Joe Neumaier

The problem with Russell Crowe's new take on the legend is that it has one muddy boot in history and the other in fantasy. The middling result is far from a bull's-eye.

It’s rare when a psychological drama gets us into a character’s head without tricks or a voiceover. This drama from Alex Ross Perry burrows so deep that it’s scary.

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.

And always there’s Wojtowicz himself, who died in 2006. His patter and persona must be seen to be believed. This guy was a piece of work, and so is The Dog.

While the film becomes slightly redundant, the anger and strife its characters cannot overcome is awful, poetic and, frankly, astonishing.

Unfortunately, the fantasy-thriller they're in eventually falls apart, becoming a much sillier, less substantial movie than its lead actors deserve.

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

Part of the problem with "P&F" is that Tiana and Naveen's connection feels superficial.

A snapshot of several New York eras that coincide with the Internet's growing pains, We Live in Public focuses on entrepreneur, party-thrower and dot.com bubble participant Josh Harris.

The film winds up as a chronicle of uneasy forgiveness.

Like its antiheroes, this slacker tragedy has moments of calm and originality that are sadly obliterated by a tendency toward the extreme. Still, in a kind of reverse apocalypse, the movie's toughest stretch is its first two-thirds, a navel-gazing, semi-romantic nothing-a-thon that falls away in time for the movie to emerge from the ashes.

Any movie with food as a motif runs the risk of pouring on the metaphor, and that happens here, too.

Joe and director David Gordon Green find a middle ground between the old, vulnerable Cage and the one that seemed to eat that other guy. Good to have him back.

Without pushing too heavily, Green makes the parallels between Enrique and Michael's situations genuine.

Spottiswoode relays this tragic story with respect and sadness. But Michael Donovan's script is stuffed with clichés, and Dupuis is unable to convey the depth of Dallaire's emotions.

Here, it's all Bardem, and this great actor's careworn face and sensitive presence counts for a lot. He ultimately can't save the soul of Biutiful, but he makes the journey easier.

Saulnier accomplishes something rare here. He has an ability to convey depth of feeling and ominousness without tricks or even musical cues.

Director Tiller Russell sometimes get sidetracked — a dangerous thing in a story that already has a lot of twists, turns and off-ramps. But it’s a story you have to hear, from the guys who lived it and may never live it down.

Pieced together, these behind-the-scenes moments are a thrill for history buffs. From the moon landing to the resignations, this is raw Nixon.

There's just some great imitations of what remains an acquired taste.

Because it's so rooted in real life, the drama Good Kill is even more terrifying than “The Purge,” Ethan Hawke’s horror film from two years ago.

Scenes of Favreau at the grill bantering with Leguizamo and Cannavale could almost sustain an entire movie.

While Lomborg is an engaging though sometimes smug subject, director Ondi Timoner allows a coterie of scientists to spend too much time puncturing Gore than propping up Lomborg - who comes off as charismatic and engaged but, ultimately, merely a contrarian.

Luckily, the cast is comfortable going with the flow. Ribisi is amusingly corrosive, while Jenkins and Rispoli are sweaty, cigar-chomping movie-journalist archetypes.

Any film as politically specific as Miral needs to be addressed on two levels, as a movie and as, from a certain viewpoint, a polemic. If a viewer can separate one from the other - and some may not - there's an intense, novelistic drama here.

Whether it works is a matter of taste, but the fact that Burton's revisit unearths enough fun while feeling like four films in one is testament to the source's seductive bloodline.

Before it devolves into typical American-style action, there’s an intriguing, European-style complexity to Dead Man Down.

Unfortunately, Elysium devolves. It doesn’t address the ramifications of making everyone healthy for eternity, or what it is on Earth they’re making or digging up that fuels whatever economy is left on the space station. For such a well thought-out premise, there’s not a mention of how capitalism works in this futureworld.