Sara Stewart

Director Suri Krishnamma capably depicts the darkness in Jim’s head with his shadowy surroundings, misanthropic inner monologue and increasingly frequent hallucinations, and Griffith’s vulnerable performance is a standout. But the film’s final third seems needlessly graphic.

No personal revelations surface in “This Is Us.” Also, no narrative, no conflict — no differentiation between band members, even, besides the designation of dark-eyed Zayn as “the mysterious one” (he likes to paint).

In some ways, it feels like an indie meditation on the eternal “When Harry Met Sally” question: Can men and women be just friends? Here, though, the focus is on the small, often unsaid moments that define a friendship — and a murky attraction.

Twi-hards, Beliebers and Whovians have nothing on the cult of Jane Austen, whose beribboned ranks are ripe for satire. Unfortunately, this scattershot comedy only occasionally hits the mark.

My own voice-over would go something like this: “This summer. One woman. Will see this movie. Again.”

Like some hybrid beast out of Greek mythology, this young-adult sequel has the body of a “Harry Potter,” the head of a “Twilight,” the feet of a “Hunger Games” and the tail, oddly, of a “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

The real treat here is the science, not the fiction. The film’s sleek aesthetic was developed in consultation with NASA about what such a mission would actually require, and look like as viewed on surveillance cameras.

I’d like to see a sequel about her freshman year at college, please. There were still a few items on that list left unchecked.

The innovation of Refn’s latest is mostly just in the way it manages to merge gory and boring. At least it’s created a new movie adjective for me: goring.

I only laughed once, and it was when Whit Stillman made a cameo to be snubbed by the newly self-actualized Imogene. But it was mostly in disbelief; pretentious or not, Stillman represents a caliber of smart writing that’s wholly absent from Girl Most Likely.

With the exception of “Tape 49” — the Simon Barrett-directed segment about the PI — the films are ridiculously shaky, their camerawork so determinedly guerrilla-style that it’s difficult not to look away, sometimes at crucial moments. Found footage is all well and good, but if it’s unwatchable, it might as well have stayed lost.

The movie lurches from one gross-out scene to another, flipping the bird at continuity and logic. It honestly seems as if Sandler and his team descended on a random suburb, halfheartedly improvising and moving on when they got bored.

As in the original “Despicable,” masterful physical comedy is what raises this animated pic so far above most of its competitors.

Are Some Girl(s) like this? Yes. But I left this movie with no additional insight on why.

In a film that’s often sad but not without its triumphs, director Morgan Neville smartly explores the complex role that ego and self-promotion play in this profession.

Predicated almost entirely on the repeated juxtaposition of innocent girlishness and mindless violence, Violet & Daisy could still have been campy fun — instead, it wilts for lack of wit.

Still, the proceedings move so quietly and thoughtfully as to be occasionally somnolent, though they’re punctuated with spasms of the violence that marked the Troubles.

None of these seemingly plot-rich questions are explored; instead, we’re stuck with a greasy-haired Mark Ruffalo, as his detective character flounders along in their wake, muttering that he doesn’t have time for this magic crap.

Daunting though it may be for the aspiring pick-up entrant, this is a fun and worthwhile ode to one of New York’s greatest summer pastimes.

This indie, female-centric riff on “Deliverance” is spare, smartly written and shot through with moments of twig-snapping tension.

This documentary, a love letter to their sisterly bond, gives a reasonably engaging look behind the scenes.

Director Mark L. Mann seems to be searching for the meaning in aimlessness, and in lowered expectations. But too often the narrative left me feeling the titular “um.”

Director Daniel Algrant chose well with Badgley, who transcends the rather made-for-TV vibe with a decent rendition of Buckley’s haunting falsetto.

Alas, the film’s relevance — and ultimately sane upshot — is buried beneath a meandering and oftimplausible plot.

Director Christian Charles gets some comic mileage from the inimitable Walsh and Rae, but it’s ultimately hard to care too much about a caddish protagonist like Norman — or, for that matter, about the clichéd “women are crazy!” sentiment that hums nastily under the antics of Dori’s unorthodox family gathering.

A trove of home videos, vintage commercial and propaganda footage and black-and-white animation dress up this energetic if somewhat unfocused look at the birth of skateboarding in the German Democratic Republic.

Temple and Angarano, entertaining enough, never quite sell the idea that this goodhearted couple would be so easily transformed by greed.

There are a lot of casualties in this stylish, unoriginal thriller, but James McAvoy’s knee was the only one that moved me.

The upstart Sapphires are a smash to watch as they cover soul tunes like “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” “What a Man” and “I Can’t Help Myself.”

I’ll say one thing for The Call: Its ending is actually a bit of a surprise. Just when you think it couldn’t get any stupider, pow! I’ll be damned, Hollywood, you still have the power to blindside.

There’s not a bad performance in the bunch. Hendricks’ and Fanning’s Brit accents are nicely un-showy.

Pineda is lovely, but I stopped believin’ in this documentary long before it was over.

Sure, it’s got its horror aspects. But for my money, this movie belongs alongside “Secretary,” “Ginger Snaps” and “Thirteen” in the family of deliciously dark female coming-of-age stories.

Mostly, though, it all ends up feeling like a lost, minor episode of “The X-Files:” A little scary, a little silly and catnip for those who want to believe.

Adapting the author’s cornball formula for a second time around is once-ambitious director Lasse Hallström (“Dear John”), who delivers a cinematic valentine you’ll be reasonably content to watch on a flight in a year or so.

Would you rather . . . watch this movie, or spend an hour and a half having your arm hairs plucked out with a rusty pair of tweezers? I’d have chosen the latter if it’d been on offer.

This female revenge thriller starts out promisingly, but squanders its girl-power capital quicker than you can say "Rihanna."

You'd hope a political-insider indie reuniting "West Wing" stars Rob Lowe and Richard Schiff, and informed by the experiences of an actual former spin doctor, would be a small delight. You would be wrong.

Sure, violence in movies isn't violence in real life. And when you combine it with intelligent dialogue and pointed social commentary (a la "Django Unchained"), it can be cathartic. But The Last Stand, absent either of these things, just seems to want to gin up a lot of high-fiving for a lot of shooting, and right now is the least palatable time I can think of for that.

There's also a refreshing lack of wrapping everything up in a neat, happy bow at the end.

Parental Guidance kicks off with a mean-spirited joke about an overweight woman and heads downhill from there.

In a movie season - and a month - filled with so much gunfire, bloodshed and human despair, it's refreshing to sit back and bask in the sheer joy with which these brightly costumed, stunningly agile performers navigate fire, water and air.

This is a compelling and comprehensive guide to one of the most Kafkaesque crime stories in American history.

While Caplan works well in theory as an antiromantic-comedy heroine, director and co-screenwriter Michael Mohan just doesn't give her enough to do.

Too much of the film is taken up by creaky plot devices and one sibling vowing to track down and talk to another one to resolve a problem.

Finally, someone took the source material at its terribly written word and stopped treating the whole affair so seriously.

Jane's friendship with Sadie is the one thing that cuts through the numbness - though the film's so low-key, even emotional revelations feel pretty muted.

Tonally, the film swings between whispery romance and ominous horror as it explores the dark side of love and lust, including an amusingly gory meditation on the notion that the person you think is your beloved might just rip your heart out.

The mellow Laue... makes a likable enough subject, if sometimes low-key to the point of dull. Watching other people watch him play, though, is definitely not.

Ultimately, Sleep Tight makes a sounder case for nocturnal Webcams than the "Paranormal Activity" franchise ever could.

Aside from these curious role reversals, though, Alex Cross is a mess. Drawing on every conceivable '80s B-movie action cliché and treating its beleaguered female characters like pieces of meat (literally, in one scene of butchery), director Rob Cohen squanders a surprisingly recognizable cast on a half-baked plot adapted from James Patterson's series of novels.

This is hardly reinventing the wheel, but it is serviceable, if you're looking for a few shivery communal scares.

An inoffensive but bland ode to the talky high school movies of John Hughes and Cameron Crowe.

Watching this yoga documentary mirrored how I feel about taking weekly classes: The ancient Eastern tradition is demonstrably beneficial for both mind and body, but its execution can be so boring and its teachers so painfully earnest.

Harris, a talented comic actress who looks more like a real person than a Hollywood facsimile of one, makes every scene she's in shine.

Here's the thing: Found footage is scary when - because - it leaves you to fill in a lot of the blanks yourself. But actually watching whole families have terrible things done to them - well, hard-core horror fans may dig it, I guess. I'd call it forced voyeurism of the worst sort.

If you can handle the glacial pacing and lack of dialogue, there is a certain squirmy satisfaction to watching this well-worn story of love, cruelty and madness play out minus the long-winded speeches and romantic catharsis.

Scrappy and unsettling, V/H/S puts the majority of today's mainstream "scary" movies to shame.

A serviceable animated movie about a soft-hearted Dracula.

Yes, there are the requisite jump-in-your-seat scares, many of them false alarms, and it all plays out basically exactly like any other horror movie, but Lawrence does elevate the proceedings.

Director Ben Hickernell soft-pedals the material into a blandly feel-good dramedy. As Abigail's spirited young trainees, Alexandra Metz and Meredith Apfelbaum give Backwards their all, but can't row their way clear of its clichés.

How to Survive a Plague, while a shaggier-structured documentary than many, is a heart-wrenching portrait of one of the saddest, most heroic chapters in American history.

For a movie called Sparkle, the absolutely least interesting or central thing about it is Sparkle (and Sparks), although the "Idol" singer does bust out one impressive performance.

There is no way you could make this movie stupider or more pointlessly noisy than it already is.