Coogan is often very funny as the libertine Raymond, whose real estate holdings made him one of the UK’s richest men at the time of his death in 2006. But tragedy simply is beyond his range at this point.

Big Star’s fans are so passionate that this film may well please some of them, but as for myself, I already knew their music was genius. By the end, I was muttering at every critic and musician and record producer, “Guys, tell me something I don’t know.”

The Way, Way Back is balanced, satisfying, wholesome. Dig in.

It’s a brief movie, and perhaps all that preamble is meant to justify the ticket price. The best advice is to walk in about 25 minutes after the lights go down. You’ll still get all the laughs, and you won’t have to hear about Hart’s YouTube hits.

As in the original “Despicable,” masterful physical comedy is what raises this animated pic so far above most of its competitors.

The sad truth is these durable 80-year-old characters, who peaked with a 1950s TV series, never even come to life in this bloated, misshapen mess, a stillborn franchise loaded with metaphors for its feeble attempts to amuse, excite and entertain.

Nothing in Redemption quite adds up, including the paranoid hero’s insistence that he’s being watched by drones.

A rare dud from great Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, I’m So Excited! is a campy, sex-obsessed spoof of airborne-disaster movies that never really gets off the ground.

Neil Jordan’s Byzantium dares to rework “Twilight” with twice the teen moping and Robert Pattinson replaced by a guy with the sexual magnetism of a sickly Ron Weasley.

There are a handful of moments to entrance a non-fan. When the musicians and singers assemble to sing “Proserpina,” the last song McGarrigle ever wrote, with its haunting refrain (“Come home to Mama”), the effect is transcendent.

The film shows how quiet exteriors can mask deep interior lives, and how art feeds those lives. The view of art is richly intellectual, sometimes enthralling. But I confess, I liked Museum Hours best for answering a question I’ve always had: What is that guard thinking?

Its priceless clips from the disco era aside, The Secret Disco Revolution laughably fails to turn Barry White and Donna Summer into the Che Guevara and Emma Goldman of the dance floor.

At nearly three hours, it’s entirely too long, needlessly padded out with an intrusive interview-framing device.

Are Some Girl(s) like this? Yes. But I left this movie with no additional insight on why.

This film is best when arguing that drugs should be treated as a multibillion-dollar commodity business in need of regulation, and not as a moral failing.

The Heat, which provides enough opportunity for wholesale mayhem as well as laughs, is pretty much a guaranteed crowd-pleaser.

You couldn’t ask for a more fun summer popcorn movie than White House Down.

The movie, told from the killer’s point of view, is genuinely unsettling and propelled by a terrific, buzzing synth soundtrack straight out of the early ’80s. But the only suspense is in which woman will be the next victim.

The two leads spend a lot of their time doing static interviews, in a format familiar from TV shows like “The Office.” This glorified narration gets old, fast.

Somm does a fairly impressive job of making wine tasting somewhat cinematic despite its being essentially unfilmable, at least until taste-o-vision comes along.

Winter hits his stride detailing how the music bigwigs hung Napster out to dry, but couldn’t do a thing about their industry’s permanently altered business model. This exercise in recent nostalgia (the original Napster went bust in 2002) might have been better if the tart cynicism of that section had shown up earlier.

Despite a remarkable performance by Suliman, who’s almost never off-camera, events become increasingly pat and implausible, with one explanatory scene played like a shadowy variation on Kevin Spacey’s monologue in “Se7en.”

A Hijacking is Lindholm’s second feature as director; he’s also worked with such austere Danes as Thomas Vinterberg of Dogme 95 fame. What he’s learned, it seems, is how to strip away distractions, and let character become suspense, as well as destiny.

It’s not exactly giving away anything to reveal that Stamp also sings three numbers in Unfinished Song — the last one so stirring that you should bring at least one box of Kleenex.

Less an awful movie than a totally uninspired one. The under-5 set may find it funny, though I suspect their parents will be checking their watches a lot, as I did.

So once you figure out the first rule of Zombie Fight Club — nothing too bad can happen to Brad Pitt — the movie is, despite intermittent thrills, rote.

What makes Storm Surfers 3-D mesmerizing is jaw-dropping footage shot inside brute waves that’s unlike any I’ve ever seen before.

In a film that’s often sad but not without its triumphs, director Morgan Neville smartly explores the complex role that ego and self-promotion play in this profession.

In Vehicle 19, Paul Walker is back behind the wheel again, but this time it’s a rented minivan and the plot is brainless even for a Paul Walker movie. Get ready for “The Slow and the Spurious.”

It’s doubtful that Scorsese will redo this new Lau thriller, which is OK because the Chinese original is all fans need.

Will there be a “Hatchet IV’’? I shudder to think about it.

Set in the drab suburbs of Paris, The Stroller Strategy doesn’t even offer pretty backdrops.

If the movie has a star, it may be cinematographer Oleg Mutu, the Romanian who lensed “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” and “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days.” Even when the pace wanes, the images are still gripping.

Without any preachiness, this magically beautiful film urges us to take better care of the bees, and honor the irreplaceable things that they do for us.

A clever, elliptical, slightly bizarre and altogether transfixing psychological thriller.

In other words, this punkish, sleek film about beautiful kids wallowing in purloined Prada could have been written by a grumpy 65-year-old white guy in gabardine, provided he had a sense of irony. The Bling Ring is the bridge between Coppola and Bill O’Reilly.

Deploying an impeccable American accent, Brit Henry Cavill may be as charming as the late great Christopher Reeve.

There is stuff in This Is the End that had me laughing so hard, I sensed new body parts joining in to help out — my pancreas was heaving, my bile ducts ripped.

Time has robbed Blume’s subjects of shock value, but her perceptiveness hasn’t dimmed. The movie’s sincerity carries it along, and makes this story endearing despite its filmmaking clichés.

This material cries out for big-budget treatment by a real master like Paul Thomas Anderson or Martin Scorsese.

Though darker elements loom in the shadows, nothing in this painfully sincere film is remotely affecting; just think of it as “My So-Called Strife.”

Silly enough for you? Did I mention that the immortal Ken Jeong of “The Hangover’’ plays God, who gets mighty pissed when hubby accidentally shoots Jesus out of the sky?

Here’s a movie that will test the limits of your ability to watch other people having a good time.

Predicated almost entirely on the repeated juxtaposition of innocent girlishness and mindless violence, Violet & Daisy could still have been campy fun — instead, it wilts for lack of wit.

A dull drama about domestic squabbling that hopes to be mistaken for a thriller.

There is something both mischievous and moving about a world-famous director who, closing on his 10th decade, designs a movie that celebrates his actors: their varying ages, their versatility, their heart.

The best compensation for sitting through this silliness is Alice Taglioni as the primary cop.

The first filmed Shakespeare comedy in decades that’s actually funny.

After a wickedly promising start, this pointed political satire quickly deteriorates into a fairly routine, if sporadically quite effective, home-invasion thriller.

It seems more likely that a dumb movie will lead only to a time-wasting surge in applications from dummies. Maybe The Internship was secretly funded by Bing.

Sirius requires a religious faith in the notion that the same government that can barely get it together to raise the debt ceiling can suppress all evidence of aliens, via means such as engineering 9/11 as a distraction when Greer got too close to proving his case.

Less a movie than a checklist of indiecinema clichés. Youth on a journey of self-discovery? Got it. Dead mom? Uh-huh. Wounded and entitled when it’s trying to be soulful, plotless, laden with indie rock and entirely overhyped at Sundance? Checkarooney.

Someday, when gay Americans enjoy full equality, we can all hope their sexuality will finally stop being used as fodder for dopey, hopelessly contrived dramas like I Do.

It’s a truly interesting slasher fest; in this one, the heroine gets to be both beauty and beast.

The Wall winds up as a captivating fable, an end-times scenario that’s more about the survival of the spirit than the body.

Still, the proceedings move so quietly and thoughtfully as to be occasionally somnolent, though they’re punctuated with spasms of the violence that marked the Troubles.

It’s involving, as biopics go, but the shattering debates that still swirl around Arendt’s view of the Holocaust are relegated to walk-ons.

Let’s say you wanted to have another go at “Red Dawn” but you think more like Redford. Voilà: You’d have The East, a cockamamie valentine to eco-terrorism.

None of these seemingly plot-rich questions are explored; instead, we’re stuck with a greasy-haired Mark Ruffalo, as his detective character flounders along in their wake, muttering that he doesn’t have time for this magic crap.

Basically, this is Smith and his real-life son, Jaden (both affecting ridiculous mid-Atlantic accents) talking the audience to death for something like 90 minutes before the closing credits.

Trouble is, while the social milieu is nicely realized, other parts of the drama are not. Too often Burshtein cuts off a scene prematurely, darting away just as the crucial moment of emotion or confrontation appears.

Daunting though it may be for the aspiring pick-up entrant, this is a fun and worthwhile ode to one of New York’s greatest summer pastimes.

It is a remarkably unattractive-looking movie. I don’t know when people voted that the seasick look of an iPhone video is now a desirable style.

Despite Gibney’s best efforts to put a halo on Manning, the enormity of what the soldier did towers over what has been done to him.

Making a movie this warm, funny, and rigorously truthful about lovers trying to remain partners is even harder.

I had the sensation of sitting through a fourth-grade school play that contained no children of my own: the very definition of a nightmare.

For my money, Furious 6 is more fun than “Skyfall" and a lot more fun than the deadly dull “Star Trek Into Darkness,’’ both of which ask you to take their silly plots way too seriously.

The good news is that The Hangover Part III isn't a rerun like the second episode. The bad news is everything else. For all the promise of mayhem and WTF moments, the final episode hits you with all the force of a warm can of O'Doul's.

This is less a documentary than a wholly uncritical celebration.

Eckhart’s another matter. He’s adequate, but there is something about his raspy voice and WASPy body language that’s more in tune with being the bad guy at the board meeting than the hero racing through the train station.

This indie, female-centric riff on “Deliverance” is spare, smartly written and shot through with moments of twig-snapping tension.

Pieta is one of Kim’s most complex and mature efforts, melding violence and humor into dark entertainment.

Winocour skillfully films Augustine being exhibited for other doctors in several disturbingly erotic scenes, but elsewhere Soko’s stolid, one-note demeanor takes a toll. The script, which gives Augustine no background and mostly shows her either being “treated” or having an episode, doesn’t help.

Philippe Béziat’s documentary focuses on how Sivadier and his Violetta, the French soprano Natalie Dessay, fuse acting with the music. It’s an incredible view of artists at work.

The main problem is the criminal subplot, full of Aussie villains snarling “mate” at one another and landing bloodless punches on Dean. 33 Postcards is what happens when someone grafts a prison angle onto “Pollyanna” — the tough guys just get in the way.

At least there is a happy ending — DeChristopher, for wasting the government’s resources, properly served 21 months in federal prison. Now, he has moved on to Harvard Divinity School, where his sanctimony will serve him well.

Baumbach seems mainly interested in capturing the whimsical rhythms of unformed post-college life, with money too scarce and roommates too ample — but he already did that, did it better and with more rueful feeling, in the much funnier “Kicking and Screaming,” the debut he made at 25 and one of the best films of the 1990s.

The only darkness here — besides the dingy-looking images dimmed by 3-D glasses — is the murky plot, which is as silly as it is arbitrary.

So unspeakably dull that it can’t even offend, save when the filmmakers have the almighty nerve to quote Alfred Hitchcock and Jonathan Demme. It would be far better to rip off a William Castle movie, and aim for a level they have a prayer of actually hitting.

This documentary, a love letter to their sisterly bond, gives a reasonably engaging look behind the scenes.

The terrorism thriller Java Heat sure is violent. I don’t even want to tell you how viciously Mickey Rourke mangles the French accent he’s trying to do.

The various witnesses tell contradictory tales that turn this into a real-life “Rashomon." The fact that two of the principals — Sarah and Michael, who delivers touching and eloquent on-camera narration that he wrote himself — are accomplished actors adds another level of confusion and interest that help make this compelling storytelling.

A weird mash-up of disaster, horror and dystopia genre pictures, Aftershock fails to make the Earth move.

While Greenwood and Posey turn on enough charm to make this a fairly painless experience, Zack Bernbaum’s And Now a Word From Our Sponsor is a mild, toothless satire — a “Being There’’ where there’s barely any there there.

What begins as an alert and witty barbed satire degenerates into a senseless bloodbath in the black comedy Sightseers.

Director Lenny Abrahamson’s latest film has its roots in the notorious death of a teenager outside a Dublin nightclub, later detailed in Kevin Power’s novel “Bad Day in Blackrock.” The pensive, gray-tinged What Richard Did unfolds this downbeat tale in long scenes, but seldom feels slow.

Chism’s characters are pleasingly odd, and though she can’t string much of a narrative together — there is a stop-and-start quality to the picture that grows tiresome — a few of the set pieces are funny.

Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby is the first must-see film of Hollywood’s summer season, if for no other reason than its jaw-dropping evocation of Roaring ’20s New York — in 3-D, no less.

Has the aroma of an autobiographical confession by someone for whom life hasn’t been overly difficult.

If anyone in the store’s history ever had a bad experience there, you won’t find it in this movie.

Give director Paul Borghese credit for daring in giving his movie a title that evokes Sergio Leone’s two most famous epics. The trouble with doing that, of course, is that you better be prepared to deliver a movie on the same level.

Director Mark L. Mann seems to be searching for the meaning in aimlessness, and in lowered expectations. But too often the narrative left me feeling the titular “um.”

For those willing to lock into Reygadas’ mad wavelength, the beauty is worth the puzzlement.

The sex is the main thing that makes Kiss of the Damned worthwhile.

This is a fine idea for a PSA TV commercial, but (a) they already did it back in the ’70s and (b) it goes on well past the 30-second mark.

Director Daniel Algrant chose well with Badgley, who transcends the rather made-for-TV vibe with a decent rendition of Buckley’s haunting falsetto.

Gil Kofman has an interesting and funny story to tell in his documentary Unmade in China. Too bad he spends more time talking about himself than detailing his misadventures in Xiamen, China, population 3.67 million.

The overall effect tends to be as chilly and monotonous as Shannon’s demeanor as Kuklinski — a real disappointment.