Joe Neumaier

The Double belongs to a very specific club. If you’re on its wavelength, it’s a dive into quirky, murky fun. But even if you are, this oddball offering is vague and slippery, a calmer brother to “Brazil” or Orson Welles’ Kafka tale “The Trial.”

The film features plenty of elements that seem familiar from previous cinematic dystopian visions — class warfare, decrepit living, a feeling of terminal velocity — yet you can’t help but admire director Bong Joon-ho’s high-wire act.

Watching Ushio Shinohara and his wife Noriko make their art, we’re reminded of how much life is inside even the most abstract of pieces.

It's about watching two always-fine actors do a lot with very little.

Hey, isn't summer a good time for a salad?

A colorful account of the life and art of the recently retired Drew Struzan, whose amazing poster work from the 1970s onward still delights cineastes and casual observers.

The most pleasant surprise in the movie adaptation of "Watchmen" is the pop-art fusion set off by placing superheroes in a "real" world. The film's biggest challenge – and accomplishment – was making that plausible.

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

He (Fincher) gives in to its mimicry of an Agatha Christie parlor game. Only instead of Miss Marple, the old-gal crime-solver with piercing blue eyes, we get Lisbeth Salander, pierced goth-girl investigator with raccoon eyes.

This hard-working film may not be a balm, but it can help.

You see the spark of 'this is cool!,' but you don't sense a purpose. The underconceived Public Enemies suffers from that lack of drive, though Johnny Depp is so urgent and charismatic as John Dillinger, he provides enough firepower to make the film legit.

More mournful than alarmist, Arthus-Bertrand's film goes beyond global warming to look at life out of balance, through a lens darkly.

Culminating in a high-scoring, exciting game, "Gunnin'" scores.

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

If you're going to pick the werewolf as your favorite monster, there's a lot to appreciate in the shaggy, imperfect but still fun new version of The Wolf Man.

Dilutes the idea some by giving every four-legged hero a story arc. And there's not enough of the first movie's super-erudite monkeys. Yet the sitcom-style silliness is still there, and it's nice to see that the old "grin or frown as you wave a hand across your face" joke still has cross-generational, and cross-species, appeal.

Writer-director Michael Goldbach fills the story with too many distractions, but Dennings, known for "Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist," is feline and fun.

Entourage plays like a solid, if slightly too long, episode. But even given the bloat, the cast’s easy camaraderie and a “play it as it lays” atmosphere wins you over.

This savvy and sensitive company has unapologetically made a movie for (very) young moviegoers.

Can’t-look-away stuff, though it’s tough to believe your eyes and ears.

Gorgeously animated and featuring a tapestry of real-looking wonders, Brave is certainly a thing of beauty. But its emotional layers don't yield the same depth.

Affleck is playing someone split down the middle, but we're stuck seeing only one side of him.

If you succumb to The Better Angels, the effect is like falling into a gorgeous photograph, but that also means the narrative in this arthouse film is oblique and sketchy.

So often not in his element — his turn in “Oz the Great and Powerful” is evidence of that — Franco is in freako mode here, and walks a line between spaced-out caricature and just plain Out There.

This absorbing film isn't an apology or an explanation, but it nonetheless holds plenty of answers - including an amusing dissection of that infamously wiry hair-bear 'fro from the man who wore it.

A movie with no clear narrative. It pushes boundaries and feels like one man's fever dream. But all those traits would certainly make Allen Ginsberg happy.

While not every family film can plant a flag here, the happily offbeat Mars Needs Moms turns out to be a charming, subversive, minor addition to the club.

The whole movie is about piecing together broken parts. It may not always come together, but what it makes, if you look at it the right way, is endearing.

Think you know all about comedy? This thorough, funny and thoroughly funny chronicle of the Catskills Mountains resorts — that is, the Borscht belt — will still teach you a thing or two.

Luckily, Son of Rambow, a comedy that's part kid-buddy flick, part valentine to filmmaking - and full of heart - has both.

Nonetheless, if you're a Force completist, this is as crucial as a bootleg of 1978's "Star Wars Holiday Special." Which, by the way, was awesome.

This mellow chronicle of Nat Hentoff is like a tour through New York’s past.

Finally, a found-footage thriller that merits, and expands on, this irrationally popular format.

The special effects here are wiry martial artists grunting their way through fight after fight. It's exhausting but exhilarating.

For all its shortcomings, “Gigolo” knows when to turn on the charm.

As a misanthropic guy in a dead-end job, Matthew Broderick is more engaging than when he has to be perky.

Has two aces going for it: Soderbergh's poking at the maze­like holes in American business and Damon's whirling dervish performance.

Filled with horrific but colorful anecdotes, director Joe Berlinger’s incisive look at the mobster life of Boston career criminal and FBI informant “Whitey” Bulger is essential viewing for fans of lurid, true underworld tales.

Much like “La Belle Noiseuse,” the 1991 Jacques Rivette film it resembles, this contemplative drama washes over you.

All of the actors' vocal performances are spot-on, including McAvoy's gentle Arthur, Nighy's salty GrandSanta and Ashley Jensen's cute stowaway elf Bryony, a chipper little pixie that would make Rudolph's pal Hermey proud.

The cast hits the right notes. Fraser, switching between affable good sport and heroic goofball, clearly doesn't mind this stuff. He realized early on with "George of the Jungle," "Dudley Do-Right" and the "Mummy" movies that his B-movie build and persona is perfect for live-action cartoons.

The actors make the raucousness feel as easy as the cinematic couples therapy.

Monument Valley makes an appearance, and there are soulful moments of slow motion. There’s enough heart here to make up for whatever first-timer miscalculations ride along too.

Filmed over six years, “Ashes” is joyous and uplifting, full of spirit, memorable athletes (including Olympian Adrien Niyonshuti) and remarkable achievements, both big and small.

Ridley and Benjamin have done more than capture Hendrix’s moves and sounds. They’ve captured his spirit.

The success here is mostly due to nuanced performances and an appreciation for what these kinds of films require.

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

The final result somehow undersells a man whose life and death were watershed moments in the gay rights movement.

The result isn't bland, but it's not exactly Bond either.

The movie is tense and coiled for its first hour, then becomes routine in its second half.

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

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

A frenetic, overstuffed but imaginative fantasy.

Haywire, clean and no-fuss as it is, needs more action scenes to match Carano's game.

This unhurried, novelistic movie is worth looking into.

Just when it seemed Hal Hartley was going to be forgotten, along comes the Long Island-based auteur’s terrific new feature. It’s a follow-up to his opus “Henry Fool.”

Writer-director David Riker's film is tough going, but worth it.

Kline sinks his old smoothie teeth into the part of Flynn, but is careful not to draw blood too easily. The man’s pathetic nature, after all, doesn’t spring from his movies. (Flynn worked right up to his death, in 1959.) It’s deeper than that, but also more shallow. Walking that knife’s edge is a trick. Kline finds exactly the right path.

This insightful doc from director Andrew Rossi addresses topics that get more polarizing each year: the high cost of college, the factors that dictate who’s educated in this country and the culture that surrounds those decisions.

Where the film fails, ironically, is in the central love affair. Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen is undeniably gifted, but his Stravinsky is a blank, stoic presence only comfortable at a piano.

It can sometimes be hard to sit through, but another song is coming soon, and anyway, close your eyes and imagine you're on vacation, sipping vino in a piazza, soaking in the street life.

Challenging and thoughtful, but is also, like its characters, a prisoner of its own anger.

The moments when Spy falls apart are when the film fancies itself the real thing. The times when it works are due to its leading lady.

Hellion is a glimpse into rural American childhood that’s both tense and melancholy.

Has moments of power that push through a fake-out script.

Upstream Color is weird, but it’s worth the time.

Whether the young ensemble attains it remains to be seen. The standouts, though, are Naughton, Pennie and Perez De Tagle.

The movie could have gone several ways, too — and it is heartbreaking to watch this ambitious story choose the wrong one and get lost in space.

Only in its final scenes do the usual WKW themes emerge in full bloom, but purists shouldn't miss it.

Just as precise and self-consciously precious as predicted. Which doesn't mean it hasn't got moments of charming wit buried under all its archness.

Morris mixes piercing sit-downs with disturbing evidence. Though soldiers, including the notorious Lynndie England, express remorse, it's haunting to hear how several prisoners were "nice guys" or known to be innocent, yet no connection is made between those remarks and the images of torture.

Though there's too much movie-style self-deception, Sheridan is excellent, and his scenes with the consistently engaging, criminally underemployed Campbell Scott are subtle and serene.

To see these children of waitresses, salon workers and fathers on disability burdened because they stepped up is humanizing and heartbreaking.

Lengthy clips of leaders including Angela Davis and Stokely Carmichael bring us back to emotional moments in this country's history.

Director Chen Shi-Zheng's film has a graceful energy, and three strong performances help make this serene drama - and its shocking conclusion - quietly moving.

With musical numbers and fight scenes as big as its heart, director Nikhil Advani's action-comedy really does sample it all.

Without excessive emotion or drama, director Javier Fuentes-León's film - and Mercado's performance - gently captures the power of emotions whose silent rattle is even stronger than reality.

The boat rides and picnics we're privy to are an enjoyable way to get to a bittersweet conclusion. Yet it's hard not to feel like we've taken this trip before.

So the big surprise of Horrible Bosses 2 is how far it gets on the hopped-up jabberjaw alliance of Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day. In the 2011 “Bosses,” they were swamped by the conceit: White-collar pals try to kill awful employers. Now, freed up to free-associate, they’re totally winning.

Jack Black adds new depths to his slippery comic persona in Bernie, a movie that may not ultimately add up to much, but which is filled with wonderfully odd details of weird Americana.

Though it's rough around the edges, it is also, undeniably, a nervy, confident debut.

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

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

The trouble is, too much of director Shawn Levy's '80s-ish lark is filled with noise, when it really needed more quietly silly stuff.

Tries to capture that moment -- complete with air guitar-playing deejays -- and unapologetically rides a wave of nostalgia, but ultimately sinks due to a bloated, watery script.

That truthfulness, along with the movie's emotional honesty and narrative polish, help tag this NY-grown indie as one to seek out.

A movie that’s of two minds. It’s well-grounded, but also over the top. It’s a man-vs.-machine epic and also an intimate drama. It’s quirky-smart yet sci-fi silly. And it winds up being half as good as it could be.

Just when you thought it was safe to stand up to a bear in the woods, this jarring indie horror drama will make you scurry back indoors.

If you're looking for an incisive portrait of self-generated stardom, you won't do better than this.

Oasis also takes aim at the bottled-water industry, entertainingly calling in psychologists to break down our fears of what is - or isn't - contaminating what we drink.

Donald Sutherland's passionate rendition of a speech from Trumbo's 1971 film "Johnny Got His Gun" (based on his novel) is worth the price of admission.

Their devotion to their art is admirable, and the film gets under the skin, if never really in our blood.

Liv Ullmann’s screen version of August Strindberg’s 19th-century drama is an austere, pared-down take that does one thing extremely well: It allows actors Jessica Chastain, Samantha Morton and especially Colin Farrell to shine. But this emotionally brutal work is anything but cinematically engaging.

With witty throwaway bits and Cavanagh's fast delivery, "Scot" gets away with a third-act dip into hearts and platitudes. Otherwise, it's refreshingly snarky and quick.

A thoughtful drama about guys who have a moment in the big time before returning home to an odd reflected glory.

Director Nimrod Antal’s grungy gang-of-thieves pic is tough and, for this genre, surprisingly ethical.

If you’re searching for smart, soulful teen entertainment, you can start looking inside Paper Towns.

There are two stormy performances from Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz that elevate Allen's melancholy thoughts on love and relationships.

Craig, far from James Bond but still swaggering, makes a leathery, craggy commander, and Schreiber - who'll show his full-on action chops this summer in the Hugh Jackman "Wolverine" movie - is tough but sullen. Yet all this old-style moviemaking doesn't always pay off.

It appears that turning the John Ford/John Wayne classic "The Searchers" into the church-vs-vampire adventure Priest was not an altogether god-awful idea. As long as we don't get "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" as an elegiac zombie drama, this adaptation of a graphic novel has some bite.

If there's a book-loving adventuress or adventurer in your house younger than 10, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island provides a lighthearted break from the death-obsessed "Harry Potter" franchise and other literary but limp adventures like the "Narnia" films and "The Lightning Thief."

It's been a long, not always linear path to the opening of the new tower, planned for 2014. Yet, as one observer says here, the project has helped heal New York in a very New York way - acrimonious, messy and loud.

Hoffman, Morton and Jon Brion's aching score somehow capture the all-too-human need to get things right. If you're in a certain frame of mind, those moments make up for all the stagecraft.

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

This gorgeous-looking documentary is crying out to be remade as a family film feature.

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.

Fearless nonfiction filmmaker Alex Gibney ("Taxi to the Dark Side," "Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer") details a history of horrific abuse by Catholic clergy in this tough-to-watch documentary.

Transporting as it is, this doc leaves a bad taste in your mouth, if just for the ill will it drudges up.

Though too much of this of-the-people, for-the-people chronicle is by necessity gummed up by clunky captions and explanations, it is an effective, and heartfelt, clarion call.

The movie hits a beautiful, celebratory note.

As this strong, moving documentary shows, for those who came to the U.S., reconnecting to their culture and blood relatives can result in a generation of young people who feel "somewhere between" Chinese and American. They're never fully one or the other, but in the best cases can feel part of both.

Though Lorenz Knauer's film is as thoughtful as his subject - with a break for interviews with Pierce Brosnan and Goodall's fellow UN Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie - the study of chimps is given short shrift.

Parents should know that the ending makes the last moments of this family-friendly documentary as tough as "Bambi." But the lessons about friendship are gigantic, indeed.

Though it teeters at times on the edge between potboiler and melodrama, Arbitrage benefits from a notable lack of sympathy for Gere's Gordon Gekko-like Miller. Rather than seeming pat, Jarecki's straightforward cynicism is pointed and purposeful.

Watch for a cameo by young animator Tim Burton.

Atmosphere is three-fourths of the game in a horror film, and The Lords of Salem has it in spades. It’s not too much to say that until this culty-witchy throwback chiller turns too bloody, it shows how far a little style can go.

The actor (Garcia), whose banked anger has been a secret weapon since "The Untouchables" 25 years ago, paints a fascinating portrait of a man moved by fate.

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.

Haneke's superb cast provide beautifully measured hints at the disconnect between the ribbon's symbolism and the entire town's unspoken atrocities.

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.

The cast is generally game for playing cardboard cutouts, with Goodman having the most fun.

A quiet, oddly serene movie with a curious soul.

Those who came of age during Knievel’s rise, rise and fall will enjoy the fun moments. But this family-sanctioned film comes up short in terms of objectivity.

Movies like this, from "Diner" to "Beautiful Girls" to "Garden State," have a standard trajectory, and this film's no different. But it has a nuance and a rumpled comfort with itself, which turns Fairhaven into an inviting place to visit.

A fairly gripping cautionary tale.

What emerges is a portrait of the "psychic risk," as her father says, of living a creative life - and the intense feeling that entails.

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.

The film awkwardly mixes political, social and medical issues and ends up being less than the sum of its parts.

A "Blair Witch"-y creepshow that owes a lot to Japanese horror.

A good-ol'-boy civics lesson that's too scattered to achieve its predictable goals.

Amusing as it is, it never feels real.

Low-budget, grubby and gleeful, but with a nice sense of style and apparently an endless supply of dry ice. Points deducted, though, for a too-easy alien-corpse joke.

If it were just Hurt's show, it'd be a helluva trip.

Noise ultimately becomes a slice of city life instead of a great satire.

Despite the Spierig brothers' punchy visual style and satiric tone, Daybreakers eventually devolves, though Dafoe and his Southern drawl goose things up and Hawke has a greasy romanticism.

Screenwriters Chris Shafer and Paul Vicknair’s script feels like a first draft that was written in one night as they got pumped up on Red Bull and speed-watched Netflix. Guys: Another few polishes could only have helped.

When the haze wears off and the movie grounds itself in reality, it's a bummer. Until then, though, what's weird here is gloriously weird.

In a certain kind of indie movie, the only thing sweeter than a bad boy transformed is slow, sad tragedy. Mercy has both, which isn't good.

This year-in-the-life comedy will appeal mostly to its target audience -- the boys of middle school, USA -- and frankly, that's all it needs. Who else would appreciate the idiocy of social pressure,

Yet it all comes down to one simplistic idea, and the result feels like a one-film evangelical movement.

With no adults to add melodrama, the sweet Water Lilies depends on the emotion in its young performers' faces to move forward.

Sparky voice performances and heart make up for this family film's theft of Tim Burton's sensibility.

Sadly, once the movie shifts gears, it becomes a timid "Donnie Darko."

This action-comedy will seem fresh only to 8-year-olds -- though it may give parents an excuse to introduce some of the '50s horror movies it parodies.

The "Star Trek" gibes feel especially lazy, since the movie ought to be "Men in Black" kicky, not sketch-comedy dusty.

Occasionally stumbles into charm but more often is just wayward and hazy. It makes you hungry for a real movie from writer-director Jonathan Levine.

Plays like a throwback to gritty-but-softhearted English dramas of the 1980s like "Mona Lisa" and "Sammy and Rosie Get Laid."

Director John Scheinfeld's film, utilizing interviews with friends and collaborators, hits a high note on Nilsson's friendship with Ringo Starr and his fear of stage performance.

If only this Eddie Murphy flick had taken its own advice and spent a little more time being reflective instead of hyperactive, it might have overcome a trite script and awful, obvious excuses for comedy.

True Story is a prisoner of its own dull storytelling.

Steen, her face full of remorse, does a great job of portraying someone unclear of where to go or what to say without a script.

Stoker is like the baby David Lynch and Tim Burton had, then left on the doorstep of the Addams Family. Full of heavingly gorgeous images that envelop a viewer before smothering them, its maddening elements eventually become too much to bear.

The mystery at the heart of the film is a riddle wrapped in an enigma covered in dullness.

The oh-so-out-there mentality earns some chuckles, but that, along with Piven's preening, gets very trying. A hard sell is still a hard sell.

The kids' story gets out of control, but Andie MacDowell is a pleasantly earthy mess as Victor's out-of-it mother, and familiar New York faces (Ann Magnuson, Mark Boone Jr., Richard Edson) lend quirky support as the out-of-it elders.

A movie that's so anachronistically mushy and awkward, it earns extra credit simply for being so innocent.

Only Wahlberg rises above the muck; everything else here feels buried in concrete.

Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson is overhyped as Billy Bob Thornton is slow and steady.

The Identical is one wacky movie, based on a bit of truth.

Certainly, the West Memphis 3 deserve more chances to detail how the justice system went nightmarishly awry. But take this as ultimately more personal journal than investigation.

In what world does Smart People exist? Clearly not the real one, though this dramedy wants to think it's filled with ironic insights about love and family.

This taut but cliched little thriller is like "Wait Until Dark" with neo-Nazis.

When a movie is this strange, it's gotta count for something.

The tricky camera moves that fill up Silent House make for one-half of a nerveracking horror film – before the movie's obviousness just gets on your nerves.

Snitch is like watching an elephant on ice: inelegant, but you admire the effort.

Had the film stood still more often, its stylish gambit would have worked better.

This gruesome, allegorical drama is dark and unsettling, but not so original that it begs to be let in.

What keeps the movie afloat, though, is Seann William Scott as Steve Stifler.

Unfortunately, its present-day tale, involving a career woman seeking to mend her 20-year bond with a girlfriend injured in an accident, is lax and clunky, and its story-within-a-story - a tale of two laotong, or soul sisters, in oppressive mid-1800s China - is gorgeous but simplistic.

While the film is slightly better than similar efforts Allen made between the ’90s and his recent time in Europe, it’s both too broad and too shallow.

Unfortunately, director Joe Maggio's film, despite showing real promise and an ear for threats delivered with a smile, runs out of gas.

The G.I. Joe team is back, and most of their sophomore movie adventure, G.I. Joe Retaliation, is as bland as their name and as subtle as an exploding tank.

If Deadfall had more life, it might have been about more than just its wannabe edge. Ruzowitzky, whose 2007 film "The Counterfeiters" won a Best Foreign Film Oscar, understands the movie's simple plan. But it nonetheless puts us into a big sleep.

Stripped of his former pretty-boy image, the Texas-born actor is snarly and gnarled, and understands what Nichols is aiming for. That’s crucial, as Mud needs something to stick to.

The earnest attempt at family drama doesn't benefit from the abundance of movie-of-the-week cliches.

The film works better as an uncomfortable character drama than as a murky family mystery, which Karpovsky deepens with some psychobabble. Still, a nicely sinister and shuddersome effort.

Too many threads are woven together here, but occasionally, it just connects.

A lot of gleeful audience members are interviewed in Glee: The 3-D Concert Experience, though the source of their happiness could be a lot of things.

Patric and Baldwin react to all the morbidity with restraint, and Vassilieva keeps her bald head high. But they won't be able to help this barefaced vulgarity earn any terms of endearment.

A mopey indie family drama like In Our Nature can't quash "Mad Men" star John Slattery's charm no matter how badly it tries.

Our time spent with Nenette feel as stifling and airless as hers.

For better or worse, the blood and bone-crunching remains most prominent.

Director Andrea Di Stefano’s filmmaking debut has a spotty sense of urgency, but we get to know neither Nick nor Escobar, so both the innocence and the fiery threat lack impact.

His (Bateman) performance is fun. Too bad The Switch is not.

A lot of heart, a jaunty mariachi score and a lush Eisenhower-era look help as the family-friendly story follows the usual sports-drama plays.

There are parts of “Escape From New York,” “Air Force One,” “Cliffhanger” and countless Luc Besson movies strewn about. Big Game doesn’t stomp on their memory, but like an overenthusiastic fan, it does smother them with amateurish zeal.

Winds up feeling like a form of emotional tourism. The images recall Terrence Malick, but the film fills "atmosphere" into dry narrative holes where a story should reside.

Noble but dull.

Aniston is fine, and sometimes good even, in director Daniel Barnz’s maudlin and overly obvious drama. She has layered moments of sympathy as a woman afflicted with chronic pain. And unlike in the bad rom-coms she does too often, Aniston absolutely shows some serious chops.

Now CDL aficionados have One Day, though it is a tedious addition to this subspecies of rom-com, despite Anne Hathaway's efforts to make us fall for her regardless of the setting.

It reads like a Cinemax special event, and as good as Leguizamo and Waterston are, the skeevy, fantasy-fulfillment plot that drives David Ross' movie is uncomfortably risky business.

After a while, Vacation starts to reek like a car when the kids have their shoes off. Really, though, that stench is a studio digging through its old titles, trying to find something fresh to remake.

Lutz, who was a boy when his family fled the Long Island home, is full of belligerence in this chronicle of his family’s alleged run-in with a ghoulish home where a murder had occurred.

Heartening, and yet, a year after being filmed, unintentionally aggravating.

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.

There’s a good chunk of info for those eager to know how the sausage gets made, as well as the facts of life and death surrounding what we consume. You just have to pluck the PR feathers and find the good parts.

Sadly, the film gets mired in traditionalism, something the man himself always railed against. But worth a look for seeing intellectual bravery (still) at work.

Forget the minor, derivative scares in The Lazarus Effect. The real jolt here is seeing a well-known name playing a monstrous evil force.

Sadly, Hit & Run, for as much sporadic fun and genuine heart it has, runs out of gas. But it's not for lack of trying, and that counts for something.

The movie gets repetitive, and when it calls an audible and goes somewhere unexpected, it pulls back quickly. Too bad.

The only bit of machinery that makes the film move is Jason Statham, who's provided the steely saving grace in so many modern action movies.

There's a climactic putt, of course, but by then you wish Duvall would get one more "Tender Mercies" under his belt so you can forget about this tin cup of a family flick.

Taken 2 has a plot that could have been written by a GPS program, and contains all the technical charm that conjures up.

The class issues make them pariahs, the love scenes belong on Cinemax After Dark, and the emotions writer-director Catherine Corsini believes are so adult are clichéd. Still, Scott Thomas is beguiling as usual, the one expected thing that's welcome here

Though diligently paced and sharp to look at, the mysteries inside Mother are, finally, bloodless.

Though it takes time to find its courage and heart, Gigante, like its oversized hero, merely has a slow, shy way of doing things.

"Parnassus," while not unwatchable, is also an elephantine mess.

Sadly, this gorgeous-looking adult movie plays out the same theme over and over, never going anywhere surprising. At least we have Binoche to guide us to hell and back.

Insidious doesn't feature the lazy, home-video-style terror of "Paranormal Activity," thankfully. But it's also pretty normal activity for a ghost story.

A dramatic tale of survival and horrific memories struggles against distracting melodrama in Sarah's Key, and unfortunately, melodrama wins.

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.

Director Jeff Preiss soaks his movie in a brownish retro atmosphere, which helps smooth over the many dull spots, but only briefly. Though his cast is strong even when the movie lags, they often feel like soloists doing their own thing next to each other — always melodic but never truly meshing.

Haunting ideas and efficient storytelling, but director-cowriter Alex Rivera needed to fine-tune a bit more.

Director Danis Tanovic never undersells the anger and tension in the family, yet while the emotional underpinnings feel raw, much of "Cirkus" also winds up spinning 'round to obvious, if uncomfortable, places.

Janssen's affectionate, almost-1970s-style view of innocents-at-large may not be polished, but earns points for being from the heart.

Digs up familiar ground without adding any fresh dirt.

This stoners-meet-government-assassins mashup is as meandering and paranoid as a guy toking up in front of City Hall. Sometimes that’s amusing, but most of the time it’s tiring.

If "Ice" never really solidifies, it's nonetheless the work of a filmmaker whose seriousness is worth watching out for.

When boxing cliches work, they can deliver a knockout. When they don’t, as in Southpaw, we get just punch-drunk.

Director Peter Webber (“Girl With a Pearl Earring”) fills the film with conciliatory emotion and jarring vistas of post-atomic landscapes. Unfortunately, Emperor needs more good ol’-fashioned swagger.

Now Bell can break out of the genre. She's served her time.

This is just one nutso, painfully unfunny family flick.

This old-fashioned sword-and-sandal drama has all the bread and circuses we've come to know from the movies. It flirts with interesting story choices, but ultimately, all roads lead to boredom.

The Canyons has more in common with Schrader’s opulent immoral tableaux “The Comfort of Strangers,” “Auto Focus” and “The Walker” than with his other work (including the script for “Taxi Driver”). It’s weaker than those, though, and less biting.

Marshall shows off the breathtaking landscape, but with interiors, he populates the ale houses and encampments with cliches - like dueling female warriors, one a mute and the other a white-haired vixen.

Director Juan Feldman trusts his actors to charm us, which they do — up to a point. But there’s only so much that can be wrung out of this spinster-meets-exotic stud, “Summertime”-lite affair.

Though much of the film's power is tamped down by the passive storytelling style, Dillane's performance as the adult Jakob is compelling, and Ayelet Zurer is beguiling as Jakob's late-in-life soul mate.

Hopped up like a Bugs Bunny cartoon on mescaline and as chatty and uppity as a 5-year-old, Burn After Reading could be seen as the Coen brothers' need to let loose after the tightly wound "No Country for Old Men."

Smith ("American Movie") sees the poetry in everyday people, and lets his rambling story find its own rhythm.

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

not a good comedy. But there's no airbrushing out the funny surrounding its star.

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.

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

Gugino is having a ball, but every scene feels like an oh-so-arch one-act.

This stately chiller owes a lot to 1960s British flicks like "The Innocents" and "The Haunting," but unfortunately heads towards cliches with every step.

This rambling, unfocused, shuffling documentary paints the famous standup in broad strokes, only occasionally providing worthy examples of how Winters inspired generations.

It put-puts along like a moped in busy traffic, content to amble around but not go anywhere.

Feels stagy and anti-visceral.

When "Pineapple" goes from ganja to genre, it sours.

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.

Unfortunately, there’s a more potent power present here: dullness.

The big problem here is that dark sci-fi satire works best when it aims for several targets. Repo Men aims at corporate greed, which is good, but doesn’t fill in the details.

Never achieves the David Lean style of epic it aims for - exterior vistas and interior dramas - but it has two charismatic performances, beautiful Chinese locations and an admirable lack of sentimentality.

Overshoots the mark by spinning its implausible, hyperviolent tale around too tight a family circle.

If The Conjuring were less of a con job, horror fans would not feel equally as trapped.

Maddeningly mundane, this Romanian drama aims for an antiseptic look at random violence and, unfortunately, achieves it.

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

The 6- to 10-year-old audience this movie is aimed at deserved better.

Actors are left with too much time to play emotional symphonies, while inevitably having to hit too many required notes.

Don't expect to taste anything surprising.

Predators tries to spice up the hunt-or-be-hunted thesis, but from the get-go, director Nimrod Antal's movie has nowhere to run.

While its tone and humanity offset the futility of each side's need for one crucial hill, much of this intense, honorable film is too drawn-out.

Cenac is witty and Heggins has a wary stillness, but the movie itself seems too shy to let them really engage each other.

Proudly matter-of-fact but, sadly, far from gripping.

Franco himself is ponderous playing Williams, which tends to overwhelm everything. A cool concept, and A for effort.

There’s no fleeing the clunkiness in No Escape.

Its young heroine is proud to be herself; there's just not much for her to do beyond that.

Apparently, it takes a village - or the collection of villages known as Los Angeles - to go nowhere slowly.

About the kinds of showbiz hangers-on seen in the background of a Scorsese movie, and it feels like those guys decided they were the real stars.

A high-concept goof that’s hard-pressed to surmount its twee preposterousness.

Westby's nervy story is like "Desperately Seeking Susan" played straight. Let's hope O'Grady's next film meets this one's potential.

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

There are times when a Kilmer performance is like watching a clock move: well-timed and oddly compelling, even though it's totally predictable. That's the case with Felon, which doesn't belong to Kilmer but which he steals anyhow.

Duchovny tamps down his sardonic style to play a quiet guy, but the result is blandness. Timothy Hutton gives a solid turn as a standup businessman. In all, director Anthony Fabian isn’t sure how to build a nontreacly movie out of an inspiring true-life story.

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

Every generation gets a "Big Chill," and this tired but well-meaning indie contains many clichés of the "pals-pondering-life" movies that came before.

Fanning's watcher is watchable, yet the kid-actress extraordinaire is so polished it kind of makes your head explode.

Hector wants to connect to our inner child, but it feels more like a long story from a good-hearted but dull grandparent.

The final fate of Adolf ­Eichmann is certainly a compelling subject. But its dramatic impact is severely diminished here by stilted filmmaking and wooden performances.

Yen, who also choreographed the fights, is a natural hero, and the large canvas and pseudo-superhero tactics work for a bit, but then the action gets sidetracked in place of myth-building.

His humor works best when it's throw-away, but "Zohan" throws everything up to get a yuck. It's a shock to see how many "yuck!" moments Sandler settles for.

Calvary is like a philosophical Agatha Christie mystery. That’s certainly not the worst thing to be. But it’s also the film’s undoing, because the reliance on specific genre cliches undermines the movie’s more serious intentions.

This is an odd little directorial debut from Matthew Lillard - the onetime Shaggy from "Scooby-Doo," now a solid character actor thanks to "The Descendants" and "Trouble with the Curve" - but it has its rewards.