This film slips and sloshes around in such ways that you really can't figure out its take on the unfolding and ill-fated story.

Innocence certainly has all the right genre conventions to toy with, but the haphazard script by Brougher and Tristine Skyler is a bloody mess.

Evidently made with deep pockets but muddled intentions, The Identical is a folly largely unworthy of its hidden idol.

Director Lenny Abrahamson establishes a twee tone early that renders tinny the transition into melancholy, and it’s a shame the film so clings to Jon’s perspective. The takeaway is as flat as Frank’s mask. Bemused smile, followed by deflated feeling.

This is interesting and fun to watch, but not so much for what it reveals as for what it hints at. Cantinflas just doesn't provide enough for getting a handle on the man, but will have me, at least, doing further reading and watching as it really whets the appetite to know more about this great talent.

While its characters attempt to go deeper, As Above/So Below’s stabs at scares and sentiment only seem that much shallower.

So slow-moving, the narrative takes forever to gain momentum, and when it finally does, it deliberately undercuts it. This either is the most contemplative and sensual kind of pleasure or a well-meaning, finely executed misfire that ultimately drags instead of soars.

Wright is terrific – sensitive and alert – in the live-action opening. But that opening runs more than 45 minutes long, a way too heavy-handed preamble to the crazed animation to come, and the actress’ vocal delivery – soft-spoken, gently bewildered – is too soporific to pull off lines like, “Look at me, I’m your prophet of doom.”

By the end of this affable little film, you’ll likely crave a bowl of fresh-made pasta in seafood sauce, a glass of Frascati, and a room with a view on the Amalfi coast. (Sigh.)

The November Man is diligently executed, and Brosnan gives a fine performance as an action hero who can convey a character’s thought processes as well as deliver a punch.

Visually, the film’s technique is thrilling. There’s hardly a camera setup anywhere that doesn’t look like it could be a frame ripped from a comic book or graphic novel.

The Dog reveals both expected and unexpected things about this oddball character to keep you interested.

Few genuine moments throw into even sharper relief the tedious trappings which surround this, your average teenage tragedy.

Rich Hill attempts to lay bare these kids’ lives, striving for gentle intimacy, but the result feels more like arthouse pandering.

It’s an impossible standard, maybe, but in 42 minutes, TV’s "Friday Night Lights" delivered all-star-level emotional complexity and action. When the Game Stands Tall is strictly JV squad.

Occasional animated inserts inspired by Chantry’s work as an illustrator, while accomplished, inject an off-note of whimsy that doesn’t quite square with the script’s stabs at edgier humor.

The viable chemistry between these two leads keeps the ball in the air, even when the balls land elsewhere in strained homophobic gags.

It’s McHattie’s bizarre turn as the beleaguered town’s mayor that steals this show. Taking his cue from another infamous Ontario public servant, he gives a performance that can only be described as bat-shit crazy. Fitting, eh?

With Calvary, John Michael McDonagh (who wrote and directed "The Guard" and is the brother of Martin “In Bruges” McDonagh) has crafted a darkly hilarious and deeply ruminative update on the passion play.

The film begins to get a bit lost as the story develops and pushes toward a wobbly climax and conclusion. And what to make of that sled, which is the first bit of knowledge Jonas receives. Rosebud, anyone?

What the movie ultimately demonstrates is that the sum total is less than the individual parts when you add together Rocky, the Terminator, Indiana Jones, Mad Max, Blade, Zorro, Hercules, and the Transporter.

A consistently workmanlike helmer, Liebesman (Wrath of the Titans, Battle: Los Angeles) keeps the pace brisk and the overall tone closer to that of the recent G.I. Joe vehicles, infusing this glorified toy commercial with an almost aggressively knowing sense of humor and exactly one fun action sequence on New York’s most conveniently located mountaintop.

Because “all in” – to me, at least – suggests a certain standard of enthusiasm, of emphaticness, and what this latest Step Up movie indifferently chunks out falls far short of that standard.

Those expecting a charming bonbon à la Midnight in Paris may wish to lower their expectations. Magic in the Moonlight’s story is exceedingly threadbare, a first draft that never got fleshed out or tightened up.

Into the Storm captures the magnificence of tornadoes, their awful beauty when they set down, the devastation they wreak, and the enormity of their consequences. The film features a rich array of well-developed characters – including the storm itself – which makes it ever more involving as it unfolds.

The Hundred-Foot Journey is elevated comfort food. The flavors aren’t complex, but it’s nourishing nonetheless.

For the most part, Code Black is a riveting document despite its tendency to jackrabbit around in its themes and personalities.

For better and worse, the story unfolds as the late Brown himself might have related it, scattered across time, told with more impulse than clarity.

Guardians of the Galaxy is an outlier: a space opera in a largely earthbound movie cycle (excepting the occasional red-eye to another dimension in the Thor pictures), candy-colored and bopping where the other Marvel movies are muted and imposing, and the funniest one to date, without a doubt.

Inherently funny, with a terrific sense of timing, an amazing gift for mimicry, and an ability to perfectly imitate all kinds of everyday sounds, Iglesias is always charming and frequently laugh-out-loud funny.

If anything gets lost in the mayhem, it’s Johnson’s reliably charming personality.

The Killer Inside Me is hardly uninteresting, and you get the sense that everyone involved tried really hard to pull off this difficult adaptation. But it would be impossible to view The Killer Inside Me as anything but a vast miscalculation.

Persecuted is a profoundly conservative, Christian ideological take, guised as a classic Seventies paranoid thriller. Certainly unique, this is another targeted release, specifically aimed at groups sharing its beliefs.

Patinkin and King’s characters’ wrangling with spirituality is sincere, and specific. Everything else in this everything-and-the-kitchen-sink film feels like too many ideas stored up over an especially long winter.

The best comic-book movie in a long time, though based on no comic, Lucy is a film that mates classic Besson with Quentin Tarantino in a go at the mystical, world-solving vision found in Stanley Kubrick’s "2001: A Space Odyssey" and Terrence Malick’s "The Tree of Life."

Even when plausibility fails, I Origins is elegantly cosseted by its dreamy camerawork (courtesy of Markus Förderer) and pretty people.

Certain scenes play as if Reiner forgot to show up on the day of filming, so the actors and cameraman just winged it. Perhaps his embarrassing (and pointless) turn as Leah’s clueless accompanist with the bad toupee distracted him from his principal responsibilities behind the camera. What a Meathead.

Forget divining who’s predator and who’s prey. Everybody’s chum here.

It is a bland, clawless comedy; a cautionary tale of a high concept gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Linklater’s newest film, a true masterwork, eschews this big-bang theory of dramatics in favor of the million-and-one little things that accumulate daily and help shape who we are, and who we will become.

Overall, Planes: Fire & Rescue, though featuring lovely graphics and stunning animation, is just too mundane.

Le Chef is practically bursting with good-natured bonhomie.

The story has a welcome sense of continuous momentum, and what’s more, DeMonaco has a better handle on both his skewering of the entitled upper class (not as pointed as Paul Verhoeven’s ultraviolent satire, but a start) and the righteous anger of the targeted lower class (personified by Michael K. Williams’ resistance leader, Carmelo).

Eloquent, it is surprisingly moving and beautifully structured.

Coherence presents a far-fetched premise at the outset, only to slyly smuggle in some remarkably relatable matters of the heart along the way.

The mutilated, slobbering, howling possessed in Deliver Us From Evil crawl on all fours like animals, and furiously dig into surfaces until their fingers bleed, but they’re nothing more than a sideshow, freaks on display for your perverse enjoyment. It’s unsettling, but never terrifying.

The narrative and its attendant lessons about how one rotten ape and/or human can spoil the bunch are engaging, although I found myself drifting during the battle sequences.

Unimaginatively filmed and of a misbegotten construction, Tammy goes all in with its namesake character (played by McCarthy), hanging the entire movie around a person who is immediately and irreversibly established as being thoughtless, unperceptive, destructive, and uneducated.

Despite the shaky-cam aesthetic, Dave Green’s first feature still makes for a brisk, appealing adventure capably anchored by four young actors.

For the most part, though, Nothing Bad manages to hold a tight grip, evocative as it is of Lars von Trier’s similarly unflinching "Dogville" and equally bound to start some conversations among those willing to stomach it.

Elliptical, authentic, and with a strong palate of visual flair, Miss Lovely can be a confusing concoction at times, but it is never boring.

Remarkably frank, Korengal espouses no one clear sentiment towards war.

Director Candler acquits herself nicely in her third feature-length film, never allowing the agonizing narrative to drown in self-pity. She keeps the film’s head above water despite the occasional contrivances in her screenplay.

Snowpiercer holds its own; it’s an unruly but rattling – and ravishing – work of art. On first watch, I wondered if there was anything to scratch beneath the surface – it seemed so straightforward, I worried there wasn’t enough there there – so I rewatched it almost right away and was surprised to find it still left me panting.

Its affection for this prince among putzes is infectious: Within the first five minutes, you’ll find yourself liking this man despite hardly knowing him.

Despite not breaking any new cinematic ground. The Rover plays like a taut spellbinder.

The more you become acquainted with these men, the more this movie grows on you. This is the sneaky power of authentic cinema verité. The purer the form, the purer the truths that may be revealed.

It’s an indie film about abortion that comes snuggled in the broad strokes of a quirky relationship comedy. A grump might wonder when indie films got so soft, but I’m more intrigued by the inverse: Why aren’t more studio films this clever and winning and conversant in the same language as their audience?

Everyone in the ensemble is game for their respective misadventures, but little of it seems all that inspired.

The film is fun. It could have been produced by Ross Hunter but wasn’t, maybe even directed by Vincente Minnelli, although he probably would have screwed with it a lot more.

There’s a definite austerity to the storytelling, which is enhanced by the crisp black-and-white cinematography by Łukasz Żal and Ryszard Lenczewski.

Coyness aside, Borgman is a supremely controlled and darkly nuanced fable that veers away from your expectations every time you think you have it figured out.

For No Good Reason comes alive whenever the camera sits back and records Steadman attacking a blank piece of paper.

Sweet-spirited and sometimes meandering but always working in the service of its young protagonists’ perspective, We Are the Best! might come off as slight if you aren’t paying attention, or you pay too much attention to the too-cute closing credits montage.

The result is a bit like seeing a Nike commercial make a drunken pass at its friend’s manga collection while the X-Files DVDs watch from across the room; it may not make much sense, but at least it’s never boring.

I laughed, I cried, I longed for a pet dragon to call my own.

An unusually fun and funny film.

Imaginatively, it places all the known elements of the story in different contexts, completely recasting this familiar fairy tale into a more poignant and resonant work.

The story is rather creaky, but who cares when the actors Clive Owen and Juliette Binoche are so sublime together? Even though the film creates an artificial construct that rings hollow, the two central characters generate great heat and interest. Their presence is enough to keep the film’s nattering foolishness at bay.

Filth seeks to eventually gain your sympathies, tricking you to care about a character who’s just dragged you through the gutter of human depravity for the last 90 minutes, only to offer up an absolution that, while attempting to be dark and edgy, is just flat and unconvincing.

Crammed to bursting with the director’s trademark magical realism. Occasionally marred by budgetary constraints, this is nevertheless a welcome return for an artist who truly deserves the sobriquet: El Maestro.

The neo-noir Cold in July operates at a steady sizzle. A body turns up dead before the film’s opening credits: It becomes the opening salvo that propels the characters into a confusing vortex of guilt, revenge, corruption, and vice.

Night Moves doesn’t give us much reason to like or empathize with its protagonists, but neither does it discount their activism. In this way, the film spurs contemplation. If it’s food for thought you’re looking for, you won’t go hungry with Night Moves.

Elgort’s performance is more mannered than Woodley’s open-faced, direct line to the heart, but it works.

This is an action flick for those who like form over substance in their popcorn movies which explode onscreen every summer.

As lovely as it sometimes is, what this film needs is a little more shape and a little less ambience.

A charming, rambling, modern romantic comedy is so sloppy that it should be done in by its excesses, yet the large, excellent ensemble cast manages to make it all work.

The Immigrant is two hours long, but I stayed even longer in my seat, through the credits, still in thrall to it all. The title is singular, but the scope is not so easily quantifiable.

That’s not to say that MacFarlane’s film isn’t funny, but rather that his creative talent could benefit from more judicious editing and focus. MacFarlane’s id runs rampant with no signs of a superego (internal or external) to rein it in.

The material is interesting, and the production values are top-notch. Anushia Nieradzik deserves special notice for her costume design; her luxurious dresses in deep shades of purple and magenta race the pulse more than anything particular in the plot or characterization. It’s all quite well done, if only a touch too decorous.

Chef is filled to the brim with the kind of heart and vivacity that makes up for the film’s familiar storyline.

Capitalizes on the audience’s familiarity with the many players and their complex backstories, but never advances the ball down the field, tenders no new thought or wrinkle to the franchise. It’s the difference between a diverting entertainment, and a riveting one.

The laziness is what irks me most about Blended. Everything from the re-teaming of the two stars and their "Wedding Singer" director, Frank Coraci, reeks of moviemaking by checklist.

The drama may not be as focused as we might like, but Slattery’s outstanding gallery of actors make this an ensemble piece that commands our attention: These dead-end characters stick out like bas reliefs in the community framework.

Writer/director Lucía Puenzo (XXY) has a nice feel for her characters and, especially, the viewpoint of adolescent Lilith. But by giving away the story’s big reveal at the very beginning, it infuses the film with a potent sense of dread rather than suspense.

A restless, nervy actor, Hardy seems to get a kick out of tying one hand behind his back. He dominated "The Dark Knight Rises" even with a modified ball gag obscuring most of his face. Here, locked behind a steeling wheel and a conceptual gimmick, he only has the upper half of his body to work with. No surprise to anybody who’s been paying attention: Half a Hardy adds up to a hell of a lot.

The filmmakers have cast their underdogs well: Madhur Mittal plays the anxious, upright Dinesh; Suraj Sharma is the loose-limbed, pizza-loving Rinku; and they’re both funny and endearing, two words that apply to the whole of the supporting cast.

It’s a creature feature for the Subatomic Age.

The movie aspires to be an inspirational screwball comedy of sorts about the stresses of motherhood, but the situational humor lacks the spontaneity necessary for some crazy fun.

Carping on a film clearly targeted to 5-year-olds might seem unjust, but the filmmakers go about their business in such a lazy fashion that the viewer can’t help but feel irritated by the whole ordeal.

As a documentary on the origins and backstory of the unfilmed film, Jodorowsky’s Dune is unsurpassable. More than that, however, it also allows audiences a rare glimpse inside the furiously creative mind of Jodorowsky, who still, at 84, is a wonderfully mad genius of the moving image.

The setup is great, but Fading Gigolo’s follow-through lacks dynamism.

Even our First Lady isn’t safe from this documentary. Fed Up contends that Michelle Obama’s fight against childhood obesity and her Let’s Move campaign have been co-opted by the food industry. Ever notice how no one ever talks anymore about her vegetable garden on the White House lawn and its consequent argument for the consumption of freshly prepared foods over the processed varieties?

Amusing enough, but weirdly joyless.

Unfortunately, Deneuve’s performance is not enough to elevate On My Way from the dredges of narrative tedium. Bettie may have gotten her groove back, but, in the end, the price the audience pays isn’t worth it.

There are no hard truths to be found in Finding Vivian Maier (really, how could there be?), but it’s an engrossing doc nevertheless – a portrait of an American artist hiding in plain sight, a mystery with too few clues, and a sincere inquiry into how best to divine the wishes of the dead.

Although Eska’s story is fairly simple (and created prior to "12 Years a Slave"" and "Django Unchained," which made slavery-era films part of our contemporary dialogue), it’s an emotionally rich tale.

Although handsomely mounted, this latest star in the Marvel Universe is not a leading light. But it probably has enough juice to keep the galaxy spinning until something more original comes along and knocks it out of orbit.