Mark Jenkins

Blair Witch runs only eight minutes past the original, yet it feels about a half-hour longer. The new toys — especially the drone — allow for fresh situations, and there’s more blood and supernatural affliction than before. Mostly, though, the filmmakers just repeat familiar moves and expand established locations

Murphy is fine as the title character, although his performance consists mostly of suppressing all of his usual shtick. He certainly doesn’t endow Mr. Church with any unexpected depths. But then neither does the script.

Director John H. Lee isn’t big on John Le Carré-style intrigue and introspection. (The dialogue comes in only two flavors: blustering and sentimental.) He’s better at the shootouts and chase scenes, which are loud, lively and well-choreographed, if sometimes outlandish.

More mood piece than drama, Equals ultimately benefits from the scarcity of exposition, because the story’s details make little sense.

Although it boasts three crackerjack action sequences, Cold War 2 won’t wow Hong Kong cinema buffs who crave nonstop mayhem. This clever drama features more bureaucratic wrangling than criminal scuffles.

Amusing and even edifying, although it is also unlikely to make converts out of those who just don’t get Zappa’s pastiche of juvenile parody and sophisticated songwriting, derived from rock, jazz and 20th-century experimental music.

In the movie’s first hour, all the blood is medical. Then the director stages a big shootout, mostly in slo-mo, that’s more clunky than epic. Before that misstep, though, Three is singularly entertaining.

In the Chinese martial-arts film The Final Master, the fighting is more lucid than the plot. That may be characteristic of the genre, yet this smart, stylish movie diverges from the expected in many ways, most of them enjoyable.

In giving equal weight to all subjects, “Older” flirts with triviality.... But Fegan punctuates some commonplace observations with more peppery ones.

The movie is carried by sweeping widescreen images, dynamic camera movements, impressive special effects and a color scheme that contrasts icy blues against fiery reds.

The filmmakers keep trying to make Will appear paranoid, but he’s not fooled for long — and most viewers won’t be, either.

The thing that really doesn’t translate is the movie’s melodramatic sensibility. What New York New York presents as profound tragedy may strike non-Chinese viewers as simple bad timing.

Standing Tall is indeed tough going, yet it’s illuminating and ultimately even a bit hopeful.

Although its final act is brutal, this Chinese crime drama also has elements of farce and romance.

Stretched across nearly two hours, it tells a story that would have been adequately laid out in a 30-second television spot.

Ip Man 3 credibly conjures the period with soundstage sets, rock-and-roll oldies and slicked-back hair. But director Winston Yip shows less concern for authenticity in Ip’s antagonists.

The movie is often poignant but leavened with humor.

Hitchcock/Truffaut would be a stronger film had it spent more time with its title figures and less with the contemporary directors.

Although Joplin’s brief life was eventful, its contradictions would stymie a tidy biopic.

Despite numerous missteps and contrivances, Olvidados succeeds as an indictment of Operation Condor’s horrors.

The inspirational docudrama nicely evokes the havoc of the initial cave-in, but spends too much time above ground to convey the existential horror of the almost-buried men.

This mesmerizingly beautiful drama ponders themes of duty, patience, isolation and compassion.

In My Father’s House offers lots of interesting raw material, but it could use a disinterested observer’s remix.

Douglas Tirola’s documentary is brisk and entertaining, if not especially thoughtful.

Shanghai is an exercise in retro glamour, alluring decadence and tough-guy posing, all of which it delivers in sufficient quantities.

A Brilliant Young Mind is less stuffy than the usual cinematic ode to British smarts and schooling. But that still can’t save this tale of eccentric genius from being profoundly conventional.

Annaud and his crew, including wolf trainer Andrew Simpson, nicely illustrate the animals’ cunning and coordination.... The human drama is more perfunctory.

Best of Enemies exists mainly as an occasion to replay the footage of Vidal’s smug taunt and Buckley’s seething response. It’s great television, but it has been available on YouTube for some time now.

Like “The Intouchables,” Samba is loosely plotted and is at least 20 minutes too long. It seems ready to end half a dozen times before it finally does, with ironic payoffs for Samba and Alice that are too glib to be satisfying.

Rebels of the Neon God rarely cracks a smile, but it’s as droll as it is disaffected.

It’s just a question of what route Angie and Marco will take to happiness. Yet their unsurprising journey is lively and entertaining, thanks in equal measure to the movie’s star and its director.

In the wake of numerous documentaries and a big-budget film, writer-director Clare Lewins can find little fresh material.

There’s a fundamental problem here. The movie relies on the instinctual human fear of death, but its message is that dying is a promotion.

Snow Zou’s directorial debut does have a few noteworthy attributes: attractive stars, sun-dappled cinematography and an audacious payoff.

“Thunder” doesn’t boast a distinctive look or a cast of famous voices. But its characters are engaging and its action sequences exhilarating.

As Above, So Below is inherently absurd, but it would be somewhat less so had it fully committed to just one of its ridiculous premises.

In its second half, “Kundo” becomes robust and exhilarating. The filmmakers stage cast-of-dozens battle scenes and one-on-one showdowns with equal brio.

First-time director Trish Sie, a music-video veteran, is more interested in spectacle than character, as she demonstrates even when nobody’s dancing.

If the movie’s universal themes don’t impress, its specific details do.

Perhaps seeking to retain something of the book’s rhythm, Knight and Hallstrom let a very simple story meander for two hours and include episodes that serve no dramatic purpose.

At every turn, the movie is less moving than the real-life events that inspired it.

The Fluffy Movie’s principal weakness is that it’s not much of a movie. There’s no particular reason to watch this in a theater rather than on television.

After evoking only warm smiles in its first half, Le Chef ultimately veers into farce.

Sensitive performances by the four main players suit the tone, which is naturalistic and even earthy — most of the characters are shown going to the bathroom — yet ultimately poignant.

Like most of Rohmer’s movies, A Summer’s Tale is comic, humane and much more complicated than it seems at first. The fresh-faced actors, realistic dialogue and naturalistic performances suggest a casual approach, but as the story progresses, the filmmaker’s control is increasingly evident.

America is less successful as a debate, since it isn’t one. D’Souza controls the conversation, and thus goes unchallenged when he tries to make real-world points with make-believe scenarios.

Whether it’s being sexy, jokey or homicidal, Stage Fright doesn’t deliver the goods with sufficient spirit. It lacks the sparkle to be a truly killer show.

Its cinematic flair nearly overcomes the awkward story.

Intriguingly, Jinn makes a plea for understanding and cooperation between Muslims, Jews and Christians. Disappointingly, writer-director Ajmal Zaheer Ahmad does all too good a job burying that message within a blustering supernatural thriller.

The brawling itself is every bit as inventive and exhilarating this time around... The script and acting, however, prove less successful.

As is typical of the genre, the plot gets sillier as it unfolds, while the violence gets gnarlier.

Shot in New Mexico on a limited budget, Boys of Abu Ghraib is a credible depiction of the tedium, frustration and humiliation of wartime service. (Jack gets coated in human excrement not once but twice.) Naturalistic scenes of boxing, bantering and masturbation, set to a rap and hard-rock score, emphasize that these boys are young American everymen.

The French Minister boasts robust pacing, screwball-comedy banter and an exuberant central performance. For most American viewers, though, the movie could use footnotes to go with its subtitles.

Director Neil Burger, whose last divergent character was the smart-drugged protagonist of Limitless, allocates more than enough of this overlong movie to details of life and society in future-Chicagoland. But he fails to make any aspect of the premise persuasive.

Although Boniadi makes Shirin nearly as likable as she’s supposed to be, writer-director Ramin Niami’s movie is crudely contrived and sloppily edited.

If you're only going to see one film about the Battle of Stalingrad — and there are many — Stalingrad would be the wrong choice. Russian director Fedor Bondarchuk's treatment of the World War II turning point is shallow and contrived, if sometimes impressively staged.

If the movie fails to conjure soiled 19th-century Paris, that's not primarily because it was shot in Hungary and Serbia. More problematic are the English-language dialogue and actors who speak in a variety of accents and perform in a range of styles.

And if the narrative does drag in places, Amalric and Del Toro could hardly be better; the contrast between their styles fits ideally the characters of excitable analyst and impassive patient.

The movie wavers in tone, occasionally lurching into supernatural fantasy, and withholds information in a manner that’s more annoying than tantalizing.

If Nenette as a character is more a narrative convenience than a depiction of an actual condition, her permanent childhood does provide the 63-year-old Balasko with an exuberant, unpredictable role. That she continues to make work for herself as both an actress and a director is a good thing, but it would be better if she found a more ambitious writer.

The Attorney can be melodramatic, and first-time feature director Yang Woo-seok is not yet a singular filmmaker. But the movie is carried by its rousing pro- democracy message and a lively performance from the versatile leading man.

That the same performers keep returning in different roles, playing Peruvian and Japanese flyers as well as American ones, only adds to the sense of man as machine. Everything, and everyone, must run like clockwork. Yet no apparatus is foolproof.

Kore-eda is himself a father now, which may explain why his work has gotten sunnier.

Yes, The Rocket is a sports movie, with an outcome that's easily foreseen. The cultural specifics of this Laos-set tale, however, are far less predictable.

As Arbor, nonprofessional actor Chapman gives one of the fiercest performances of this kind since Martin Compston's turn as a different sort of teenage entrepreneur in Loach's 2002 film "Sweet Sixteen." He's riveting, even in his final moment of calm.

Over the nine months the movie chronicles, about half the refugees leave the school building. Many return to the Fukushima area, but none to Futaba, which is still radioactive and officially off-limits.

Cooper does slow the action and set it in the least glamorous of circumstances, which drains the pleasure from the thriller conventions. But just because Out of the Furnace isn't much fun doesn't make it profound.

The film was shot entirely in South Africa, and revels in golden light on dry yellow grasslands. But it's still a very British movie, a respectful view from a suitable distance.

Like "Eve's Bayou," her best-known movie, Kasi Lemmons' Black Nativity presents a child's view of a troubled family. The latter film is sweeter and slenderer, but that's only to be expected.

Set to Jeremy Turner's spare and mournful score, Narco Cultura is ultimately more pensive than lurid.

German history and culture are among Sokurov's concerns in this visually compelling, intellectually scattershot movie.

Because it serves up Armageddon with a side order of teen romance, How I Live Now is not always credible. But as a portrait of a surly 16-year-old whose internal crisis is overtaken by an external one, the movie is persuasive.

Basically the anti-"Kill Bill." Both movies are quilted together from their auteurs' favorite Asian action flicks, but where Tarantino's was overheated, Reeves' is elegantly iced.

The director recut the movie several times as events overtook it. She may yet do so again — although if more major changes occur, they could merit beginning another documentary. As The Square makes clear, Noujaim would not hesitate to rush back into the fray.

As The Fifth Estate excitedly illustrates, in the Internet age no one can ever really have the last word.

Rickman is too theatrical, and too British, to vanish entirely into the person of Hilly Kristal. But he's entertaining to watch, and ultimately one of the more persuasive actors in a movie that suffers from as many odd casting decisions as Lee Daniels' The Butler.

A Touch of Sin is the most dramatic and even lurid of writer-director Jia Zhangke's movies. The film-festival star hasn't quite become a Chinese Tarantino, however.

Reich has a good sense of humor, as is virtually required of an adult who's less than 5 feet tall — he has Fairbanks disease, the same condition that accounts for Danny DeVito's stature — so he's pretty much guaranteed a laugh when he hops to his feet and asks if he looks like an advocate of "big government."

Only the genre's most studious followers will be able to watch Muscle Shoals without being regularly astonished: Even if it sometimes gets lost in its byways, Greg "Freddy" Camalier's documentary tells an extraordinary story.

Zaytoun is different: This time, the director allows his characters to cross the frontier. That makes for a story that's sweeter, but also less convincing.

Wadjda offers an interesting contrast to films made in Iran. Where the latter country has a long cinematic tradition, Mansour's is the first feature shot entirely in Saudi Arabia.

While Populaire would still have suffered from being overlong and overfamiliar, a smoother leading man could have done much to boost the intended Cary Grant vibe.

A waka is a traditional Japanese style of poetry, and this documentary does take a lyrical approach. Although barely an hour long, Tokyo Waka leaves room for offhand observations and humorous asides.

Aside from the giggles induced by the romance-novel bits, the movie's principal hazard is exhaustion. There are too many characters, and too many of them spend too much time morphing into something else. Five more like this? That would be demonic.

Many of the White House scenes are jarringly motley, as Whitaker maintains Gaines' dignity against a series of performances that range from bland (James Marsden's JFK) to cartoonish (Liev Schreiber's LBJ). It comes as a relief when Daniels reduces Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford to TV clips — though that strategy makes the film even more of a stylistic jumble.

So the principal point of controversy involved here is not Jobs himself, but Ashton Kutcher, who plays him. The actor's approach is to ape Jobs' speech and movements, which he does quite well. Whether mimicry qualifies as characterization is a question for Jobs' viewers to answer for themselves.

A 90-minute biography can't include everything, of course. But Lovelace comes on like an inquiry into the '70s zeitgeist, only to retreat into melodrama. Ultimately, the movie relies as heavily as any porn feature on its intrepid female lead. Rather than exploiting Seyfried, however, Lovelace just sort of wastes her.

While Europa Report recalls such small-ensemble stuck-in-space flicks as "Moon" and "Sunshine," it's basically "The Blair Witch Project" relocated to the vicinity of Jupiter.

Hypermacho but tongue-in-cheek, the first 20 minutes of 2 Guns are enormous fun.

Evil cannot triumph in a movie made in China, but Drug War's ultimate scene nonetheless manages to astonish, revealing both Choi's character and the nature of mainland justice. Rather than dodging the harshness of Chinese authority, To depicts it implacably. He does exactly what the censors want, and yet subverts their worldview.

This movie, like all of Sandler's, insists on its star's likability.

Big Star was essentially Chris Bell's band, and emotionally, Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me is Bell's movie. Joining rock's dead-at-27 club via a 1978 car crash, he left behind a fine, then-unreleased album and two siblings who tell his story movingly. As they recount his final years, the sadness in Bell's songs comes to seem eerily prescient.

Winterbottom's 2004 film "9 Songs" is the most sexually explicit picture ever to get general release in Britain. Oddly, given its subject matter, The Look of Love turns out to be much tamer; as Raymond's shows and magazines become raunchier, the director sidesteps or actively censors the steamiest material.

Those who don't savor Cohen's leisurely rhythms will probably not respond to Museum Hours, and even the movie's admirers will admit that it could be a little tighter. One scene that might be trimmed is the one where museum-goers pose, naked as the people on the canvases around them. The interlude certainly isn't dull, but it is a little brazen for a film that encourages its viewers to find the beauty in more commonplace sights.

One thing Doueiri didn't get from Tarantino is smirky attitude; The Attack is sad and resigned, but also tender.

The documentary's most memorable vignette is suitably unnerving: a visit to northern China, where the threatened disappearance of bees has already come to pass, leaving workers to pollinate fruit trees ... by hand.

The result is complex yet lighthearted, as diverting as it is meditative. Resnais uses contrapuntal editing — one of his trademarks — as well as artificial settings, special effects, split screens, cinematic references and anachronistic devices to keep viewers tipsily off-balance.

A disastrous father-son endeavor about a calamitous father-son expedition, After Earth doesn't play to the strengths of any of its major participants.