Michael Rechtshaffen

It may be by-the-book, but American Wrestler is a story well worth telling.

Martin and Coffa may bear a strong physical resemblance to their real-life counterparts, but their contemporary-sounding line delivery has all the dramatic heft of a Foster’s beer commercial.

Kill Ratio is a laughably inept political thriller that would have been right at home on the USA Network lineup circa 1990.

The penetrating Solitary is a sobering account of life (without parole) inside the Red Onion, a super-maximum security prison ensconced in Virginia’s Appalachians.

While its own roots never go quite as deep as they might, there’s still something goofily endearing about seeing Reitman, armed with that trusty bonsai, traipsing around the country on a healing mission.

In his first feature outing, director Soham Mehta overplays the significance of virtually every aspect of Rajiv Shah’s script, no matter how minor, with painfully slow pans and needlessly lingering establishing shots.

Lopez’s first feature comes across as fragmented and overwrought, with characters and performances that seem to have been egged on by the score’s achingly purposeful piano.

The loneliness of the long-distance chess grandmaster is affectingly conveyed in Magnus.

Veteran director Roger Spottiswoode, whose output has been spotty in recent years, returns to form with a perfectly weighted redemptive story that engages the heart without shying away from the darker aspects of Bowen’s recovery.

Imitating the Bourne capers rather than establishing an identity of its own, “The Take” is a strictly by-the-numbers political thriller that fails to capitalize on Idris Elba’s formidable screen presence.

Like “The Big Chill” and “Peter’s Friends” but without a single character you’d want to spend five minutes with, let alone a weekend, The Drama Club makes for a crassly unpleasant ensemble piece.

Summarizing the plight of the average working actor’s lot in three all-too-familiar words, No Pay, Nudity, is a tenderly observed, bittersweet comedy featuring a beautifully rooted Gabriel Byrne.

Although the beguiling spell begins to wear off before reaching its full two-hour length, the film’s got style for days thanks to Biller’s affection for classic — as well as not-so-classic — cinema.

Appealing equally to the eyes, ears, heart and funny bone, Moana represents contemporary Disney at its finest — a vibrantly rendered adventure that combines state-of-the-art CG animation with traditional storytelling and colorful characters, all enlivened by a terrific voice cast.

Apparition Hill is actually a compelling but unnecessarily long-winded sociological study about a group of adults recruited to watch for signs and wonders in a small village in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Flaming out from the get-go, Trash Fire represents another soggy batch of Southern Gothic horror-comedy from writer-director Richard Bates Jr. that spews out pitch black smoke with little combustible substance.

Rose’s pickles might have a pleasant snap, but there’s none to be found in the tired, limp shtick in Sheldon Cohn and Gary Wolfson’s screenplay, which has been choreographed at a lumbering, drawn-out pace by director Michael Manasseri.

The rehabilitative power of forgiveness is thought-provokingly explored in Ilan Ziv’s An Eye for an Eye.

Chief Zabu may have been buried for the past three decades, but this tiresomely talky would-be satire is no treasure.

Michael Mueller’s character-driven script is about the only thing that feels driven in this otherwise listless vehicle, and “The Beat Beneath My Feet” conveys all the pulse-pounding energy of a funeral procession.

One could say the mechanical direction leeches the energy out of virtually every sequence, but that would imply there was any there to begin with — and, although the young actors seem likable enough, their characters never credibly come to life.

The end result admittedly favors tone over substance, accentuated by Jeff Grace’s playful, mock Morricone score and character turns that affectionately flirt with conventions without giving way to outright parody.

Chockful of hoary archetypes making hokey observations...leading to a truly laughable big-ending reveal, the film, with its wildly uneven performances, underscores the pitfalls inherent in shifting from the written page to the big screen.

This overcooked Thanksgiving turkey succeeds only in managing to take all the fun out of dysfunctional.

The parameters of homeland security are chillingly assessed in Do Not Resist, a troubling documentary examining the escalating militarization of the nation’s police forces.

If you could take the Shrek, Happy Feet and Smurfs movies, toss them in a blender and hit the pulse button a few times, the result would be a pretty reasonable approximation of Trolls, an admittedly vibrant-looking but awfully recognizable animated musical comedy concoction.

Despite the admittedly unique angle, this ambitious drama gets crushed under the considerable weight of its artistic, as well as budgetary, limitations.

[A] misguided hybrid that makes tediously clear from the outset that the conceit just isn’t working.