Nicolas Rapold

The movie (directed by Janeen Damian and written by Kirsten Hansen) skips over Maddie savoring the outcome of her wish, and shifts right into charming comedy around her confusion, including having no memory about how she got engaged.

Mr. Meyer adheres to a cinema of broad experience by casting rugged but uninspiring nonprofessionals and focusing on the rebels’ long, lonely struggle rather than on triumph and tactics.

The newer film’s picture of neglect and denial, with flashes of connection and empathy, is promising, if tough to inhabit.

The many red herrings and the dark-secret finale recall the reliable, compulsive appeal of a page-turner, although the tensions don’t always feel fully translated to the rhythms and demands of a film.

Any deviations from the film’s obligatory timeline tour are very welcome, like a mortifying studio recording of Murry holding forth, and it’s a treat to hear the esteem for Brian among the Wrecking Crew, the storied group of session musicians.

Butter on the Latch thrives on its casually true snapshots of confusion and connection.

Cronin thrills as ever to luscious gross-out scenes.

Though not terribly nuanced, a bit muddled and lacking certain perspectives, “Zipper” drives home the fragile identity of even the city’s signature locales and the alarming cultural myopia of much redevelopment.

The filmmakers behind Elemental might have done better to commit to a single portrait and been more fearless about avoiding familiar oratory, but small steps are progress too.

The film, which could definitely focus more on the multiple-Grammy-Award-winner’s music, peters out around 2024, a year before Ye released a song called “Heil Hitler.” But Ballesteros, who started the project when he was 18 years old, does his best to portray a reflexive iconoclast without excusing the inexcusable.

The film’s often frenetic editing tends to weaken this strong story. But this hopeless history does have the flair to deploy Depeche Mode’s “Never Let Me Down Again,” capturing the tragic absurdity to Goudreau’s ambition.

The story assembles before our eyes like an illustration in a manual for superspies.

Mr. Gordon is likable, though it would be naïve to think he is unaware of cultivating his own image here.

It’s all mellowly funny rather than creepy, something like a stand-up conceit elaborated into scenes.

The severely beautiful film is painted in a dauntingly austere manner, as if lost in a war against itself, with confrontations underplayed and the rural landscapes making more of an impression than the detoured drama.

It’s a chronically underachieving movie, but relatively amusing in its quaint wish fulfillment.

Seriously, if not always elegantly, the film portrays the great Ip Man as someone trying to survive, which is to say just as often a victim as a victor.

The filmmaker strikes gold in her varied selection of defectors, especially the military man fed up with the myopic chain of command.

Many little touches in the film reflect the offbeat hand of Ms. Delpy. But she sells herself short by not giving the mother-son conflict a bit of a sharper edge beyond Lolo’s awfulness.

There’s a lot to learn from How to Make Money Selling Drugs, but sometimes there’s just a lot.

While these ninnies' antics and banter are remarkably entertaining, the quality of the satire depends on when the movie is sending up ludicrous extremist logic and when it's just engaging in repetitive buffoonery.

While the movie creates an intriguing emotional space in which characters at the end of their ropes can open up, there’s the distinct sense of a missed opportunity.

Mr. Sembène was an inspiration; as a film, Sembène! is something less than that, petering out as it goes on, but at least offering a fair-minded tribute to a master.

There’s a loose, bohemian quality to Mr. Cohen’s sketch of a film.

Whatever the facts, Mr. Gracia’s messily structured film works best as a document of fear in today’s Ukraine and as a kind of ghost story about the Soviet Union.

The lustrously shot movie breaks Sam out of the gallery grind through Hollywood-grade somersaults in storytelling (one of them so breezily violent as to feel a little tasteless)

The tell-all promise of the film’s title dwindles away into predictable perspectives from members of his family. But this introduction to Chaplin shines whenever he performs, displaying his comic genius for doing everything wrong to absolute perfection.

As it dives into this infrequently depicted culture, Mr. Fraser’s film is caught shuttling uneasily between speeches and action.

The film’s final shot might seem a little too apt a summary of an audience’s reaction: Mr. Trêpa, looking into the camera, shrugs.

Mesrine's promised end in November 1979 arrives as history recorded it, but, by that time, you're hoping the next vogue in biopics is the short film.

Mr. Borden, an acclaimed Canadian stage actor and playwright, turns in a slyly entertaining performance. But the relationship between Lake and Melvyn feels a bit more one-sided than perhaps was intended.

Mr. Nalin applies an on-the-ground approach, mainly looking at holy men and lost boys at the gathering. But he lets the sprawl slacken his overlong film’s grasp and, strangely, underplays the nuances of the event’s spiritual aspects.

Mr. Toledano and Mr. Nakache, who wrote the scattered screenplay, have a well-honed touch for comic beats and a feel for workaday details. That comes in handy when their points about French identity miss the mark, or when the main characters share special moments without really acquiring depth.

Ms. Bradley’s debut feature flutters along with inoffensive lyricism and a kindly eye, but it’s not enough to bring off a full-fledged portrayal that holds together.

What pops more than the gunfire are the line readings, where Ms. Parker, especially, but also Mr. Malkovich and Ms. Mirren, can give personality to standard action repartee.

A film plunked somewhat unfortunately between the inspirational and the ordinary.

The movie proves to be a fragile conceit. It’s as likely to fall apart and cause frustration as it is to induce a reverie.

Though Mr. Holdridge and Ms. Saasen feel genuine, they lack acting chops, and their screenplay’s self-consciousness about romantic clichés plays like a cliché itself.

[Mr. Greenbaum] is observant of tears and laughter alike, but he might have made fewer sacrifices in the name of a tidy package.

It can’t fail to trigger shudders of recognition as well as feelings of release, but the filmmaking lacks a certain drama.

The Institute stumbles between documentary and exploratory simulation, at once confusing and pedantic.

As more and more perfect shots drift by, the reality of the characters and their relationships dissipates, and we’re left with just picturesque moods.

A movie whose techniques present problems not containable by the noble intentions of its makers.

Stu’s travails feed into his salty homilies about getting closer to God, delivered with Wahlberg’s usual bluffness. That doesn’t automatically translate into a religious experience, and watching the movie can feel like a two-hour hearty handshake.

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.

This film could have been more surely and deftly put together.

The naval collisions and melees play out in panel-like renderings that are bold and satisfying for the first half-hour but lack the momentum and bombastic je ne sais quoi of “300.”

Not that some of this isn’t amusing, but you feel the considerable improvisational skills of the cast going to waste.

Roberto Andò's Viva la Libertà wobbles between being wispily suggestive of finer existential meaning and generational commentary, and being basically a handsomely dressed-up “Dave” for post-Berlusconi Italy.

Goofball antics and a terrific, raucous finale can’t make up for the essential slackness of its repetitive comedy and punk chest thumping.

Perhaps it’s a hazard tied to a subject, seeds, which are all about potential, but Ms. McLeod’s film feels naggingly diffuse and insufficiently vivid in evoking diversity.

What’s most curious is Mr. Labute’s kid-glove treatment of the scenario, forgoing real sexual gamesmanship, much less the opportunistic rug-pulling in past films. That baseline of sincerity is refreshing to a point, yet he’s written a fairly weak-tea story of conflicted self-discovery that would make for a mildly engaging evening on the stage.

The film feels both hermetic and declarative, and it’s folly to constantly remind a viewer of Fassbinder’s impossible-to-replicate alchemy of color, lighting, angles and passion.

Pathaan is in some ways a save-the-world superhero movie without suits, and while less self-serious, the hefty length can lag. More is not always better — though the gusto of Padukone speedskating to the rescue at one point goes a long way.

An urban drama limited by its nonprofessional cast and impressionistic, scattered storytelling.

The ticktock horror plotting muffles the romantic spark that brought Maja and Leah together in the first place — the thrill replaced by a lukewarm chill.

The landscape can go only so far in expressing Toichi’s mind-set, and the movie turns hokey when it dramatizes Toichi’s inner thoughts.

The wish fulfillment of time travel tends to be fun to watch, and the director, Dean Israelite, feeds on the friends’ giddy escapades for a while.

The root of the movie’s appeal is less the scripted story than watching three game oldsters.

The Forecaster has the distinct hermetic feel of a documentary that employs an echo chamber of people too close to the material.

Despite much talk of diversity and tradition, Mr. Levine has little fresh to say about gentrification issues or documentary storytelling.

Neither the value of music nor the deficiencies of certain nursing homes are tough to debate. But a documentary that never leaves any doubt about what comes next, while single-mindedly stumping for a cause presented as unique, is also not terribly interesting as a film.

This dully structured film makes its points early and often, treading water before a purposely delayed big finish.

The “nothing to see here” focus gives the homey-feeling film the whiff of a sanctioned production.

This film is actually less menacing than marveling, though a disturbing opening scene in a storm-tossed van could fit right into Mr. Quale’s earlier work.

Despite a generous attempt at a series recap, it’s chaotic for the uninitiated. These characters require several episodes of exposure for us to feel that much is at stake in the ebb and flow of honor, hysteria and eternal friendship. In any case, the animation is often a pure sensual delight.

The bloat saps the fun and intrigue from the film, which can’t navigate between playing up eccentricity and committing to the notion that hell can be other people (even in a one-time refuge).

The movie doesn’t need to achieve the same levels of sensation as a wildly popular racing simulator, but it should convey excitement and dynamism in its own cinematic way. When the novelty of watching a gamer become a driver wears off, we’re left with an adequate racing drama in a medium built for so much more.

The burlesque take on high school has some fine, ridiculous moments and lets the movie get away with more than a serious drama might.

The story comes to feel mild (and incomplete) in its tempered nostalgia.

Mr. Harmon is delightfully talented at improvisation, freestyling nonsense lyrics. Mr. Berkeley, on the other hand, proves himself a dismayingly predictable chronicler, making sure that we know exactly what we’re supposed to think and efficiently packaging jokes and revelations.

Despite some nifty freak-outs, the movie’s buildup can lack a certain snap.

Mr. Skjoldbjaerg, who also tapped Norwegian history with his bank robbery re-enactment “Nokas,” doesn’t convey a creeping atmosphere of moral rot so much as an irksome glumness.

Lost and Love (“Lost Orphan” in the original Chinese title) confronts serious problems but is too busy reaching for epic sweep and soaring moments to nail the fine detail of main characters’ fraught give-and-take.

As written by the TV veteran Robert Carlock, Kim’s rise-and-fade arc is sympathetically rendered, with humor and the urgency of an underhand pitch.

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.

The film’s biggest trick might be casting Moore, Stan and the positively glowing Middleton and still never quite catching fire.

The caper, directed by Moon Hyun-sung, isn’t as fun as it insists it is, playing up the crew and its exploits à la “The Fast and the Furious” and “Baby Driver” but never hitting its stride.

While Mr. Workman evidently respects Mr. Carbee’s talent, he also frames his movie as a trite narrative about a kind of lovably odd acquaintance who comes out of his shell, without many incisive ideas about shaping or broadening the material.

It’s informative but not enlightening, and Mr. Berlinger packs in chattering news clips and a score that’s audible under the interview.

The big-kid-bulky Dayton-born comedian gets some welcome playtime in Jim Pasternak's patchwork tribute, but not nearly enough.

[Ms. Kroot's] banalizing documentary is self-defeating as it tags along with Mr. Takei and his wonky husband, Brad, on their busy daily schedule.

William Eubank’s The Signal demonstrates the fine line between paranoid science-fiction fantasy and demo reel.

His strategy is political — in a meaningful way — but not cinematic.

Comes across as more of an extravagant gesture than a fully realized artistic conceit.

Decency prevails in a somewhat ludicrous finale involving an army of children and a train containing a high-ranking officer. It’s an ending so tidy as to undercut the effort to broach a shameful side to the American war effort.

Though not pretentious, his film feels a tad overthought, held back somehow by a stubborn, dour obscurity clouding its freshly realized, lurid milieu.

As Terraferma tightens its focus on a courageous resolution of tough issues, too much nuance is jettisoned along the way.

Despite an appealing fondness for New York locations and habits, Mr. Buschel and his cinematographer, Ryan Samul, have embalmed their film in style. J. J.’s ostentatious speeches feel like a projection of self-conscious cleverness, and the film’s virtuoso lighting doesn’t always match up to the needs of a scene.

Some of this recalls Stephen Chow’s “Journey to the West,” minus the brilliance.

Despite the urgent subject matter and lyrical touches, it’s a film that needs further layers of complication and texture.

Despite eccentric touches, like a handheld street-shot overture and Grand Guignol Omen references, there's little difference between this story and soap-opera intrigue.

But viewers looking to learn more about Mr. Watterson and his creation than what’s contained in his Wikipedia entry may come away as hopped-up with impatience as Calvin when confronted by parental indifference.

There’s a go-for-broke vigor to the way Mr. Amata cuts to the conflict in most scenes, but the heavy-handedness across the board imposes some significant limitations. Mr. Amata, though, pulls no punches with his ending.

Richet proves maddeningly loath to edit his material, and his charismatic star, Vincent Cassel, does not delve deep into the character.

Soko gets credit for not softening Mwangi’s landing, and the outcome of the election is dropped as nearly an afterthought to his valiant efforts. But the on-the-ground campaigning and complex history could use a better shape than the film’s fits and starts.

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.

The film’s skimping on economic and social issues echoes one description of Biden’s own messaging by some pundits: low-key to the point of obscuring the full picture of his efforts.

Shot in sleek tones by Christopher Doyle, the film melds class-conscious melodrama with malleable mood piece, but keeps threatening to fade from understatement into stasis.

Ms. Ambo communicates the notion of compassion and calm as something teachable, but perhaps feeling already convinced, she’s less ambitious as a filmmaker about taking her subject and her portraits to another level.

Mining deeper emotions from the fanciful premise doesn’t work out for the film, which gets tied down to a generic musical-contest subplot. It’s a workable comedy that’s sunk by its attempts to impersonate something else too.

Lifted by the sepulchral Stephen McHattie as Lisa’s nemesis, the film’s frazzled thought experiment becomes an adequate yarn.

A serviceable slab of possession horror.

Most often Mortem just lacks bite, and the dedicated leads seem at times a little slight for the staging of a struggle at eternity’s edge.

By the time Beauvais dismisses some chestnut trees as “bland,” the movie screams nothing so much as the pained self-absorption of depression — an anguished revelation, but dead-on.

Mr. Lespert and his screenwriters tend to telegraph what’s happening next with on-the-nose dialogue, leaving behind an orderly but not vividly realized biography (or necessarily a complete one).

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?

Mr. Barber can work up a fair sense of menace, but he seems to have directed most of the talented cast to speak their lines in a mannered fashion learned from other movies.

Despite some flourishes (such as a mirror-like crystal cave), “Transformania” feels locked into the routine rhythms of its plotting and makes one-note jokes out of its human incarnations.

King works to portray a tight mesh of relationships around Cole, directing Elizabeth Palmore’s valiant adaptation of the sensitively rendered Carter Sickels novel. But lacking a strong central performance from Ettinger — who gets stuck on a half-pained, half-exasperated setting — much of the movie feels like a series of comings and goings, entrances and exits.

Mr. Chapman administers some of his (amplified) thwacks and drop kicks with a likable, you-should-know-better air of amusement, recalling a Reagan-era TV cop show.

As heartening as it is to see a slum child tutored about vicious cycles of adversity and using the buzzword “partnership” with aplomb, the film comes to feel cut and dried.

Based upon a 1999 young-adult novel by Walter Dean Myers, Monster conveys the ache for all that its protagonist could lose, but it can’t escape the dramatic ruts of its own creation.

The strategy and strategizing of Beyond Outrage still feel like overkill (if you’ll pardon the expression).

It’s a proud film but average.

What initially feels like brash energy peters out until what’s left mainly evokes pretty ordinary gangster movies.

It’s a literally colorful and playful attempt to portray battlefields of artistic ambition and political struggle. But its dialogue and characters are also written as subtly as a radical manifesto.

Suri Krishnamma’s Dark Tourist takes an effectively unpleasant trip down the lost highway of a morbid mind before its bad choices start catching up with it.

Some low-budget manifestations of the supernatural jazz up the frights now and again, but as the novelty of worshiping a hole in the ground fades, the film paints itself into a corner.

Mr. Horvath’s procedural, increasingly dry documentary takes the “rush” out of “gold rush.”

Mr. Song puts his usual big heart into the character, though there aren’t many layers or nuances to the drama. Every scene does its job, tears flowing on cue.

The setup’s clichés grow harder to ignore, despite a welcome mischievous streak and some bucolic imagery.

The director, Lee Kyu-man, makes the camera hover tensely over scenes, but only a couple of action sequences pack much oomph. There’s more sinister tension in brief scenes with elder statesmen of the criminal world, who are chillingly self-assured.

The protagonist’s life changes for the better, but your mileage may vary.

Plan A never quite rises to the challenge posed by this remarkable chapter in history.

If only the story of Hinterland felt as engrossing and alive as its setting.

The facts are more gripping than the filmmaking in Marco Amenta's routine docudrama about tenacious teen informer Rita Atria.

The message of manifesting your goals reigns supreme, which is great, but it’s worth mentioning that Watson’s willpower benefits from the privileges of financial security, family support and a curmudgeonly-turned-selfless coach.

The dark comedy (punctuated by the catchphrase “Toodle-oo”) doesn’t always come off, and the filmmaking is more off-kilter than necessary, with capricious camerawork and pacing.

More often than not, Mr. Letterman uses his movie as a toy chest of characters more than as a medium, the muggy Mr. Black included.

As flatly directed by Christian Vincent, Haute Cuisine is a reserved, très simple tale that raises the occasional smile and tummy rumble but keeps hiccuping because of the drawn-out parallel story about her subsequent tour of duty.

Bilbo may fully learn a sense of friendship and duty, and have quite a story to tell, but somewhere along the way, Mr. Jackson loses much of the magic.

Not that Dr. Bot and the oblivious self-righteousness won’t delight certain fans, but this remains a protracted, scattershot comedy sketch that never quite nails its tone.

At least for the uninitiated, the drift of the filmmaking seemed to fall short of the transcendence envisioned by its story.

It’s a hodgepodge that Michael Moore (whose movies Ms. Lessin and Mr. Deal have produced) and his editors might snappily dice together, but here the construction falls short.

The first installment’s critics might think this sequel further desensitizes viewers to violence along national or religious lines. It’s a movie of the current moment, which isn’t exactly a comfort.

Mr. Corbijn picturesquely frames the back story to the shoot, but his muffled retelling drifts with Dane DeHaan’s murmurous impersonation of Dean and Robert Pattinson’s almost perversely listless turn as Stock.

The escapades are tossed off and fall flat, all products of the business-as-usual template created by the film’s producers, Adam McKay and Will Ferrell.

Having established a downbeat, even stoically plain tone, this economical affair feels like a canvas prepped for, and awaiting, further detail (or straight-to-video-on-demand sequels).

At its sloppy heart, this is meant to be an affirming movie, but the filmmakers could have taken a cue from one line of dialogue: “Don’t just feel special. Be special.”

Death on the Nile, Kenneth Branagh’s second adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot stories, forgets the simple pleasures of ensemble excess and pure messing about.

Ms. Otto conveys a double-edged intelligence as the film’s pinched notion of “Elizabeth Bishop in Brazil,” while Ms. Pires strides about, every snap judgment and grand gesture a measure of her appeal. Both are hemmed in by direction and a screenplay that are relentlessly on point (as well as an off-the-shelf score).

A certain kind of discipline and experience is at work here: It’s no accident that the action and dialogue seem blandly cartoonish, as if the moviemakers wanted to keep everything easy for all ages to follow.

If the film is less persuasive for its lack of balance, it’s at least heartening to learn that undesirable dams can be destroyed and their rivers restored to their old ways and means.

This promisingly tragic tale is sunk by cartloads of context and an overbearing, slanted narration.

Perhaps most impressive are the resources deployed in shooting this production. As if the film’s ostentatious aerial vistas, merely functional scene-writing and score weren’t distracting enough, Mr. Sexton’s dialogue freezes dead any simulation of the period with tone-deaf lines amid Bolívar’s impassioned rhetoric.

By not centering on the victims, Mr. Khalfoun nearly makes the film about pitying the panic-prone killer; the camerawork lacks the ominous, confident glide of much Steadicam horror.

The filmmakers pop their story’s bubble in a confusing finish, but it all ends up feeling like a mystery novel that simply never revealed the key clues.

Ms. Bagnall’s baffling story about a trio of oddball outsiders is stricken with a galloping case of romantic whimsy and falls short of its serio-comic aspirations.

While the documentary marshals an impressive array of survivors and visits several international locations, it grindingly adheres to an unwieldy tour-style presentation, with more than a few rough spots and, at times, an unpolished look.

Motorbikes careening round corners just millimeters off the track still quicken the pulse, but “The Next Chapter” also demonstrates the padding that documentaries in general have picked up in recent years.

Spall summons a kind of early Ryan Reynolds haplessness, talking a mile a minute while catching up. But a sheepish pall steadily creeps over the whole endeavor.

The film’s director of photography, Matthew Libatique, makes “Pelé” more than an eye-moistening anthem for a built-in global audience.

Premature bops along with a wiseacre self-awareness and a nimble cast... But Mr. Beers and his fellow screenwriter, Mathew Harawitz, also have a numbing Seth MacFarlane-esque weakness for purely attention-getting crudeness and unfunny stereotypes.

The actors’ chemistry feels brittle, and like many road movies it has trouble mining drama out of disparate episodes.

A credit-sequence television clip of Mr. Warren and the real Ms. Smith with Oprah Winfrey makes the entire movie feel like the strangest book infomercial in memory.

Neither the action nor the comedy in this action comedy is consistently strong.

It’s all a bit like a classic-rock tribute concert, or playing with all your action figures at once, or maybe “Cannonball Run,” with the strained buddy-buddy back-and-forth.

A gently wry sense of humor about human foibles and some well-turned exchanges keep the proceedings drifting along pleasantly enough, until characters start convening for the requisite heart-to-hearts and making-up.

The movie’s biggest weakness comes with its tendency to film people telling us what’s going on rather than having us observe.

The movie, admirably shot on location, has a cast that is nonetheless directed without much verve by Wiebke von Carolsfeld. The film was adapted from a novel by Aislinn Hunter, but the characters’ inner lives remain elusive.

Mr. Rush can’t fly far on Mr. Tornatore’s dialogue and workmanlike plotting, and Sylvia Hoeks, as Claire, doesn’t bring a corresponding energy.

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

It’s a job requirement for a show host like Mr. Uygur to project his personality and beliefs; this filmmaker doesn’t muster a healthy skepticism to match.

The tone ranges from wounded to disgusted, but a movie positing this deep a rot in the system needs to be more measured and better made to take hold.

The baggy 137-minute story drowns out Mr. Feng’s assorted sharp moments with hoary family drama and clumsy plotting, and Li Yifeng is generic as Mr. Six’s son.

Relatable doesn’t have to mean routine, but Mr. Reiner doesn’t always bother to tell the difference.

While Mr. Ramsay accomplishes some kind of a trick in streamlining the play, his trimming of corners feels more like a taking away of the center.

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’s few spectacles — particularly the composite image of Russian soldiers aflame after a fuel depot explodes — seem to consume the creative energies of the filmmakers, with their palpable pride in staging patriotic deaths from the safe distance of history.

The resulting object is less about the world than about itself, and feels like a hey-that's-neat 90-minute troll through the video-sharing website (which co-presents the project).

A certain curiosity value arises out of Mr. Phillippe’s coincidental occupation here as a professional actor and a director.

The film is too sincere an expression of admiration for this poet’s work to feel pretentious, but it’s like a music video for the poems, often literal in its biographical readings.

The movie’s charms are limited by what comes to feel like a coddling conceit.

The film’s initial naturalism is warped by overheated film technique and a dead-ending screenplay.

The film’s dramas are ornately costumed but often stilted and lacking the verve of the battle staging. Even the glories of war can turn stultifying when you’re shown one too many thousand-yard-stare reaction shots by military leaders.

The film’s ending, introducing farmers whose lives (and weight) have been changed for the better, sounds enough like an infomercial to undermine the whole enterprise.

The film feels like a work of community advocacy.

Overall, the movie has the bantamweight feel of a really long DVD extra: Little details of the director’s ancestral stomping grounds are appealing, but don’t jell into something satisfying.

There’s a slight wonky interest in seeing the grind of recording sessions and fan service. But the film feels promotional enough that it won’t lean into the potential humor of their situation.

The residents of the English village Gladbury in the period holiday film The Christmas Candle might as well be bustling about in a snow globe for all their dimples, yuletide obsession and quaint, consumptive coughs.

There’s a little effort to give each story its own tempo and style; you notice bits and pieces plucked from other movies or TV shows.

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.

Like his ill-fated hunting party, Mr. Denham’s plans for his thriller don’t turn out quite the way he’d hoped.

While White Rabbit is not a lost cause, its difficult story of mistreatment and lashing out proves too much of a challenge to tell well.

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

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

It's hard to appreciate things like the character detail amid the insufferably squealy voicing and arbitrary suspense.

Most of the movie is a losing proposition.

The flashy adaptation of the book by aging Belgian provocateur Herman Brusselmans is as systematically offensive and boisterously vulgar as its degenerate punk protagonists.

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

There’s something woebegone about the film itself as it staggers along, ever in danger of tipping into the abyss inhabited by one of its subjects.

The movie’s best bits lose out to the requisite moral turnaround.

Mr. Perry’s latest film touches upon some recognizable and realistic challenges with efficient compassion, but there’s probably more dramatic tension in a car pool than in this film’s collection of predicaments.

Like the 1994 documentary landmark “Hoop Dreams,” Lenny Cooke measures out the years with a pensive jazz motif, but the film feels comparatively stuck on a couple of notes.

Mr. Rollinger, a protagonist of a curiously circumscribed life, proves to have an opaque appeal.

Between a bro-friendly voice-over and “TMZ Live”-style bull sessions with his producer, Schroder’s exploratory pose comes to feel exasperatingly clueless. Yet the film also assembles soothingly sharp commentators who lay bare the power and race dynamics and aggression at play in the Lincoln Memorial encounter.

Eventually runs out of gas--or rather, pedal-power--as the filmmakers grope for how to cap the Beavans’ story.

Technology remains no substitute for well-written characters and genuine intrigue and atmosphere, so despite the cute special effects and camera jostling, this film feels like an extended episode of an after-school show by Disney.

Mr. Cohen, no stranger to delivering pulp product, employs visual clichés as if they were flash cards; no exposed thigh or made-you-jump reveal goes unexploited.

This directorial debut by Liz W. Garcia, a writer for television, bears some echoes of its creator’s origins, going from deft to trite in its drama and setting up character arcs that feel sappily resolved within its feature length.

Reinhold exerts a Svengali-like hold on Franz and the women they know, though the character’s questionable magnetism makes this dynamic increasingly baffling.

Mr. Wilson’s Antoine is too much of a pill to root for, and the voice-over and wispy songs dribbling over scenes only underline the forgettable filmmaking.

Mr. Sobel’s film skates past any persuasive sense of motivation.

The 20-year-old Hubble Space Telescope--whose repair mission is the subject of this chronicle--turns out to be a bit of a stage hog, and audiences expecting a blissout of swirling galaxies will wonder why so much time is spent on astronauts sweating over screws and bolts.

The film’s stacked stories naggingly lack a cohesive train of thought beyond the often harmful pervasiveness of pharmaceuticals in American society.

Like many broad successes this unremarkable movie proves decidedly reluctant to yield any golden secret to box-office bonanzas, unless you count tried-and-true chase formulas and a moral about rethinking priorities.

The fun is not always contagious, even for someone like me who grew up reading Tom Clancy’s wonky Cold War fantasias.

Mr. Rosebiani evidently wants to avoid depressing his audience while addressing a serious subject, but his aims are likely to be lost in this film’s strained mugging.

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.

Dad humor abounds in Family Camp, a vanishingly mild comedy that resembles other films about parents and kids bumbling in the wilderness

This reheated “Sex and the City” adventure flops, even with Leslie Mann and Rebel Wilson hard at work being funny.

A messy collision of strained portrayals, semi-comic incidents and tear-jerking tactics.

Something is off with Every Thing Will Be Fine. Even for a movie about a writer detached from his emotions, it’s ponderous, like a lucid dream gone bad.

a hackneyed story of a tedious, lovelorn expatriate, pulling himself together and dragging us around with him.

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.

Slow-motion knockouts follow, with Mr. Statham as sure-fisted as ever, but the “Expendables” director Simon West can only summon dead air in between. Mr. Goldman’s slightly offbeat underworld is not very convincing, and Mr. Statham’s thick voice and inexpressive acting suggest brain fog rather than gritty blues.

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

Enervatingly synthetic, The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears slices and dices the images and tropes of Italian giallo-style slasher films into an inert pile of style.

It’s a far cry from the wonders of Morris Engel’s “Little Fugitive” and might have been better off in a kid’s-size portion as a short.

Holly is supposed to be out of Guy’s league, but neither of them is up to carrying scene after scene of weak sparring and punny flirting.

Son of God may have hit the mark if part of the goal was to create a portrait flat enough to allow audience members to project their own feelings onto the screen.

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 tech-gadget-heavy plotting is so preposterously weak that it’s hard to look past the cheap laughs or half-baked direction.

This glossy movie from Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz about the Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas feels the burden of promotional urges and lacks a sense of immersion in a multistage event attended by hundreds of thousands.

The nitty-gritty science of global warming is tough enough to evaluate without the sort of hard-sell Ondi Timoner pushes on behalf of her subject, Bjørn Lomborg.

Viewer beware: Between the uplift and the cringe, this movie may cause whiplash.

As these overwritten characters cope and make fresh romantic missteps, the movie cruises obliviously along, littered with glib dialogue and howler developments.

Indigo is vaguely defined here as having a certain sensitivity and even power, but the movie doesn’t quite share those qualities, collapsing from a lack of direction in more than one sense.

The cast doesn’t quite succeed in keeping the suspense fresh throughout the story’s left turns.

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.

If the lineup is bipartisan, the analysis oscillates between apt and obvious, culminating inevitably in amen calls for popular action.

The title of this perfectly well-appointed production is apt: Big Gold Brick looks all right but it truly just sits there.

Mr. Hart tells wild tales, Mr. Gad is humiliated, and most everyone else gets to dish out or receive abuse. But the laughs are not a sure thing.

Wrong lets most of its random gags and view-askew premises twist in the wind like hamhandedly wacky improv comedy, punctuated with synthesizer effects. The film’s misguided flatness is perhaps its fatal flaw, not so much deadpan or existential as just monotonous.

Slack acting (perhaps aggravated by the harsh lighting design) and the script’s inability to build characters together vaporize the chances for the movie, which is both smugly clever and at times distastefully clueless.

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.

We’re meant to warm to Hannah and Andrew as they wear each other down with good-natured ribbing. But Ms. Hall and Mr. Sudeikis hardly warm up themselves, showing little chemistry and looking unsure how to play the film’s tone, or the would-be zingers.

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.

A deeply silly drama of corrupted innocence.

It’s hard to argue with that message, but one doesn’t have to accept the ho-hum experience of watching this movie.

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.

Slack storytelling (including snippets from a post-film Q. and A. session) and patchy filmmaking seal the unappealing deal.

Predictability and clichés get in the way of comedy here, especially with a lead character who rarely comes across as more than blandly sweet.

It’s like a gently distressed company film blown up to feature length.

The multicultural milieu lends an initial boost as Mr. Kwek’s jokes and plot entanglements take potshots at life in Singapore, but all the air seeps out of this attempt at zippy, tabloid-nutty storytelling.

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

Clinging to Hannah’s naïve viewpoint and the cherished ideal of her friendship with Anne results in some hard truths being hidden away or oddly sanitized.

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.

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.

Campanella, who overconfidently takes his time, outfits the film with ludicrous interrogation scenes, a drunken colleague who provides comic relief and redemptive tragedy, and a climactic flood of memories that plays like a trailer.

A clumsy mixed-nuts comedy.

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

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

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

Neither the very relaxed pace of this builder, Chris Overing, nor Mr. Stone’s sporadically amusing neuroses about his filmmaking make for a gripping documentary.

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.

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