Peter Keough

Gimme Shelter is sometimes moving and inspiring, but you have to wonder: Though Kathy and her movement give teenagers shelter, do they give them a life?

What I found more disturbing was the casual misogyny of the convoluted story line.

The quest ends in a surprise Capra-esque resolution, which both satisfies and cloys.

Writer-director Zach Clark doesn’t rise much above that level of subtlety in his lampoon of the phony goodwill and soulless commercialism of the Yuletide season. Luckily, he has a cast that elevates the puerility into genuine pathos and absurdity.

It’s a Christmas nightmare, stuck with two obnoxious relatives who think they’re funny, and won’t shut up.

Last Days aspires to the kind of no-frills, psychological terror of Duncan Jones’s brilliant “Moon” (2009) but, despite some determined performances, settles for the clichés of the abortive “Apollo 18” (2011).

The observations coalesce into a cogent whole, providing insights that are never overtly stated.

Though fitfully entertaining, it lacks the conviction and urgency present in even the weakest of his quasi agit-prop productions.

The result is an extended home movie that is also a sociological experiment.

Despite the music, and no matter how the film’s editors slice it, the attempt to get a rise out of the audience by way of the endangered child device verges on emotional pornography.

All in all, maybe the best 90 minutes of romantic comedy in theaters this fall. Unfortunately, the film is 122 minutes long.

So here’s a tip: Don’t desert this film before giving it a chance. You might not want seconds, but eventually it dishes up a satisfying slice of life.

With his thoughtful exploration of the conflict between desire and responsibility, and his self-reflexive exploration of the themes of voyeurism, ambition, and personal identity, Reeves’s debut shows signs of a talented filmmaker.

In his eloquent, evenhanded, and meticulously constructed debut documentary, Jason Osder stirs the ashes of this tragedy and sheds new heat and light on such timely issues as the abuse of authority and the violation of the rights of citizens, especially the marginalized and powerless.

In the war between zombies and vampires for the domination of American popular culture, the zombies currently seem to have the edge. So suggests a montage in Rob Kuhns’s amusing but perfunctory documentary about the origins of the 1968 ur-text of zombiedom, George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead.”

Somewhere between John Cassavetes’s “Husbands” (1970) and “The Hangover” (2009) you will find Last Vegas. Not necessarily a bad place to be, except the film unfortunately has the madcap hilarity of the former and the emotional intensity of the latter.

It comes down to this: Which is more important, the innocence of a child or the survival of the species? And if the race survives, will it just become like the enemy aliens that must be destroyed to do so?

It’s the kind of outrageous comedy that you might even take your folks to, though probably not your kids. Say what you will about Harmony Korine and his demented geriatrics, at least they take their trash seriously.

This movie doesn’t make the case. In fact, had they upped the absurdity a notch, it would rival the comedy of Christopher Guest’s let’s-put-on-a-show mockumentary, “Waiting for Guffman” (1996). As it stands, it plays like an infomercial.

This sounds like it could be austere and schematic, but the affecting, authentic performances from the first-time actors make these characters thoroughly authentic.

Despite moments of black comedy and some memorable images, this “debut’’ doesn’t offer a lot to love.

A grade A, meat-and-potatoes genre flick.

Escape From Tomorrow, Moore’s sometimes surreal, sometimes sophomoric, black comic phantasmagoria, makes for a bumpy theme park ride.

Not your everyday dilemma, but as depicted in this lushly detailed and passionately performed melodrama, the mores and traditions of this sequestered, seldom depicted group take on a broader relevance.

The world of cinema is richer for the voice of Al Mansour; she speaks for the women of her country, and for people everywhere.

“You don’t need a man to define you!” Very true, and so much for feminism. The rest of the film takes a long, convoluted, predictable, and mostly unfunny route to prove that the opposite is the case.

Another problem with “Inequality” is that it offers nothing new or surprising.

In lieu of suspense, Rosenthal relies on a mood of free-floating anxiety, enhanced by West Virginia (actually British Columbia) landscapes where the sun never shines. As one-note as the title suggests, A Single Shot misfires.

Despite hard-working performances and the occasional sexual frisson from ingénue Déborah François (a kind of French Renée Zellweger) and seductive Romain Duris (who looks like Tom Hanks by way of Montgomery Clift), Populaire hits mostly wrong keys.

In a year when black filmmaking has surged with Oscar-touted films such as “The Butler” and the upcoming “12 Years a Slave,” Murray’s Things Never Said has a quiet eloquence of its own.

Not known for subtlety, Besson gets the expected laughs, and then some. He also exercises an unwonted finesse, not only with the allusions, but also with variations on the “f” word that, if not poetic, are at least funny.

The story gets both complicated and predictable.

As a five-minute sketch it would have been so-so. But as a 93-minute slog through witless puerility, it seems like an eternity in hell, baby.

Unfortunately, Hatley chooses not to offer much context or background history regarding that or other aspects of Helm’s half-century career, other than archival footage of Helm and the Band in their prime, press clippings, and comments from the Band “biographer,” Barney Hoskyns.

Who knows what they’re fighting about, but given the ecstatic ballet of fists and water, tossed bodies and smashed decor, centered by Leung’s majestic impassivity, it doesn’t really matter.

Imagination is what these filmmakers could use more of, as their ingenious concept doesn’t develop much beyond a gimmick.

The film looks great, boasting all the elegant period details that are expected in tasteful French adaptations of treasured national literature, with beautifully photographed Bordeaux landscapes and luxurious interiors. As for the human element, however, the mood is more apathetic than tragic.

In this alternately whimsical and grim documentary, Zachary Heinzerling relates the couple’s down-and-out, inspiring saga, which slyly comments on the evolution and ironies of the past half century in contemporary art.

Like [The Purge and The Conjuring], Adam Wingard’s sly, diabolical, and oddly moral You’re Next draws on the home invasion/haunted house scenario, but outclasses them with its wit, irony, and technically proficient terror.

Though director Ziad Doueiri’s uneven treatment of this provocative premise suffers from contrivance and implausibility, it nonetheless arouses profound questions about fanaticism, cultural identity, and the essential mystery of other people, even those we think we know best.

If one were to compare this film to one of Jobs’s own products, it would be more like the Cube than the iPod.

In addition to being very funny, In a World . . . also makes a case for women to be, well, heard. But in terms of cohesion and narrative, it doesn’t quite come together as a movie.

Though Mazer’s ambition is laudable, he has not yet integrated the comedy of manners into the comedy of no manners.

Epstein and Friedman may have the best of intentions, but in the end they’re exploiting Lovelace, too.

As remorseless in style as it is in message, In the Fog offers little hope and few pleasures, but earns admiration for its elegant exploration of the lowest depths of the human condition.

Silva doesn’t resort to any fancy tricks to depict his characters’ inner experiences. But something happens nonetheless, a bonding of sorts that is almost, if not quite, convincing.

Although Raymond’s career extended over five decades of London sleaze, decadence, and celebrity, neither director nor actor provide much insight into the man or his times, not to mention the significance of Raymond’s prime product.

Though admirable in ambition, McGowan’s decision to broaden his simple story’s scope diminishes an affecting melodrama about the increasingly common, insufficiently acknowledged plagues of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Bernstein communicates Ungerer’s manic spirit and his irrepressible creativity by punctuating the conventions of talking-head interviews and archival footage with animated snippets of Ungerer’s thousands of illustrations.

In the end Death triumphs, but its allure and obsession remain a mystery.

Grown Ups 2 offers a bittersweet paean to childhood and youth and their inevitable loss. Take the case of Adam Sandler. Didn’t he use to be funny?

Though overloaded with narration, “Honey” triumphs visually, with stunning shots of bees in flight, tracked in slow motion, “Winged Migration”-style, by who-knows-what technical wizardry.

A film that ultimately says more about banality than evil.

What might have proven an illuminating perspective on familiar issues disappoints as Bouchareb fails to turn his outsider’s point of view into new insights, and instead takes the easy route, falling back on familiar stereotypes in his tour of US misogyny and xenophobia.

Few comedians talk so much to get a laugh, and sometimes the strain shows... And the directors don’t do him any favors by the annoyingly frequent close-ups of audience members in convulsions of laughter.

This remake, like Frank’s horrible hobby, remains an exercise in empty repetition.

[Terence Stamp] and Vanessa Redgrave, as well as supporting actors Christopher Eccleston and Gemma Arterton, raise Paul Andrew Williams’s entry in the golden age genre from mawkish to genuinely heartwarming.

Intentionally or not, Roland Emmerich’s White House Down is the comedy hit of the summer. No other film equals its comic sophistication. Each nutty scenario is surpassed by the next, ludicrous story lines coalesce with expert orchestration, and absurd details return with perfect timing to build to a crescendo of hilarity.

Though “Berberian” bogs down a bit in its infernal spiral, Strickland proves himself to be a rising talent — a master of sound and fury both.

Burshtein has achieved a gripping film without victims or villains, an ambiguous tragedy drawing on universal themes of love and loss, self-sacrifice and self-preservation.

The problem with high concepts like this is cooking up a story and characters to go along with it.

It is part Rorschach test and part theme park ride as the filmmakers shoot from the strangest places and from such odd perspectives that much of the film consists of trying to figure out what the heck is going on.

Fascinating but frustrating.

Though offering some chilling twists on the usual conventions, employing wit and restraint where otherwise the filmmakers might have relied on the contents of an abattoir, Aftershock is ultimately predictable in its litany of who lives and who dies, and doesn’t try to be too ironic or self-reflexive about it.

More than just a footnote to a wayward period of cultural history, The Source Family portrays an American type, the transcendent charlatan, a latter-day Gatsby, not of material riches but of the soul.

Despite the derivativeness, Chism shows talent and shrewd instincts in the timing and direction of the comedy — she handles the requisite dinner table disaster scene with aplomb.

An effusive, sad, visually gorgeous, and illuminating portrait of the artist.

Perhaps the elusive, uncanny soundtrack of Tangerine Dream brings this about, or maybe it’s Friedkin’s juxtapositions of close-ups and stark long shots of the tiny trucks lost in jungle or desert landscapes, but Sorcerer eventually seems to be happening someplace not of this world. Not hell, exactly; maybe Limbo.

Just because Rad — who died in 2007 at the age of 70 — wasted 26 years bringing Dangerous Men to the screen doesn’t mean you should waste 80 minutes watching it.

After “Rocco,” Visconti’s style lost the vestiges of naturalism and indulged in rococo artifice and aristocratic splendor.