This movie’s about as scary as a jackhammer.

Daum acts as a thoughtful onscreen guide to what the picturesque hillsides and its stone remains represent.

A Billion Lives employs a variety of experts in relaying its message, but it sometimes feels like a statistic-filled, 95-minute commercial for the vaping industry rather than a feature-length documentary.

Mr. Donkey is deeply flawed but also fascinating. There’s a good story here, woven between the thudding jokes.

The punk and metal music-infused soundtrack belies the film’s largely gentle approach to a series of small, evocative and well-played moments that combine to slowly heal the Lunsfords and prove that you can go home again.

Even as Into the Inferno invites us to marvel at our insignificance in the face of Mother Nature’s seething primordial firepit, Herzog, being Herzog, refuses to lose sight of the human element.

What Fire at Sea appears to be and what it is are not the same thing, and it's that difference that makes it a masterful documentary.

It's not that "Inferno" as it stands doesn't provide hints of better things. The plot has its share of unexpected twists, peripheral characters hold our attention, wide-screen vistas of tourist destinations Florence, Venice and Istanbul are easy to take, and stories involving the end of the world have a certain built-in interest. But as presented on screen, none of this gels as it should.

The frenetic, ad-hoc aesthetic of the visuals complements the shaggy dog brilliance of Oasis.

At times, I’m Not Ashamed is vivid enough to make one pine for a Christian-leaning teen flick that doesn’t have such a blunt, preordained ending.

In its final moments, Boo! A Madea Halloween delivers a moral with after-school-special levels of subtlety. A jolting switch from oft-mean-spirited humor to a message movie, this comedy is unlikely to win over any new fans, but the devoted will find comfort in the familiarity.

Michael Mueller’s character-driven script is about the only thing that feels driven in this otherwise listless vehicle, and “The Beat Beneath My Feet” conveys all the pulse-pounding energy of a funeral procession.

Although the filmmakers use the soldiers’ own words, they fail to create believable characters who can engage the audience.

[An] engrossing, unexpectedly moving documentary.

Courier-X is so inscrutable and tediously boring that it will test the patience of even the most tenacious truther.

As it stands, this abysmal romantic comedy serves as an abject lesson against vanity filmmaking.

Sadwith, whose TV credits include the miniseries “Sinatra,” conjures a few memorable moments in his big-screen debut. But the most stirring moment belongs to Cooper, who turns a barely audible, exasperated sigh into a complicated life story.

It’s the journo’s open gaze and natural inquisitiveness, his refusal to merely demonize his abusers, that give the film its discomforting power.

Director Kijak deserves credit for constructing an engaging narrative that will have the uninitiated crossing their arms in an X in solidarity by the end.

By turns coolly observed and disquietingly compassionate — qualities that also describe Rebecca Hall’s brilliant central performance — the movie drifts alongside its subject, Charon-like, through the hell of her last weeks.

One could say the mechanical direction leeches the energy out of virtually every sequence, but that would imply there was any there to begin with — and, although the young actors seem likable enough, their characters never credibly come to life.

A memorable romantic comedy that stands to bring back the genre’s good name, “It Had to Be You” is as funny, endearing and enjoyably off-kilter as its adorable star, Cristin Milioti.

Hunt, whose debut feature was “Frozen River,” has a steadfastly classicist approach to tried-and-true genre storytelling that’s admirable, but instead of building tension, The Whole Truth lets it bleed out.

Before the Flood is neither dull screed nor stat-heavy pamphlet, thanks largely to the questing intensity of its marquee guide.

American writer-director Angad Aulakh tries to agitate the pensive set-up with sex and a supposed mystery that never raises the pulse. The Bergman-esque posturing falls so far short of the Swedish master that it wouldn’t even qualify as accidental parody.

The end result admittedly favors tone over substance, accentuated by Jeff Grace’s playful, mock Morricone score and character turns that affectionately flirt with conventions without giving way to outright parody.

Star and first-time director Ewan McGregor, working with screenwriter John Romano, has skillfully reshaped Roth’s tale for more urgent cinematic telling, covering a host of profound themes with disquieting power, reflection and grace.

Without sacrificing his taste for psychosexual perversity or his flair for violent grace notes, Park has given us a teasingly witty and elegant puzzle-box of a thriller whose pleasures are rooted not in visceral shock but in narrative surprise, and which wisely opts to seduce rather than pulverize its audience.