What makes Furlough such a wan, dispiriting experience is how indecisive and fundamentally timid it seems. Rather than subtly braiding drama and comedy together, as real life often does, the movie oscillates jerkily between the two modes, as though hesitant to commit to either one.

Some viewers may find Joe's stressors too negligible; and honestly, Tilt is too shapeless and esoteric to be great. It flags considerably after its first hour, stumbling toward a frustrating ending. Still, there's a frankness to this picture that compensates for the overall slightness. It's the rare thriller that looks to combine "Five Easy Pieces" and "Taxi Driver."

Not that there aren't sporadic pleasures in store for the star's completists — a seasoned gesture here, a well-timed tear there and the steely beauty of her ageless gaze. But it's not enough to save Souvenir from the sense that without her anchoring presence, this movie would float away.

The gimmicky structure and style is more distracting than effective, and it mostly fails to compensate for an underdeveloped plot.

A plethora of pleasures are hidden under the deceptively mundane title of The Opera House. Nominally a documentary about the creation of New York's half-century-old Metropolitan Opera House, it turns out to be a charming and convivial celebration of not just the building but also opera in general and creativity across the board.

There may be little in this movie that you haven't seen before, but the perspective through which you're seeing it can make all the difference.

The movie draws you in with its tender exploration of relationships and authentic performances, but pushes you away with pointless slo-mo sequences.

It's hardly the first or last time Hollywood has plundered one of its own long-dormant properties, but it's also a reminder that not every resurrection has to feel like a desecration.

That the film is animated, yet feels so thoroughly real, is a testament to its vivid use of rotoscoping as well as a solid script by director Ali Soozandeh, an Iranian expatriate.

The delicious silliness of The Hurricane Heist creeps up on you, because the absolutely wild action sequences as Will weaponizes the hurricane happen with very little fanfare or preparation.

You're either on board with this brand of outré exploitation or you're very much not on board. Return to Nuke 'Em High a.k.a. Vol. 2 is strictly for die-hard fans.

The movie is choppily constructed, with a preference for jarring region-hopping and touristy positivity over vivid mini-portraits or informative dives into the process/taste details of Georgian wine.

The crime thriller Bent, not to be confused with the acclaimed Holocaust-era drama of the same name, is a routine programmer filled with surface characters, generic tough-talk and forgettable plotting.

While those vibrant Vietnamese backdrops make for an enticing tourism pitch, audiences are advised to skip this girls trip.

DiMarco's noir-inflected family drama is confident and mature, but less involving than it could be, because the filmmaker and his star make their anti-hero stubbornly unappealing.

The aesthetic is just right, but it's a bit too obtuse, mannered and affected to sink its hooks into you, and it keeps the audience at arms' length.

Unfortunately, writer-director Yan England never focuses on any one lesson long enough to make a complete or satisfying statement. The result: a potentially meaningful movie that hands us a double dose of despair when a ray of hope was needed.

As Kuhlman shows us, even if DiMaggio discovers you can't go home again, landing in the general vicinity can be well worth the journey.

This is Pedersen's second movie for Sen in the same role (after "Mystery Road," with a reported Australian television series in the works), and his Jay is the kind of compellingly gloomy, intelligent and tough justice-seeker easily worth a whole series of politically thorny, culturally resonant crime sagas.

Rampling, a Modigliani of long-limbed litheness with a face built for sorrow, inhabits the role and the visual compositions so deeply that the character resonates long after the film has ended.

Thorough, impressive and smartly put together, joining dynamically edited verite footage with a series of thoughtful interviews, Breaking Point serves a pair of interlocking purposes.

This movie remains subtle throughout, emphasizing the tenuousness of reality and the unmooring isolation of the bush.

Even if some things have changed, spending time with an artist who's concerned, as he's said in interviews, with "the permanence of temporary objects and the temporality of permanent objects," is always worth the journey.

Honoring the primacy of language for his characters, Levine deftly reveals the ways they wield it to seduce, attack, manipulate, repress and, occasionally, to communicate.

Tutu and Blomfeld's confrontations have vigor and commitment but don't build to the requisite catharsis.

Horror movie characters aren't generally known for their brains, but these ones make enough bad choices that audiences won't be able to help yelling at the screen (at least ours couldn't). It's a frustrating experience at times, but the script from Ben Ketai and "The Strangers" filmmaker Bryan Bertino eventually allows the family to take some satisfying actions in the second half of the film.

The Outsider is a slick copy of multiple, much-better films and TV series. It's so well-polished it's practically featureless.

The threat of violence churns beneath nearly every frame of this poised and coolly disturbing movie, but Finley's diabolical sense of mischief is held in check — and in some ways amplified — by his discretion.