Todd McCarthy

Franco, employing diverse cinematic techniques from split screen (mostly early on) to direct-to-camera address, makes the Bundrens’ time of trial more immediately coherent than it is on the page without disrespecting Faulkner’s oblique style.

Redford, who can’t avoid exuding charisma, plays this role with utter naturalism and lack of histrionics or self-regard.

[A] wryly poignant and potent comic drama about the bereft state of things in America’s oft-vaunted heartland.

Ambition markedly outstrips achievement in The Congress, a visionary piece of speculative fiction that drops the ball after a fine set-up.

This is a gorgeously made character study leavened with surrealistic dimensions both comic and dark, an unsparing look at a young man who, unlike some of his contemporaries, can’t transcend his abundant character flaws and remake himself as someone else.

Coppola’s attitude toward her subject seems equivocal, uncertain; there is perhaps a smidgen of social commentary, but she seems far too at home in the world she depicts to offer a rewarding critique of it.

No matter how silly and outlandish the action gets — and it does become ridiculous — it also delivers the goods its audience expects.

No matter how frenzied and elaborate and sometimes distracting his technique may be, Luhrmann's personal connection and commitment to the material remains palpable, which makes for a film that, most of the time, feels vibrantly alive while remaining quite faithful to the spirit, if not the letter or the tone, of its source.

After impressing well enough in his previous big screen directorial outings, Abrams works in a narrower, less imaginative mode here; there's little sense of style, no grace notes or flights of imagination. One feels the dedication of a young musician at a recital determined not to make any mistakes, but there's no hint of creative interpretation, personal feelings or the spreading of artistic wings.

The fact that the three actors who do most of the fooling around — Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton and Susan Sarandon — have a combined age of 202 pegs this as a sex romp for the Viagra crowd.

A lively, sometimes very funny comedy.

Black and his co-screenwriter, first-timer Drew Pearce, have great fun reshuffling the deck, teasing about who might occupy what superhero suit and morphing the story along with identity revelations and expansions of the dramatic horizons; the well-chosen cast members respond in kind with virtually palpable glee.

Given all the ways a project like this could have gone wrong, the result is surprisingly good on several fronts, beginning with a shrewd structure that fosters an intelligent dual perspective on the public and private aspects of the Deep Throat phenomenon.

The story is told in a hammer-on-anvil manner that evinces no gift for social satire or sharp cultural insight.

Basically the film consists of a bunch of techies in white shirts and glasses laboriously discussing their views, exchanges you get the feeling the filmmaker thought would come off as humorous.

Crude, repetitive and rigorously single-minded, the popular actor’s writing and directing debut lays it all on a bit thick, as the few points the film has to make are underscored time and time again.

Oblivion is an absolutely gorgeous film dramatically caught between its aspirations for poetic romanticism and the demands of heavy sci-fi action. After a captivating beginning brimming with mystery and evident ambition, the air gradually seeps out of the balloon that keeps this thinly populated tale aloft, leaving the ultimate impression of a nice try that falls somewhat short of the mark.

Pretty when it should be gritty and grandiosely noble instead of just telling it like it was, 42 needlessly trumps up but still can't entirely spoil one of the great American 20th century true-life stories, the breaking of major league baseball's color line by Jackie Robinson.

Watching a bunch of people take a drug trip is seldom either entertaining or edifying, but Chilean director Sebastian Silva manages to make it at least tolerably amusing.

There's something about novelist Stephenie Meyer that induces formerly interesting directors to suddenly make films that are slow, silly and soporific.

So fetishistic about high-powered weapons that it qualifies as an NRA wet dream, G.I. Joe: Retaliation pretty accurately reflects the franchise's comic book and cartoon origins, which is both a good and a bad thing: good if you're a 12- to 15-year-old boy, bad if you're just about anyone else.

Although there is incident in the film's second half...it doesn't build to the level of compelling drama, leaving the film in a quiet, temperate realm that scarcely makes the pulse race.

Danny Boyle has great and plainly evident fun adding twists and curves and tunnels and endless style to his modern London noir Trance, but he makes so many left turns that the film turns in on itself rather than going anywhere.

Generates a fair amount of tension and produces the kind of nationalistic outrage that rock-ribbed Americans will feel in their guts.

The Call for the most part is a tense, extreme-jeopardy thriller that delivers the intended goods.

As Oscar, Jordan at moments gives off vibes of a very young Denzel Washington in the way he combines gentleness and toughness; he effortlessly draws the viewer in toward him.

For all its derivative poetics -- as many exteriors as possible were shot during or just after magic hour, a la Malick -- the film is a lovely thing to experience and possesses a measure of real power.

Deftly playing Tina Fey's feminist-icon mother, Lily Tomlin all but steals Admission, a knowing but uneven comedy about the neuroticism of the college-admission process on both sides of the equation.