Marc Mohan

The star's innate vulnerability (and his ease with Dom's colorful but expansive vocabulary) makes the character more sympathetic than he has any right to be. And that, in turn, makes Shepard's film more entertaining than the Guy Ritchie ripoff it initially resembles.

When the fly trapped in the spider's web is as clueless and selfish as the sap played by Mark Webber in 13 Sins, it's hard to muster much sympathy.

The Missing Picture feels akin to last year's great documentary, "The Act of Killing."

The scenes between Gainsbourg and Skarsgard are fewer and less engaging than in the first volume, and the dichotomy between them is simpler and more obvious. And that doesn't even include an ending that is as impulsive and deranged as anything Joe comes up with during all of her taboo-breaking adventures.

There's nothing earth-shaking here, but a chance to see one of cinema's great movie stars in a tailor-made role that pleasantly subverts her icy image is always welcome.

Highly entertaining chronicle of a dream unfilmed.

Joe works better as a study of character and environment than as the thriller it tries to become in its final act.

As a hypothetical, all-access documentary about the kookiest day in draft history, it's oddly satisfying, maybe because watching the actual, bloated spectacle (scheduled this year for May 8) is so often underwhelming.

Goodbye World will remind you more of "Gilligan's Island" than "Lost."

Just as austere and demanding as you'd expect a black-and-white film about a Polish nun to be. Don't let that scare you, though.

In spite of its familiar outlines, director Rob Meyer's first feature benefits from an authentic script and performances.

A crowd-pleasing import that would leave only the most steadfast curmudgeon unmoved.

In a movie that strives to offend with every spat profanity and cruel insult, the most shocking thing about Bad Words is that it expects us to care about its main character at all.

Blood Ties not only convincingly recreates its era, it seems like it could have been made then.

Once the story proper begins, it too feels slightly out of time.

The Grand Budapest Hotel shows Anderson engaging with the world outside his meticulously composed frames like never before.

Sobol, directing his second feature, should have been able to prod this story to life, especially considering the cast he was provided. But everything proceeds in such an orderly fashion, right through the ostensibly 'twist' ending, that maintaining interest is a serious challenge.

If the behavior of the characters had been more recognizably human in its venality, and the film's perspective more ruthless, this custom-made compound might have worked.

With more discipline and a keener sense of family dysfunction, these ingredients could have gelled into something impressive. As it is, Awful Nice is closer to the former than the latter.

While In Bloom offers an authentic slice of life from a particular time and place, it never gets close enough to its characters, physically or emotionally, to really hit home.

Chow's specialty is over-the-top slapstick action in the Hong Kong style, and the new film doesn't disappoint on either count.

From the evidence presented here, this film's three screenwriters have not only never taken a commercial flight, they've never met any actual human beings. The details of air travel and human behavior are equally foreign to the film.

If Like Father, Like Son had set up a genuine conflict here, this could have been a fascinating, even gut-wrenching, melodrama. Instead, writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda stacks the deck by making Ryota such a highfalutin jerk and Yudai such an exemplar of cozy, loving family life.

Despite the fact that its pace turns somnolent at times, and some of its themes feel somewhat clichéd nearly a half-century on, this revival offers a fantastic entry-point opportunity to one of cinema's singular figures.

A volatile film. But it's not a specifically political one. With only superficial alteration, it could be set in Cold War Berlin, or colonial Boston, or any time and place where the dynamics of power conspire to create an atmosphere of paranoia and mistrust.

The only thing Stratton, a former television actor making his first feature, has going for him is the casting of Jessica Lange.

The result is both a captivating history lesson and a tense intellectual thriller that dares to ask big questions about creativity and technology.

Overall, The Pretty One suffers from excessive, unfocused quirk and a predictable sitcom resolution.