Neil Genzlinger

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.

The film is a rare combination of instructive and poignant.

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.

A raunchy comedy that is so poorly executed and so unfunny that no one involved with it should ever be allowed to work in the movies again.

The actors, none of whom have much experience, are quite convincing, but the story — Jed falls, then sees the error of his ways — is an oft-told one.

The animated tale Henry & Me aims to inspire sick children, but it also aims to promote the Yankees and the team’s mythology. The two goals don’t mesh very well.

Mumbly dialogue, relentlessly jittery camerawork, a star who is also co-director and co-writer: Yes, it’s time for another movie that mistakes the claustrophobic world of young New York artsy types for something interesting.

Listening to these three swear up a blue streak is amusing for five minutes or so, but that’s about it.

Ms. Bailey’s willingness to let the children talk and to let the viewer impose broader meaning elevates it.

The Rule, by the married filmmakers Marylou and Jerome Bongiorno, doesn’t show us enough detail about how they’re applied to distinguish St. Benedict’s from countless other parochial schools, private institutions and military academies.

It’s an awkward mix of sentiment, underdeveloped relationships and rock ’n’ roll pretensions, and it never quite gels into the “Love Story” for the 21st century that it wants to be.

After turns out to be working territory that, while emotionally fraught, has already been pretty thoroughly mined.

This terrible attempt at a political thriller for the religious right is aimed not at Christians in general but at a certain breed of them, the kind who feel as if the rest of the world were engaged in a giant conspiracy against their interpretation of good and truth.

Scott Derrickson, the director, and his special-effects crew really deliver the creepy goods here, providing an apt climax for as taut and credible a movie involving demonic possession as you’re likely to see.

It would be hard not to make a thought-provoking, heartstring-tugging film from this source material, and Bound by Flesh certainly tells the twins’ story effectively.

Ivory Tower, a documentary about soaring costs and other problems confronting higher education, can’t seem to decide what points it wants to make and ends up making none.

The film, by Jody Shapiro, seems so hagiographic that when it finally gets around to its 20 minutes’ worth of interesting stuff, you’re not sure whether to trust it.

The history lesson is fascinating, and it’s nice to see an American export other than a Hollywood blockbuster engendering good will.

With its underwritten characters (especially Walter) and scenes, it seems like a generic ABC Family plotline melded to a commercial for Facebook, Twitter and Skype.

It’s adorable.

This is a sweet tale that will resonate with anyone who has tried to make a Skype call to a grandparent.

It’s not clear what Aram Garriga thinks he is accomplishing in his simplistic “American Jesus,” but he’s not accomplishing much.

Little of it is funny or genuine, and the benefits and beauty of real faith are nowhere in evidence.

Though colleagues and former students chime in, Mr. Miller lets Mr. Mann and his violin do most of the talking, drawing on assorted interviews and vintage performance clips that convey both the skill and the enthusiasm underpinning his subject’s long career.

A sometimes amusing sex farce.

The documentary “Tanzania: A Journey Within” is two travel diaries woven together. One is somber and moving. The other is distractingly annoying.

Marvin, Seth and Stanley aims to be a deadpan travels-with-my-wacky-dad story, but the father in it is almost an afterthought. It still has sublime moments, but it leaves you wanting more of them.

The film’s main distraction, oddly, is the voice-over through which Nate annotates the action. A voice-over is standard procedure for the wistful-look-back genre, but here it’s forced and unfunny. This wild story sells itself, no narration needed.