The result is high school English crossed with "Waiting for Guffman," though the humor is largely accidental.

Oblivion has the ability to haunt you visually and, with an unanticipated love story, even emotionally.

The Lords of Salem is like some queasy-making machine, a chamber piece of possession and madness that exerts a strange, disturbing power.

What really elevates the film, though, is the crucial context that Payne provides to explain — but not justify — the pirates' actions.

Unfortunately, the film often feels somewhat random and disorganized, with Newnham and Grainger-Monsen never zeroing in on a cohesive narrative structure. Still, the movie's engaging subjects (including several parents) and valuable themes largely carry the day.

Pawn's cops and robbers game could have been far better played.

It's a cautionary tale of sorts, but the story is so strange it is often not clear exactly what it's cautioning us against.

François Ozon can usually be counted on for dark irony of the juiciest sort...But the filmmaker has an especially deft touch when a dash of comedy is mixed in. He uses this to delicious effect in his latest, In the House.

If you think three months is an impossible amount of time to write and produce a feature film, well, it is.

McGuinness has a commendable grasp of visual textures and rhythms. It will be interesting to see what she does with a stronger story to tell. Here, reaching for dramatic effect, she comes up empty.

For Hetherington, the front line was not just a set of coordinates in a bloody battle, but a space where true artists operated, and Junger's film goes a long way toward celebrating that mind set, but also recognizing how treacherous it can be.

What you see is pretty much what you get. Fortunately, what we see is often vivid and lovely.

The movie elicits knowing smiles more than laughs, even as it reveals a boundless observational awareness about the beefs and slights that, for the small-minded, must feel like everyday Armageddons.

As a portrait of female strength and a celebration of the artistic spirit, Leonie too seldom comes fully alive.

Director Kang Woo-Suk spins an epic swirl of masculine psychodrama over his many punishing fight sequences...But he also makes a handful of sage points about desperate times, the cycle of bullying and our modern culture of ratings-sanctioned aggression.

Add one more extraordinary survival tale to the canon of Holocaust documentaries: No Place on Earth.

With its startling mix of 16-millimeter-shot, handmade animation styles using stop-motion, sketches, collages and models, along with uncensored characters often resembling cadaverous marionettes, this twisted look at life in a faded Appalachian town is one decidedly idiosyncratic ride.

Alas, the flick can't resist overheating. Paradoxically, when people finally do jump in their cars, curl their fists and grab their guns, we wish they'd retreat to the safety of their monitors.

I found it to be some kind of wonderful, flaws and all. This is one to be taken in like meditation. Clear the mind and let what is in front of you wash over you. Save the contemplation for later.

Robinson's combination of fortitude, restraint and passion for the game was stunning. You can't help getting caught up in this story, even as you are wishing the telling was sharper than it is.

Part science fiction scare movie, part offbeat romance, part completely unclassifiable, "Color" is also one-man filmmaking of a remarkable sort.

The Angels' Share leaves a warm glow.

Simon Killer...is Campos' bleakest project, which honestly makes me fearful for the future. Still, he is a provocative one to watch — willing to push the aesthetic boundaries as well as the story to extremes even when the risks don't always pay off.

My Brother the Devil is a promising debut that marks El Hosaini as a filmmaker to watch, but one still very much in the developmental stages.

6 Souls is regrettably sick with that familiar disease afflicting movies of this ilk: ostentatious, hollow moodiness that spreads like an unwelcome rash.

Without a human dimension to ground its construct, The Brass Teapot ultimately feels like an interminably stretched-out skit rather than a storybook lesson stained with blood and hurt.

There's plenty of action, some ping-ponging romance and even a bit of tension as Silver Circle spins its muddled tale. But it's all so overwhelmed by the rudimentary, computer-generated animation (characters don't so much walk as lurch and glide) that, well, the medium becomes the message.

The Story of Luke is not a saga of epic proportions, but with a huge assist from Pucci's layered performance, takes a premise that could easily be movie-of-the-week sappy and finds a humanizing lightness.

Lynch's film is a work of steady chronological progression. Without straining for big-picture significance, it provides a composed look into the revolutionary spirit.

[Filho's] mastery of pacing, theme and stylistic eccentricity throughout Neighboring Sounds is so assured as to be breathtaking. Don't miss it.

The Company You Keep is a shrewder, more satisfying piece of filmmaking than we've seen from Redford in a while, though not quite in the league with his best behind-the-camera work.

Music in Babe's and Ricky's is righteous and raucous and easy to come by, but the story of Mama Laura is more elusive. And that is the frustration.

It starts out like a house afire, but by the time it's over we're the ones feeling burned. A slick heist tale with more twists than sense, this is one movie that ends up outsmarting itself.

It's unlikely the movie will gain the same ardent following as Raimi's debut, but it offers enough good-time gore, goofiness, scares and screams to leave an audience feeling a certain elated exhaustion.

A vivid portrait that should satisfy aficionados and intrigue the curious. Ink-averse viewers, however, may remain unsold.

Perry's ongoing disinterest in improving as a filmmaker is now seemingly part of his unshakable belief in himself, his insistence on doing his thing his way.

At times, Lipsky's storytelling is too cutely self-aware, trying too hard, making Molly's Theory of Relativity something of an intriguing, if not entirely successful, exoticism.

The movie is intimate in its telling, sweeping in its issues and stumbles only occasionally.

Writer-director Eran Creevy shows himself to be well versed in the mythic sweep of Christopher Nolan's and Michael Mann's crime sagas, if not their intelligence with storytelling.

"Rescue" features excellent archival footage plus a rich array of recent interviews.

"Rubber" felt inventive and complex, but here Dupieux's absurdism is simply muddled, masking the fact he doesn't really have much to say.

Eden is never less than suspenseful, but rather than sentimentally pander to easy outrage, or indulge in icky women-in-distress titillation, the movie...zeros in on the details of how dignity can be stripped like bark from a tree, and the queasy determination it takes to stay alive in a living hell.

For all the ways Dickerson vigorously dramatizes the stages of solitary confinement — nervous humor, fear, rages, survival ingenuity (including a nifty breathing apparatus) — it's never enough to explain why this particular individual's story is worth telling.

Writer-director P.J. Hogan may have based Mental on an actual incident from his childhood, but the crazy quilt of a movie that resulted feels anything but real.

Filmmaker Leon has deftly structured Gimme the Loot as a picaresque tale, an anecdotal, observational film that introduces us to all manner of eccentric and original characters. Will Malcolm and Sophia get what they want, what they need, or something in between? The only sure thing is that being along for the ride is pleasure of the most unexpected sort.

The story goes slack onscreen, so much so that the movie's two-plus hours will seem an eternity.

Family Weekend is no worse than many of the dysfunctional family comedies that populate the Sundance Film Festival — "Little Miss Sunshine" is name-checked within the movie itself — but isn't any better either.

Renoir is a lush, involving film.

In an attempt to be both modern and traditional, this gorgeously made film ends up betwixt and between.

It's massive, all the retaliation and the world saving stuff. And it's convoluted. Frankly no one should have to think that hard to keep up with the Joes.

Moving somewhat obviously toward denouement, the film hits a false note or two. But mainly it's exhilarating in its refusal to make smooth what's messy, inchoate and tenaciously alive.

[Antoine Fuqua] gives in to terrible instincts here, flirting with overwrought patriotism, one too many laugh lines amid numerous characters being shot in the head, and a general chaos-inspired editing technique all too rampant in today's action cinema.

With good intentions and a warm heart but undone by uneven performances and shaky storytelling, Bob's New Suit never quite finds the right fit.

As amiable art-house fluff, it's a passable way to kill time.

Anyone seeking an empty-headed, derivative joy ride through crime-comedy conventions could do far worse than Silver Case, a brisk, good-looking and never dull B movie.

Garrone achieves something uniquely colorful, disturbing and trenchant about self-perception in an increasingly fishbowl-like society.

Loyalties are tested, futures are reconsidered and the body count climbs in the effective action import New World.

Save a weak police pursuit, events are earnestly depicted and involvingly played, even if the period re-creation at times feels overly burnished. Still, Love and Honor suffices as old-fashioned, pie-in-the-sky entertainment.

Though the film at times works scene by scene, Webley can't quite tie it all together. A disjointed jumble, The Kill Hole can't dig itself out.

Laurence Coriat's shapeless script...pads its overlong running time with standard teen trauma — band squabbles, girl betrayals, skinhead brothers — that saps the audience's energy before the grand finale.

Good stuff comes when bad stuff happens; that's when some of the movie animation prowess kicks into high gear. But too many of the "solutions" the guys concoct are so impossibly complex or just downright ridiculous — puppetry comes to mind — that like the continents, it's a little too easy to drift away.

The noir-ish contours of writer-director Ana Piterbarg's story yield a frustratingly dissipated movie, one with few storytelling pleasures and an overabundance of forced mood.

Brad Leong's comedy has some nicely miserable character beats.

A one-man band known as Makinov — he wrote, directed, produced, shot, edited and ran sound here — has done a pretty decent job in the chills department using a simple story, small cast and largely contained location.

From Up on Poppy Hill is frankly stunning, as beautiful a hand-drawn animated feature as you are likely to see. It's a time-machine dream of a not-so-distant past, a sweet and honestly sentimental story that also represents a collaboration between the greatest of Japanese animators and his up-and-coming son.

It buzzes along for a while, the promising plot innovations inviting suspension of disbelief, before by-the-numbers implausibility, over-the-top valor and unsavory contrivances take over and the line goes dead.

Capper's film feels like a making-of featurette spun out to documentary dimensions, just another component in the new album's marketing plan...In its simplest moments, though, Reincarnated presents an honesty that is its own reward. It shows us an old Dogg with no tricks.

The blurring of fact and fiction has been a part of the Amityville saga since it became public, but for Lutz there's no gray area in his memories, whose power is undiminished.

The film, directed by first-timer Rocky Powell, has a different happy ending in mind, one that adheres to rom-com formulas in a manner that should give it a second life on basic cable. Just don't expect to fall hard for it.

Less a documentary than an acutely positioned marketing tool, Mindless Behavior: All Around the World delivers a chaotically high-energy burst of performance and behind-the-scenes footage for fans of the slickly produced hip-hop boy band.

It's a fun, nostalgic, informative journey. Aided by vivid archival footage and photos, the movie charts the evolution of the song through the Holocaust, the birth of Israel and the modern Jewish Diaspora.

K-11 has the makings of a cult movie campfest but little of the authentic wit, edge or outré vision it would take to get there. What's left is a dreary jailhouse drama that somehow managed to imprison a few notable actors within its lurid walls.

It's an adult look at the teenage years, an examination of how personal emotions inform political action, a noteworthy change of pace for writer-director Sally Potter and, most of all, the showcase for a performance by Elle Fanning as Ginger that is little short of phenomenal.

It's best not to overthink the sci-fi love story Upside Down and just enjoy its dazzling visuals, dream-like inventiveness and lush romanticism.

Part manic comedy, part would-be heart-warmer of the "follow your bliss" variety, its odd combination of tones and situations leads to as many awkward, uncertain moments as funny ones.

This is Nancy Meyers territory, but leaden with passé observations about lovelorn women...and hardly ebullient as either oddball-pair comedy or housewife-revenge fantasy.

It's a tad overstuffed, but never lacks for interest. And Saulter, who serves as his own director of photography, has a poet's eye for detail, capturing the beauty of his native country, even in its most extreme poverty.

A Fierce Green Fire: The Battle for a Living Planet, adapted from the book by Philip Shabecoff, proves a worthy reminder of how much has been done to help heal our planet's ecological woes as well as how much remains to be achieved.

The film has a sarcastic tone, like that of a friend who you never can tell is kidding or not, which eventually breaks through into a place of unexpected sincerity. Meeting this odd, idiosyncratic "Somebody" is a rare delight.

The movie is an arty lark of ambiguous entertainment value, pulsing with melancholy. It's rarely less than interesting visually or tonally, thanks in large part to Korine's prurient sense of humor and the rich location textures and Crayola sweep provided by gifted cinematographer Benoit Debie ("Enter the Void").

Moll's restraint gives way to a tastefully overwrought checklist of Gothic imagery. In the cloistered shadows and the harsh Castilian sun, the visuals are handsome, even as the movie threatens to tip into parody.

With so many twists, the movie feels like it's trying too hard. Some moments are cleverly constructed; and others seem as if the filmmakers have left themselves no plausible escape.

The war crimes and romance stories theoretically run on parallel tracks, but the overall pacing is ragged and the dialogue frequently out of step with the characters we've met.

With its long takes and deliberate pacing, Beyond the Hills is demanding but always engrossing, even during its repetitive middle section.

A good idea for a ghost story is dead on arrival in The Condemned, a would-be thriller whose intended horror-tinged chills register as ho-hum hokum.

Though unevenly told and at times too fanciful for its own good, Electrick Children marks an intriguing feature debut for its risk-taking writer-director, Rebecca Thomas.

The film leans a little too heavily on Pineda's wide-eyed disbelief at his sudden turn of fortune, leaving a feeling that it could dig deeper into the history and dynamics of the band. Yet Pineda's ebullience is infectious, and Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey is a pleasant story of dreams coming true.

It is a rare thing to witness the creative process. But in the excellent new documentary Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters, filmmaker Ben Shapiro gives us fly-on-the-wall access over a 10-year period to an acclaimed artist as he envisions, designs and executes his surreal commentary on small-town American life in the form of an epic photo installation, "Beneath the Roses."

Despite his cogent finger-pointing, nifty graphs and succinct highlighting of recent climate change history, longtime followers of the hyper-partisan topic may not find much terribly new or revealing here.

The film's re-creations, some involving actors and some the girls themselves, aren't always successful, but the truths at their core are rock-solid. Illuminating and ultimately hopeful, despite the horrible circumstances depicted, Girl Rising stands as a testament to the power of information.

The Silence is an exemplary German-language thriller, a complex and disturbing examination of guilt, violence and psychological torment that chills us to the core not once but two times over.

Sometimes sweet, sometimes scary, sometimes sour, Oz the Great and Powerful is a film that doesn't know its own mind. A partially effective jumble whose elements clash rather than cohere, this solid but not spectacular effort stubbornly refuses to catch fire until it's almost too late.

The powerful things we expect from War Witch are as advertised, but what we don't expect is even better.

It's all slight stuff with a typically oversold Bollywood score, but there are pleasures here and there.

The Last Exorcism Part II is an effectively unnerving, slow-burn supernatural horror tale. The film is smartly different enough from the original to survive on its own, though it lacks some of the first film's sense of surprise.

Barsky does a good job of taking all the complexity of such a major personality and the times in which he flourished and boiling it down to the essentials.

More than a gimmick, that self-conscious visual strategy suits the self-impressed creative-class characters, even as it is, finally, more interesting than they are.

Marquette, aided by Frank Langella's precise narration, has crafted an engrossing and disturbing tribute.