Rachel Saltz

For a mockumentary to work, the writing has to be spot on. But the script by Alan Grossbard, who shows a fond familiarity with, if not great insight into, the racing milieu, has too many half-baked characters and goes soft just when it should get sharp.

If the storytelling disappoints (shocking!), the film mostly doesn't. It relies on action and effects and Bollywood's trump card, star power, to carry the day. This is Mr. Khan's movie, and once he sheds Shekhar's droopy locks, he shines as the deadpan, action-hero robot with digital snot and smooth moves on the dance floor.

Chalet Girl may not be particularly creative or genre busting or even a great example of a romantic comedy. But its premise might make you smile.

The movie plods along self-consciously, and when the big twist occurs (you'll most likely see it coming), it complicates the plot, but not Butch, who remains a paragon. That's the problem with Blackthorn: it goes all mushy when contemplating its grizzled, out-of-time hero.

What should be rousing stuff - a republic is born! the chains of feudalism thrown off! - remains a kind of lavishly illustrated history lesson. Even the irrepressible Mr. Chan (this is his 100th film) seems subdued.

Mr. Sarmah's film is well intentioned, but it comes off as a kind of Cliffs Notes to enlightenment.

Has a complicated story to tell, about black surfers and, more broadly, about African-American history and the history of surfing. Great topics all, but that's a lot of ground to cover and, unsurprisingly, the film often feels a bit scattershot.

At times you wish Mr. Marx had sharper storytelling skills (or a better editor). Some important details seem clear only in retrospect, and some remain murky. Still, Mr. Marx shines a light on a place and a way of life that are rapidly changing.

The fine-boned, delicate-looking Ms. Casadesus, now 97, is a pleasure to watch. And the not-delicate-looking Mr. Depardieu does his usual excellent job. But their scenes together, if sweet enough, aren't particularly convincing or moving.

If the movie feels old-school (with new-school production values), consider its pedigree. It's no wonder: Shaolin is a reimagining of the 1982 "Shaolin Temple," in which Jet Li made his debut.

Full of indie mannerisms - compulsive swearing, jokey violence, quirk-laden characters - Flypaper can't quite manage to find a style or a comic groove of its own.

Subtle it ain't and subtle it needn't be. It is, though, mostly involving (if Bollywood long, at 2 hours 45 minutes) and even occasionally stirring.

Worse, you never root for Ms. Calderon's Luz, who goes from sullen to more sullen to a bit less sullen. She has discipline - to lift, she has to keep her weight down and train constantly - but not much compassion and no joy.

Intermittently absorbing, if deliberately stripped of drama.

More and more, Bollywood movies are urban tales for urban audiences. What feels most backward-glancing about Singham is its uncomplicated, even cartoonish insistence on the benefits of village soil over city dirt for cultivating bedrock Indian values.

Undone by its very premise: that the two stories it tells can coexist in the same film.

It's hard to completely dislike a movie in which Mr. James makes like Fay Wray, hitching a ride on the back of his gorilla pal, Bernie (voiced by Nick Nolte), as Bernie clambers up a bridge.

It also shows, perceptively and often sweetly, a broader slice of young, urban, educated life in India as the three deal with careers, love and happiness.

Unless your idea of a good joke is a golf ball thwacked into an unsuspecting crotch or the old frying-pan-in-the-kisser gag, you probably won't like this movie.

These interviews form the backbone of !W.A.R., and like the film, they're passionate, contentious, funny, sincere, politically attuned.

Mr. Wexler has found interesting people and useful, funny and sometimes crackpot-seeming information.

Mr. Arbeláez cites Iranian film as an influence, and it's evident in his movie's subdued lyricism and its focus on the boys, whose games and projects - they keep trying to rescue the ball - are treated with a sweetness that steers clear (mostly) of sentimentality.

At one point the lions make a meal of a lovely young zebra they've just killed. That spelled the end for the little boy sitting next to me. "I'm too scared," he said, and he dragged his mom out of the theater. Sorry, kid, it's a jungle out there, even in Disneynature.

The film mixes period footage with visually unappealing contemporary interviews. If you're expecting voluble, outsize personalities with colorful war stories, you'll be disappointed.

Korkoro (the word means freedom in Romani) has an unexpectedly leisurely quality as it shows the texture of Gypsy life - the music-making, the intense bonds with horses and the natural world - and its awkward fit with modernity.

The movie too often fails to reward the close watching it requires. While its stillness powerfully suggests stasis, its fragmentary approach doesn't achieve a cumulative power.

Ms. Rao gives the city an immediacy it doesn't usually have in films. But she has more feel for mood than for storytelling.

There's a lovely, unhurried quality to Mr. Hosoda's storytelling, which nicely matches the clean, classically composed images of his outer story.