Lawless outback, shotgun-toting banditos and even roadside crucifixions somehow add up to an experience that’s about as thrilling as your average trip to the post office.

Altman and Rapp skirt the fine line between satire and caricature, stopping just short of ridiculing the women who pack Dr. T's office.

Thanks to Hudson and the other women, it's a moderately beguiling date movie.

Refreshing for its simplicity and its originality in a marketplace dominated by soulless blockbusters.

A collection of such dazzling digital illusions you can't wait for it to hit DVD so you can freeze individual images.

Coppola works in weird ways, but the real Versailles was so much weirder.

Weds half-hearted thriller elements to the self-absorbed, no-budget mumblecore films pioneered by Katz in efforts like "Dance Party, USA."

Despite Mulligan bringing her A-game, the film falls short of its potential.

Some bits are too stagy, but for the most part this long night feels like an interview that could have actually happened. Miller is so good - dumb, smart, wounded, wounding, a lollipop of sweet poison that you'd buy every day until it killed you - that you feel you not only understand her but all actresses.

There is more style here than story, but the style - slashing cuts delivered in queasy orange sunstroke tones, accompanied by the urgent bleat of the cellphone - is considerable.

The main attraction is little-seen archival footage going back 50 years, including scenes from the 1960s "Parades and Changes," with artful nudity that was praised in Europe but brought threats of arrest in New York.

So what starts out as fascinating sci-fi becomes just fi, and winds up pulp fi.

The bonkers ending will be a talker. At first, I was skeptical, segued to disturbed, and then thoroughly creeped out. It’s a wild choice, however, one with a hint of precedent elsewhere in the series. And it serves to differentiate what is, admirably, a highly deferential film.

With Frozen II, Disney has done the impossible: It’s made a terrific animated-musical sequel.

High praise for the movie Mother and Child: It's as good as a TV show. Although it's not as fine as HBO's "In Treatment," a show run by this movie's writer-director, Rodrigo Garcia.

Slovenian-born writer-teacher Slavoj Zizek, narrator of the movie "A Pervert's Guide to the Cinema," provides the most entertainment.

The movie grows steadily more arresting as it goes on and saves its best parts for last.

Soulful though the film is, melodrama gradually sneaks in, and then it takes over.

Sounds bleak, but turns out to be an absorbing and lively film.

A poignant, graceful little film.

Genuinely creepy Southern Gothic thriller that once again proves that in horror movies, sometimes less is actually more.

The result is inept, tedious kitsch that even at its best feels like John Waters minus the joie de vivre.

Carion, in his feature debut, means well, and his characters are lovable. But the plot is so predictable and sentimental that viewers are likely to lose interest before Sandrine and her goats walk off into the sunset.

Shamelessly contrived and manipulative, Tae Guk Gi packs a visceral wallop.

Rom-coms died because they weren’t very rom and didn’t have enough com. But Sleeping With Other People, which is both hilarious and emotionally alive, is as delightful as a first date that crackles with possibility.

The film is primarily interested in the music that accompanied this turmoil, which is a bit like covering the American Revolution with the focus on the wigs Washington and Jefferson wore.

It would seem no easy task conveying the essence of a bigger-than-life figure like Ellison in a 96-minute film. But Nelson, producer of Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man," makes it look easy.

Wanted is like a 12-armed heavy-metal drummer after a case of Red Bull, flailing and thundering through two hours of impossible action.

Censors in Iran must have been smoking weed when they approved I'm Taraneh, 15, a sympathetic portrait of an unwed mother.

The doctors and nurses who care for America's wounded troops on the battlefield and in hospitals get their due in Fighting for Life.

Adoration, which hinges on a number of coincidences, contains some really fine performances.

Combines a sketch-comedy premise with pacing like a philosophy seminar.

What’s said to be Marvel’s most powerful superhero ever is served Melatonin by Larson. There is precious little texture or detail, ups and downs, or emotions of any kind in her performance. The character, even when kicking ass, is a total bore. Such as it is, the film’s best moments are provided by Jackson and a hilarious cat.

A reasonably uplifting kids movie if you don't think about it too much. I get paid to think about things too much, and effective as the movie is, it nevertheless left me slightly put off.

Weitz keeps the schmaltz in check, but it's clear pretty much from the outset that this immigrant family is fated never to find A Better Life north of the border.

Disappointingly skin-deep and almost shockingly wholesome, Mary Harron's The Notorious Bettie Page lives up to neither its title nor its advertising slogan, "the pin-up sensation that shocked the nation."

Rental Family is a heartwarming jewel of a movie that is a dazzling showcase of Japan’s urban and natural beauty, instead of the usual depiction of hordes of tourists surrounded by skyscrapers and lit by LEDs.

Vitally, though, the director gets a terrific performance from Jerome, which prevents “Unstoppable” from falling into the traps so many athletic yarns do.

An intelligent look at family dynamics set in a boring Washington State suburb where Bible-thumping Mormons come knocking on your door.

This Disney film is all pretty simple, with messages about bigotry and ignorance, friendship and growing up. But at least they don't hit you over the head with them.

The Innkeepers is no masterpiece, but you may well leave with your nerves expertly jangled.

Williams triumphs by exceeding both in sheer actor's craft - and the depths he plumbs in his character's tortured soul.

Strictly a love it-or-hate-it proposition, it requires viewers to work at a movie with a narrative that could support at least half a dozen interpretations.

Sister Helen don't take no bull.

By the time the final shot arrives -- a rooftop panorama in the falling snow -- we don't know much about any of the people we've just encountered. But we have been treated to a feast for the eyes.

Meet Peter Berlin - the man whose eccentric life style has earned him the title the Garbo of gay porn.

The line between honey and syrup is a fine one, I'll grant you, but "Best Exotic Marigold" was on the wrong side of it. Quartet carries a noble glow, as serene and beautiful as sunset.

Gorgeous set pieces thrill the senses, but there is philosophical inquiry as well. "Alien" was, after all, just "Jaws" in space, but Prometheus ponders where evil comes from and how it conquers its makers.

You can't help wondering how prisoners who practiced Vipassana fared as free men.

The dialogue, while filthy, is wickedly funny, and sounds perfect coming out of the mouths of these beaten-down characters in their low-rent surroundings.

Starts as a serious examination of the two women's lives, but it descends into a mushy melodrama complete with schmaltzy music and dewy cinematography.

What keeps “The Lost Bus” from going full PlayStation — or full Brosnan — is a pulsing performance from McConaughey as a flawed dad desperately trying to reach his ill son (played by McConaughey’s own offspring, Levi Alves McConaughey) while saving the sons and daughters of others.

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.

Carl Kranz, as a possibly autistic boy enamored of Natalia, offers his scenes some heart. But Soft in the Head is drab, ramshackle stuff — up in everyone’s face, and finding very little there.

Like the paintings of the master, Renoir is beautiful to look at, but it would be a mistake to call the film (or its subject) shallow.

Though there are moderately interesting interviews interspersed throughout, Deadheads will want to see the numbers, in which Grisman's more formal style complements Garcia's looser approach to his music.

A viral blast of the American Dream. It's "Rocky" with a briefcase.

Think of it as the rantings of a grouchy old man (he's 71) who for half a century has resisted all efforts to dumb down his movies, insisting instead on making them HIS way and no other.

Eight Below doesn't always quite put across the idea of extreme weather, either; the way the actors keep appearing outside with bare heads and jackets unzipped suggests November in Burbank, not 31 degrees below zero. The scenes in which Biggs appears in shorts kind of clinch the point.

What Bombshell has going for it is a jaunty pace. The film by Jay Roach — the “Austin Powers” director who’s had rotten luck with dramas — clips along and is always watchable. But it misguidedly mimics other annoying, ripped-from-the-headlines movies, such as “The Big Short” and “Vice,” that rely on Elvis-impersonator acting, smug narration and quick cuts. Sometimes, you just want to see a tough topic taken seriously.

If you were wondering what “12 Years a Slave” might have been like as a two-part episode of “Masterpiece Theatre,” you might want to check out this unsatisfying but not uninteresting oddity. It renders another historical story about race with exquisite taste but not much in the way of passion.

Director Luca Guadagnino pirouettes far from the easy-living, Italian-countryside romance of last year’s masterpiece “Call Me By Your Name” for an arthouse-meets-Grand Guignol reboot of one of the freakiest horror movies to come out of the 1970s. And he pulls it off in delicious, gut-punching style.

The photographs on view are dazzling; the way they are shown here is somewhat less so.

A lightweight French comedy worth watching only for Cecile de France. The gamine actress - decked out in short reddish hair, black tights and a thigh-high mini - is charming as Jessica.

Sharp little psychological thriller.

Uses the compelling true story of the triumph of the Enigma code-breakers as background for an invented but believable story of love, betrayal and heroism.

The whole thing is shot in an irritating, self-conscious way.

Makhmalbaf finds room for moments of humor and humanity.

There's also enough laconic humor, warming camaraderie and hopeful stabs at dignity to keep the story from assuming the glum gunmetal gray of its setting on the coast of northwestern Spain.

(Osment) delivers what may be the greatest performance ever by a child actor.

It's hard to go wrong with documentary subjects as articulate and intriguing as childhood friends John Flansburgh and John Linnell.

The most gut-bustingly funny movie so far this year.

These were people willing to take chances. Would that Trank had taken chances in telling their stories.

Daniel Radcliffe continues to propel himself further from his Harry Potter past, this time via straight-up flatulence: Swiss Army Man nearly makes up with juvenile glee what it lacks in plot and coherence.

In one of Hugh Hefner’s least creepy moments ever, he describes how they became friends later in life; with his help, she finally obtained the legal rights to her rampantly used image.

The French affection (affectation?) for conversational film reaches absurd proportions in the talkathon Domain.

Feeble comic one-liners and slow pacing combine for a routine fangfest in this remake of the 1985 film.

You can't spell cliché without Che. And as I endured this mad dream directed - or perhaps committed - by Steven Soderbergh, I wondered where I'd seen it all before. The booted stomping through the greensward, the jungly target shooting? It's a remake of Woody Allen's "Bananas," right?

Seldom has any movie shown so much geriatric sex and full-frontal nudity (male and female). But, thanks to Dresen, it is all done with taste and sensitivity.

Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel do some of the best work of their careers playing longtime friends navigating their twilight years in Paolo Sorrentino’s witty, wise and swooningly beautiful dramatic comedy Youth.

The film is hard on the eyes, having been shot in a low-budget style with the ubiquitous digital palette of gray-beige-taupe. Fortunately, it’s also hilarious, full of humor that is understated, wry and dependent on familiarity with interests as wide as Houellebecq’s own.

Works its way to an improbably cheerful ending, but getting there is a slow trip.

The movie is passionately retro, but Barta shows his methods can create a world every bit as engrossing as the latest CGI.

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.

Wiig and Adebimpe give appealing, naturalistic performances — it’s Silva’s character who grate.

In Born To Be Blue, Ethan Hawke plays the heroin-addicted jazz trumpeter Chet Baker as a kind of guy version of Marilyn Monroe — breathy, fragile, a country naif struggling to stay anchored in this world instead of drifting off into the next.

The kind of small gem that's becoming increasingly rare in American films.

A movie that runs on jet fuel and confetti, Elvis is a tribute to Presley’s innovative spirit, deep passion for fusing blues, country and gospel music and the intense connection he had with his audience

In short: Too Many Cooks plus too many minutes.

The overall mood of Gypsy is despair.

Call it "The Doom Generation II." Gregg Araki's Kaboom returns to the trippy ways of his 1995 erotic head trip.

Movies don't come any more charming than Mongolian Ping Pong.

Slight but entertaining and occasionally touching.

Builds steadily from its smarter-than-your-average-horror-film beginnings to a genuinely cunning psychological thriller with a third-act twist guaranteed to shock even the most eagle-eyed watchers.

A misfiring black comedy oddly reminiscent of all those bad 1990s movies about strippers getting killed at bachelor parties.

The scariest revelation in Ratliff's film is that the Texas Hell House has proved so popular that it's being copied all over the country. Heaven help us!

"Love, Actually" meets "Trainspotting" in Intermission, an edgy Irish romantic comedy that deftly juggles a dozen interconnected story lines.

Who's going to love it? Anyone with a sense of humor: Team America: World Police is hands-down the funniest movie of the year.