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.

Ultimately, it may be the case that Guggenheim is a better instigator than filmmaker, as the debate about our educational system appears to be on the upswing at present. For this, rather than all the specifics of its argument and what it leaves out, Waiting for 'Superman' is essential viewing.

In practice, and played as farce, the characters are one-dimensional cutouts kept at a dogged remove. Their miseries are a bore – maybe to Allen, too, who abruptly ends the film, after so much inaction, when it finally catches some dramatic traction.

Ultimately, though, Jack Goes Boating is too much of a banal thing. Jack's a good guy, and you root for him all the way to the end, but, wistfully, that doesn't make him an any more interesting everyday Joe than he is.

A surprisingly warmhearted examination of hypocrisy and social insecurity, unlikely camaraderie and stutter-stepped formation of adult identity.

The 3-D angle is the only one I can identify to justify Alpha and Omega not going straight to DVD.

In the end, Devil feels like an ingenious short film pumped up for theatrical release. Shyamalan's story is sound, but the execution dragged me to hell and left me there wondering if his much-rumored sequel to "Unbreakable" was ever going to arrive.

Once the rodeo's over, where do the sweethearts go? Beesley, thankfully, doesn't end the film with the end of the rodeo, but there's a potentially more interesting follow-up doc ghosting right behind this one.

There are good guys we don't care much about and bad guys that we do and even badder guys we're supposed to hate. But on the sliding scale of culpability, everybody's just a few clicks away from the next guy.

The film is never less than absorbing to watch. However, in the end, I think Catfish lives up to its namesake's reputation as a bottom-feeder.

The subdued characters I can abide, intellectually speaking, but subdued filmmaking with material this fundamentally gut-punching is a lot less easy to swallow.

The Virginity Hit is repugnant.

It's hard not to feel punk'd and trapped amid the company of jerks.

It pains me to say it, but Afterlife, the latest installment in this seemingly eternal zombie apocalypse franchise, is considerably more entertaining than George A. Romero's most recent exhumation.

Going the Distance has a tin ear and sullied eye: Nothing sounds or looks very good.

In the end, Machete may not be all that original, but it is fresh – fresh as a steel blade to the gut.

Has little of the wit, surprise, or memorable characterizations of the original.

Aided by a strong soundtrack by Corbijn's friend Herbert Grönemeyer, The American nevertheless seems more like a concept in search of a movie.

It runs the stopwatch on a chase sequence to a comical extreme and takes way, way too long to take its final bow, in the process burning off any residual goodwill.

The shock ending isn't all that shocking if you're a fan of genre films, but it's nonetheless effective despite the fact that it sidesteps several key questions. Never mind: It's hellishly fun.

Gratuitous in every sense of the word, this second remake of 1978's Joe Dante-directed/Roger Corman-produced "Jaws" knockoff is ridiculous summertime drive-in fun.

Lottery Ticket is ultimately no "Friday," but that 15-year-old film's communal vibe is clearly the model Lottery Ticket is chasing.

While this is hardly "Breaker Morant," it's nowhere near as mawkish or cloying as it could have been.

For American children, Nanny McPhee Returns may seem something like a foreign film, but the movie has enough spoonfuls of sugar to make the Britishisms go down.

Amiable fluff that takes its time learning how to walk, talk, and generally act like the kid-centric rom-com that it is.

Though the story played out in the national media, this documentary makes effective use of commentary by Tillman's survivors, who resent the way the military lied to them and exploited the memory of their loved one to serve an ulterior purpose.

You want vampiric satire with actual laughs? Try Mel Brooks' "Dracula: Dead and Loving It," "Love at First Bite," or even Roman Polanski's "The Fearless Vampire Killers." Anything is better than Friedberg and Seltzer's endless, bargain-basement, sub-Cracked magazine un-comedy.

Roberts, wearing that beatific half-smile of hers that suggests inner peace and wisdom before she's even begun her journey, is too open-faced with her emotions to signal the complexities of Gilbert's distress – over her divorce, her control issues, her rootlessness, and inability to live in the moment.