Lisa Schwarzbaum

Writer-director Jeff Nichols builds his elegantly shot, weather-sensitive horror story in waves of tension that crest as if pulled by tempests.

The result is a duet of outstanding loveliness between Kendrick and Gordon-Levitt, also an actor of nuanced control.

British filmmaker Andrew Haigh's background in editing (from Gladiator to Mister Lonely) is evident in the casual beauty of moments that only appear "found," giving Weekend an engrossing documentary feel.

Killing looks ridiculously easy in this dispensable exploitation picture, directed for maximum impact of head-cracking pain by ad-trained Irish director Gary McKendry in his first feature.

Annabel and Enoch learn from each other, even as time ticks away and the end draws near. Weeping is invited, but by no means required.

German filmmaker Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) noodles around with form, composition, and sexuality in 3, a playfully pieced-together, beautifully shot, and secretly ridiculous drama about a triangular relationship among blasé Berliners.

The second insurmountable problem is the difference between Parker's performance as a fortysomething banker, wife, and mother musing (in voice-over) at her computer and her previous performance as a single, thirtysomething girl-about-town in "Sex and the City": There is none. I don't know why she does it.

Among Gosling's many star-making qualities is his nuanced mastery, since "The Believer," of a facial expression of infinitely adaptable, imperturbable, sustained calm that can read as chilling or ardent, hard or soft, as the role demands.

Here's a scare-the-crap-out-of-you medical thriller about a viral pandemic that will have the immediate post-screening effect of causing a handwashing stampede.

Here, love and attraction between two teenage girls put them on a collision course with Tehran society in general and one girl's troubled, increasingly religious brother in particular.

I do wish the movie's ending weren't so squishy. It's been changed from the finale that Sundance audiences saw earlier this year and now reeks of focus-group testing.

There's something and nothing for everyone in Conan the Barbarian 3D.

A drippy, uninvolving movie adaptation.

In Final Destination 5, Death makes the point yet again that it will not be cheated. And happily for those of us who enjoy the FD series' grotesquely clever premise beyond reason, unfortunate folks still refuse to pay attention, with inventively dire consequences.

As for the concert itself, it's a generically big, loud, overchoreographed, over-mic'ed, post-Madonna production.

With exemplary use of archival footage, director Asif Kapadia expertly contrasts episodes of adrenaline-rush speed with moments of reflective slow motion to capture the addictive thrill and danger of the sport, as well as the personal values of the humble, spiritual sportsman.

There's nothing nice about 30 Minutes or Less. It's got no redeeming social value. It just ticks away, exploding all notions of where you think it's going to go. It blew me sideways.

This enveloping dream of an epic narrative experiment comes from the great Chilean-born, France-based filmmaker Raúl Ruiz (Time Regained).

As she did in her striking 2005 debut, "Me and You and Everyone We Know," July creates a fluid cinematic universe.

Soon enough it's back to stale jokes about spousal date nights.

The comedic slaps are too limp to leave a mark. Director George Ratliff applied a much clearer eye to "Hell House," his chilling 2001 documentary about a real church.

It is fun, though, 
 to see the younger Hanks play a murderer - it's like seeing Justin Bieber work blue.

The thrilling conclusion to a phenomenal cinematic story 10 years in the telling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 is proof that authentic movie excitement is its own form of magic.

A bouncy, well-built, delightfully nasty tale of resentment, desperation, and amoral revenge that does for employer-employee relations what Danny DeVito and Bette Midler did for the bonds of matrimony in the great 1986 Zucker brothers comedy "Ruthless People."

Following 2009's "Bluebeard," French filmmaker Catherine Breillat continues her unique and psychologically, erotically daring deconstruction of classic fairy tales and the female condition.

It's easy enough to accept the romantic-comedy luck of the two finding each another. It's much tougher, and ultimately useless, to buy everything else about this fairy tale of self-reinvention in a stalled economy.

Dark of the Moon is hardly a fleet production, but here Bay makes his best, most flexible use yet of all the flamboyant bigness at his command: Computer-drawn characters and human actors seem to occupy the same narrative for once.

The result is a portrait that expertly mirrors its subject: Buck is shaped with the same economy, restraint, and unfussiness as the man, to unexpectedly inspiring effect.