Tirdad Derakhshani

Charming, emotionally resonant, yet nowhere as fresh and dramatic as its predecessor.

Wetlands is one of the most daring, visually arresting, innovative, and imaginative examples of filmmaking to come out of Europe in recent memory.

While it misses the mark most of the time, director Hilary Brougher's film has a promising story, an impressive cast, and occasional moments of grace.

Featuring an awe-inspiring, stellar performance by Parks and Recreation's (and Wilmington's) Aubrey Plaza as Beth, the film opens with the high school girl's short-lived death.

Their film would be even more compelling if it followed up with further reports, perhaps a few years apart, charting the three boys' fates.

Iceland is beautiful. Really, really, really - really - beautiful. That pretty much sums up the new feature film Land Ho! That message is the film's alpha and omega. Its raison d'être. Its soul and its being.

Hollywood's latest entry in that tried-and-true genre, the disaster movie, is . . . well, it's like . . . a totally gnarly roller-coaster ride!

This story truly is inspirational and a lesson about civic responsibility. However, it makes for little more than a TV movie or a straight-to-video snack.

A clever, fun, and affecting romantic dramedy about love and rock-and-roll.

When it comes to sheer comic-book fun, few summer movies deliver a more consistent, satisfying, thoroughly enjoyable shot of cinematic jouissance than the delightfully adventurous actress Scarlett Johansson's latest bit of strange, Lucy.

Isn't a cheap knock-off but an equally effective, deliciously disturbing movie. It's bound to delight genre fans (and dismay critics, who attacked the first as heavy-handed and sloppy).

Swinton is delightful in a twisted turn as Wilford's enforcer, a Margaret Thatcherian dragon lady who adores watching her men torture miscreants who have defied the train's No. 1 rule: Know your place.

Like other entries of its pulpish ilk, the picture packs lots of violence, a fair bit of gore, and plenty of cheap scares.

A remarkable, thoroughly disturbing creepshow that burrows deep under your skin and refuses to let go.

One of this year's true surprises, the superior animated sequel not only is infused with the same independent spirit and off-kilter aesthetic that enriched the original, it also deepens the first film's major themes.

The 85-year-old Chilean-born auteur returns this week with his latest directorial attempt, The Dance of Reality, an intensely personal, deeply felt, if at times solipsistic autobiographical work about his childhood in Tocopilla, a seaside town at the edge of the Chilean desert.

Pulp fiction doesn't come much better than Cold in July, a gritty, grisly - and perversely giddy - crime yarn directed by Pottstown-born indie-film provocateur Jim Mickle.

The writer-director has the talent to dig deep and lay bare the assumptions behind our idea of justice and our notions of right and wrong. In The Devil's Knot, he settles for an encyclopedic, if skin-deep, presentation.

A dazzling documentary.

A tediously faithful remake of French filmmaker Luc Besson's terrific 2004 international hit "District 13," the Besson-produced Brick Mansions might have been mildly interesting had it been made a decade ago.

"You have to be like a poet," Jodorowsky says at one point. "Your movie must be just as you think of it. . . . The movie has to be just like I dream it." What an extraordinary dream it could have been.

It's hard to know whom to blame for this futile exercise: Morris or Rumsfeld.

An uneven, mildly amusing, and highly derivative flick featuring a wonderful, quirky cast as a crew of art thieves who run a complex scam on the art world, and on each other.

An inspiring, educational, highly enjoyable documentary.

A crafty, suspenseful, violent horror film that touches on the inner lives of sexual predators, the question of guilt and remorse in the human soul, and the practice of torture.

A happy-smiley Christian fairy tale disguised as a hard-hitting shard of social realism.

Slapdash, with dialogue and plot points that were cliches in Dickens' era, the pic sends up, then reaffirms, all the values the media sell us each holiday: compassion, forgiveness, tolerance.

Just call this movie "The Hangover: AARP Strikes Back."

"The Silence of the Lambs" gave us an articulate, Euro-suave gourmand cannibal, but served up pretty much the same stew.

Profane, randy, oversexed, and wonderfully juvenile.

Love conquers all. Sadly, Yoo's film does not.

There are a few nice scares in The Colony, and the female lead, Rookie Blue's Charlotte Sullivan, looks really, really cute in blond dreadlocks. But she can't save the movie, nor can her impressive costars, Bill Paxton, Kevin Zegers, and Laurence Fishburne.

Drug War is a deeply intelligent, exhilarating and eminently satisfying adult crime story, one of the best thrillers you're likely to see this year.

A quiet, modest chamber piece more like "Moon" than "Star Wars."

Very few of us would like to think about the physical and emotional toll that life in captivity takes on these magnificent creatures. Gabriela Cowperthwaite's powerful, heartbreaking, and beautifully crafted documentary, Blackfish, forces us to do just that.

Unexpectedly fresh, alive, and vibrant - and wonderfully traumatizing.

A sly, richly modulated, emotionally engaging, and brutally honest film.

If you're looking for quality prepackaged, predigested Hollywood family fun this summer, you could do a lot worse than Despicable Me 2.

While it flirts with the ridiculous, the film manages to maintain a certain gravitas as its many stories unfold.

Dense, richly textured, and emotionally fraught - uplifting and devastating in equal parts - Shane Carruth's masterful sophomore effort is an abstract, elusive, but emotionally engaging love story that's more tone poem than drama.

The characters' high-minded, if unsophisticated, patter clashes with the film's ironic-chic style, and it never manages to move beyond the late-night palaver of earnest, if naive, college freshmen.

Alvarez triumphs because he made one crucial decision: Avoid digital animation and use only practical in-camera special effects. He uses every trick from classic Hollywood and invents a few of his own.

A silly, if fun, futuristic sci-fi romance.

The movie is well-edited and lean, a fast-paced, action-filled bit of froth that manages to be diverting and surprisingly fun.

Not one of Sparks' best flicks (The Notebook is quite good) Safe Haven is marred by film cliches. It has an alarming number of throwaway montage sequences.

Wake in Fright is essential viewing for anyone interested in the roots of male violence.

Tai Chi Zero, the first film in a planned trilogy, will leave hard-core fight enthusiasts wanting. But it's a droll, pleasant diversion all the same.

It can feel inchoate, dropping the viewer in the middle of events without much context, and it exacts an emotional toll. But its raw quality also makes it compelling viewing.

No one should be expected to endure 115 minutes of this nonsense.

The Possession has none of the suspense that made Bornedal's morgue thriller "Deathwatch" such shuddering good fun. And despite the absurdly overwrought Bernard Herrmann-esque score, it has very few genuine shocks.

A taut, understated minimalist masterwork.

Gripping, hair-raising documentary.

Ai Weiwei comes off as a man on a singular mission: to record the life around him before it is erased or distorted by a repressive government terrified by the smallest sign of nonconformity. His primary weapons: video cameras and Twitter.

It's as exhilarating and moving a film opening as you're likely to experience. Sadly, the rest of Follow Me doesn't live up to this overture.

Less famous perhaps than some of Alfred Hitchcock's other wartime thrillers, this 1940 spy yarn is possibly one of his best. [07 Mar 2014, p.W15]