Nicolas Rapold

It’s the kind of movie that makes you zero in on and root for an actor (Ms. Madigan) as she tries to wring something real out of her lines, but there’s no saving this film.

Whether you believe these phenomena are spiritual journeys or visions created by the human mind (or both), the film loses its sense of epiphany in the lackluster jumble of its moviemaking.

The film dresses up pretty young things in fatigues and retro T-shirts for a story so clichéd and brainless that it’s almost more disturbing than laughable.

47 Ronin can’t entirely paper over the void at its center, traceable partly to the shadowboxing of computer-aided filmmaking or studio tinkering.

The filmmakers’ aversion to coherent narrative and genuinely suspenseful visuals (not to mention a penchant for having Ms. Moore receive terrible news via cellphone) keep the movie’s mystery stew from hitting the spot.

Rendering a miraculous premise dull, the film seems relatively uninterested in doing more than preaching to the choir.

The hand-me-down showiness and sluggish storytelling by the director, Paco Cabezas, underline the monotony in this ordinary revenge thriller.

With a character who can essentially say and do whatever she wants, you might expect a bit more.

There’s something grudgingly admirable about the voluble star essentially spending an entire film doing reactions. But it’s a disastrous move in a Hollywood satire that already needs to be more than a grab bag of jokes.

In a way, the occasionally lugubrious undertones and casual cruelties suit the setting, but the tragic heft Mr. Martinez seems to be pushing for doesn’t materialize.

This tedious chronicle has the interest level of a home movie of a vacation with bickering and yammering left intact.

Mr. Megaton’s direction of action sequences borders on atrocious. Ragged camerawork and editing ruin freeway car chases and hand-to-hand combat alike.

All in all, the beloved kingdom of Oz is not well served, though there’s just enough detectable affection to keep it from feeling like a pure cashing-in.

Mr. Avgerinos’s glossy, overripe take on high-flying, unscrupulous lenders — the wolves of Main Street — deteriorates into a hot mess of montages, trailer-ready one-liners and thudding drama.

Instead of lending immediacy, the padded-out documentary conceit only spotlights the stiltedness, and Parker falls short of building credible drama out of urgent issues.

Most of the time, this incoherent thriller resembles an overheated trailer for itself: a glaringly rough assembly of ill-staged computer-generated action sequences and portentous moments.

After a somewhat tense opening chase involving a lot of girders, much of the film is rather shakily assembled.

Partly thanks to Ms. Reed — as well as to Scott Bakula, as Wendy’s beleaguered boss, and minor players — the movie has its share of underplayed little scenes of realistic color.

The movie is predictably sentimental at its root, but it’s also meant to be comedy, partly resting on Mr. Williams’s energetic but failed attempt to play a jerk.

The screenplay, by John M. Phillips, is the written equivalent of a toddler discovering curse words. Yet some riffs draw chuckles.

Mostly you root for Mr. Michel’s couple to reconnect simply so the movie will come to an end.

Mr. Kaleka’s film feels a bit like wandering into a hotel convention hall full of true believers who have been chatting for hours.

The film's frustrating treatment is actually more like the local reporter who is shown struggling to stay in the loop.

The ultimate break comes with a glorious full-screen CGI zoom into blazing heavenly bodies, a refutation of the title's modesty.

The highlight is the crop-cut woman of the group, Wei Caixia, resoundingly vivid in her mix of ambivalence and confidence and worth her own film. Why not this one?

In Curling, his (Cote) interest in individuals with "one foot outside of society" continues with a crisp portrait of a Québécois solitary man and his cloistered preteen daughter.

This vision of free self-expression bubbling forth under authoritarian pressure echoes sentiments in Zhao's previous work. But the rest of the movie lacks the thrilling organic open-endedness of Zhao's nonfiction depictions; real life (or 2006's Street Life) trumps this Life.

Despite its cultural detail and fetching leads this Jamaican director’s colorful debut feature is undone by ragged scene construction, weak acting and a scattered script.