Neil Genzlinger

The Ottoman Lieutenant is an overwrought nurse romance merged with a history lesson, a combination that is hard to take as seriously as the film wants to be taken.

Enjoyable performances keep the tale from becoming too heavy-handed.

A bit more editing to remove some of the airiness would have made for a better film.

The actors do nice work before things derail.

The title character of Rock Dog isn’t likely to end up on anyone’s Top 5 list of animated heroes, but the film does have a thoroughly enjoyable rocker in it. And an appealingly nasty wolf, too.

The vivid recollections of the attack by survivors, including Mr. Hughes, take over the film midway through, and the friendship story line never quite re-establishes itself.

The writer, Joe Johnson, and directors, Damien Macé and Alexis Wajsbrot, have a few surprises, but not enough to make this anything other than a formulaic story of teenagers behaving badly and getting what’s coming to them.

The journey could be a bit more eventful, but the payoff is charming.

This film doesn’t find any fresh ways to make you jump out of your seat. Ms. Lutz is appealing, though, and fans of the franchise will probably be pleased with the elaboration. Too many horror sequels are content merely to recycle what worked the first time.

The movie has a roughly equal number of clumsy moments and sweet ones.

The story may not stay with you, but don’t be surprised if you come away with a strong desire to visit Florence.

You don’t need an animal-rights group’s boycott to give you permission to avoid A Dog’s Purpose. You can skip it just because it’s clumsily manipulative dreck.

The threads may not all be original, but they’re kept nicely distinct. Rather than awkwardly intertwining, they merely brush up against one another.

Mr. Brook and Ms. Wells are in a sense not documenting a controversy at all; they are capturing an endemic, heartbreaking defeatism.

If you prefer to view dying as a natural part of life, a step in a cycle, this film will feel discordant and perhaps counterproductive. But visually it will certainly stick with you, and your children.

The film, by Justin Bare and Matthew Miele, would be better if it spent less time gushing about how great Mr. Benson is and more time confronting some of the questions his approach raises.

Mr. Rains, Ms. Leo and Mr. Franco are all so interesting that you wish they had more to bite into. But the film has a transfixing quality nonetheless.

Getting retro right is harder than it seems.

Sometimes the movie, directed by Josh Gordon and Will Speck, is too obviously just a framework for its stars to deploy goofy schtick, but the overall package is naughty, inappropriate fun.

Ms. Smith does not fit easily into any box, and neither does this thought-provoking film.

The film, directed by Gregg Bishop and released by the Chiller Films horror factory, has a few good special effects, but it’s too noisy and scattershot to be suspenseful.

An assured and thoughtful debut.

Underappreciated occupations deserve better than the cliché-clogged, utterly predictable Life on the Line, a terrible movie about the workers who keep the electrical grid functioning.

The movie sweeps you along with a brisk pace and even dashes of humor.

The film may be one-sided, but if nothing else, it is a reminder that the “coal equals jobs” equation is a serious oversimplification.

The film, directed by Mario Van Peebles, brays the story in broad strokes and clichés as if the horror of it didn’t speak for itself, which it most certainly does.

It’s a smart, understated sex comedy, a description that suggests a certain maturity. You’d never suspect it was the first feature from its director, Robert Schwartzman.

At this point no documentarian can possibly have a fresh take on climate change, right? Wrong. The Anthropologist, a stealthily insightful film by Seth Kramer, Daniel A. Miller and Jeremy Newberger, improbably mixes that topic with a mother-daughter story to produce a distinctive study of change and human adaptability.