Joe Neumaier

This is the film that fulfills whatever promise Kristen Stewart has shown for more than a decade.

If this is your particular poison, it won’t kill you. But anyone averse to Sparks’ sappy touch may get sick from all the bull.

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.”

What remains rote is how easily the fiend’s victims fall for his tricks. It’s almost as if they’ve seen too many movies like The Barber, and shaved away all common sense.

The atmosphere surrounding them both is enveloping. While the story falls a bit into melodrama, that can’t chop away at the solid drama the stars and director build beautifully.

Noah Baumbach’s sensational satirical drama While We’re Young is, finally, a movie for grownups to run out and see.

Get Hard isn’t edgy enough to be offensive or witty enough to be challenging. It’s just dumb.

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.

The movie is played fast but lacks wit. The script, written by Kristin Gore — daughter of Al, and author of the book on which it’s based — mistakes frantic for funny.

Leave it to Al Pacino to find the good in the mediocre.

There’s a lot left unsaid in director Anja Marquardt’s chilly yet intimate and thought-provoking indie drama. But what should be said loud and clear is that actress Brooke Bloom is riveting. Emanating everyday grace and real depth, she plays a sex surrogate handling several needy and emotionally wounded clients.

Sean Penn’s bad side makes for good action-drama in The Gunman. There’s a grubby, redemptive quality that makes this tough-minded flick feel like the son of “Serpico” and “Salvador.”

Every scene is entwined in clunkiness.

Crisply directed but inescapably pious and, worse, narratively poky.

Branagh, working from a script by Chris Weitz, gives the film emotional heft. James’ performance — never saccharine, often staunchly independent — makes the story’s more regressive elements float away.

Intimate and intellectual, the film — with a title taken from J.D. Salinger — focuses on the type of person you pass on the street, see in a coffee shop or sit next to on the subway who makes you wonder what life he’s led. One full of melody and muse, it turns out.

Often it’s the fighters themselves who best sum up the appeal of “the sweet science.”

Fatigue is all we get from Run All Night.

Sam Worthington and Jim Sturgess are solid as two of the four kidnappers, but Swedish director Daniel Alfredson pushes the caper button too many times. More sly wit would have helped things come to a head.

Unfinished Business squanders almost every opportunity provided by its potentially funny premise. Instead, it becomes yet another blotch on star Vince Vaughn’s résumé.

What the film doesn’t show enough of is how these people got their positions of power. We get much more of the other side, the legitimate scientists, and too much of a magician who pops up to describe cons and double-talk. But he shows how a bunko artist is a bunko artist, whether on a corner or on CNN.

Yes, there are good moments from a team of veteran British actors, but overall, this return visit to the 2012 gray-set rom-com is deadly dull.

The stories are horrifying, but essential to hear. Kirby Dick’s important documentary puts a personal face to the staggering numbers.

What on earth is Salma Hayek doing starring in this exploitative, junky piece of torture trash?

Will Smith may have run through every trick in his bag. In Focus, the one-time fresh prince and former box-office champ looks tired, bored and, even worse, uninspired.

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

This version of the time machine is more powerful — it’s made me go back and hate the original.

The actors are in good form, but McFarland, USA can’t find its footing.