Joe Neumaier

Danish director Lars von Trier makes this tale of one woman’s banal sexual adventures into inadvertent comedy. The film makes an analogy between sex and fly-fishing — and fly-fishing comes off as more intriguing.

This movie is so dumb for most of its running time, you walk away wishing there was less plot and pointless posing and more of the fuel-injected coolness that brought you to the multiplex in the first place.

A smart, ardent, profound movie.

It never comes to much more than an atmospheric head-scratcher.

When people complain about movies glutting the market, this moronic “Black Swan”-meets-“Phone Booth” thriller is what they mean.

The only saving grace is Green, the reigning witch-queen of cinema. The smoky-eyed French actress, best known for “Casino Royale,” “The Golden Compass” and “Dark Shadows,” throws her all into the performance, going bare-chested at times, bared-teeth at others. She’s like Elizabeth Taylor’s "Cleopatra" possessed by a succubus — which is a good thing. Without her, 300: Rise of an Empire would be bloodless and brainless.

The result is a film almost too reliant on its players to push it through.

The best twist is how Neeson’s growly presence makes a bumpy ride enjoyable.

The movie grips us partly because Bakri’s performance is alternately casual and calculated.

It only comes alive when the star briefly shows the casual looseness that once was his calling card.

It’s impossible to find anything that grabs you in Pompeii. This lumpen adventure with a misguided romance buries anything in the disaster-flick genre that might have been a blast.

It’s playful, stable and sexy, thanks to a cast that knows how to find the sweet spots.

The remake of the 1987 cult actioner Robocop is a misguided failure — not only because its retooled half-man/half-machine hero now has emotions, but also because its “fear the machines” message winds up feeling creaky.

Though it’s more testimonial exhibit than movie, “Unjust” remains a crucial document.

There’s also little point and a garish quality that goes from pulp to junk fairly quickly, despite Pegg’s presence.

This eerily unsettling indie takes a few pleasantly unexpected turns before winding up in a traditional place. But if you think it isn’t worth the time, you have another think coming.

There’s great repartee between its cast of this “based on a true [but forgotten] story” of World War II. Yet the film overall isn’t colorful enough.

That Awkward Moment is eminently forgettable — but worth remembering as Poots’ moment.

Far from burning bright, this earnest indie starts out dull and gets duller.

With a snappy score made up of American standards and tons of Gallic spice, “Love” wins us over.

As seen in Charlie Victor Romeo (code for “Cockpit Voice Recorder”), the events are almost unbearably gripping.

Branagh, taking advantage of his experience helming 2011’s “Thor,” shows an allegiance to the genre he’s working in; both as director as co-star, he pours on the menace.

This ludicrously written, buffoonishly acted, irritatingly filmed sword-and-sandals epic hasn't half the sand, sweat or saltiness of other titles in the genre.

Cranston, in a fake beard and dark glasses, seems to be enjoying his goofy act. Trouble is, this isn’t the kind of movie in which goofy earns goodwill.

This honest and engrossing film shows how ingenuity and spark can restore excitement in education. That goal needs every helping hand it can get.

This Canadian Hamlet, completed years ago, is as airless as a tomb.

The concept is the same, and just as tired as it was when the second, third and fourth sequels to “Paranormal Activity’s” 2009 first installment.

In the monumentally dull 47 Ronin, Reeves mumbles monosyllabic claptrap between dull action scenes. And it’s a shame: At almost 50 years old, the actor allows this turgid, clanky flick to play to his worst stereotypes.

The story Stiller tells manages to float in a most peculiar, satisfying way.

A delirious, manic, push-the-limits comedy of gaudy amorality that tests the audience’s taste. But it’s a gamble that works, since you leave this adrenaline trip wasted, but invigorated.

There’s a great fever-dream quality to David O. Russell’s American Hustle that instantly reels you in.

Marie is middle-aged and at a crossroads in All the Light in the Sky, a movie that feels the same way — listless and searching and on its way toward something good.

Yes, the film’s CG dinos look great tromping in the Alaskan wilderness, but children deserve better than such unchallenging fare.

Like the bloated channels it parodies, the movie stretches to find something to say, then settles for stupid.

Comedy characters change and grow. Sometimes, as we see in Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas, they become so much like old relatives that their edge is gone.

As an acting symposium, this is 83 minutes of Tucci exercises; never a bad thing. The wooden Eve does her best, but director/writer Neil LaBute unfortunately underwrote her character — by design, it would seem, given all that transpires.

The slick but moving Saving Mr. Banks transcends its corporate pedigree to become a great Disney movie about making a Disney movie.

Murder on the Orient Express, this ain’t.

The result is cool and semi-comical, but also serious.

Throughout, Hollyman rings true . She’s heartfelt, freaked-out and never too way out.

Like “The Deer Hunter” — from which it swipes its Keystone State milieu, its haunted veterans, and its self-endangerment metaphor — Out of the Furnace gets under your skin.

Leave it to Spike Lee to deliver one of the strangest, most off-putting movies for the Thanksgiving holiday.

A disappointing mess of a genre flick.

This odd Dickens-meets-Sunday-school movie is as artless as the setup is muddled.

The dissection and discussion, though well-intentioned, winds up lifeless.

Filmed — patiently, beautifully — over that same length of time, the film’s day-to-day aches are quiet and lovingly rendered.

Writer-director Will Slocombe presents a familiar buffet, but there’s good stuff to pick over.

The good news is it comes very close, and does it without sacrificing its soul. Despite its sense of been-here-slayed-that, director Francis Lawrence expertly delivers thrills, ideas and spectacle.

Empathy for the all-too-real plight of the working poor drives this heavy but bold indie. Sadly, though, it falters under the weight of too much drama.

Capturing family on film — the real rhythms of family, with all the annoyances, awkwardness and affection — is tough. Tougher still is wrestling a story around the murky emotional waters of Midwestern relatives. Yet one needn’t be cut from that cloth to see the hilarious beauty, and the beautiful honesty, in Nebraska.

A frosty-eyed, imperturbable actress in “Atonement,” “Hanna” and “The Host,” Ronan is at least able to sell Daisy’s new focus while the movie loses its own.

The movie’s spell is solid, even if it doesn’t soar to the heights it could.

Director Mike Newell’s rich take on the story is a fine introduction for new viewers.

Andrew Cohn and Davy Rothbart’s doc, exec-produced by Steve Buscemi and Stanley Tucci, is one more sad, serious eulogy for a way of life.

Thor: The Dark World may not be thunder from the movie gods, but it is — shock! — an entertaining journey into mystery, action and fun.

If Woodroof is the movie’s guts, Rayon is its heart, and Leto (TV’s “My So-Called Life,” “Alexander”) is stunningly perfect, even when the story veers ever so slightly into expected territory.

Though coming off at times like Adam Sandler’s “Grown-ups,” only with Oscar winners, Last Vegas is a genial little comedy for the crowd it’s intended for.

The fights are strong (though the 49-year-old director’s are slo-mo), and the surface is calm. Say “Whoa!” if you like, but it’s cool.

A look into one of the most invisible, and crucial, of cinematic disciplines. Using the seminal casting director Marion Dougherty as a subject, the film walks us through the intricacies of casting, with insight from Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Robert Redford and others.

Ender’s Game, the book, may have a special place in pop-lit. The movie, however, is as special as a migraine.

Sex is plentiful, but the lust is for paydays. This is territory covered far more vibrantly in “Margin Call,” yet director Costa-Gavras (“Z,” “Missing”) still has good, old-fashioned indignation to count on.

More than just a one-name star of pop culture’s alternative history, Divine’s story — terrorized by bullies, embraced by the outré, where he finds a home — stands for “all the outsiders,” as Waters says (between hilarious anecdotes).

An oblique, by-design and frustrating drama, Claire Denis’ film about a man’s mysterious suicide and its repercussions is creepy, but finally too vague.

Ultimately, this dull tour of a thieving, primal underworld is just a lot of high-talking hogwash.

McQueen has made a film comparable to “Schindler’s List” — art that may be hard to watch, but which is an essential look at man’s inhumanity to man. It is wrenching, but 12 Years a Slave earns its tears in a way few films ever do.

Where Sissy Spacek seemed otherworldly and haunted in De Palma’s film, Moretz (“Hugo,” “Kick-Ass”) is sadder. She’s a terrific young actress.

Ultimately, Paradise is a tiny version of a saint’s journey among sinners, an immature conception. Peramb-you-later, Lamb.

Michael Starrbury’s astute script draws us in slowly, depicting the realities of Mister and Pete’s lives in progressive reveals.

Machete Kills? “Machete Bores” is more like it.

As a film, the result is static, like Ang Lee’s similarly muddled “Taking Woodstock.”

Though the film’s untested cast struggles with the drama, and the sketched-out story is often banal (there are several amateurish calls-to-mom scenes), the presentation of a specific city subculture is etched from the heart.

Interviews with survivors fill us in on the personalities of the lost, but the background of K2, with archival footage from 1954, is equally gripping.

This nothing-new-here documentary presents basketball’s onetime celebrity point guard in unguarded moments. But the result is banal and fawning, with Lin coming off as a pious, charmless subject.

A thrill ride with a brain.

This is the kind of movie that, in order to puff itself up, quotes Meyer Lansky, Napoleon and Native American sayings. But according to Hoyle — as poker players would say — the film really just does boilerplate Hollywood drama.

The most gripping based-on-fact film so far this year.

The wonkiness is at a minimum and Reich delivers it with tales from his own life, since he’s the son of a dress store owner and a mom who helped in the shop. Essential viewing, no matter how you cut it.

The movie gets too claustrophobic, while its noble attempt to take on suffering remains laudable.

Sometimes, less is more. Case in point: Thanks for Sharing, a film that’s a little too eager to be ID’d as a “sex addiction dramedy.” As a result, solidly grounded performances from almost all the cast members wind up playing second fiddle to navel-gazing.

Dano, Bello, Howard, Davis and Leo — the last nearly unrecognizable — are equally strong. Villeneuve, whose last film was the Oscar-nominated “Incendies,” uses them all perfectly, and Prisoners works best when it’s not what you thought it was going to be. But even on familiar ground, it’s hard to let go of.

Best of all, we take a trip back to Depression-era New York and grasp its resonance more than 80 years later. Delicious.

Some parents are mellow, and others have instilled emotional problems in their children. This less-than-illuminating work resembles the spelling-bee doc “Spellbound,” only with a promise of high-end endorsements and far more pampering.

As narrated by Mickey Rourke and with appearances from Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno, the movie captures the men who mix “sports, entertainment, art and a way of life” — as the former Governator describes body sculpting. It’s their honesty that looms large.

Howard, whose previous tales of men in professional peril include the topnotch “Apollo 13” as well as “Backdraft” and “Cinderella Man,” works with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle to create a style in the racing scenes that makes the most of every angle. By the time the final lap of Rush starts, we’re up for the ride.

Enough Said doesn’t have the intimacy of Holofcener’s “Walking and Talking” or “Lovely & Amazing,” but it still cuts close the bone. Often so close we have to smile in self-defense.

Director Andrew Dosunmu’s film is big-hearted and rich, frequently using slow motion to underscore an artful intimacy.

A committed cast and pensive insights into family and self-expression help make this indie drama work.

Though the film plays like late-era Woody Allen — not necessarily a good thing — and Goldberg’s rambunctiousness is more annoying than liberating, there’s a serious depth of feeling here. Bosworth, thankfully, is attuned to that, and makes the most of it.

It’s too bad we can’t take a hit out on The Family. This unexciting, unfunny would-be action satire is filled with Italian-American stereotypes, decades-old TV-style Mafia cliches, bits of business that never amount to anything and actors so much better than the hoary, one-joke material.

Comes upon a few quirky solutions and movie-ripoff scares before settling into a kind of coma.

Writer-director Hannah Fidell’s somber drama of an illicit romance earns credit for being a serious discussion of a tabloid-rich topic, but the movie runs out of places to go.

This frisky late-’50s-set French comedy about a competitive typing contest hunts and pecks a bit for fun after its story gets rolling, but it’s visually vibrant throughout.

Evil babies aren’t exactly fresh meat for parody. Then again, there’s hardly a laugh in this whole hellish thing.

Though Fontaine makes sure the beaches are sun-dappled and the women’s shared house comes off like a sandy paradise, the movie is like the early-’80s groaner “Summer Lovers” with wrinkle lines. Hooray for the freedom and beauty of older women — a demographic that deserves better than the deplorable Adore.

Only DeWitt looks at home, but Shelton allows “Touchy Feely” to be so wishy-washy that we can never get a hold of the star, or the movie.

Any urgency the movie has comes from co-star Terrence Howard, a firebrand of an actor who can’t be contained by a paint-by-numbers script.

The story feels like quicksand. Riddick, which couldn’t even qualify for proper summer movie placement, moves like Martian molasses and can’t present an action scene to save its life. You’ll wish you had Uncle Martin’s ability to speed people — not to mention awful movies — up.

With no heat at all and a woefully disjointed cast, De Palma’s danse macabre never catches fire.