Joe Leydon

The naturalistic style of the storytelling is stealthily enthralling, as is the lead performance by Margita Gosheva as a provincial Bulgarian schoolteacher who is slowly, inexorably driven to the edge by crushing debt.

Ganem has sufficient verve and appeal to sustain interest in both of her characters, and the sporadic tweaking of telenovelas and the fans who love them is often quite clever.

The line between priggishness and creepiness is repeatedly smudged by multihyphenate Rik Swartzwelder in Old Fashioned, a faith-based drama that looks as lovely as an expensive greeting card, but moves as slowly as a somnolent turtle.

Both fascinating as a glimpse at the not so distant past, and provocative as an account of what arguably was an early step in the decline of political discourse on television.

The five leads earn kudos for their ability to come across as something approaching credible.

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.

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

As Red Knot (very) slowly unwinds, Thirlby conveys an impressive range of emotions through the eloquence of her facial expressions and body language. Like Kartheiser, however, she labors under the burden of playing a role that is more a vague concept than a fully developed character.

Copenhagen remains more intriguing than compelling.

The cinematic equivalent of a modestly amusing shaggy-dog story that meanders toward a clever punchline.

La Scala is able to maintain interest and sustain narrative momentum throughout his fantastical narrative, even while he covers overly familiar territory. In this, he gets immeasurable aid from the sincere performances by his game cast.

A potentially gripping story of empowerment through armed resistance is almost totally undermined by studied, self-conscious storytelling.

Born to Fly teasingly suggests that some displays of avant-garde virtuosity could be enjoyed equally by venturesome aesthetes, dance enthusiasts and devotees of World Wrestling Entertainment.

All things considered, The Identical might have worked better as a TV miniseries, a format that would allowed the filmmakers to give equal time to Hemsley’s story.

Connor and co-director Michael Worth allow Fort McCoy to proceed at an unhurried pace, giving Stoltz ample opportunity to subtly convey undercurrents of guilt and anger percolating beneath his character’s affable exterior.

The mix of raucous buffoonery and violent mayhem isn’t exactly seamless, and the laugh-out-loud moments come with conspicuously less frequency during a third act that suggests a rough draft for “Bad Boys 3.”

The film deserves more than just a passing grade, and is a good deal better than any plot synopsis might make it sound.

Premature winds up resembling nothing so much as the coarsely smutty teen-sex comedies that abounded throughout the ’80s in the wake of “Porky’s.”

For the most part, however, D’Souza gives the impression of someone obsessed with whitewashing any and all dark chapters in U.S. history books. There are times when his defenses and rationalizations come across as almost laughably facile.

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.

Tureaud and Salzberg achieve their potent impact through the straightforward (but clearly admiring) observation of men who band together in battle and, in the film’s emotionally stirring final scenes, mourn their fallen comrades.

[A] ponderously paced, needlessly convoluted and altogether unexceptional thriller.

A sci-fi thriller as generic as its title, Alien Abduction generates only low-voltage shocks.

Kakkar and Pastides generate a rooting interest in their characters, with compellingly persuasive performances.

Scripter Wittliff and Spanish helmer Emilio Aragon (“Paper Birds”) hit the sweet spot between galloping and sauntering while unfolding the movie’s plot, an interlocking chain of coincidences, encounters and colorful supporting characters that often recalls the twisty storylines of Elmore Leonard.

Equal parts suspenseful road movie, persuasively detailed period drama and emotionally resonant coming-of-age story, The Retrieval is an outstanding example of regional indie filmmaking accomplished with limited resources and an abundance of skill.

The performances are perfectly attuned to the material, with Koechner dominating his every scene as a kind of demented ringmaster, and Healy adroitly demonstrating the potential for both humor and horror in a character with nothing left to lose.

Aiming more for bemused chuckles than for convulsive laughter, Plotnick and his actors deftly evoke a faux Me Decade ambiance throughout Space Station 76.

The final destination is entirely predictable — right down to the deus ex machina reappearance of an erstwhile antagonist — but the trip itself is never less than pleasant, and often extremely funny.

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

The four leads are nothing if not game, and actually earn respect, along with a fair amount of sympathy, for their uninhibited willingness to go to extremes. But there are limits to what they can do to dispel the overall sense of mounting desperation as the gross-out tomfoolery grows ever more tedious.

The term “freewheeling” does not begin to describe the slapdash, anything-goes quality of the screenplay co-written by Troma mogul Kaufman.

A modestly inventive but curiously bloodless version of the Bard’s timeless tragedy.

A slickly entertaining piece of work that will doubtless delight the young pop star’s fan base, and possibly engage curiosity-seekers who have heretofore remained immune or indifferent to Bieber Fever.

An ingeniously simple setup is cunningly exploited for maximum suspense in Hours, a slow-building, consistently engrossing drama.

Hopelessly stagebound, despite halfhearted efforts to open up what’s basically a talky two-hander, and risibly pretentious in the manner of soft-core porn that’s no sexier than glossy ads for expensive perfume.

Even when judged by the standards of broad farce, however, Expecting repeatedly strains credibility and defies logic in ways too glaring to ignore.

There doesn’t appear to be any purpose at all to the random exchanges and interactions that pass for a plot.

It seems even more slapdash and desperately unfunny than their earlier work.

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.

Moderately interesting as a once-over-lightly political history lesson best suited for home-screen consumption.

Working from a script by Lou Berney, which in turn was adapted from a novel by Turk Pipkin, director Tim McCanlies maintains an even hand throughout, so that neither the moments of broad comedy nor the stretches of tearjerking sentimentality get out of hand.

Despite the bumpy pacing and the routine plot elements, writer-director Le-Van Kiet periodically generates a sense of palpable trepidation during what might best be described as a worst-case scenario about post-partum depression.

Hellbenders becomes what it intends to burlesque, and that’s not so damn funny, even with 3D gimmickry.

Director Vincenzo Natali (“Splice”) is more effective at sustaining clammy suspense than hiding all the holes in Brian King’s script. But top-billed Abigail Breslin (“Little Miss Sunshine”) is effective enough to generate a rooting interest in the plucky protagonist of the piece, and to sustain interest when narrative logic turns fuzzy.

The road to hell is paved with well-intentioned clunkers like I’m in Love with a Church Girl, a strenuously sincere but tediously schematic and heavy-handed attempt at cinematic proselytizing for Christianity.

Sufficiently sweet to serve as a date movie for all ages, Lost for Words comes across as almost subversively retrograde in its old-fashioned approach to charting the slow blossoming of a cross-cultural romance.

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.

Will Wallace's turgid indie tells an earthbound and anemic story about an orphan's progress in small-town Texas.

Beautiful lensing by Mauro Brattoli and an evocative score Steve Poltz enrich the pic’s flavor as a document of, and a tribute to, an iconic cowboy’s indomitable spirit.

The makers of Grace Unplugged deserve at least some credit for resisting temptations toward melodramatic excess.

A lightly engaging bilingual trifle that benefits greatly from the charm of lead player Jaime Camil, a Mexican TV and film star who evidences smooth self-assurance at the wheel of what could be his crossover vehicle.

Costa-Gavras develops such a propulsively suspenseful pace — with no small assist from Armand Amar’s mood-enhancing Euro-tech score — that his drama comes across as the cinematic equivalent of an engrossing page-turner you might purchase off the rack at an airport newsstand.

Too many stretches of Wedding Palace are so garishly lit and broadly overplayed that they seem more cartoonish than the actual animated sequences that pepper the live-action production. That’s a pity, since this indie romantic comedy is not without its minor charms during its infrequent quiet moments.

An initially intriguing but ultimately exhausting tale of grieving parents left quite literally dazed and confused in the wake of their young son’s death.

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.

The concept is thought-provoking but the execution is flat-footed.

Instructions Not Included is a sporadically amusing but unduly protracted dramedy that slowly — very slowly — devolves into a shameless tearjerker during its third act.

Despite an effective Jim Caviezel, this anecdotal drama never rises above the level of lightly likable.

Stevens offers a couple of revelations that bring the documentary to a dramatically and emotionally satisfying conclusion — and, not incidentally, leave a viewer with the pleasing sensation of discovering a worthy individual.

“Portrait” abounds in the sort of ironies and contrasts that can make a biodoc fascinating even to auds totally unfamiliar with its subject.

Deftly balancing twin goals of informing and entertaining, the pic matter-of-factly details the various ways that marketers, multinational corporations, police departments and government-run intelligence-gathering organizations obtain and exploit info.

Once you get past an incredibly self-indulgent intro — an uncomfortably long mash-up of comedy sketch and road-trip-with-entourage doc that seems simultaneously apologetic and arrogant — you can enjoy approximately an hour of boisterously freewheeling and unabashedly raunchy funny stuff in Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain.

There’s something curiously underwhelming about the blood-soaked mayhem on display in Hatchet III.

Each member of the ensemble offers a vividly detailed performance resounding with emotional truth, delivering lengthy swaths of LaBute’s sometimes savagely furious, sometimes shocking funny dialogue with pitch-perfect degrees of intensity.

Not so much a probing examination as a fulsome celebration.

Boasts way better production values than the penny-pinching 1981 original and conceivably could delight genre fans who have never seen the first version or its previous remakes/sequels. But it’s bound to play best with those who catch Alvarez’s many wink-wink allusions to Raimi’s picture.

Neatly balancing brightly sentimental comedy with slightly edgier funny business, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone pulls off the impressive trick of generating laughs on a consistent basis while spinning a clever scenario about rival magicians waging a Las Vegas turf war with a wide multi-demographic appeal.

A lightweight, warp-speed, brightly colored trifle.

The helmer generates suspense with shrewd pacing, deft emotional manipulation and efficient use of familiar tricks -- jittery editing, flickering lights and unsettling sounds -- common to haunted-house pictures.

An appalling misfire that tries and fails to evoke the anything-goes spirit of such '70s sketch-comedy concoctions as "The Groove Tube" and "Kentucky Fried Movie."

Agreeably amusing but unduly extended, Matru ki Bijlee ka Mandola suggests what might have resulted had Rodgers and Hammerstein lived long enough to attempt a Broadway musical about the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The hit-to-miss ratio is less than impressive throughout A Haunted House, a frenetic and freewheeling satirical comedy that only sporadically scores a bull's-eye while aiming at easy targets.

A boisterously Tarantinoesque mash-up of cliches, archetypes and bodacious craziness in the tradition of Southern-fried '60s and '70s drive-in fodder, The Baytown Outlaws is the sort of cartoonishly violent and swaggeringly non-PC concoction that defines guilty pleasure for many genre fans.

While there's something undeniably fascinating about the way Fairhaven repeatedly avoids predictable payoffs for portentous dramatic setups, narrative momentum is conspicuous by its absence.

Helmer John Luessenhop ("Takers") and a small army of scripters go back to the bloody roots of the long-running franchise to concoct a better-than-average horror-thriller that relies more on potent suspense than graphic savagery or stereoscopic tricks.

A slickly produced and brazenly clever piece of work that could attract a cult by sheer dint of its ingenious nastiness and self-aware snark.

The picture all too obviously recycles bits and pieces from "Madagascar," "The Lion King" and other made-in-America toons. Unfortunately, much gets lost in the translation.

Trouble is, apart from some modestly inventive carnage and an undeniably humorous hambone turn by Malcolm McDowell, there's really nothing here to make genre fans dash through the snow (or maneuver through traffic) to megaplexes before the low-budget, high-concept Canadian production's Dec. 4 homevid release.

A slickly produced, unabashedly celebratory picture about professional skateboarder Danny Way.

When a documentary begins with its subject using his crutch to deliver a vicious blow to the director's nose, it's reasonably safe to expect less-than-smooth sailing ahead.

Even by the freewheeling, mood-swinging standards of Bollywood, the pronounced disparity between the pre- and post-intermission halves of Jab tak hai jaan is more than a tad jarring. Indeed, viewers may feel they've been treated to an oddly matched double bill -- a delightfully vivacious romantic dramedy, followed by an Old Hollywood sort of psychological melodrama.

Writer-director Ciaran Foy skillfully taps into primal fears and urban paranoia to keep his audience consistently unsettled in Citadel, an intensely suspenseful horror-thriller.

Although it traffics freely in stereotypes and sitcom-style one-liners, Gayby is never less than likable.

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

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.

Despite the considerable impediment of a premise arguably even sillier than that of the original "Red Dawn," helmer Dan Bradley's long-delayed remake of John Milius' 1984 kids-vs.-Commies adventure delivers enough thrilling action sequences and rock-'em, sock-'em fantasy-fulfillment to amp its B.O. potential.

Passably pleasant but thoroughly predictable.

This enervating muddle of paranormal nonsense manages the difficult feat of seeming frenzied and lethargic all at once, while building toward the sort of ludicrous cop-out climax that often incites die-hard genre fans to shout rude things at the screen.

While it's highly unlikely that anyone predisposed to championing Obama would be won over by the sound and fury here, there's no gainsaying the value of "2016" as a sort of Cliffs Notes precis of the conservative case against the re-election of our current U.S. president.

The script is so thinly written that the main characters are defined almost entirely by the actors playing them. Fortunately, seasoned pros Slater, Rhames and Cromwell are able to flesh out their boilerplate parts.

Yet another attempt to mix raunchy excess and romantic-comedy sweetness in an anything-goes raucous farce, The Babymakers offers a few big laughs between ho-hum stretches of frenetic vamping.

The interaction among opposites inspires an abundance of predictable race-based jokes, many of which have the saving grace of actually being funny.

A picture so thoroughly generic as to suggest a contraption assembled from spare parts with the aid of a how-to manual.

An engrossing and satisfying picture, one that can be enjoyed even by people who have never before heard of its subject.

Despite enough good intentions to pave a four-lane highway, the ardently sincere but dramatically unfocused For Greater Glory plays like a multipart miniseries that has been hacked down to feature length.

Scattered stretches of suspense and a few undeniably potent shocks are not enough to dissipate the sense of deja vu that prevails throughout Chernobyl Diaries, a wearyingly predictable thriller about "extreme tourists."

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.