A first-rate example of good storytelling and well-timed — while not excessive — gore. Its disgusting, hilarious conclusion left me eager to see what’ll be next from director Jim Mickle.

A disarming but low-impact documentary that amounts to an odd dual biopic, Shepard & Dark can feel a bit like intruding on a conversation between two old friends.

It often seems like an acting workshop: Behave as if you are the parent of a dead child.

This movie is basically “Spinal Tap” minus the jokes. Two of the band members have the word “Metallica” emblazoned on their clothing. Metallica — it’s the band that has to remind fans whom they’re watching!

A cinematic listicle of misleading economic talking points.

Short, sweet, raunchy and often screamingly funny.

Whelk, I hope the makers of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs earned a nice celery, but I’m afraid they made a hash of things. A hash seasoned with oy sauce.

Nothing in this movie would actually happen, so what’s irritating is that it presents itself as a savvy, “Am I right, ladies?” dating commentary.

It falls to Hanks and his movie-star presence to anchor this ambitious enterprise, and he does some of his most impressive acting without saying a word.

The tone teeters between delicate and affected, and there’s only so much flitting around and soulful stares a movie can sustain before an audience starts wanting something more earthbound.

Director Suri Krishnamma capably depicts the darkness in Jim’s head with his shadowy surroundings, misanthropic inner monologue and increasingly frequent hallucinations, and Griffith’s vulnerable performance is a standout. But the film’s final third seems needlessly graphic.

Dull yet contrived drama.

There are some bright one-liners in the beginning, but the comedy/drama mix is an uneasy one, especially considering the shabby way the film treats McKenna, as a tart who’s just there to improve some yuppie sex lives.

A more nuanced picture of the only president to resign from office emerges in Penny Lane’s clever documentary.

In short, the crows are pests, but the movie shows them great affection, as do the humans who discuss the ways they must accommodate the crows. After a while it is impossible not to admire the birds’ intelligence and resilience, and see that perhaps it’s the other way around: The crows are the ones putting up with us.

A campy erotic thriller that’s seriously short of, well, passion.

Getaway is so bad that what’s most surprising about it is that Nicolas Cage didn’t manage to star in it. But one man can only do so many low-rent projects a year.

No personal revelations surface in “This Is Us.” Also, no narrative, no conflict — no differentiation between band members, even, besides the designation of dark-eyed Zayn as “the mysterious one” (he likes to paint).

A credulity-straining thriller featuring a few good paranoid moments — and, perhaps most important, Rebecca Hall running in high heels.

Cusack and Cage — who don’t have any scenes together until halfway through — do their best work in years, while erstwhile “High School Musical’’ star Hudgens shows off acting chops missing in “Spring Breakers.’’

Wong extracts magnetic performances from his two stars, and Philippe Le Sourd delivers gorgeous cinematography.

Una Noche is intriguing enough, however, to make you hope that both Mulloy and her actors are heard from again, sooner rather than later.

Now, here’s the trilogy’s second installment, in which the jolly Austrian makes it clear that women of a certain age do not have his permission to overdo it with religion, either.

Director Annette Haywood-Carter films the proceedings with a sepia-tinged prettiness, but this is a Southern “Downton Abbey,” minus the loopy plot turns and wisecracks that make that series so addictive.

Given that the opening shot shows the heroine on the toilet, what a nice surprise to find that this is a pure love story, told with elegance and simplicity on a low budget.

In some ways, it feels like an indie meditation on the eternal “When Harry Met Sally” question: Can men and women be just friends? Here, though, the focus is on the small, often unsaid moments that define a friendship — and a murky attraction.

Larson shines as an adult staffer assigned to keep these self-destructive kids safe while they work with therapists.

Bloody horror flicks need not be anemic when it comes to intelligence. The victims of You’re Next, as well as their slaughterers, are reasonably smart and resourceful. Their clash may not be as nasty as the battles of academia, but there’s a lot more common sense involved.

The movie independently bungles everything it tries, like a Central Park busker who simultaneously sucks at juggling, harmonica playing and skateboarding.

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones hopes to be the start of a new franchise for tweens and Twihards, but the twuth is this twash is anything but a twiumph.

A movie about bisexuals sounds fresh and fun on paper, but a sensitive acoustic song under the opening credits shows exactly where The Happy Sad is going. Deadly earnestness and sex don’t mix well at the movies.

Farahani determinedly underplays her character, and is often very touching. But while there is a satisfying final scene, The Patience Stone is essentially a monologue, and Atiq Rahimi (directing the adaptation of his own novel) doesn’t have what it takes to make the story more dynamic.

It’s an entertaining melodrama of the old school that plays out with the clockwork inevitability of a “Columbo” episode.

Twi-hards, Beliebers and Whovians have nothing on the cult of Jane Austen, whose beribboned ranks are ripe for satire. Unfortunately, this scattershot comedy only occasionally hits the mark.

In mashing together story elements from Terrence Malick’s “Badlands” with the look of Malick’s “Days of Heaven,” Lowery put 90 percent of his energy into the atmosphere and 10 percent into the script.

The friction between a couple of still-struggling artists sounds rather depressing, but in fact the film is often funny; it shows that love is present in even the couple’s harshest exchanges.

This one is essentially “The Firm” with smartphones.

Jobs amounts to, at best, a Cliffs Notes version of the man’s early life. If you want the real story, you’ll have to read Walter Isaacson’s fascinating 2011 biography, which would make a much better film than this one.

I do get a chuckle out of movies with wildly inappropriate behavior, rude language and ultramayhem, especially when they involve children, but Kick-Ass 2 sometimes felt like being trapped in a room with the funniest guy in seventh grade.

Although director Lee Daniels dials things down a bit here, subtlety is not what he does. That strategy worked for “Precious’’ but turned his more recent “The Paperboy’’ into a feature-length howler.

The landscape cinematography is often eye-pleasing, but the script is labored, filled with clichés and never allows for character development.

As pure comedy, it’s a hoot.

The Zipper is a carnival ride, a tumbling cage whose screaming customers are spun around like a Ferris wheel.

The final scenes, when Mancini meets Kim’s son, have the awkward feel of an “Oprah” episode, with the editing and music suggesting a catharsis that isn’t always backed up by what’s on-screen.

An uneasy mix of Richard Linklater and Abbott and Costello, Prince Avalanche is an oddment, but one that brings some small, peculiar pleasures.

This morbid, cruel movie seems leached of all things that might inadvertently give viewers pleasure.

My own voice-over would go something like this: “This summer. One woman. Will see this movie. Again.”

Often less really is more, and that’s why I can recommend Planes, a charmingly modest low-budget spin-off from Pixar’s “Cars’’ that provides more thrills and laughs for young children and their parents than many of its more elaborate brethren.

The superficial script doesn’t go nearly deep enough to begin explaining Lovelace.

Like some hybrid beast out of Greek mythology, this young-adult sequel has the body of a “Harry Potter,” the head of a “Twilight,” the feet of a “Hunger Games” and the tail, oddly, of a “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

For a 99 percenter movie, then, Elysium is kind of a head-scratcher. It throws away its best opportunity for drama. It’s as if Han and Leia parked on the Death Star and started asking, “How much is a two-bedroom around here?”

The movie, directed by the formerly promising Rawson Marshall Thurber (the hilarious “Dodgeball” and the awful “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh”), thinks it’s subverting the conventions of the sitcom with a revolutionary new idea, which is: Do everything exactly the way a sitcom would, plus lots of swearing and dirty jokes.

Cardinale’s few brief scenes are the ones with the most depth; her facial lines really did come along with some wisdom.

Breakup at a Wedding works, because Quinaz has come up with a concept that lets him skewer directorial pretension alongside wedding hysteria.

I’m a sucker for films with great surfing footage, let alone wacky ’70s hairstyles. But this overlong, cliché-infested Aussie period drama tested my patience.

The sincerity and simplicity of the film, however, lift it somewhat above the ordinary run.

The teen movie The Spectacular Now begins like “Say Anything” but soon turns into “Drink Anything.”

Superficial and hokey yet still oddly endearing.

The real treat here is the science, not the fiction. The film’s sleek aesthetic was developed in consultation with NASA about what such a mission would actually require, and look like as viewed on surveillance cameras.

You may protest that this is just a splattery feature-length sketch, and you’d be absolutely right. Why not have a laugh at this absurdly trite concept? I’ll take the cheesy breeziness of “CVZ” over the frowny somberness of “World War Z” any day.

Not every movie can come from the heart: This one is from the crotch. But what’s left for the sequel? Maybe it’ll feature Mark and Denzel sporting matching leather codpieces or giving each other bikini waxes. We can only hope.

The movie's most exciting when the precision and jaw-dropping nerve of the gang holds center stage.

Paul Schrader’s The Canyons is not the worst movie of 2013 — it's marginally better than "InAPPpropriate Comedy" and "Scary Movie 5," two even worse bombs that Lindsay Lohan also lent her rapidly diminishing talents to — but it is surely the most boring I’ve seen.

In the ’80s, I hated Ronald Reagan, Bob Dylan and the Smurfs. It’s comforting to know I got one thing right.

It’s a scrappy, unpretentious movie, with nicely calibrated pacing, but there’s no logic, little motivation and above all, no personalities.

The climactic shootout, which goes on for 15 minutes and has an astronomical body count, is a masterpiece of its kind.

The shallow, derivative and contrived British heist thriller Wasteland lives down to its unfortunate name.

Europe’s immigration dilemma was also the focus of Aki Kaurismaki’s winsome “Le Havre,” and the Africans themselves were front and center in Moussa Touré’s “La Pirogue.” This film is somewhat less effective; Crialese’s message seems to take priority over a deeper sense of individuals.

The pretentious and unrelievedly glum first feature from music-video and advertising director Nenad Cicin-Sain, The Time Being looks sharp, but it’s about as dramatically satisfying as watching paint dry.

Frankenstein’s Army is funny and original, with innovative costumes and set designs. It’s sure to please horror fans.

First Comes Love seems punishingly long. It’s no more visually arresting than anybody else’s home movies, and the film’s creator fails to connect her subset of Manhattan privilege to anyone or anything other than herself.

I’d like to see a sequel about her freshman year at college, please. There were still a few items on that list left unchecked.

Blue Jasmine may sound like a topical satire, but it isn’t really. It’s a character study of an obnoxious, selfish and supremely self-absorbed woman oblivious to the pain she inflicts on others.

I liked that The Wolverine (which saves a nifty twist for a surprise scene in the middle of the end credits) turns down the volume on the usual din of colliding mutant superpowers.

The innovation of Refn’s latest is mostly just in the way it manages to merge gory and boring. At least it’s created a new movie adjective for me: goring.

Beck expressed dismay that “Pimp” was taken as a glamorization of his life, and not a warning. By omitting the experiences of the women who worked for him, the filmmakers risk the same thing.

Still Mine eschews schmaltz, and is tremendously moving.

I only laughed once, and it was when Whit Stillman made a cameo to be snubbed by the newly self-actualized Imogene. But it was mostly in disbelief; pretentious or not, Stillman represents a caliber of smart writing that’s wholly absent from Girl Most Likely.

Even for a mumblecore film, Computer Chess is weak stuff, a punitively dull chunk of quirk that is about, and feels like, being stuck in a motel with a gaggle of programming nerds for a weekend.

The cumulative impact is devastating, and very far from a simple Western condemnation of another country’s brutality. In forcing viewers to hear the boasts of genocide’s perpetrators, The Act of Killing puts a harsh spotlight on all celebrations of bloodshed, from Hollywood to the op-ed pages.

Copperhead has a more accurate period look, but dramatically it’s inert.

The movie was largely improvised, which lends itself more to scenes than a feature-length film.

A couple of heavyweight actors — Tim Roth and Cillian Murphy — get top billing, but this British drama belongs to young Eloise Laurence, memorable as Skunk, the diabetic daughter of Roth’s kindly solicitor.

It’s a compelling story, and Minac has told it before, notably in 2002’s “The Power of Good: Nicholas Winton.” This new documentary seems aimed at a classroom audience.

For a movie that so strenuously rips off “Ghostbusters” and “Men in Black,” R.I.P.D. manages to come up with fresh new ways of being absolutely terrible.

How bad could the boneyard be compared to sitting through this execrable piece of non-entertainment? Better dead than RED 2.

Classy old-school horror, James Wan’s The Conjuring depends more on its excellent cast and atmospheric direction than cheap gimmicks to raise hairs on the back of your neck. Which it does, quite frequently.

A fresh, fast and funny little fable.

The film, then, places a heavy hand on the scales of justice as it winds up with a fuzzy plea — an implied demand for a second, federal civil rights trial for the cop, who got a light sentence. But the shooting wasn’t a racist one.

Thomas Vinterberg (“The Celebration”) directs with restraint that makes the story all the more affecting.

Anything can happen when Michael Cera wanders around Chile without a script on a mission to get high on mescaline. Or, in the case of Crystal Fairy, nothing could happen, too.

With the exception of “Tape 49” — the Simon Barrett-directed segment about the PI — the films are ridiculously shaky, their camerawork so determinedly guerrilla-style that it’s difficult not to look away, sometimes at crucial moments. Found footage is all well and good, but if it’s unwatchable, it might as well have stayed lost.

Ultimately, this film reveals the Israeli self-image, but not much more. The people with the cameras pass by Arab neighbors, and what the Palestinians’ home movies might look like remains unexplored.

Lifetime movies have their pleasures, and so does this film. Chief among them is the cast, a group of over-45 actresses who really are better than ever; in the cases of Brooke Shields and Daryl Hannah, remarkably better.

De Niro mostly looks miserable and very tired (a document glimpsed on-screen hilariously claims his character was born in 1970) and prattles on endlessly about forgetting the past.

The movie lurches from one gross-out scene to another, flipping the bird at continuity and logic. It honestly seems as if Sandler and his team descended on a random suburb, halfheartedly improvising and moving on when they got bored.

There’s no shortage of brains, brawn, eye candy, wit and even some poetry in this epic battle between massive lizard-like monsters and 25-story-high robots operated by humans.

The filmmakers wisely avoid the temptation to be cutesy (remember that penguin movie?) and sentimental.