The not-so-fresh Prince charts a familiar cautionary tale about the bad choices economically disadvantaged young men sometimes make early in life, but to its credit, it seldom feels hackneyed or cliched.

It starts off slow and somewhat clunky, but by the time the mind-blowing third act arrives, it’s all a fan can do not to stand up and cheer.

It honors this extraordinary couple’s defiant and unwavering love for each other, but it doesn’t celebrate it much beyond a cliched falling-in-love montage and a chaste wedding-night scene. You can look, but you better not touch.

Mixing Ken Loach-style social realism with Mike Hodge’s grasp of stylish murder, much in the vein of 2012’s equally razor-balanced sniper shocker Tower Block, you’ll be cheering for this good woman when she faces the inevitable showdown.

There’s not enough here to carry the painstaking production design and costuming – a visual feast let down by shortage of meaning. This is a movie about perception, indeed: As beautiful as it is on the outside, the inside is completely superficial.

Shelton's enthusiasm is remarkably refreshing, but it's not enough to mean well, and we don't know much more about these people or their world at the end than we learn at the beginning.

You've got to hand it to Reynolds, director Cortés, and screenwriter Chris Sparling; they milk every single frisson of nail-ripping anxiety from a stunningly simple – yet universally recognized and dreaded – conceit and then cap it with a payoff of molar-pulverizing intensity.

Playing out like some bizarro hardcore version of an episode of "Girls," Wood’s feature debut infuses a hefty dose of white privilege mixed with more than a sprinkling of gender politics, all wrapped up in a sleazy, sweaty, strung-out package that wants, no, needs you to react to the various bad decisions every character makes.

With its 1950s decor and upbeat ending (clever camouflage all), Married Life probably won’t show up on the radar of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family anytime soon, but at the risk of supplying the enemy with ammunition, I have to say they might be giving a pass to one of the more ethically dubious films to come out of Hollywood in years.

Preminger strips the musical of all excess and frills. He creates an austere, depoeticized, anti-lyrical world in which nothing obstructs his camera's detached recording of the action. The great themes of Preminger's oeuvre are obsession and the conflict between freedom and repression, themes which are central to Carmen Jones.

Although Bless Me, Ultima can feel a bit overstuffed, it’s an honest and naturalistic kids’ story about growing up Mexican-American.

Although Ferrara's Body Snatchers might not be the preferred among the three versions, it is nevertheless a clever reading of the story. The decision to start the pod plot within the military is a great one, and there's a disconcerting lack of privacy for the Anwar character.

The Long Game is shot well and sounds good, and has potential on its quest to be a first generation American anthem.

Ismael’s Ghosts drops a number of seemingly disparate ingredients into a stew that ends up coalescing into a satisfying treat, full of surprises and flavors you wouldn’t expect.

Night Is Short doesn't make a lot of sense, but then it's not supposed to. It's a series of crazy scenes with a daffy logic all to itself, and it is endlessly and effortlessly charming.

The rainswept city streets overflowing with graffiti and half-torn leaflets are poignant tableaux of melancholy, the jazz-infused soundtrack by Denis’ house band, Tindersticks, unifying each moment. But as evocative and intoxicating as these elements are, they never quite fit into a cohesive whole, as Trish and Daniel tryst their way to the Costa Rican border.

Every movie about the Holocaust should be this good, but few are.

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.

A host of A-list stars have been enlisted to play small roles in a bid for viewer engagement. See Mariah Carey in a blink-or-you’ll-miss-her role as Cecil Gaines’ maltreated mother.

Cute and toothless as a kitten, Seamstress doesn't inspire the same kind of fervent devotion its principals feel when confronted with art, but it does make a pleasant enough diversion.

In its third act, Life, Above All takes a bit of a dip into la-la land, in terms of believability – how precisely is an impoverished family supposed to have afforded an ambulance and hospice care? – but that doesn't diminish the emotional impact of Manyaka's performance and the idea that courage can be infectious, too.

Columbus' film version is fine, and it's bound to make kids happy while simultaneously generating untold box office, but if you haven't yet picked up a copy, don't let the film override the novel; set aside a weekend, dive in, and then head off to the cineplex to take in this well-done companion piece.

Closer is an un-love story as honest and naked as Cupid in the devil's dock, the whole truth, and nothing but.

While it's sad the filmmakers didn't lavish more detail on the characters' faces and fluidity of their movement, the picture is still dynamic looking: moody, haunting, full of bold shapes and action, striking compositions, and clever quotes from the encyclopedia of noir. It has style to spare. And for any kid at heart whose breath catches at the sight of a caped figure swooping across the sky, it has moments when your lungs will be stopped by a Dark Knight to dream on.

So instead of a nice, clean movie about parental regret we’re forced to suffer through an unnecessary biblical metaphor stretched way past its limits of applicability and a bit with an American flag that turns Deerfield from a human being suffering a crisis of conscience into a hollow symbol of a country in a state of political disenchantment.

Perhaps the discrete delegation of the thrills to the 1966 story and the moral quandaries to the 1997 story is what prevents The Debt from congealing as well as it might have. Life is rarely that neat.

If sex, gangsters, and killing Nazis are three of the most enlivening topics in the movies, then let us count friendship as one of the most tiresome, right up there with grooming horses and sharing for sheer thrills.

This movie is much like its brethren: pretty, with strong leads -- the most fun is watching Sarandon match her heavy-lidded orbs against Jones' demon stare -- great supporting work (especially from the sorrowful Parker and the regal Davis), and a tense chase or two from director Schumacher.