Manohla Dargis

Like too many animated films aimed at children, Barnyard embraces stereotypes that generally no longer cut it in adult films, and for good reason.

Mr. Ceylan performs this particular operation with rigorous solemnity, technical virtuosity and precision tools — his lapidary visual style rises to the challenge of the natural environment — yet there’s something missing from the very start, namely the spark of breathed-in life.

It isn’t long into Poor Things that you start to feel as if you were being bullied into admiring a movie that’s so deeply self-satisfied there really isn’t room for the two of you.

Like everything else in this film, Mr. Cage's performance is watchable if never credible because his director never resolves the disconnect between this star's function (to entertain) and that of his character (to repel).

While it flickers with grace and imagination during its initial half, largely because of Jack, it devolves into a dreary, platitudinous therapy movie in its second, largely because of Ma.

Mr. Broomfield maintains a level of cool detachment throughout. That's to the good of the movie, which, though technically exemplary, falters dramatically on occasion, becoming dangerously close to overheated whenever the characters speak for any length.

Close Your Eyes has its virtues, certainly, including some pleasurably loose interludes at the beachfront compound where Miguel lives. These have a delicate, unforced quality that creates pinpricks of light in a movie that, as it struggles to engage meaningfully with the past, sinks into ponderousness.

Mr. Gibney, who enters swinging and keeps on swinging, comes across as less interested in understanding Scientology than in exposing its secrets, which makes for a lively and watchable documentary if not an especially enlightening one.

On viewing, the cuts seem negligible, but what is new and clearly improved is the sound, which now booms with each door slam and gunshot.

A nutty, often enjoyable farrago of craft and cinematic sampling, King Arthur moves fast and loose, and is almost aggressive in its absence of an original idea, in and of itself a Bruckheimer trademark.

The three leads remain watchable, but only the sourness in Jake’s face when he moves into Justine’s house hints at the kind of true and complex emotions that, bromide by bromide, this movie insistently denies.

Without question, the whole thing's absurd -- this is, remember, about a guy stuck in a phone booth -- but for its first 40 minutes or so it's also mildly entertaining, fueled by the nuttiness of the setup and Schumacher's energy.

Chastain reliably holds the screen even if her performance often feels overly studied rather than lived in, never more so than in her scenes with Sarsgaard, whose delicate, quicksilver expressiveness appreciably deepens both the movie and its stakes. You don’t always believe in Sylvia and Saul as a couple, but Sarsgaard makes you want to.

The movie has its diversions, including Scarlett Johansson's bodacious Janet Leigh and Michael Stuhlbarg's wheedling Lew Wasserman. It's fluff. But while its dim fantasies about Hitchcock and the association of genius with psychosis can be written off as silly, they also smack of spiteful jealousy.

There's something overly studied, almost clinical, in how it all pulls together.

Alternately frustrating and rewarding film.

C’mon C’mon is a nice movie about characters who are so nice that I almost feel bad for not being nicely disposed toward them or this movie, even with Joaquin Phoenix as the guy and Gaby Hoffmann as the sister.

Johnson’s own sleight of hand is estimable, even if his effort to add politics into the crowded mix rings hollow. The machine is what matters here, and he has clearly had such a good time engineering it that it’s hard not to feel bad when you don’t laugh along with him.

Mr. Friedkin, a director with a talent for kinetic screen violence, never finds his groove with Killer Joe, which lurches from realism to corn-pone absurdism and exploitation-cinema surrealism.

The director Lee Toland Krieger is good with actors, especially in the expression of a low-key, unforced intimacy.

A misfired, misguided would-be satire.

There's nothing new about this sado-cinema, and nothing much worthy, either.

Djukic has a fine eye and is a talent to look out for, even if here, like Ana-Maria, she chose the wrong girl.

What Michôd never manages to make clear is what we are to make of this version’s nationalism, its glorification of war, its ambivalence toward corrupting power and its selective, finally misguided attempt to brush off Shakespeare.

I liked The Flash well enough while watching it. But thinking and writing about it and everything that has gone down has been dispiriting — real life has a way of insinuating itself into even better-wrought fantasies.

The self-reflexiveness of the entire enterprise only breaks the spell that Slate and Camp work hard to maintain — one which Rossellini effortlessly keeps intact with intelligence, beautifully controlled phrasing and a soft, melodious warmth that feels like a tender caress.

Ms. Bullock, who excels at playing spunky, is as appealing as usual, but the role proves as awkward as those heels.

The title character is one of those difficult women that the movies just can’t quit and rarely prove as interesting as filmmakers seem to think. Anne obviously has issues — psychological, behavioral, familial — but the movie isn’t big on specifics. It’s a pretty, uninvolving blur.