In the end, Barracuda may not have the sharp teeth of the Hollywood nail-biters that have swum before in familiar waters. But if you’re attuned to its slow-burn charm, it still offers some bite.

My Friend Dahmer becomes one of the year’s most chilling true-life dramas.

Parcels out information like a triage medic doling out morphine; every tiny bit is carefully considered and then rationed out as though he were terrified he might exhaust his supply before the closing credits.

A playground for Malkovich – enjoyable enough but not terribly deep.

Will be of interest for anyone seeking unconventional romantic stories as well as those curious about the development of the Dogme movement.

Writer/director James Vanderbilt...sticks to Mapes’ version of the truth, and the film serves as a valedictory for Mapes and Rather. Still, the movie never negates the truth’s other strands, while also showing what a human profession journalism is.

Baichwal is comfortable with those moral and aesthetic ambiguities as well, and, as a result, she’s created a visual poem of devastation that makes one question one’s entire relationship to the world.

After Tommaso, which was Ferrara at his least apologetic, it's so fitting that his most epic film is also his most introspective.

To do no disservice to the impressive work of Bridges' co-stars, anytime his ragged writer, in flowing caftans and floppy hats, is on screen, it's impossible to take in anything else, so commanding is his presence.

It’s a mixed bag for sure, but The Good House ultimately displays enough self-assurance to overshadow its contrivances.

While the performances are total delights, there remains the nagging feeling that Kore-eda is not working at his peak.

As documentary Free Chol Soo Lee shows, it's wisdom that seems to evade what are supposed to be the mechanisms of that justice.

Curious and effective.

An intriguing export with crossover appeal.

As a film An Inconvenient Truth is a treasury of information. Attention may occasionally drift, but the film’s message of urgency is abundantly clear.

An admirable little film, a funny and familiar depiction of Americans traveling abroad, strangers to each other and themselves.

Director Margaret Betts’ superb debut feature arrives in theatres at perhaps just the right moment.

A bit of action, a bit of humor, and a whole bunch of teachable moments.

It's strange thinking of water as a market commodity, and it's hard to comprehend the kind of greed that must go into keeping it from needy mouths, but, fact is, the water business is now the world's third-largest industry, meaning there are a lot of sinister souls out there fiddling with their bank statements while Rome dries up.

While admirably eschewing any "God’s Little Acre"-like sensationalism, the movie has little compelling dramatic energy. While the near-absence of emotional commotion doesn’t hobble Bull, there’s no question it keeps it tied down.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone draws a lot of goodwill from the basic likability of its star performers.

Puts an unusual spin on some of the clichés of the romantic comedy.

Better use should have been made of the voice talent provided by Jeremy Piven, Salma Hayek, and Lenny Henry than the meager cameos their characters have. But no one here needs to walk the plank.

So while there's nothing incredibly new here in the narrative, it's also a reminder that Keery has natural charisma, and is turning that to increasingly interesting ends.

The actor Scott Caan makes a strong debut as a writer-director in this atmospheric character study in which he also co-stars.

The reveal is a bit predictable, but a couple of fake-outs keep things interesting along the way.

A fascinating sight to behold.

It's far from perfect -- as many jokes fall flat as succeed -- but like Undercover Brother himself, it's smarter than most, and twice as solid.

At its best, Joy celebrates the passage of a demoralized woman who finds the steel in her spine. At its worst, it panders in the name of female empowerment, occasionally delivering moments of pseudo-inspiration that ring so falsely it’s difficult to hear anything else.

Fans of wartime romances like Casablanca and Doctor Zhivago are sure to swoon over the fate of Cold War’s divided lovers.

There is a lot to like about The Phantom of the Open – and just as much to quibble over – but ultimately, the world can easily stomach a few treacle movies if they are this grounded in failure.

Echoes long after the movie ends.

Indeed, Smile, at its best, is a bit weirder and more left-field than you may expect. Following the recent release of Barbarian, it’s continuing this year’s trend of seemingly well-polished, potentially anonymous studio horrors having much more inspired, hidden ambitions than other high-profile contemporaries.

Quiet desperation, as Pink Floyd so adroitly observed, is the English way, and Ian McEwan's 2007 Booker short-listed novel On Chesil Beach is a soft-spoken but devastating reminder of that truth.

Meticulous and abstruse, Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color is an idiosyncratic film that invites explication but defies total understanding.

It's a film that inspires, that will make you want to try the silly, impossible, wonderful thing.

Segel, scripting himself, injects regular bursts of comic genius into the proceedings.

What resonates most about Trolls Band Together are its lessons about self-acceptance and letting go of perfectionism. It’s a great message for young kids to internalize, and perhaps a good reminder for adults in the audience, too.

Under the muck and mire, Vesper is a reminder that both life and hope can be surprisingly durable, flexible, and morphable.

Filmed in luscious black and white, Mustang Island is a millennial comedy of manners that also doubles as a superlative acting showcase for real-life couple Macon Blair and Lee Eddy.

What Warriors of the Rainbow may have going for it most of all is Chin Ting-Chang's dreamy cinematography, which presents the native Seediq amid the sultry jungle greenery that brings to mind the absurdly lovely flora of James Cameron's Pandora.

Despite the often unsettling subject matter, this adaptation of Emily M. Danforth's teen novel isn’t an intense experience: no big confrontational scenes, few (if any) histrionic moments.

You feel Lucky’s frustration and gloom, how they burden him, without Stanton opening his mouth. But thank goodness he does, otherwise we wouldn’t get to hear him croon the lover’s lament “Volver, Volver” with a backing mariachi band. The moment is sublime – gawdam, Harry could really sell a song – and piercingly poignant.

Roth delicately captures the weight of weariness that burdens Neil, as he shuffles the streets in his Birkenstocks, briefly showing signs of life in the company of Berenice. We are locked on to Neil for those signs, and Roth’s performance is utterly absorbing.

It’s a tantalizing offer that’s stuffed with celebrity, scandal, hedonism, and riches and all the sex, drugs, and disco that money could buy.

If Pride manages to be somewhat reductive in its depiction of equal rights activism, at least it’s reductive in the right direction.

For the first time in her film career, Plummer really owns the movie. Plummer's habitation of the character of Eunice in Butterfly Kiss is a creation that sears itself permanently into the viewer's consciousness, though it's possible that, ultimately, you may wish the memory to be quite otherwise.

The film’s weak spot is that it and its subjects seem unsure of Case’s cult status.

Although the story and imagery are absorbing to watch, the details of the plot are sometimes hard to follow and fully digest. But enough of it survives to make this extravagant production a delightful experience for Westerners to watch.

Sporadically, the deliberately organic, semi-improvised tone doesn't quite gel, and there are momentary longueurs that could derail the story. But Myrick's decision to keep the narrative simple, and instead concentrate on the characters, means there's always a thick strand of sympathy and tragedy at play.

Streisand's been in front of cameras so long she's thinks of them as mirrors. Luckily she has a good eye and it, more often than not, has the ability to look straight to the soul.

With beauty and talent to spare, Portman is something to behold: It's as if Elizabeth Taylor and Jodie Foster were somehow genetically melded at an early age. She's definitely a beautiful girl to watch for.

Thoroughly predictable from start to finish.

The screenplay by father-son team Jacob and Michael Koskoff, the latter of whom is also an actual trial lawyer in Connecticut, is tight and lean; even the courtroom scenes are punctuated by honestly unexpected revelations.

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.

Recounting the history of nukes, mankind's seeming inability to render them obsolete, and the many nightmare scenarios that are cropping up with almost daily frequency in this grim new age of terror-on-demand,Countdown to Zero is less a documentary in the traditional sense than a scathing piece of advocacy journalism.

At times it feels like it wants to be a comedy, à la History of the World, Part I, and at others it seems solidly part of serious dramas like Ben Hur. It’s a tricky tone to balance, and The Book of Clarence doesn’t always succeed, weakening an otherwise enjoyable and entertaining film.

Although The Many Saints of Newark offers an alluring glimpse into Tony Soprano’s birth under a bad sign, it never shows the blue moon in the mobster’s eyes.

The film constantly plays against expectations. Reitman’s skilled direction of the superb cast allows the ridiculous to become poetic, the artificial to unfold naturally, the absurd to achieve a deep romantic resonance.

It’s a daunting task to mount a stage production of the play these days, given the college-lit symbolism embodied by its hapless titular bird and the narrative arcs to which today’s audiences are accustomed, much less adapt it for the big screen and still remain true to Chekhov’s delicate dramatic sensibilities. Either way, it’s an uphill climb. This film adaptation of this seminal play (the fourth, by most counts) gets about halfway up the hill.

Skate Kitchen’s mild melodrama meanders all over the place, not unlike the many skateboarders who shred the skate parks and streets, carving hypnotic, slo-mo figure-eights or outrageous triple ollies on every available surface and obstacle.

As Benny, [Driver] nudges the film out of its few valleys of smarm, making Circle of Friends a heartfelt love letter to circles of friends everywhere.

Wasted! is sure to be mind-expanding for anyone who’s never contemplated what happens when excess food is scraped off one’s plate. But the film’s real novelty lies in the demonstration of actual solutions that have already been put into practice.

One would think that a film concerning ghosts, time travel, and righting past wrongs would clearly lay out the rules, but Do and screenwriter Christopher Larsen are more interested in pastoral atmosphere than logic and with examining the emotional toll of regret, of mistakes, and how those things can follow you forever.

Like code that works but inefficiently, the length is both a feature and a bug. Mercifully, Ascher's most visually original movie to date keeps those TED lecture seat-shuffling blues at bay.

A notch above the mediocre movies that are usually made from mediocre John Grisham bestsellers. That may sound like faint praise, but it’s an endorsement for this surprisingly entertaining film.

This is an impressively realized (and, yes, occasionally, unavoidably humorous) valentine to Hollywood's sci-fi glory days – all heart, no snark, and one big eye.

You know you're watching some sort of bizarre classic when King of Trash John Waters gets half his face burned off by sulfuric acid in the first act.

There's just enough plot to keep things moving but never too much that it gets in the way of the basic fish-out-of-water gagfest. The Beverly Hillbillies' greatest achievement is its inspired casting.

Within the context of films that include the word booty in their titles, it serves up an unusually fresh, inventive and good-natured brew of pure lascivious fun.

Farrow and Walken are terrifically semicomatose as Abe's mom and dad, and Murphy – as a co-worker who takes what appears to be pity on the eternally adolescent Abe – is equally memorable. Yet Dark Horse feels like a lesser Solondz film, despite its cavalcade of misanthropy.

Makes it pretty difficult to tell the difference between good mothers and bad.

Unsettling and odd, it's the perfect film for a dreary, rainy day.

Fans of the Polish brothers and fans of inspirational movies may all depart the theatre scratching their heads: The Astronaut Farmer is not exactly the movie any of these viewers expected to see. This is almost always a good thing – even if the movie is a deserved head-scratcher.

From James Brown to Sam Cooke, the songs set a mood that lingers for some time after.

Like some sentimental fool, I allowed Johnson’s good-hearted buffoonery and Pettis’ overpowering sweetness and Millard and Price’s unwavering belief in the healing power of love to get the better of my senses and travel straight passed my brain to my heart.

In the end, Redbelt prevails, just as Terry teaches his students to prevail, but getting there isn't always pretty.

Assuming that rich human insight, great production values, and topnotch acting still count for something, Mrs. Brown should have no trouble finding an appreciative audience.

It’s hard to say what makes Veronica Guerin feel so distant and uninspiring. Maybe, it’s just as conventional wisdom has always said: Journalism is a dull and tedious business to put on the screen.

In an era where so many horror films are anchored in the aesthetics of Eighties American cinema, Sputnik establishes itself as an especially polished work of retro-futurism.

Where Kore-eda finds his languid but captivating pace is in the constant itch that there are no ways to quite make all of the pieces fit.

Missed opportunity and bad timing inform the romantic interlude in Of an Age in a way many of us have experienced at least once.

Embrace the simple pleasures of pen to paper.

Unfortunately, someone (screenwriter Justin Lader, perhaps?) needed to improvise some kind of satisfying denouement because the film’s third act just collapses in on itself. The One I Love is imaginative and provocative until … until it isn’t.

Pink Flamingos is, in its own unique way, the quintessential American Family Film. Not my family, certainly, and probably not yours, but a family nonetheless. So here's to family values. And shock values, too.

The result is an expansive and ambivalent testament to human ingenuity, human intransigence, and nature’s endangered yet enduring power to move.

The movie is, ultimately, a fascinating victim of its own ambitions.

It's not if Michael gets out of his rut (or when he gets to chasten Pineapple a little along the way), but how, and it's a fun ride with him until he reaches that destination.

The movie has a floppy vibe to it, teetering on lazy farce in its mixed marriage of dry humor and flashes of violence.

Just because Pavements is a prankish film about a prankish band doesn't make it any less deeply heartfelt. It’s one for the fans – and we are legion.

Employing contemporary interviews with those who were there and a wealth of raw footage from the original events, Desolation Center illuminates a short-lived but absolutely momentous time when the Mojave beckoned, free of charge and front-loaded with anarchic artistic overload.

Not so much horrific as it is just skeletons-in-the-basement creepy, this is a shuddery fun surprise for horror fans, who by the way should stick around until the closing credits are done for a special (if inevitable) trick or treat.

Offers a very interesting snapshot of some decidedly modern pathologies.

It's interesting to see this more quotidian aspect of Israel displayed on film, but the parable of James' Journey to Jerusalem has the sophistication of a Sunday School lesson.

Spacey makes interesting work out of an otherwise overdone situation.

The film offers elliptical hints as to what evil may or may not be lurking in the house, a four-story set designer’s dream.

Casting Seigner in the coveted role of Vanda in this adaptation of David Ives’ Tony-winning play may strike some as nepotistic (she’s married to director Polanski), but her performance stands on its own. It’s deliciously self-conscious.

Although flawed in many respects -- it's not as smooth and silky a movie as it could have been -- Don Juan DeMarco nevertheless evokes a romantic mood that tickles and caresses.