Director Alan Parker milks naturalistic performances out of his small cast and creates a brutal intensity rarely matched in cinema today. Michael Serensin's cinematography is oddly sedating yet intense, giving the prison and the whole country of Turkey a frightful, alien sort of feel.

As a document of an extraordinary event, Anthropoid does the disservice of rendering this bit of World War II history dull and colorless. I’m sure there’s a History Channel show that tells the tale better.

Crowley doesn’t blink at the cradle-to-grave graphic intimacy of Payne’s script, and in Garfield and Pugh he finds a duo who understand the deceptions and devotions of a beautifully flawed relationship. Watch ’em and weep, kids.

The layers constructed between author and art, emotional manipulation and terrorism as coping methods are dense and dizzying. This is film as therapy, and Triet appears to be the one on the couch.

It is, in essence, the video game transferred part and parcel to the screen, and very well at that.

Better in theory than in practice.

Yet as wonderful as it is to see a breezy, earnest romantic comedy that is so matter-of-factly gay-themed, Big Eden suffers somewhat, unsurprisingly, from some of the usual perils of a breezy, earnest romantic comedy.

Like rocky road ice cream, The Rundown is chunky stuff, full of calories and easy to take in small doses. Also like rocky road, it’s bound to attract flies if you leave it lying around, and, more to the point, too much of it is likely to make you gag.

Nearly a perfect film, from its bold and epic man-vs.-nature conflict to the breathless scripting, editing, acting, and direction.

Although this version of Beowulf (the script, ricocheting between thrilling, heroic, and hilarious, is by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary) does take some liberties with certain heretofore undreamed of aspects of parentage, it's as faithful to the extant version as it needs to be.

It’s not just that it’s a great thriller. Its importance as a film is that it really weaves the lead character’s disability into the script, in a way that arguably wasn’t equaled in the subgenre until Mike Flanagan wrote a deaf heroine for Hush.

The emotional crux of the movie is the relationship between the inept father and his hapless children. It’s a one-note relationship but the tone it strikes is good, due in large measure to mullet-headed McConaughey’s typical absorption into his role.

This children's sci-fi movie should be palatable to the young and old alike, yet it's ultimately more a mild diversion than a magical adventure.

A charming, winsome slice of Seventies pop kitsch reconceived as a kind of Knight-errant quest for that holiest of all grails, dear old mom.

In short, there are way too many storylines here, especially for a movie that turns stiff whenever it's on the ground. When cascading through the cityscape, Spider-Man 3 still makes us gasp with delight, but on Earth those gasps come solely in reaction to the cynical dreariness of the script.

Even by Byington’s lo-fi standards, Lousy Carter feels ramshackle. It’s got traces of the familiar warm bathos of his sardonic best work. However, like Lousy’s cardigan, it’s all a little threadbare.

As pure a summer popcorn overdose as you're likely to find, M:i-2 is breezy, breathless, brainless fun, falling just short of Woo's own "Face/Off" but head and shoulders above anything else out there just now.

Taylor’s film works best as both a commentary on the viral limits of parental affection, and the terror of bringing up said juvies.

As Zamperini, Jack O’Connell is the film’s strongest asset. The actor holds our attention from beginning to end, making us care deeply about the man’s fate instead of becoming an empty icon of stoicism.

Exuding direct-to-Redbox energy, Fuze has enough plot twists to make it watchable. You’re just not liable to remember much of it afterwards.

This is director Pouliot's first film, so perhaps some of his excess cuteness can be overlooked. But then again, maybe not.

It’s a nice bit of close-quarters cinema, offering some jolts and scares before the obligatory WTF ending.

Doesn't tell you anything about human nature you probably haven't already suspected, but then again it's good to be reminded of these dark things from time to time. Especially these days.

It's a gorgeous albeit depressing mess, as distancing and despairing as a realpolitik wipeout.

The film is one of the more adult offerings out there in a spring movie season peppered with martial arts and superheroes. It may be just what you're looking for.

Three actors play Bobby at different ages, and none of them quite jibe with the other – 16-year-old Bobby seems far savvier than the twenty-something version (who is played by a defanged Colin Farrell).

High spirits mark the first half of the film; quite simply, these guys are just fun to be around – most especially Howard, all half-lidded, cat-who-got-the-cream coolness.

Outlaw King gets far more right than it ever gets wrong. Fourteenth century Scotland wasn't kilts and Pictish face-paint: It was a Late Middle Ages nation, with elaborate regal clothing at court, elaborate cravings and furniture, a distinct culture – and mud and blood and violence.