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.

The Lifeguard is one of those deceptive movies that, to its credit, winds up being about more than just an easy-to-describe tagline. In this case, that line would be: “Woman goes back to hometown, sleeps with high school boy.”

What Getaway needed most is enough juice to get to the finish line, narratively speaking. Because while jumping into the car is great, the fun dies fast if there’s nowhere to go.

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

You’ll never buy an inexpensive T-shirt without feeling guilty again. At least not after seeing Nathaniel Thomas McGill and Vincent Vittorio’s thorough documentary, which explains something you already know — American manufacturing is dying.

There’s social commentary in all of this, but it takes a back seat to a surprisingly compelling narrative of the two combating teams.

The big twist to Closed Circuit is stated in the film’s TV ads, so even the element of surprise is lost. There may have been the making of a juicy, episodes-long BBC series here, but as it is, there’s barely any juice at all.

What’s more depressing: that John Cusack chose the junky, un-exciting serial killer drama The Frozen Ground as his latest step away from John Cusack-y roles, or that Nicolas Cage chose to, at long last, be as un-Cage-like as possible?

Short Term 12 wraps up with one of the most touchingly memorable last moments of any film this year. Despite a title that’s hard to recall, this brief but resonant movie sticks with you.

Wong’s visual grandeur is, as ever, all-encompassing.

Combining the dysfunctional family reunion and the home invasion thriller, You’re Next tries, somewhat valiantly, to add new twists to the usual bloody horror-flick shenanigans. But aside from a few fresh chords, it’s same-old, same-old.

Drinking Buddies is full of relatable dilemmas, guileless moments of kindness and character-based humor.

This full, footage-rich documentary shows respect for the social, legal, political, religious and pugilistic battles of the former Cassius Clay.

The missed opportunities in Austenland are more numerous than dowry-less sourpusses at a ball in a Jane Austen novel.

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.

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.

This contemplative drama draws strength from day-to-day ordinariness and a terrific lead performance from Paul Eenhoorn, yet sadly falls short.

Entertaining and smart, with a great, career 2.0 performance from Ashton Kutcher.

The shadow of Terrence Malick falls hard across this Texas crime drama, a beautiful-looking prose poem that starts strong but winds up with nowhere to go.

A singularly full-hearted and moving film.

The meta-satire hits you over the head until not just your Spidey sense is tingling.

Paranoia’s twitchiness is like an actual twitch: it’s contrived and clunky, and you forget it in an instant.

Farahani — seen in “Body of Lies” and “Chicken With Plums” — is equally vibrant in a performance, and a film, that dares us to listen.

It’s hard to imagine the lives behind the voices that are part of the movies. But In a World ..., the debut feature from actress-turned-writer-director Lake Bell, not only gives the people who do movie voice-overs a closeup, it savvily and wittily uses what we hear as a metaphor for what we are.

Zipper captures the erasing of one of New York’s most unique stamps by cartoon businesspeople with dollar signs for eyeballs.

The film winds up as a chronicle of uneasy forgiveness.

While “Lovelace” falters a bit, it remains a memorable, unflinching indictment.

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.

The “Millers” script — it took four writers to cobble together something that seems so slight — hits too many obvious notes between the moments when Aniston can strut her stuff.

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.

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.

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

The oldsters are feisty — a gun-totin’ granny is played by Pussy Galore herself, “Goldfinger’s” Honor Blackman — but the shtick’s as flat as old ale. It is bookended, though, by two seriously great songs.

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

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.

The focus in James Ponsoldt’s affecting, intelligent drama is a pair of teenagers, and in them is so much complexity and heart that this casually paced gem feels rich in scope. They’re two of the most carefully created figures on screen this year, and yet their normalness takes us by surprise.

Pure charisma is sometimes the best special effect. That’s what Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg bring to 2 Guns, and after a season full of superhero duds, they deliver a crucial dose of cool.

Everyone thinks sex is easy to do, but that doesn’t mean they’re good at it. The To Do List is exactly that type of movie, one that thinks a sex-obsessed version of a John Hughes comedy by its very nature is hilarious. It’s not, but there are still some things to like here.

The way she (Blanchette) anchors this superb dramedy is a thing of beauty.

Good thing the Aussie star has the role down to a science, since the rest of The Wolverine is a howler.

It's nothing special. Which sort of makes it a loser all the way 'round. Expect a sad afterlife for it on cable.

Bening and Dillon are equally misused, and the rest of the cast is frankly just annoying. Like Imogene’s early promise, Girl Most Likely is likely to be forgotten quickly. The sooner the better.

An extraordinary, must-see examination of what humans do to killer whales so that these amazing creatures can become one more entertainment.

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

The always beguiling Radha Mitchell can’t save this stunted procedural-horror combo.

Whether one thinks Only God Forgives is laughably awful — like, for instance, “Showgirls,” “The Color of Night” or “Battlefield: Earth” — or just plain terrible awful depends, appropriately, on how much you’re willing to forgive it.

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

It’s never laugh-out-loud funny or inside-track smart, but in a summer full of bombastic failures, a lack of pretense is enough.

Families who have already raced to “Monsters University” and “Despicable Me 2” will find Turbo an acceptable third-place finisher. A sort-of escargot-meets-“Cars” adventure, it has some sharp vocal turns and remains fun even when its inventiveness runs out of gas.

One of the most extraordinary films you’ll see this year.

Travolta, who was more believable as a middle-aged housewife in “Hairspray” than he is as a former Serbian commando, has the accent down pat. But his Boris-and-Natasha-style syntax seems to represent Killing Season best. Just imagine that voice saying: Dees ees very seelly movie. Catch on cable TV, please.

This sequel to last year’s surprise buzz-maker takes the same appreciative approach to scare-flick tradition: Take hipsters, mix into classic genre riff, goose until ludicrous; repeat. Not every try is successful, but as with any anthology, if you don’t like one, sit back and wait for the next.

Laudable as its world-building is, the film drags not just in its interminable middle hour, but also during the redundant monster-on-mechawarrior smackdowns.

Director Cathryne Czubek’s well-researched, incredibly lively chronicle of the way guns are marketed to, coveted by, and portrayed with women is a vital glimpse into a cultural phenomenon.

What starts as a creepy, original conceit — mysterious Caesarean-section abductions during hospital stays — devolves quickly into standard talk-to-the-camera, jump-at-the-sounds, found-footage banality.

All those cliched literary trappings come together in Stuck in Love, but the final product feels more like a footnote than a finished work.

This smart-looking but empty adventure — with a hero that looks more Tom Ford than John Ford — suffers from a shambling script, shifting tones and a surplus of villains. Clunky and drawn out, “Ranger” shoots blanks, even with the star power of Johnny Depp behind it.

With his rapid-fire delivery and big heart, Rockwell makes Owen his version of “M*A*S*H”’s Hawkeye Pierce, but the film’s layers of well-observed truths go deeper than that.

Some may still be surprised at this fun, well-informed chronicle of what was happening in the U.S. as lighted floors, boogie shoes and Saturday night fevers were the rage.

Even in shabbily put together dramedies, such as this one, there can be a glimmer of light. Here it’s Christine Lahti’s anguished, nuanced turn as a wife and mother excited to begin a new phase with her husband.

Perhaps afraid that watching a symbol of liberty repeatedly go boom isn’t enough, Emmerich and screenwriter James Vanderbilt add family drama, an attack on Congress, a plane crash and the possible nuking of the Middle East. What isn’t tonally jarring ends up shatteringly inept.

This poor man’s Norman Bates, though, doesn’t make us wonder what makes him tick; he makes us want to shut our eyes.

A gripping, personal examination of a seemingly unresolvable conflict.

A fascinating, alternate-universe look at the dawn of the music-sharing phenom — once a cause of concern in the industry, yet now a footnote to our all-digital music marketplace.

It is no summer thriller. It’s an anemic actioner that fosters excitement like dead limbs as it lumbers toward a conclusion.

Fans of Dario Argento and Mario Bava will appreciate the references. Even for newcomers, there are minor chords to enjoy. If only there were less screaming.

The crowd that likes these things will certainly be psyched. Everyone else, not so much.

Narratively static and morally banal. That may be par for the course, however, when half the movie is spent watching shallow kids try on other people’s clothes.

The serious-minded result has many super-cool moments. But when it gets clunky, it’s super-meh.

Who let an unfunny, irritatingly acted two-hour commercial for Google onto multiplex screens?

Weixler is a delight, and director Tom Gammill captures the right level of deadpan to pull this off.

This dark lark is like walking around Times Square looking at the flashy logos and lights and thinking you see the message behind the medium.

Though much of the film is overcooked and overwrought, it’s well-played, and writer-director Kieran Darcy-Smith keeps us guessing, and watching.

As a look at how we got from there to here, “Evocateur” is one for the time capsule.

Gandolfini scoops up another chance to show off the gentleness he left at home during six seasons of “The Sopranos.”

The movie even makes night-vision-goggle scares more irksome, a rare feat.

As the cracklingly cool The East shows, they’re the real deal. It’s not easy to make a thriller where brains and guts are so clearly in cahoots.

Summer 2013 has its first bomb, and sadly, it’s landed right on Will Smith.

Even young would-be botanists will find this charmless animated adventure as exciting as watching grass grow.

Delpy and Hawke, who’ve invested this trilogy with the fine shadings of life lived, do extraordinary things with small moments.

Galifianakis, though, is the key here. Able to smash a scene to smithereens with the simplest of lines, the hirsute comic is as unpredictable as ever, yet takes director Todd Phillips’ bait to up the stakes.

Aiming for lightness but landing with a thud, Frances Ha is a well-meaning blunder. Director Noah Baumbach’s ode to Brooklyn twentysomething life is a flibbertigibbet fable that, like a self-absorbed flirt you meet at a party, grates on the nerves despite being easy on the eyes.

Black Rock is as dingy and dirty as the genre thrillers it appears to want to one-up. All it does, though, is bring everyone down.

The result is a stunningly nervy sequel that vaporizes any worries that Abrams’ terrific 2009 reboot was a fluke.

Luke Evans, whose higher-profile work includes “Clash of the Titans,” this summer’s “Fast & Furious 6” and the next installments of “The Hobbit,” smolders embarrassingly. But he shouldn’t be embarrassed. In the shadows, that could be anyone.

A lot of Aftershock predictably involves screaming or shock cuts, and the movie features a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo from Selena Gomez.

Feiffer sometimes gets snagged on the look-at-me nature of her meta-performance, veering from pathological to pathetic, and not always in the best way.

This would-be satire earns an E for Effort for wanting to be to the advertising world what “Being There” was to television.

The film is a mystery uncovered like a detective story, wrapped in a love letter.

Cathy Moriarty and other Scorsese alums pop up, but these mean streets feel too derivative to thrill.

“Um” winds up as empty as its mean streets are phony.

As Richard Kuklinski, the Garden State guy who sleepwalks into an infamously deadly life he was born for, Shannon hits a whole other level.

It sharply fuses the humor and heart of the earlier films with a satisfyingly heavy-metal strength — and a darkness that’s more than earned.

Wahlberg and Johnson are the saving graces of an in-your-face movie.

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.

As a wry, knowing narrator guides us in and out of their symphonic affair, there’s no doubt the trip is worth it.

This terrific film certainly contains the spark of discovery.

The Big Wedding lets them all down with bottom-rung sitcom shtick and an undercurrent of squareness masquerading as absurdity.

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.

Kosinski’s ultimately underwhelming film leads nowhere. As its palpable sense of dread — well-sustained in a gently cascading first hour — gives way to dead ends, this Omega Movie shoots itself in the foot.

Luckily, folks like Snoop and good sports like Sheen and, yes, Lohan, break up the monotony. Until, like an undead beastie, the boredom and dumb jokes come roaring back.

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.

It feels like a high-end perfume ad.

Boseman is watchful, winning and confident, but never saintly. Yet he keeps Robinson’s moral spine aligned with his skill and self-respect, showing how he needed all of those to succeed.

A frisky, feisty heist flick with brains and charisma, the movie may make a few errors, but they’re forgotten in the blink of an eye thanks to all the twists, turns and close shaves.

Sort of “An American Psycho’s European Vacation,” this indie dramatic thriller mixes sex and violence and still winds up dull.

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

The cutesy energy is just too much in this Aussie comedy that’s overly bemused by its quirkiness.

What Room 237 is really about is how movies inspire passion. Which is a great thing, even if it comes out in wack-job ways.

Unfortunately, the rest of writer-director Eran Creevy’s film just shows that the Brits, too, make good-looking but empty thrillers, just like in Hollywood.

The poetry in The Place Beyond the Pines can be elusive, but also easy to get lost in.

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.

The bad news about Admission is that this thin envelope of a comedy checks all the boxes for being a phoned-in, phony, padded rom-com.

Hemsworth has presence, but he also represents this film’s biggest problem: It feels like a bunch of good-looking kids putting on a show.

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

Points for niche audaciousness, but that’s all.

Even with no wood sprites, witches or spells, there’s plenty of magic in this coming-of-age charmer.

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.

Hardworking Oscar winner Harden and beguiling Spanish star Watling do nothing for this haphazard film, which belatedly decides it wants to be a stage satire as the women lark into a ridiculous avant-garde production of “MacBeth.” Bloody awful.

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.

Nothing terribly special here, but perfectly played and a spiritual cousin to such early ’90s indies as “Naked in New York” and “Ed’s Next Move.”

The deliberate pace Mungiu employs in this incredible work is so engrossing and quietly heartbreaking that its philosophical ending may come as a shock.

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

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.

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.

As important and eye-opening a documentary as you’ll see this year, A Place at the Table makes it impossible to think of hunger as merely another symptom of a shredded social safety net.

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.

Owing a debt to Albert Brooks’ early comedies, Red Flag might be too much if it weren’t just right.

Muddled and inert despite the best intentions, this inescapably dull thriller plays like a Middle Eastern take on Liam Neeson’s “Taken.”

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

The result was remarkable, but the story of it, while true to the moment, needed — ironically — much more dynamism.

The movie’s gimmick is having the actors visually superimposed over sets created from actual Civil War photographs. But this collage effect, while striving for truthfulness, comes off like a View-Master version of a tale already told.

All of that ends up making this movie — originally titled “Jeff,” in a telling bit of overpersonalization — feel like a late-night cable-news hack job.

Ultimately, even more than 2007’s “Live Free or Die Hard,” “Good Day” never lets McClane be McClane. Gone is his taunting snark and quick-witted preparedness; instead he seems like a jerk with a thing for guns.

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.

With a bit less grisliness, it could have been a mystery dinner-theater performance.

Australian director Cate Shortland’s straightforward approach to the blinders worn by Hitler Youth creates a disconcerting and eerie film, made even more memorable since it’s seen through the prism of childhood’s end.

The movie respects a viewer’s intelligence, which should also serve as a warning; don’t be lulled into a stupor. Keeping sharp will allow all the fun and menace in this terrific thriller to seep into your head.

Swan is so eager to be a trippy comic lark that it ends up resembling a clown trying to fit through a pea-shooter.

This pseudo-punkster hybrid of "Heathers" and "Thelma & Louise" loses its way almost immediately, veering from wannabe-shocking social indictment to stultifyingly obvious yawner.

Like Stallone, director Walter Hill is also far from his heyday ("The Warriors," "48 HRS.," "Streets of Fire"), but the old-guy camaraderie behind the scenes is evident. Despite the movie being based on a graphic novel, no one adds extra flash here just to appease the kids.

The politician who almost pathologically asked the question "How'm I doin'?" clearly never needed a view outside his own. Which is as New York as it gets.

If you're going to have a ghost in your movie, it might be a good thing to present a viable alternative to that ghost. Mama, however, presents a battle between two not very good options before crumbling like a sheet on a string.

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.

Okay, y'all, the never-ending appeal of the Southern-fried crime caper for filmmakers hungry for flavor is back with The Baytown Outlaws. Only here, the drawling accents, screeching tires and sawed-off blasts that rise again don't amount to much.

It shows that life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. And how, in case we forget, every age can predict the next.

Texas Chainsaw 3D sees itself as over-the-top and knowing, but what we ultimately get is simply eyes without a face.

Krasinki's soft-sell script, lets the movie's ideas get absorbed without grandstanding or pretension. Its issues go down with a smile and common sense, which turns out to be exactly the right formula.

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.

There's a funny movie scratching at the edges of This is 40. Unfortunately, writer-director Judd Apatow sees himself as the John Cassavetes of Comedy, so every time that funny movie starts to emerge, Apatow tramples it with scenes of domestic irritation.

Mood is more important to Not Fade Away than anything, but writer-director David Chase, who turned mood into masterpiece with every season of "The Sopranos," allows nostalgic feeling to be the sole reason for this, his first feature film.

Just when we thought Quentin Tarantino had shown us all the cojones he has, in rides Django Unchained.

Small victories that turn into defeats, long walks to gain little ground, little wounds that get deeper every day - growing old is a war, and movies rarely go there. Michael Haneke's amazing, dignified Amour is the exception.

What finally sticks in the mind about "ZDT" is its precision. What the film says about getting information from terrorism suspects in an era of high-tech surveillance depends on your point of view. What is unquestionable is how powerful its full scope is.

Crucial viewing for realists and alarmists both.

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

Director Travis Fine gives his period details flourish and lets Cumming and Dillahunt create well-rounded characters, but Any Day Now winds up treacly.

Yelling is a prosaic look at a hard life. Like Sweetness, the movie finds its way by instinct.

Some of Hyde Park on Hudson feels like lost scenes from "The King's Speech," the 2010 Oscar-winner about King George. It doesn't help that "Hyde's" own rhythms, appealing as they are, are often soporific.

Colorful folks and cool stunts abound, but casual viewers may still utter a big "Why?"

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.

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.

This well-intentioned but clumsy attempt to get into the head of one of the 20th century's most famous women remains full of hot air.

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.

This crisp, involving South African drama comes at you in waves, changing course and tone expertly.

A fascinating and informative, if sometimes stodgy, documentary about the most secret wing of Israel's anti-espionage unit.

While McNairy and Mendelsohn are solid but almost too showy, Liotta, Jenkins, Sam Shepard and a chewy supporting cast beautifully fill in the blanks. Killing Them Softly adds each of its characters to a punchy, prosaic tale that believes in America, one way or another.

Though Rust and Bone aims for a blasé attitude toward disabled drama - in a far more artificial way than another French film, "The Intouchables," did earlier this year - it's underwritten characters and hoary approach plunk it into mediocrity. As wheelchair-bound Stephanie practices her whale-training motions to Katy Perry's "Firework," it's eye-rollingly obvious.

Dour animated adventure that aspires to holiday joy, but is as enjoyable as a sock full of coal.

Though the film's setup trudges and its closing is too pat, that hour or so on the raft is something special, and few would dive into the story's soul as Lee does.