Playing a 70-year-old seeking renewed purpose as an intern at an Internet start-up, Robert De Niro is gentle as a kitten. Is it disrespectful to want to greet this icon of American cinema with a snuggle and a tumbler of warm milk?

The Green Inferno feels like a retread of a retread.

In video segments scarier than any couch-jumping antics on a talk show, actor Tom Cruise salutes the organization’s Napoleonic chairman David Miscavige like a soldier in an army of darkness, and rambles on about a world free of suppressive persons like he’s auditioning for the loony bin. One thing is clear in Going Clear: The man has taken one super-big gulp of the Kool-Aid.

An odd mix, to be sure, but full-tilt performances from Mara, as meth-addicted, widowed mom-cum-kidnappee Ashley Smith, and Oyelowo, playing the stone-cold killer turned cornered kidnapper Brian Nichols, help this spiritual thriller rise (very slightly) above other, more hamfisted, heaven-friendly fare.

This is a movie you feel deeply in the pit of your stomach. Sometimes, it literally hurts to watch it.

Cinematographer Jean-Marie Dreujou has shot the ridiculously photogenic grasslands in truly spectacular IMAX 3-D, and rarely have I seen it done better.

The trouble comes when somebody opens their mouth and you’re reminded this is supremely silly stuff, and overall a much lesser version of teens versus the titans of post-apocalypse industry – a copy of a copy of a copy.

It’s fun, but it’s no "Class of Nuke ’Em High."

By necessity, Black Mass begins in a hole it can never dig out of. It’s the portrait of a monster told in a flat line.

The best thing you can say about The Perfect Guy is that it plays out like a gelded version of Fatal Attraction, lacking anything dark or dangerous. It plays it too safe, and who wants a guy like that?

Weitz (About a Boy) is a sharp observer, and Tomlin and the rest of the cast are so superlative that any anxiety is quickly quelled. You’re happy to follow this movie over the river and through the woods.

This is a lovingly rendered, feel-bad chamber piece chock-full of elliptical psychodrama.

The Christian faith-based film genre takes a dramatic leap forward with 90 Minutes in Heaven, a well-appointed work based on Don Piper’s bestseller, that, for a change, doesn’t look and sound as though it was written, performed, and recorded in some church basement.

An unnerving descent into the extreme, anxious corners of a mother’s relationship to and comprehension of her 9-year-old twin sons – and vice versa – gone weirdly haywire, Goodnight Mommy is required viewing for both lovers of neo-gothic paranoia and mommy-haters everywhere.

Refreshingly, this isn’t so much a found-footage movie – although it was backed by "Paranormal Activity" overseers Blumhouse Productions – as it is a completed faux documentary, complete with onscreen titles and a cripplingly hilarious end-credits sequence featuring Tyler being Tyler.

It appears that this franchise has hit a dead end, running on nothing but fumes.

Viewed entirely on the exceptional virtues of its CGI animation (flashbacks occur via traditional, hand-drawn animation) and its occasionally raunchy humor, Un Gallo con Mucho Huevos is a small gem of a film. But its trivialization of cockfighting will surely be a rightful stumbling block for many potential audience members.

Phoenix mines a Hitchcockian vein, but it is Hoss' sensitive performance and Petzold’s intelligently paced direction that makes this film shine.

What A Walk in the Woods doesn’t have, however, is plot, character development, narrative conflict, and resolution – in other words, a destination.

With 7 Chinese Brothers, Austin-based filmmaker Bob Byington has made his most accessible film yet. The humor is less arch than in his previous comedies (among them Somebody up There Likes Me, Harmony and Me, and RSO [Registered Sex Offender]), and it’s plentiful and less diffuse than in his earlier works.

A remarkable documentary in its own right.

By the end, I was moved. Not floored, but moved.

While this isn’t anywhere near a classic of the comedy-horror genre, it’s still a well-written work of splatstick that’s more downright engaging than 90% of the “serious” (i.e., mediocre) horrors that have flooded theatres of late.

The Diary of a Teenage Girl is the rare movie that presents the subject of the loss of virginity from the female perspective. Not only is the film unique in this regard, but also in its frankness, humor, and artistry.

Digging for Fire fails its title’s own promise: It has the capacity for startling insight and artistry, but mostly it’s just a toe listlessly pushing dirt around.

If you are a fan of Gibran’s work, this film is recommended for those sections, just be prepared for some schmaltz to go along with the transcendentalist philosophy.

Mistress America is maybe Baumbach’s most probing consideration of the writer’s process and development, a continuing point of interest in his filmography, from "Kicking and Screaming" to "The Squid and the Whale" and "Margot at the Wedding."

For all its genuine thrill-ride gestalt, No Escape completely short-shrifts its Southeast Asian players. There’s exactly one Asian character of note, a Kenny Rogers-loving tuk-tuk driver (Boonthanakit). Everyone else is a nameless victim of the equally nameless mob.