The Boxtrolls feels rough-and-tumble and not as much fun by half.

Don’t come to this documentary expecting to learn more about the girl named Malala.

Though the characters are unique and occasionally fun, they're paper-thin.

In the final moments of the film, when the last piece of this very lovely looking landscape puzzle is placed, I couldn’t help but feel that the film was a missed opportunity for something more intriguing, profound.

Laugh? Cry? I thought I'd die, but then that's the genius of Gordon.

Sunshine Cleaning doesn't exist in relation to the outside world but only to other movies. Its characters aren't human beings but cultural signifiers and indie-movie stereotypes created to survive in the laboratory safety of the festival circuit but never meant to actually walk the streets or talk to strangers.

In a word, it’s soulless.

An intriguing, disquieting, but ultimately overdrawn nightmare.

A crowd-pleasing portrait of boys-who-will-be-men-who-will-be-boys.

The piece is a tribute to the 1992 film "Troll 2" and its many fans, who have dubbed it the "best worst movie" ever made.

It's a knowing, dare I say sweet, little film that takes pains to let the characters speak for themselves, never rallying behind an implicit religious message, which may be the best message of all.

As a narrative film, it's confounding and oblique – but still gorgeous to behold.

While not always successful or even unusual, Night and the City is a tart Manhattan cocktail worth savoring until the cup runs dry.

Graham’s film teems with fascinating characters – ultimately, too many for the abbreviated running time.

At the end of the day, Brewer reminds us, it’s all about hands touching hands.

Before You Know It feels like it fell out of the mid-Eighties – and that's not a bad thing. In the tradition of "Mystic Pizza" or "Moscow on the Hudson," it finds its humor in the light and shade of its characters, with the odd broader gag (especially from Tullock, who is unafraid to go big with Jackie's theatrical habits).

Taken for what it is, Brick Lane is something entirely its own.

In most ways, the film is a conventional rock doc, a nostalgic and valorizing chronicle of a group’s rise and fall. The Band is one group that deserves the deep dive.

If future films deliver similar spectacle and true, epic filmmaking, then this lengthy sequel can afford to be a prelude.

The best surprise is Yuan, the daughter of Hong Kong actress Cheng Pei-Pei. She has great screen presence and invests Lichi with a mix of kitty-cat cuteness and hellcat ferocity.

Cooly feral in dark suit and tie, Glover’s the man in the gray flannel suit gone way, way over the edge, and it’s one of the most fully realized screen performances in ages, rats and all.

A slam-bang, sci-fi actioner, relentlessly paced and edited, with a pounding soundtrack and some ingenious aliens courtesy of Berni Wrightson and KNB Effects.

More fun than Peter Hyams' "The Musketeer," and somewhat less so than "The Man in the Iron Mask," this is middling Dumas all the way.

Mamet's layering of issues -- academic freedom, violence to women, political correctness, materialism, elitism -- is masterful, as is his use of broken dialogue -- the sentences stretch out here like a row of jagged stones.

A lively action picture with a spirited sense of humor, Broken Arrow is a great deal of fun, even if it isn't exactly a return to form for its celebrated director, former Hong Kong action auteur John Woo.

Cheadle takes what could have been a role as a mere foil and creates a rich portrait of a vaguely discontented married man. Yet the drama sputters once it reaches a contrived and melodramatic climax that feels undernourished and artificial – both less than and more than one had hoped for.

Competent and unassuming, mildly problematic but ultimately harmless, Somewhere in Queens is alloyed family sitcom nostalgia sourced from stronger materials.

Crafted by much of the same creative team behind the "Despicable Me" franchise, The Secret Life has wit, for sure, but it could use more balls.