It's always odd to see Robbins, a political activist in his own right, playing at villainy, but here he descends into the role so thoroughly that the lopsided smile becomes less a notation of cockeyed boyishness than a treacherous Cheshire smirk.

A real audience pleaser.

Art historian Thomas Negovan has excavated countless hours of rushes and raw footage from the archives to assemble a new film, hewing as close as possible to Vidal’s original story. In doing so, the debauchery, majesty, and brutality are finally revealed in all their unhinged glory.

It’s high-brow, low-brow, and just about every brow in between, replete with meta winkiness and manic energy.

Three films in, and Soderbergh's Ocean's franchise has settled into a kind of hipster equanimity – happy to live in that loosely defined territory where art meets commerce and story blends seamlessly with cool.

Everybody likes to watch the messy guts-stuff of other peoples' lives, if only because we know then we're not alone in our weird ways.

Totally in the distance is the memory of "Swingers," whose hipster goof has been replaced by a stupid goof. This may be what is meant by the “dumbing down of America.”

It's like Garai can never work out whether she wants this to be a modern Gothic fantasy, or a contemporary horror with deeper social meaning, then falls afoul of excessive coincidence. The parts of the spell are all there, but the conjuring is incomplete.

It’s a curiously inert, workmanlike production: a whole lot of pomp and incircumstance.

Franco brooks no quarter in New Order, and the businesslike tone and lean economy of the film make for an incredibly unsettling experience. He also layers the film with an ambiguity that keeps the viewer off balance.

Sisley has created an authentic and nuanced portrait of a family not just in crisis, but in transition: big transition, sparked by the accumulation of small moments where the heart is laid bare, where the frustration boils over, where the delusions must be faced. And where the truth is embraced.

That may be Beautiful Boy's biggest problem: That it's too emotional.

All this and not a glimmer of General Franco makes for a surreal – and sporadically inspired – comedy of Spanish mores back when naughty was nice.

Burton and his writing team waste the opportunity of a sequel to fix the errors of the past, and instead double down on the most problematic elements of the original.

This is Burton’s most mainstream film to date, which isn’t to say it’s not an eccentrically entertaining ride. It is, but minus the kooky occult élan you expect from the man who made "Edward Scissorhands." It’s a Lifetime movie, as directed by, well, you know who.

Peterson's film is a huge, loud beast of a film, filled with gunfire, explosions, and not a few tears. It's all grounded, however, in Ford's gritted-teeth performance as President Marshall.

A consistently entertaining parody that never once makes you feel like an idiot for laughing out loud at its idiocy.

So many logical questions go unasked in The Gift, which, ultimately, is the movie's downfall. Mark this package as Return to Sender.

Black Sea is cluttered and claustrophobic in all the right ways, and it doubles as a watery jeremiad against global corporate malfeasance. Still, you walk away from the film with the niggling sense that the story never quite holds your attention the way it should.

It is a sweet, simple movie with a sweet, simple message: that children see the world differently and have much to teach the people who love them.

Penis-obsessed, man-child film comedies can crown a new king: the Danish import Klown.

Too strange for its own good, Careful is less interesting as a film than it is as a Canadian cinematic anomaly.

On the whole, though, Kong: Skull Island is great big dumb fun. It’s also shockingly beautiful to look at when you aren’t having creature guts flung into the camera.

Becker's tight, streamlined direction, along with Nicholas Pileggi's (GoodFellas) excellent script and Cusack's wonderful turn as Calhoun take City Hall far above the standard genre fare. Like real mayoral politics, it's a descent into a snakepit, with no easy answers in sight.

If you're a parent, you could do a heck of a lot worse than taking the spawn off to catch Rugrats in Paris and if you're a kid, well, you probably already knew that anyway.

The latest installment in the Austin Powers series has stopped making much sense at all, but it sure gets its giggle on, and good.

If treats like this are evidence of Washington's special gifts as a filmmaker, Antwone Fisher promises great things for the future.

A violent, sober cautionary tale, strictly middle-of-the-road when it comes to its much-ballyhooed politics and grimly obvious in its telling.

There is no question that Yuen Woo-ping is a master of his craft, but True Legend leaves doubt as to his mastery of the art of storytelling.

Marshmallow nation, you may now exhale: Rob Thomas did ya right.

Still, when The Yellow Handkerchief finally hooks into the meat of Hamill’s source story, the narrative tension puts enough wind in the film’s sails to arrive at its corny but sentimentally satisfying conclusion.

Even in the budget-laden slickness of this Amazon production, I can’t lose myself in a fantasy that these issues can be solved by a mere costume change, a pep talk, or a snappy comeback.

The Nightmare Before Christmas said that it’s all right to wrap a few scares up under the Christmas tree. Terrifier 3, the latest in the extreme gore franchise, sets fire to the decorations, cuts off your eyelids, and makes you watch the whole house burn.

With Seraphim Falls, Brosnan shows himself, finally, to be an actor of real skill – rather than just a pretty face, a great head of hair, and a buttery British accent – capable not only of playing a real human being but one with a tortured soul and a dodgy past as well.

Perfectly passable film.

Second-guessing the audience in the third act takes some of the wind out of his sails (the film wraps up the loose ends so tightly you can practically see the bow), but Hackford does his best with a King tale that many thought would be unfilmable.

Perhaps the most satisfying aspect of this film is its lack of tidy closure. As in life, compromises are reached and battles continue.

The ensuing adventure has a few giggles and a warm, sweet ending, but The Rugrats Movie is more like a pleasant Sunday drive in a big smooth sedan than the TV show's riotous joyrides in a fast, shiny convertible.

Despite its narrative familiarity, the film is suffused with such contagious enthusiasm, distinctive performances, and local color that it stands out nevertheless.

More like watching a Polaroid picture develop without ever getting to see the finished picture.

As usual with anime features, just because it's animated doesn't mean it's for kids; heads roll and blood spurts, so know that going in, mom and dad. For the older crowd, though, it's gory and gorgeous bliss.

A nice-looking, nice-feeling exercise in conventionalism that sure could use a couple of transvestites and maybe a house falling from the sky.

The characters in The Claim suffer under the weight of very big things -- betrayal, abandonment, disease, death -- but they do so quietly, stoically, until, by God, they just can't take it anymore.

Carrey is a bit of a conundrum: He's the best and worst thing about Lemony Snicket.

If tradecraft is what you like best about the espionage genre – the dead drops and dead-of-night tailings – then All the Old Knives will feel comparatively pokey, especially put up against the kind of spry spy entertainments long-form television so capably produces.

There are droll comic flourishes in this very brave film, to be sure, but all you really want to do after watching CSA is hang down your head and cry.

Meghie’s film is a paean to the push and pull between enchanting possibilities and chimerical probabilities. You don’t need to bring a handkerchief into the theater for fear of ocular leakage, but The Photograph’s modestly hopeful denouement is, truly, picture perfect.

Then along comes a movie like Deconstructing Harry, which marks the writer/director/actor's return to top form, once again using the stuff of his life to create the stuff of his fiction.

Maybe some grasp of the dynamics of the modern publishing industry would have added some grit, making it more than it is: a formulaic and forgettable pulpy beach read.

Cats Don't Dance is an inspired movie movie, one that celebrates and spoofs cinema with wit, verve, and a breathless enthusiasm for the form.

If you weren't afraid of heights before, then Fall will give you the fear. Welcome to vertigo hell, mainly due to the work of cinematographer MacGregor.

As an updated version of the old western TV show, it does a pleasant enough job.

As a vehicle for Moore's acting abilities (and Mortensen's, for that matter), G.I. Jane is terrific. But as the end-of-summer blockbuster it's doubtless intended to be, it's pretty much a washout.

For fans of full-throttle gore, The Void delivers, but for better or worse, it doesn’t really stop along the way to explain itself.

Unlike any coming-of-age movie you've seen before. Equal parts sweet and perverse, this Scottish film is unpredictable in places where it might be twee, and subversively fanciful in others where it might be punishing.

Given the outlandish premise, you'll wish the film twinkled with a more savvy sense of humor and adventure, like the chapters of the "Toy Story" series, for example.

The story is so meandering and unbelievable that Westerners are still likely to roll their eyes. I have no idea what Indian audiences will make of Kites. The film is rousing, but it does not soar.

Despite its compelling nature, Greenaway’s film is not always an easy one to sit through.

Suffers mightily from sequelitis. Forced to explain what’s going on and what’s going to be going on in the next and final installment (due out in November), the Wachowskis have laced the film with a series of crushingly dull and often incomprehensible scenes of exposition and yakky gabfests.

These visual techniques also serve to emphasize the Japanese anime fetishes for violence and female body parts -- you can always count on a gun or a breast to be in the foreground' but I'll take this opportunity to again stress that this is an adult cartoon.

So what's not to love? For starters, there's the inescapable fact that Ted is, no matter how you stuff it, yet another man-child buddy movie – and all that that implies.

What Reggio’s ultimate point or conclusion might be is, as ever, left up to the viewer for interpretation. And while this is patently not a film that big-box cineplexers are going to rush to in droves, Visitors remains a wondrous work of artistic achievement.

Collins, who also wrote this woeful, dolefully humorous take on mankind’s endless struggle to overcome the banal but no-less soul-sucking minor mishaps of modern life, ends things on a surprisingly encouraging, optimistic note.

Kind of funny and kind of scary, Baghead's central horror motif is merely a structure on which to hang its four-character story about the depth of relationships and the drive to find meaningful work.

The film is wonderfully atmospheric and full of little frights, but its overall impact is only glancing.

Green's relationship with reclusive bibliophile Edmund Brundish (Nighy) is the most effective component, even if it does owe such a glaring debt to the superior "84 Charing Cross Road" (sorry, "You've Got Mail," but still the ne plus ultra of bookstore movies).

U-571's plot moves like a rocket, never pausing for breath, and this works to a point, but certain events ... are glossed over in favor of more (exceptionally well-done) shots of exploding depth charges and topside battles.

If it's not perfect, it still gives pleasure to the eye.

While Saved! initially gets in some good gags at the expense of religious hypocrisy, it eases off, opting not to skewer religion but rather to poke it gently with a stick to see what happens.

Theroux (who co-wrote with director Dower) manages to dredge up some new, albeit not particularly revelatory, intel on the litigation-happy group, and the tack they take to get there is interesting in and of itself.

It's inoffensive and sports a positive "be yourself" message that’s obvious enough to be seen from space without benefit of hero-vision, but really, there's very little that's super about it.

Yakuza Apocalypse is Miike at the top of his game, breaking cinematic rules at every chance while crafting seriously subversive cinema that defangs both the real-world Yakuza, the Japanese government, and, heaven help us, Sanrio, too. Knitting, I tell you! Knitting!

Ozon's take on this marriage in particular is notable – apart from Freiss and Bruni-Tedeschi's bracing performances – for his unwillingness to let things spiral out of complete control.

This Romeo & Juliet is a rich visual feast, besotted with the fervor of its acrobatic camerawork and kinetic staging and its mind-bending aggregation of unrelated but resonant fragments of 20th-century iconography.

It’s the commonality of Lucio’s story and case that makes Van Tassel’s documentary more impactful.

Stoller and Segel don't shy away from rational, relatable adults, which may be an unsexy selling point for a romantic comedy, but that attention to authenticity elevates the likable, low-stakes The Five-Year Engagement.

Free Guy takes the time to create something unique and grounded and make us care about the future of these NPCs. With every reason in the world to fail, Free Guy succeeds. It’s a welcome reminder that sincerity can still play as the basis for a Hollywood blockbuster.

It’s the funniest, friskiest date movie in a good long while.

If Red Hill isn't quite a classic, it surely is a work of genuine passion for a genre that's unmistakable, and unkillable.

Löwensohn's Luce is an amoral fury, as much death goddess as aging libertine, a figure who drives the imagery as much as she is captured by it. In a world where boredom is the only sin, every act of violence or lust is all at her pleasure.

What I Want You Back really has going for it is Slate and Day. The set-up may be a Ryan deep cut, but their awkward energy, and shared ability to scattershot subtle one-liners without them getting buried by the sillier antics, harks back to another of her classics: When Harry Met Sally.

Jeunet's Micmacs resembles a live-action cartoon, one in which the set-pieces, the characters, and their actions all have the flavor of physical impossibility and unfettered imagination.

This is the hot-button topic of the moment and audiences will be divided, but there can be no denying the gut-punch power of Andrews’ directorial debut.

While the documentary offers a few delicate glimpses of a self the writer did not openly share during her 74-year lifetime – she lived as a lesbian, albeit privately – it falls short of conveying the vital essence of this modern and enigmatic woman of her time.

It ain’t Shakespeare, but if the bread-and-butter movies of Butler’s career were as compactly entertaining and as plausible (granted, a relative term) as Plane, he might get a little more respect

Even its flaws and occasional moments of repetition between authors cannot detract from this fascinating collection about one of the great filmmakers of our era.

Still, as a reminder of the banality of evil and the way a country can conveniently “forget” its casual barbarity (did someone say Guantánamo Bay?), Labyrinth of Lies is a more chilling tale than you’ll find in any horror film this season.

Finney's portrayal of Alfie is heartbreaking in its naïveté about his own desires, yet he also brings to the character an unbridled joy in life's basic pleasures.

Deli Man needs more meat on its rye.

The Help may be more interested in the moral at the end of the story than the story itself, but what saves the film from its meticulous one-dimensionality is that nuanced, deeply moving cast.

Counselors and campers' moms tend to tear up when they talk about the lessons these girls are learning, lessons that go way beyond how to tune a bass, but this isn't exactly a "rah-rah" film.

This is no Disney mermaid, not least because the conventions of creepy in Japanese culture are very different to what would pass standards and practices in the U.S.

There's so much ache in this plaintive little film that it almost makes you believe that the entire world is composed of estranged parents and children searching in vain for one another.

It’s maddeningly unclear sometimes, the whole doll/possession/ghost story, as the filmmakers play extremely loose with the film’s internal logic. Couple that with the stale scent of well-worn dialogue. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

Damon, particularly, stands revealed as a comic ace.

The seated dance between Johnson and Penn is witty, earnest, honest, and overflowing with kindness, making Daddio a remarkable story of two strangers opening up to each other.

What is so surprising – even exhilarating – about The Names of Love is that it shucks off the desultory roadblocks that engine the modern romantic comedy – all that razzmatazz of missed connections and dunderheaded misunderstandings.

Inspired lunacy.