, if not years, before you can order French toast with a straight face and a settled stomach.

Away from the baseball diamond, All Square effectively pivots to moments of surprisingly affecting drama.

This understated period drama may lack sufficient star power and emotional wallop to score breakthrough success with mainstream auds during its domestic theatrical run, but pic could find a warmer response in the same international markets where "Kingdom of Heaven" redeemed itself last year.

To put it simply and gratefully: Braven is the sort of unpretentious yet thoroughly professional popcorn entertainment that brings out the best in everybody involved.

Despite teasing hints of supernatural influences throughout much of the storyline, Not Forgotten satisfies as a solidly crafted and persuasively acted thriller that relies more on dark secrets than black magic.

The tone throughout Sneakerheadz is mostly light and bright, but the filmmakers don’t stint on anthropological detail, or shy away from the darker aspects of getting kicks by any means necessary.

A visually inspired multi-genre amalgamation, a borderline-surreal folly that suggests a martial-arts action-adventure co-directed by Sergio Leone and Federico Fellini.

Has some genuinely amusing moments of dumb and dumber silliness.

Charged by alternating currents of nostalgic bemusement and wistful melancholy, TV Man: The Search for the Last Independent Dealer evinces all the amiable enthusiasm and discursive rambling one might expect from a do-it-yourself labor of love.

Bleak, gripping, sporadically exciting drama.

Odette edges viewers toward consideration of moral complexities, and places them in the uncomfortable position of observers who are by turns instinctively sympathetic and darkly suspicious.

High Heat is a hoot. Though it may sound in synopsis like standard-issue genre fare suitable for quick-serve consumption on digital and streaming platforms, this satisfying mashup of crime thriller and dark comedy plays almost like a wink-and-a-nod sendup of such cookie-cutter time-killers.

Even though it’s easy to identify all the recycled elements — bits and pieces of several inspirational-teacher scenarios, ranging from “To Sir, With Love” to “Stand and Deliver” — in this “based on a true story” concoction, there can be no denying the feel-good effect of the finished product.

With Davi and Chazz Palminteri fronting a first-rate ensemble cast, and a tasty soundtrack of golden oldies, this unpretentious indie dramedy has much to recommend.

Uses humor and high spirits to entertain while spreading the Good Word. Much of this slick and sprightly CGI feature is sufficiently funny to amuse even the most resolutely unreligious parents who escort their little ones to megaplex screenings.

Blessed with abundant production values and a minimum of campy excess, One Night With the King is a surprisingly satisfying attempt to revive the Old Hollywood tradition of lavishly appointed Biblical epics aimed at mainstream auds.

The 2000 version is louder, broader and much, much bigger.

Result is an unusually likeable family-friendly comedy.

First-time helmer Patrick Tatopoulos (who designed creatures for all three pics) offers a satisfyingly exciting monster rally that often plays like a period swashbuckler.

First-time feature helmer Nate Taylor, working from an adroitly constructed screenplay by Peter Moore Smith, skillfully evokes a clammy sense of dread in this stealthily suspenseful indie.

Helmer Joel Schumacher and a game cast headed by Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman do their damnedest to build and sustain suspense while trying, with some degree of success, to breathe fresh life into a formulaic, even generic scenario.

The overlong but involving drama has obvious cross-generational appeal.

Yes, God, Yes is bound to rankle some conservative Christians of every denomination ... But Dyer’s Alice generates too much rooting interest, and the movie as a whole is too nondenominationally likable, for most other viewers to cast any stones.

Despite a couple of slow stretches along the way, director Mayfield does a generally fine job of integrating the eye-popping special effects with the simple but serviceable plot. The pace is just brisk enough to satisfy youngsters with short attention spans, and Williams is winning enough to keep audiences of all ages involved.

Co-directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (“Resolution,” “V/H/S: Viral”), working from a script credited to Benson, do a clever job of entwining elements of budding romance, mounting dread and indolent vacation in their leisurely paced, handsomely produced indie feature.

A frankly formulaic but raucously entertaining action comedy.

Generally pleasant family-friendly fare.

The fleeting counterbalance of seriousness makes the funny business marginally yet appreciably funnier.

Frothy, funny and formulaic, 27 Dresses is a pleasantly predictable romantic comedy that sees Katherine Heigl following “Knocked Up” with smooth moves at the wheel of her first starring vehicle.

Although it falls far short of fulfilling its full potential as a dark comedy of desperation, Dead Man on Campus is a modestly amusing trifle that merits a passing grade as lightweight entertainment.

A consistently involving and often exciting drama in which the two Wild West icons are presented from the p.o.v. of an impressionable adolescent who weighs the pros and cons of each man as a role model.

Unfolding like a better-than-average episode of a first-rate TV police procedural, Untraceable is a satisfying slice of solidly crafted meat-and-potatoes filmmaking.

Formulaic but effectively gritty inner-city crime drama.

First-time feature helmer Brian Crano maneuvers some tricky tonal shifts with impressive ease in A Bag of Hammers, a droll, quirky comedy with a pleasant amount of heart.

Deftly employing the power of suggestion and an emotionally potent sound design, Body at Brighton Rock is a well-crafted thriller with some crafty tricks up its sleeve.

Undemandingly entertaining, director Mark Bristol’s well-crafted indie can be savored as a heaping helping of palate-cleansing sherbet, best enjoyed between viewings of bigger and louder but by no means better movies. And yes, that’s meant as a compliment.

Working from a formulaic script by Steven E. De Souza, Hark employs a variety of visual stratagems to keep the action fast and flashy.

Looks, sounds and fascinates like an exceptional episode of a true-crime TV series.

The narrative itself, however, is not without its bumpy stretches. The Iron Orchard is satisfyingly involving and entertaining as a whole — call it “Giant Lite” and you won’t be far off the mark — and the performances are sufficiently compelling to ease a viewer through some abrupt and elliptical transitions.

Ronnie is more complex, and much scarier, than the kind of self-deluding boob auds usually encounter in comedies of this sort. With the invaluable aid of Rogen, who's never been better, Hill sustains an impressive degree of tension between seemingly contradictory elements.

This latest entry in the 11-year-old horror series duly adheres to tradition by providing inventively grisly demises for various characters.

Preservation ultimately impresses as an arrestingly suspenseful thriller that takes clever narrative twists and turns while moving through familiar territory.

Has more than enough across-the-board appeal to attract mainstream auds unfamiliar with source material.

A golden opportunity to witness the "unplugged," after-hours George W. Bush at his most congenial. "George" offers a portrait of a gregariously charming and self-mocking fellow who's perfectly at ease in his own skin, and who's no less slick and savvy a politician for being willing to make himself the butt of jokes.

A solid and affecting piece of work.

Tread abounds in memorable images and interviews that range from darkly comical to deeply disquieting.

There's something perversely fascinating about helmer John Hyams' freewheeling yet deliberately paced mashup of noirish mystery, splatter-movie intensity, first-person-shooter vidgame and "Apocalypse Now"-style surrealism.

An undemandingly pleasant, mildly amusing fantasy.

Very much in the tradition of "Slap Shot," George Roy Hill's raucously funny and foul-mouthed 1977 laffer about the misadventures of a minor-league hockey team, Semi-Pro scores big laughs with the rowdy play-by-play of hard-luck hoopsters struggling for professional survival.

Gleefully commingles slapstick and scatology, satire and sentiment, in a free-wheeling farce aimed at making auds laugh until they're thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

Picture inspires respect for its first-rate performances, artful construction and meticulous understatement.

With appreciably greater emphasis on action than its predecessors, and clever use of 3-D trickery to enhance storytelling as well as offer spectacle, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs could prove the third time really is the charm.

Slow-burning buildup, lack of explicit mayhem and overall low-tech approach may strike cineastes as amusingly quaint.

The pacing gradually accelerates after a leisurely first act, so that The Attorney easily sustains interest, and often stirs emotions.

Affecting performances and effective storytelling are the hallmarks of Fat Kid Rules the World.

Chronic cynics and inveterate snarkers would do themselves — and everyone else — a great big favor by steering clear of Mission Mangal, an entertaining and ingratiating feel-good movie about the 2013 launch of the Mangalyann space probe, an against-all-odds triumph of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).

In an era when similar genre pics increasingly resemble videogames, musicvideos or glossy commercials, the blunt, brawny simplicity of helmer Jean-Francois Richet's storytelling style seems positively novel.

The pic is less than fully satisfying as a conventional performance cavalcade, but sustains considerable interest as a behind-the-scenes overview of a musically and culturally diverse event.

Slick, straight-ahead action-thriller that marks a small step back and two bounding leaps forward for toplined Jet Li.

Overall package is potent. A few rock-the-house scenes of slam-bang derring-do -- are nothing short of sensationally exciting.

A solidly made and conventionally satisfying Western.

Refreshingly and unabashedly sincere in its embrace of Western conventions and archetypes, this pleasingly retrograde sagebrush saga should play exceptionally well with currently under-served genre fans.

An over-the-top and beyond-PC comedy that sometimes deftly, sometimes slapdashedly infuses party-hearty anarchy with hectoring moral outrage.

Skillfully entwines stories of three young women drifting in and out of a Jersey City juvenile detention center.

Segel makes an engaging impression throughout Forgetting Sarah Marshall, gamely making himself the butt of many jokes that involve Peter's non-macho proclivities.

By turns viscerally exciting and predictably formulaic — and, quite often, both at once — Danger Close is an efficiently crafted and consistently involving old-school war movie propelled by matter-of-fact professionalism on both sides of the cameras.

Bomb City will keep you in its grasp during every moment leading to its climactic violence. And it won’t let go until the closing credits roll.

It’s entirely possible that The Artist’s Wife would have hit the same pitch-perfect notes had it been set during a long hot summer. But the wintery ambiance enhanced by Ryan Earl Parker’s evocative cinematography feels altogether appropriate for a story about one life winding down, and another on the verge of a restorative spring.