Bitchy cheerleaders and swimming pool catfights are just two of the tedious cliches propping up this brittle comedy.

French director Gaspar Noe has kept a pretty low profile since his 2002 drama "Irreversible" notorious for its brutal nine-minute anal rape scene. But this epic, psychedelic mindfuck confirms him once again as the cinema's most imaginative nihilist.

The result, though clearly flawed, is passionate and ambitious, celebrating that long-gone era when a book of verse could spark a revolution in consciousness.

This documentary about the public education crisis isn't as smart or rigorous as Bob Bowdon's shoestring production "The Cartel," which arrived in town earlier this year and quickly vanished. But the new movie is still an admirable exercise in straight talk.

The paltry theme is that we can't predict the future, but I spent part of the time calculating how many more feeble movies Allen will make, based on his productivity rate (one per year), his batting average (four duds for every success), his current age (74), and his father's longevity (Martin Konigsberg lived to be 100). Are you ready for 20 more remakes of "Manhattan"?

Director Will Gluck (Fired Up!) shows wicked comic timing and uncommon warmth in an overworked genre.

The great cinematographer Tak Fujimoto has the time of his life on this low-budget horror feature, playing with dolly shots, abrupt zooms, and negative space inside the widescreen frame, and the fun is infectious.

This second feature doesn't resonate with nearly as much power, but its suspenseful story of two generations of career criminals in the city's northerly Charlestown neighborhood has a similarly haunting quality.

There are some creepy chuckles to be had from this allegedly true account of a hip, young New York photographer.

Making his feature directing debut, Hoffman shows considerable generosity toward the other players, which was probably a good idea given his own listless performance as the mumbling title character.

You don't have to get too far into Kazuo Ishiguro's brilliant 2005 novel Never Let Me Go to realize it's hopelessly unfilmable.

The behind-the-scenes access to professional kitchens, the intricacy of the desserts, the venerable traditions, and above all the camaraderie and respect the chefs extend each other reveal the craftsmen at their civilized best; think of this movie as the antidote to Gordon Ramsay.

As a drama this is rote, as a musical it's uninspired, and as a comedy it's adolescent; ultimately it's a mess, unsure what it wants to be.

The wrestling scenes are the best part of this drama.

True to series form, plot is nearly indiscernible, but this fourth installment in the sci-fi/horror/action franchise created by writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson is the sleekest so far, thanks to 3D and star Milla Jovovich's body-hugging catsuit.

To judge from this agonizing documentary, sniveling man-child Joaquin Phoenix was put on earth to make us appreciate Crispin Glover for the level-headed fellow he is.

Truly compelling, however, is the material about Gould's innovative studio recordings and radio documentaries.

The movie contemporizes teen-sex comedies like "Porky's" and "American Pie": when the witless nerd gets caught with his proverbial pants down, the footage ends up on YouTube with an astonishing number of hits.

It's fun to watch the habitually intense Duris relax somewhat in a light comedy role, and director Pascal Chaumeil gets good mileage out of the team's ridiculously elaborate con games.

Vincent Cassel sets a new standard for Gallic cool as the title character.

There's also some gallows humor about the record and newspaper industries, but overall this is a light, genial comedy about denial and self-defense.

Rodriguez retreats into gruesome violence and flaccid comedy, grasping feebly for topical relevance by referencing the current immigration fracas.

The result is an uneasy mix of Coen-style laughs (particularly evident in the big comic close-ups) and Zhang's majestic imagery (in one shot the couple's divorce papers shatter into a burst of confetti).

Disappointment, inhuman work schedules, sluggish exports, and the crush of a two-day rail journey ratchet up the familial tensions, which finally explode over a holiday dinner.

George Clooney produced and stars in this international spy thriller, which he probably thought of as existential but which registers onscreen as a giant bore.

Patrick Fabian is charming as Marcus, and director Daniel Stamm delivers a series of surefooted scares as the staged possession turns real. But the movie is still unsatisfying; in its eagerness to deliver familiar genre pleasures, it somehow misplaces its soul.

Comparisons with Michael Mann's recent Dillinger biopic "Public Enemies" are inevitable, and mostly flattering to this project: director Jean-Francois Richet and screenwriter Abdel Raouf Dafri take advantage of the additional screen time (about 100 minutes more than Mann had) to flesh out their protagonist, who fancies himself an honorable thief and even a left-wing revolutionary but ultimately turns out to be something much simpler: a man who loves his work.

There's little here about soldiers and mercenaries that isn't lifted from other movies, though Marshall elicits a steady seriousness from his actors (especially Michael Fassbender, in an introverted lead performance), which generally keeps the movie from sliding into camp.