Neil Genzlinger

All in all there’s not much to complain about here, except that — as with a lot of revisited classics — the story’s not as revolutionary as you remember it. For veterans of the 1982 Poltergeist, it’s more like scary but pleasant nostalgia.

The title character is a child, but two adult actors, Kathy Bates and Glenn Close, really give The Great Gilly Hopkins its considerable heart. This movie, though uneven, is affecting because of these two reliable stars.

For the first half of the film, amusing monster humor keeps things interesting; some monsters, it turns out, are better at party games than others.

The male characters here are too thinly developed for this to be a top-notch survival thriller, but Ms. Aselton knows how to get the pulse pounding.

Those who care less about such stuff than about being entertained will find plenty to like in this ghoulish comedy, a droll take on one of the most notorious mass-murder cases of the 19th century.

The cast is surely capable of sharper comedy, but Will Raee, who directed, doesn’t get everyone on the same page. Ms. Cardellini and Ms. Schaal offer cardboard caricatures, while Mr. Ulrich, among others, plays it mostly straight.

Snow Blind calls itself a documentary, but it's really all about selling the product of snowboarding; it never stops feeling like the in-house channel on a ski-lodge television.

The film does a pretty good job of conveying the bleakness and pointlessness Eva and her fellow mutants feel, but it's as if Ms. Trachinger were reluctant to take the premise any deeper for fear of being accused of imitating "Memento" or "Groundhog Day" or any number of other trapped-in-time films.

New Jerusalem feeling like an acting exercise in search of a theater class.

If you’re relatively easily scared or are in a theater full of people who are, the film might be good for a few screams. But only if you’re the patient sort. It takes almost an hour to get to the good stuff.

Over all, the movie, directed by Dan Harris and featuring name actors like Kal Penn and Janeane Garofalo in small roles, has a focus problem that leaves its humorous moments obscured and its intentions hazy.

The Oscars are swell, but once in a while a film comes along that is so courageous it deserves consideration for the Nobel Prize. An entire generation has been born and gone to college since the Beastie Boys defined that most basic of civil liberties: You've got to fight for your right to party.

The actors do nice work before things derail.

[Amy Berg's] instincts about how to pace a true story serve her well with this imaginary one, and so do the performances by Ms. Fanning and especially Ms. Macdonald.

Not much here is new, but condensing it all into one zippy documentary makes for an ugly portrait.

Maris Curran had plenty of opportunities to insert a cheesy plot twist into “Five Nights in Maine,” her delicate drama about loss and its aftermath. Yet she stayed true to her intentions, and the result is a believable character study that may not draw crowds but certainly challenges its two lead actors.

Although the film has moments when it’s serious about exploring the challenges that someone in Travis’s situation faces, it ultimately prefers to be just another football movie with a hokey big-game ending.

Here, both the director (Denise Di Novi) and the writer (Christina Hodson) are women, yet that doesn’t translate into a reimagining of the tired formula.

The more desperate the characters’ flight becomes, the less interesting the movie grows. It does end with a witty flourish, though — one that makes good use of those glasses.

What follows seems like a nonstop car and foot chase, with Albanian after Albanian falling victim to Bryan's remarkable aim and hand-fighting skills. Foreigners bad, Americans good, box office busy.

There are enough good jokes in Fanboys, a road comedy about geeks on a "Star Wars"-related quest, to satisfy hard-core fans of that George Lucas franchise. But the film doesn't have the boosters, or thrusters, or whatever, to elevate it to more ambitious heights; it's weighed down by tired conventions and a general sense of having missed its moment.

In the end, though, Mr. Garbarski makes no judgments, which leaves this film feeling sweet but light: we already knew that Judaism, like most other religions, is an ever-evolving collage.

The movie’s flaw is that it mixes tones. Ruth, her relatives and her fellow workers are realistically played, but her gal-pal buddies are caricatures.

Even before a “do as I say, not as I do” twist costs it all credibility, Prescription Thugs is a not very good documentary about a very important subject.

Ms. Breslin and especially Ms. Henley are quite good, elevating a film that seems like an oft-told tale.

Dough is sweet, often funny and always nonthreatening, a movie for those who wish the intractable realities of the world would just disappear.

This film seems blissfully unaware that political obstructionists are paralyzing the legislative process; that deep-pocketed influence peddlers have a vested interest in maintaining the fossil fuel culture; that, in general, people resist change.

Rapture-Palooza has a promising setup and a cast with a good track record of bringing the funny, yet it never does live up to its potential.