Although The D Train doesn’t completely live up to its potential, the film earns lots of points for treading a distinctive path through a conventional setup.

It is the product of a machine perfectly evolved for the sole purpose of annihilating boredom, a machine whose primary weakness is the utter indifference of those uninitiated or unimpressed by this point. For the rest of us, it’s a hearty helping of fine.

The Salt of the Earth travels to the heart of darkness, but thankfully comes out on the other side and leaves you with a hopefulness that no matter what kind of madness and repression happen in the world, there is still hope for humanity.

The language barrier borders the Babel-esque; it’s a surprise fount of humor, too, as when a translator is terrified to pass along an Italian tailor’s request to the French-speaking chief seamstress, knowing she’ll be furious at the added work.

Although there are shades of "All About Eve" here, the resonances lean more toward the fluid identities of the actresses in Ingmar Bergman’s work or even Assayas’ own "Irma Vep."

For all its unsubtle sentimentality (including a you-can-see-it-from-a-mile-away plot twist), it remains unclear whether Little Boy intends to celebrate the conviction of belief or to mock it. It’s an unfortunate confusion that permanently stunts its growth.

A far more profound and moving film about this particularly Aussie/Kiwi campaign (and one that will probably never be topped) is Peter Weir’s devastating Gallipoli, starring a very young Mel Gibson. Given the choice, I’ll take that over Crowe’s earnest bombast any day.

Lively’s performance grows more engaging as her facade finally begins to crack, and Huisman serves as a sufficiently handsome foil throughout, but if anyone rises to the occasion, it’s Harrison Ford as a former flame reunited with Adaline through a perverse twist of fate.

You have the makings of a half-baked thriller that looks pretty good (that second-unit stuff in Mexico City is tight) and performances that aren’t half-bad, but at the end of the day it’s some neo-noir nonsense that makes those post-Tarantino movies from the mid-Nineties look like "Chinatown." No mames.

The story is littered with simplistic character arcs, obvious metaphors (the title comes from a swimming class), and big decisions involving the importance of work over family.

Unfriended provides a modicum of chills and more gore than you’d expect.

Hey, hey, it’s the monkeys that rule this particular spot on the Earth, and watching them monkey around is a G-rated trip and a half. And with Tina Fey’s enthusiastic narration, you might even learn something, too.

What’s most dispiriting about this garbage burger is its nonsensical characterization of Blart himself.

Set mostly during the waning years of Stalin’s totalitarian grip on the USSR, Child 44 does a superb job of capturing the grim living conditions and pervasive paranoia that marked the bleak era. Sadly, that’s about all this movie does well.

Something this bad can’t help but be good.

The problem with True Story is that you wish there were more of it. The philosophical questions it encourages are like the tail that wags the dog. The truth becomes something of an obfuscation, and unlike films such as "Capote" and "Infamous," there’s not enough drama about the compulsive relationship between the writer and his felonious subject.

The film is certifiably schizophrenic in tone.

A rattling and ruminative piece of speculative fiction, Ex Machina is good enough to wish it were even better.

It’s a spooky, moody doozy of a debut, lensed by Director of Photography Lyle Vincent in a radiant monochrome that somehow makes even the darkness sparkle.

Blending political allegory with the tropes of teen coming-of-age films, White God begins as a tale about a girl separated from her dog, and ends up being the Battleship Potemkin of canine mutiny.

While We’re Young struggles to reconcile its protagonists’ rival impulses to either welcome an unexpected source of youthful vitality with open arms or embrace such an individual so as to better displace them from one’s lawn.

Regardless of one’s personal beliefs, it’s tough to respect a movie that ultimately invites viewers to question every case of propaganda except its own.

Lost River is a film whose reputation precedes it. Viewers have decried it as a mess or lauded it as an artistic achievement ever since it premiered at Cannes 11 months ago. Ultimately, the film is really neither. Yes, Gosling’s ambition exceeds his accomplishment, but what he’s delivered is hardly a disaster.

Titled Girlhood for its American release in an obvious ploy to be viewed as a counterpart to last year’s widely hailed Boyhood, this film is better described by its original French title Bande de Filles, which translates as Girl Gang.

Cinematographer Jeremy Prusso catches some stunning imagery, Robert Allen Elliott’s score is genuinely stirring, and the cast, most of whom are from Monrovia, is uniformly excellent.

There’s little here to convince the audience of boy and girl’s special chemistry, and nothing to attach the audience to them, either.

Gustav Klimt’s spectacular painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I far outshines this pedestrian movie about the legal battle waged by Maria Altmann (Mirren), the niece of the portrait’s subject, to regain possession of the work which was seized from her family by the Nazis during their takeover of Austria.

This is an emotionally devastating piece of advocacy journalism, as it should be. It should also be mandatory viewing for both college-age teens and their parents.