The resulting slowdown, as well as a significant narrative shift, gives Looper a slightly sprawling and ungrounded feel at times, almost as if the first and second halves are two separate movies.

The result is an artist profile that doesn't feel like the standard, stuffy artist profile. Instead, Beauty is Embarrassing is an entertaining whimsy that, like White, never takes itself too seriously, doesn't overstay its welcome and never, ever underestimates the value of a chuckle.

It features predictable humor and an underdeveloped story.

The music, of course, is the engine that makes the whole exercise go, tapping into a genre-spanning collection of tunes, but every bit as important to the film's success is its unexpected humor, which flirts with raunchy but stops juuuust short of crossing any lines that would have earned it an R rating.

Ends up being the kind of movie we don't see a whole lot anymore: an emotionally grounded and quietly meaningful crowd-pleaser that functions as a lovely antidote to the recently ended summer blockbuster season.

What Anderson's talky and willfully opaque film doesn't have, however, is an unfailingly compelling story to tell.

In other words, For a Good Time is not a good time. For that, you'll have to dust off your Nintendo and reacquaint yourself with "The Legend of Zelda" -- and hope that one of these days somebody can give "Bridesmaids" some real competition.

There's a good reason why the true-crime film The Imposter is a documentary: If someone tried to pass off this bizarre Texas tale as fiction, nobody would believe it.

Sleepwalk With Me is a decent film -- even if its not one that lingers.

Alas, in Cronenberg's hands, it just comes across as cold and lifeless and exhausting.

Celeste and Jesse Forever isn't a movie many people will outright hate, but if this is the most original romantic comedy that Hollywood can muster, forever can't come soon enough.

At some point, Lee as a storyteller must step in to move things along, to dig the rudder deep into the narrative waters and steer this ship. The destination is almost irrelevant - just steer it somewhere.

Suffers through the occasional lull, but those would be much easier to forgive if they didn't also generate frequent false moments that threaten to take viewers out of the movie.

Open-ended and decidedly un-Hollywood, it is faintly dissatisfying, especially coming on the heels of such as engaging and crisply presented story. But it offers movie-goers a wonderful opportunity to roll it all around in their heads and discuss it, even debate it, as they drive back to that cozy little cult compound they call home.

Is Premium Rush a two-wheeled "French Connection"? No, not by a long shot. (Although it does include a racing-beneath-the-el-train homage.) But when it comes to lightweight, synapse-free action fare, Premium Rush delivers.

An unflinchingly ugly -- but downright mesmerizing -- tale that plumbs the depths of human immorality and, along the way, offers a dash of subtle commentary on just how far we, as a 312 million-member nuclear family, might have lost our way.

Hit and Run achieves its chief goal: to put the pedal to the metal for some good, goofy fun, squealing the tires as often as possible along the way.

In ParaNorman, Butler, Fell and company have crafted a refreshingly enjoyable bit of family entertainment. In the process, they've also made the best animated film to hit theaters so far this year.

This is a movie that confuses teary with sweet. Mopey with sad. Discomfort with humor. And, worst of all, it confuses weird with odd.

A solidly entertaining and largely engaging film that, even with its faults, functions as a singular -- albeit melancholy -- tribute to a tragic American icon.

Has potential to be fun and meaningful, but it's not exactly a novel idea. In fact, it feels like a literary-minded "Lars and the Real Girl," the 2007 dramatic comedy that starred Ryan Gosling as a man who falls in love with a sex doll, and which coasted along on its charm and smarts.

No, it's not a perfect movie, given how dangerously close it comes to running out of quality third-act punchlines before you're liable to have run out of Sno-caps and Raisinettes. Also, some of the biggest names in the supporting cast -- John Lithgow and Dan Aykroyd, specifically -- are all but wasted.

Gilroy -- who earned writing credits on all four "Bourne" films -- doesn't miss when it comes to the most important task at hand: He takes a well-worn concept and makes it feel new, and without sacrificing its sense of familiarity.

Billed as a dramatic comedy, and it lives up to that billing, even if it tends more toward chuckles than guffaws. In other words, one thing it's not is "It's Complicated," Streep's previous -- and often riotous -- relationship dramedy.

Director David Bowers' story is straightforwardly -- almost unimaginatively -- approached. But, armed with a talented cast and Kinney's chuckle-generating source material, it functions nicely as a sort of big-screen "Wonder Years" for Millennials.

Seizing the role, and the screen, Gelber actually makes us care what happens to his surly, thoroughly unlikable character.

There's a lot of eye candy in what ends up being a slick, breathless and at-times enjoyable sci-fi update. Unfortunately, it's what Wiseman forgets to do that makes the biggest difference in his film -- and which keeps it from becoming much more than a glossy missed opportunity.

What the Duplasses end up with is a film that is amusing at times, a touch repetitive at others, but one that never quite shakes the feeling that it is something of an unfinished thought. And perhaps something they've also grown beyond.