Even most chemistry majors could probably assemble a more entertaining 76-minute picture than Underdahl's flimsy and dated story.

Self-conscious camp like this can weather (even requires) a certain degree of amateurishness. But there are limits, and Surge of Power's sloppy writing and talent-show performances quickly exceed them.

Wilding's genuine curiosity about the monks' beliefs and daily routines, as well as her willingness to ask questions that sometimes make her look like a bit of a dip, gives the film a homespun honesty and sincerity that make it a surprisingly pleasant trip.

It's typical poor-schnook-in-over-his-head stuff, spiked with some nervy, Pi-esque montages of eyes, horses and racing forms that illustrate Michael's fraying nerves (and distract us from the flatness of the other scenes).

If Fleming actually believes in this stuff, he should beware: When you put a movie this lazy and uninspired out into the world, you've got something coming to you - and it ain't good.

For those turned on by the thought of such “sexually charged” scenes as men describing techniques for picking locks to women while drawing on their bodies with mascara pencils, Erosion may provide some pleasure. Everyone else though, will be worn down by the film’s tedious hand-wringing about infidelity and bursts of unerotic sex.

The movie’s entire first half turns out to be an elaborate fake-out, a setup for a plot reversal so extreme it could induce whiplash even in seasoned Bollywood hands. As clumsily engineered by writer-director Kunal Kohli (Hum Tum), the sudden changeover from romance to political techno-thriller is likely to be especially startling for non-Indians.

Heartfelt but insipid drama, the naiveté quickly becomes exasperating.

Rather than simply releasing the uncomfortably amusing clips on DVD as a "Jackass"-style compilation, executive producer Vin Di Bona and Gold Circle Films president Paul Brooks have spliced them into the umpteenth unfunny cinematic variation of the "sensitive guy and obnoxious womanizing best friend try to get laid" story, with nary a laugh to be had unless you're one of those who finds toilet scenes and prison-rape jokes to be automatically hilarious.

A toxic combination of obvious bromides and talentless filmmaking, writer-director Ted Fukuda's schmaltzy, tone-deaf romantic drama sets your teeth on edge from the outset and doesn't let up for 103 minutes.

An accomplished miniaturist's documentary -- 80 finely wrought minutes in alternating increments of wonder and loss.

As a director of melodramatic peak moments, Karan Johar has no peer: He stages a chance encounter on a New York street between an adulterous husband and the two women in his life with the slow-motion virtuosity of a soap-opera De Palma.

This vision of the riots as a kind of Kentucky Fried Movie doesn' lend itself to film the way, say, L.A.'s urban violence does to Sandow Birk’s apocalyptic paintings. Nor does it help that the gags are mortally unfunny.

The result is (no pun intended) a powerful wake-up call, not just for Hollywood but for a nation that once fought passionately for the eight-hour workday and now, ever more willingly, works itself to death.

Needless to say, this is one odd concoction, which should find its primary audience among college potheads who like to watch ’70s Hanna-Barbera creations on the Cartoon Network late at night.

A film free of political fury, but full of activist optimism, this tame but heartfelt documentary is a fine companion piece to a day at the science museum.

Like a lot of recent queer-themed cinema that aspires to be politically charged, Maple Palm takes a hot-button issue (here, it's homophobic U.S. immigration policies) and reduces it to dry sloganeering and shameless emotional manipulation of the audience.

In this fascinating documentary, directors Ronit Avni and Julia Bacha ask what kind of person counters malicious violence with activist conciliation, but offer neither pat answers nor false redemption.

An embarrassment of a vanity project, Living the Dream is a film written, directed and starring a real corporate headhunter.

This is a decidedly bizarre movie, nicely photographed and designed -- someone spent some money -- but built entirely around dialogue so stilted and unrevealing that it’s little wonder poor LaVorgna screams it.

Withdrawal From Gaza lacks both the nuance and the muscle of Yoav Shamir's excellent 2005 "5 Days," which probes far deeper into the relationship between settlers and the soldiers who came, on the orders of supersettler Ariel Sharon, to remove them.

For a little while, Fighting Words is a modest, agreeable character piece, illuminating those who ply their trade in an under-appreciated, intensely personal art form.

This silly little flick is deadly serious. And seriously awful.

Its 104 minutes of lukewarm-’n’-fuzzy comfort food will no doubt satisfy some, but those looking for deeper insight into our nation’s peculiar mating rituals will feel left out.

With such rich material about dreams deferred, it’s disheartening that co-writer–director Desmond Nakano’s nobly made but patchy drama mires itself in nostalgia tropes and storytelling clichés.

An amateurish mashup of "The Butterfly Effect" and "The Family Man" (talk about unholy hybrids!) that strains patience from the get-go.

A film that plays like warmed-over "Cold Mountain."

Now this is more like it: Flirtatious repartee between glamorous stars in travel-poster international locations; a gratifyingly simple plot with puzzles and sleight-of-hand surprises; and, at regular intervals, outbursts of gaudy, energetic dancing infectiously exploding.