Joshua Rothkopf

It’s a portrait that’s equal parts shtick and soul — in other words, exactly what "The Love Guru" should have been.

If you go into Maleficent expecting Jolie to be the badass of Sleeping Beauty, you’re going to get burned.

More shakily, Payne’s obvious pathology isn’t probed as deeply as it should be. A jaunty musical score smooths over what might have been a tougher profile about an expert liar, to self included.

The most gratifying thing about the film is feeling Moodysson’s warmth return to him.

A full-bodied and mischievous autobiography in the spirit of Federico Fellini’s "Amarcord," Alejandro Jodorowsky’s return to filmmaking after 28 years of financial frustration explodes with great ideas.

The material isn’t excited or shaped toward any insight — the Mike Leigh of "Naked" did this sort of thing brilliantly — and the arrival of a sluggish investigating journalist (Richard Jenkins), himself a bar fixture and underachiever, doesn’t offer a valid counterpoint.

Closer to a special episode of "Diff’rent Strokes" than to "12 Years a Slave," the movie seems to exist to give its white characters belated moments of conscience.

While Transcendence has tons of money to spend on unpersuasive digital effects and dronelike music, it shows little interest in exploring the potentially tricky benefits of a computer-enhanced intellect; it’s not even in the enjoyable realm of starkly ridiculous Cold War thrillers like "Colossus: The Forbin" Project.

Turturro, writing and directing in a register light-years from his nebbishy turn in "Barton Fink," has a more sensual NYC indie in mind.

Director Samantha Grant scores an interview with Blair himself, whose too-little-too-late admissions (along with his reemergence as a postguilt life coach) might drive your crowd to hisses.

Perfect Sisters, which takes a dark, matricidal turn (inspired by an actual Toronto case), was never going to be a new "Heavenly Creatures." But give credit to director Stan Brooks for allowing his two former child stars some real meat to sink their teenage chops into.

None of this is pushed into comic relief—the filmmaker lets his drama play out with gentleness — and you smile at the many evolutions.

Morris's new subject looks relaxed and comfortable as ever lobbing out the same old evasions. He probably loves the attention from the Oscar-winning director.

This installment delivers a heavy and welcome dose of paranoia, administered between fleetly paced smackdowns.

One would be better off experiencing Woodley via her heartbreaking turn in last year's "The Spectacular Now," a drama that actually has more to say about nightmarish cliques and individuality than any lackadaisical slide into future schlock.

The filmmaker has fallen for some of indiedom’s worst clichés, including our main character’s sad stare out to the ocean, and soft camerawork that’s beginning to sound like a Klaxon: Hug me, hug me, hug me.

Either via clay dolls or fragile flesh, the truth is unmissable—as is Panh’s film itself.

Frank Pavich’s fun documentary captures an unbowed, exuberant Jodorowsky, who recalls his team of “spiritual warriors” with the camaraderie of a battle-scarred veteran.

Bad Words soars in the bits of riotously offensive chitchat between Guy and a young Indian hopeful (Rohan Chand); it wobbles in plot developments involving the effortlessly starchy Allison Janney as the contest’s “queen bee”; and it splats in the I’m-secretly-hurting conclusion.

All the way back to "Donnie Darko," Jake Gyllenhaal has had an inchoate sense of evolution about him, a tricky quality that better actors can’t pull off half as well. So it’s hard to say if splitting the star into two doppelgängers — Adam, a mousy college professor, and Anthony, a rising actor with a healthy ego — is the best dramatic plan.

Make room for the modest but affecting pleasures of veteran actors tearing into the subject of golden-years resignation.

Cry foul, you documentary purists, but narration by Jena Malone and others pulls the gamble off. The film makes its point ingeniously.

Densely plotted by director Yuval Adler and Ali Wakad (the former Israeli, the latter Palestinian), this informant crime drama finds admirable complexity in the folds of its shifting allegiances — even if you’ve seen this dynamic done better in movies like "The Departed."

Brief yet underdeveloped, Interior. Leather Bar. has a faux-documentary vibe about it.

The auteur’s style — dramatic zooms, winking symmetry — is balanced against a newfound political context; this one’s his "To Be or Not to Be."

Particle Fever is that rare, exhilarating science doc that’s neither dumbed down nor drabbed up.

Hollywood does this too; truth be told, Russia’s high-tech whitewash goes down smooth like vodka.

There’s not enough villainy—nor lip-smacking comeuppance—to justify a smiting by ash or falling column. The movie in your head melts ten times better.