Has some vitality, but it sinks into cliché just the same.

Director Chris Wedge falls into the common animator’s trap of making the “human” characters a lot duller than the nonhuman creepy-crawlies.

The results are far more exciting than most Hollywood espionage thrillers.

Before Midnight is the fullest and richest and saddest of the three movies in the trilogy. Make it a quartet, I say.

The tonal problem of the second installment, which often resembled a drug-infested pulp thriller instead of a comedy, is also problematic here.

The Canadian actress and director Sarah Polley set out to make a straightforward documentary about her mother, Diane, who died when she was 11, but by the time Stories We Tell was finished five years later, it had become unclassifiable.

It’s a skimpy, overextended riff, but some of the seemingly tossed-off moments are lovely.

The most pressing question I took away from the film is, Are they really still teaching "A Tale of Two Cities" in honors English classes?

Since 9/11-style terrorism is very much on display here, I suppose it’s fair to say that Star Trek Into Darkness is a sci-fi blow-out with overtones of the real. Series founder Gene Roddenberry would, I think, approve.

One of those documentaries that is more testimonial than investigation.

The slapstick is often clunky, but Robinson has a sweet jester’s disposition that keeps many of the gags from collapsing.

The Great Gatsby isn’t simply a classic American text: In Luhrmann’s hands, it’s also the greatest self-help manual ever written.

The film stands quite well on its own. The directors have made the right, essential decision to make the movie almost entirely from Maisie’s point of view.

Assayas doesn’t bring out the fiery best in this material, but he’s smart enough to know that revolutionaries like their comforts as much as the ruling class does.

The film’s political scope is wide, beginning in 1917 and extending for sixty years, and, especially in the first hour or so, the antic, magical tone of Rushdie’s novel is sustained.

The action, directed by Shane Black, ranges from passable to interminable. The plot goes from clang to bang. Downey Jr. is still the best thing about this series.

In the House does at least engage us. It even enlists us implicitly as co-conspirators in Claude’s devious storytelling.

Is Malick deliberately courting self-parody here? Probably not. That would imply he had a sense of humor.

Is it possible to truly start life all over again? Arthur Newman might have been better if it had not started at all.

Timeliness is certainly on the side of Mira Nair’s uneven but fascinating The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

Nobody in it seems to possess a nervous system.

The film itself vaporizes before your eyes, but it’s likable. Given its unstable mishmash of thuggery and whimsy, that’s something of an achievement.

The filmmaking is TV-movie-of-the-week dull and Robinson’s ordeal is hammered home to the exclusion of virtually everything else in his life.

Boyle loads his movie with so many snazzy effects that we lose sight of what it all means – if anything. His showoffiness confuses.

Here at least the gobbledygook is entertaining.

Equal parts preachy and melodramatic, The Company You Keep never quite figures out what it wants to be.

Although simpler and less mysterious than the great Hayao Miyazaki movies, the gently melancholic From Up on Poppy Hill is still a must see at a time when family entertainment is too often synonymous with blandness.

Renoir at least looks like a great movie. If you want a full-scale immersion in this material, I recommend “Renoir, My Father,” Jean Renoir’s wonderful 1958 biography. This book is the touchstone for all matters Renoir, both père and fils.