Panh’s technique achieves things a conventional documentary could not, as when he pans across dozens of the clay figures jumbled in a box, in a shot that calls up both the toys of childhood, and graves.

As in genuine porn, most of the acting (except for Skarsgard, who deliberately tries to be funny and sometimes succeeds) is as flat and uninteresting as the script — even when the older Joe narrates a montage of flaccid penises.

The conclusion feels too good-natured after nearly two hours of a minister who would need typed instructions to butter a baguette.

The doc consists of interviews with the absurdly grandiose Jodorowsky (whose fans include Kanye West) plus acolytes like current director Nicolas Winding Refn and film nerds, all of whom walk us through storyboards and tell us how awesome this “greatest film never made” would have been.

Tina Fey is adorable as a gulag guard who yearns to sing, but even better is Ty Burrell as a Clouseau-like Interpol inspector.

Divergent is a clumsy, humorless and shamelessly derivative sci-fi thriller set in a generically dystopian future.

It doesn’t add up to much of anything exciting, even with an appearance by Isabella Rossellini (of Lynch’s “Blue Velvet’’) as the mother of one of the doubles.

A young Jack Nicholson might have pulled this off, but Jason Bateman is not Jack Nicholson. Pity the actor who thinks he’s edgier than he actually is.

The filmmaking style is practically nonexistent: interviews and static shots of the performers onstage. They are thoughtful and often funny, especially Mat Fraser, a British man whose arms were damaged by Thalidomide, and Julia Atlas Muz, the off-stage partner with whom he often performs.

A mouse and a bear defy social convention to forge a friendship in this lovely, charming and Oscar-nominated French animated feature (now available dubbed into English with the voices of Forest Whitaker and other notables).

Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan are superb as the couple, who use the occasion to drop bombs on each other.

There are so many echoes of “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” that it starts to feel like a barely disguised sequel. But those reminders, and the rather trite journey-of-self plot, are just decoration. This tender film works to remind us of how much we still love Deneuve, and succeeds in scene after scene.

Rockwell is incapable of being boring, so there’s some small entertainment to be found in watching his buttoned-up beta male blossom into full Sam Rockwell.

Young men and fast cars are automatically stupid together, but even if you set your intelligence level at “off” — and you should — you’ll get a hangover from this cocktail of 200-proof stupid, clinking with moron ice cubes and with an idiot cherry on top.

A thoroughly enjoyable caper that doesn’t outstay its welcome.

The best parts of this awkwardly paced film are Bell’s scenes with Enrico Colantoni, who returns as her private investigator dad, concerned she’s throwing away a bright future by getting sucked back into her old life.

A huge hit in China — where it was released in 3-D IMAX — the handsomely filmed Journey To the West deserves better than the token 2-D theatrical release it’s getting in the United States to support its simultaneous arrival on video-on-demand.

A wicked little horror film in which nearly all of the violence takes place in your head, In Fear expertly builds terror out of not much more than two people driving around in a car.

It’s a slickly plotted ticking-time-bomb thriller with a crisp look and one standout debut performance, by Hitham Omari as a ruthless leader of a terrorist cell.

Loaded with improbable cultural references (Sherman totes a Stephen Hawking lunchbox and uses words like “eponymous”), I fear Mr. Peabody and Sherman may be a bit too brainy to fully connect with contemporary movie audiences.

It’s the wonderful performances by Bening and Harris that make this flawed, somewhat maudlin film worth seeing.

It largely consists of Franco musing about depictions of homosexual activity on film. As well as gay cast members speculating whether Franco will take off his clothes and perform in explicit footage. He doesn’t.

There is virtually nothing in Mac Carter’s horror flick that deviates from the standard haunted house plot (or, in this case, plod).

While absolutely nothing in Grand Piano makes the least bit of sense, it is admittedly gorgeous to look at and listen to. Give Mira a decent script, and he might be a director to be reckoned with.

Green rules the picture with her nutty stare and her willingness to get nasty in a hot sex scene, but the movie’s main weak point is the Greek general Themistokles.

“GBH” is a featherweight screwball comedy that, trying mightily to be cosmopolitan, feels awfully provincial, desperately touristy.

Yelchin is an immensely likable actor who does what he can, but his charm isn’t enough to save this awkwardly worded — and paced — wannabe thriller.

All the tedium of an endless trans-Atlantic flight gets packed into the 105 minutes of Non-Stop.

A clever setup that harkens back to “You’ve Got Mail” and “The Shop Around the Corner” doesn’t quite pay off in India’s warm-hearted comedy-drama The Lunchbox.

Son of God is guilty of all the sins of the 1950s Bible epics, but without any of the majesty.

This blathery, misogynist indie from first-time director David Grovic — which seems to be aiming for “Pulp Fiction” territory with its blend of crime, banter and the mysterious contents of a bag — falls far short, rife as it is with noir and gender clichés.

Unfortunately, as in Bay’s “Pearl Harbor,’’ much of the sometimes draggy 2 1/4 hours is given to clichéd inspirational drama.

There’s a simplicity and directness in Chaplin of the Mountains that keeps it aloft; its wholehearted sincerity feels much fresher than any number of slicker, more cynical films.

With any luck, this’ll be the death knell of the idiot-savant rom-com.

The star gives us a generous and hilarious portrait of life as an aging legend.

A campy guilty pleasure that serves up a “Gladiator’’ knockoff as an appetizer to the impressively flame-filled main course.

Besson provided the story and co-wrote the screenplay for a film directed by McG, who does his usual McGhastly job with action and is McGruesome when it comes to comedy.

As subtle and careful and slyly disturbing as Child’s Pose is though, it and many others of its genus suffer from an airlessness, pacing like the growth of algae, a dishwater color palate and a dirge-like monotone.

Your average episode of “Days of Our Lives” is less soapy (and performed with more restraint).

Omar eventually becomes a sun-scorched neo-noir — and the fade-out is an unforgettable jolter.

Basically a much schmaltzier fantasy version of “Love Story.’’

Endlessly lame.

The New Black often feels like a polished but uninspired op-ed.

Maybe my favorite thing about this About Last Night, though, is that it’s proof romantic comedies don’t have to be so predictable.

Del Toro overdoes the anguish to the point of looking like he’s playing advanced constipation, and the film, by France’s Arnaud Desplechin, gets stuck in an endless series of therapy scenes built around cheesy re-enactments of Jimmy P’s dreams.

No amount of actorly dedication can change the pointlessness of watching unpleasant things happening to uniformly unpleasant people.

Najafi stages action scenes with an intense, queasy beauty and elevates what is in its outlines a routine crime drama to near-operatic proportions.

Adult World proceeds by fits and starts, but fans of Cusack won’t want to miss his performance as the petulant poet, whose resistance is inevitably worn down by his persistent fan.

RoboCop is topically up-to-the-moment but stylistically it’s retro. Far from using the story as an excuse to string together cheap thrills and blowout spectacle, its hero has all the heart of the Tin Man.

The story is something of a trap: Both irresistibly poignant and an invitation to wallow.

Lanzmann, for his part, begins the interview with a sharp, probing manner; by the end, the filmmaker’s questions and body language are conveying something altogether different.

The Pretty One does find a handful of genuinely sweet moments in which Basel and Laurel bond on letting their respective freak flags fly. Like the film itself, Kazan is at her best when she’s not trying so hard to be cute.

Except possibly for a superlative supporting performance by Hugh Bonneville of “Downton Abbey,’’ Clooney’s low-key directorial effort is not quite an Oscar-caliber movie, though it’s got a great cast, a worthy theme and plenty of things to reward adult moviegoers.

A dismal rom-com for dudes that makes the average beer commercial look nuanced and plot-heavy.

The cheesy techno-thriller The Outsider is a blaring B-movie that doesn’t have much going for it, but it does have an engaging action hero in its leading man, a snarling Cockney badass named Craig Fairbrass.

Love is the weak link in this clumsily titled rom-com, which plays a bit like a hipster infomercial for Austin, Texas.

As cute and energetic as it is, The Lego Movie is more exhausting than fun, too unsure of itself to stick with any story thread for too long. The action scenes are enthusiastic, colorful but uninvolving, like an 8-year-old emptying a bucket of plastic blocks.

The dialogue is so vague, and the plot so minimal, it all feels like a rather pointless exercise.

The way the tightrope works is vague, but what the exercise shows is straightforward and marvelous.

None of this is particularly innovative, although Garcia and the elder Farmiga develop a nice spark and a gentle humor in their characters’ stolen day together.

This is a useful primer on what went wrong — and right — in 2008.

Winslet and Brolin have wonderful chemistry together, and Reitman makes well-worn metaphors like steamy weather and pie making (the film has been embraced by the American Pie Council) seem newly invented.

That Awkward Moment is a rom-com for dudes that seeks to outdo the ladies by being even more insipid, formulaic and contrived than anything Katherine Heigl has ever done.

A good documentary uses judicious editing to make an important addition to your knowledge of a subject, and Mitt does so in a big way.

A clunky movie that feels as if it’s underwritten by the Roman Catholic Church.

G.B.F., which concludes with a clumsy parody of the prom climax from “Carrie,’’ offers an admirable message of tolerance for teen audiences — too bad it’s been absurdly saddled with an R rating, even though there’s far less innuendo than in “Easy A.’’

Will Forte continues his transition into serious actorhood with this indie.

Like Father, Like Son has earned its right to reduce a person to a sobbing wreck.

The densely plotted Generation War sweeps past implausibilities and offers the can’t-put-it-down qualities of a superior airport novel; its last third is affecting. But a bold confrontation with the past? Not so much.

What the film lacks in plot twists it makes up for in sheer amazement.

The Nut Job has an interesting anti-socialist subtext, with the seemingly benevolent raccoon revealing himself as a power-mad dictator. It’s the most political non-Pixar cartoon feature since the very left-leaning “The Ant Bully’’ eight years ago.

Ride Along tries to be a comic version of “Training Day,” only there’s nothing in it as funny as Denzel razzing Ethan. There’s nothing much funny in it at all.

Soundly structured, smart and fast, with a plausible central scenario, several gripping moments and well-wrought dialogue.

A film so self-serious that it demands to be remade as a Seth MacFarlane farce, The Truth About Emanuel mixes the ludicrous and the pretentious in a story about mommy issues gone wild.

It settles for being a bland and preposterous thriller.

It’s unspeakably depressing to see Anna Paquin playing the mom (of a teenager!), but the pointlessness and mediocrity of the Paquin-produced Free Ride is even more depressing.

Long on atmosphere and less sentimental about poverty than “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” the film carries a potent charge of authenticity.

Ultimately, though, the lack of story and relentless suffering make Raze appealing for hard-core genre fans only.

Imagine the French lesbian romance “Blue Is the Warmest Color’’ as a raunchy American exploitation flick with loads of fake gore. That’s a rough idea of the latest from Lloyd Kaufman, the exuberant shockmeister whose Troma Team is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.

In terms of its outlook for young girls in Georgia, the movie title might as well be “Buried Alive.”

Shooting in South Africa and Botswana, director Kamaleshwar Mukherjee never lacks for atmosphere, but his film is painfully awkward in execution, from the stiff dialogue to the time-padding slo-mo sequences and glaring CGI.

Beyond Outrage fails to live up to its title as Japanese superstar Takeshi Kitano can’t find much in the way of fresh ideas for the genre.

An intriguingly Hitchcockian premise gradually takes on a preposterous air in the art-world noir The Best Offer.

Even the audience at whom the movie is aimed — the crowd for whom dinner and a movie means meeting up at 3 p.m. — will be bored by the stale funk coming off every scene.

There’s little sense of urgency, or — oddly, given the film’s title — of scale. You never really think that the 47 are truly outnumbered, and the large action scenes are often just incomprehensible.

By refusing to consider that Dickens and Ternan ever brought each other any happiness, the movie is more Victorian in its attitudes than even some Victorians were.

Hoogendijk ends the movie just before the museum reopens; but her last, soaring image is a stirring vision of what made all the agita worthwhile.

If The Past doesn’t equal the masterpiece that preceded it, it’s still an exceptional film from a man who is clearly one of the best working directors.

Poor John Leguizamo, who hopefully got well-paid to voice a stereotypical Latino bird providing a stream of nonsensical narration.

This is, by some distance, the best movie of the three, and it showcases the impeccable symmetry of his compositions, while retaining his compulsion to wag a finger in your face.

It is admirably unsparing and gloomily atmospheric. And I looked at my watch a bunch of times.

The story of a guy who never goes anywhere or does anything. Until he goes everywhere and does everything, but he might as well have stayed home.

There hasn’t been this bizarre mixture of hooah and death since John Wayne hung up his combat boots.

There is still enough venom spilled in August: Osage County to make this drama relatable to anyone who’s suffered through a wildly dysfunctional family dinner — and who hasn’t, especially at this time of year?

Jonze seems to be heading for a far quirkier ending than the one he actually delivers, but he does tap into the zeitgeist with his unlikely romantic fable.

Anchorman 2 is like watching “Anchorman” being re-enacted by semi-professionals trying to cover up their lapses by being extra-emphatic, super-doofy: 2013 Steve Carell does a lousy impression of 2004 Steve Carell.

If you’re going to invest three hours watching a movie about a convicted stock swindler, it needs to be a whole lot more compelling than Martin Scorsese’s handsome, sporadically amusing and admittedly never boring — but also bloated, redundant, vulgar, shapeless and pointless — Wolf of Wall Street.

Nuclear Nation is likely to attract those who already oppose such power plants. But supporters should see it, too, if only to hear the opposition’s arguments. The film raises issues that aren’t going away.