An above-average entry in this niche genre, wherein groups of working-class people band together against adversity.

A micro-budget black-and-white musical set in outer space, The American Astronaut is obviously not for all tastes -- but it's quite unlike anything else out there at the moment.

Overall, Miss Bala is a misfire — but its leading lady is No. 1 with a bullet. And that’s a beautiful sight to see.

Yet what makes this movie is the digital effects. It's got all the heart of a demolition derby.

A lame, glossy and disastrously misconceived film about three ditsy sisters dealing with the death of their horrible father.

Zippily written and directed by the team of Cory Edwards, Todd Edwards and Tony Leech, Hoodwinked just wants the audience to have fun - something that's been in sparse supply in theaters of late.

The film makes little sense (the couple refuses to ride subways, but Metro-North is OK), but it's a diverting conversation piece/freak show.

A sloppy and ridiculous movie that Pacino makes oddly entertaining.

Unashamedly vulgar and exuberantly politically incorrect.

Just Brit filmmaker Shane Meadows having some fun with the conventions of the spaghetti western.

Director Ava DuVernay, in showing Ruby's life in waiting, occasionally lets the pace slip into tedium.

Produced for peanuts (and looks it), but offers enough laughs to please even those who don't usually venture into downtown art houses.

A cute, often very funny romantic comedy and an effective vehicle for Matthew Perry.

By far the best and cutest thing about How the Grinch Stole Christmas is the dog Max.

Where else can you get to hear Otto sing "Crazy"?

If only director James Mangold had taken the route the Wachowskis did with “Speed Racer,” which had psychedelic colors to spice things up.

It too often looks and feels like a high-concept home movie, thanks to cinematography that's crude and ugly even by the standards of documentary video. But Group is also a remarkably believable piece of improvised theater.

One of the more interesting low-budget experiments Steven Soderbergh has indulged in between flashy Hollywood entertainments.

A well-written and in many ways pleasing update of a character who has endured in print for 78 years. Too bad it's sadly slow-paced.

Lathan, who has had a long and fruitful career as an actress in TV shows like “The Affair,” does well in her first go as a director. She has just enough visual flair so as to not overwhelm the rich characters and vibrant place.

As the two coaches head for a faceoff in a climactic live TV interview, writer Morgan starts to seem like a rip-off -- of himself.

Has its heart in the right place -- and in a season filled with somber or goopy Oscar contenders, it makes a perfectly decent date movie.

Being a lesbian period piece, the film’s earned inevitable comparisons to last year’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire.” Sure, it’s similar, minus the chemistry, humor and joy. There are definitely corsets in both.

The story becomes so convoluted and contrived that much of the tension dissipates.

While the film is best for fans of the cloth, non-Catholics, too, will gain insight into one of the most prominent leaders in the world.

Don’t expect the real dirt on “Saturday Night Live” from the doc Live From New York! The movie is fun, but it’s a cinematic coffee-table book.

Moves at a leisurely pace, and it cries out for a narrator or even just an organizing principle.

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.

In short: Too Many Cooks plus too many minutes.

Starts to get a bit preachy as it works its way toward a climax heavily influenced by "Rushmore," but it's still well above average for this type of film.

Turing’s tale needs to be more widely known, and while The Imitation Game may not be a great film, it is an important one.

Enjoyable if only to hear KarKar perform his mournful and personal songs, including a tender tribute to his late wife.

A stylish look and a fair amount of hot and heavy sex (mostly hetero), and the final shootout is pretty nifty.

Branagh's attempt to meld Shakespeare's densely verbal early comedy with Broadway show tunes fails, thanks to stunt casting, poor singing and dancing, and the incompatibility of the two art forms.

Klown turns out to be one long, brutal life lesson for Hvam's hapless character until it finally crosses the line into just plain creepy at the end.

Entertaining and informative, but it suffers from distracting voice-overs of what are supposed to be Madame Mao's thoughts. Too bad.

Seems more like a merchandising ploy than a successful attempt to entertain kids and their parents.

Wilson doesn’t have the emotional heft, or the narrative arc, of Johnson’s last film, but it does remind you how much fun it is to watch Harrelson. In real life, Wilson would just be a straight-up a - - hole.

The plot is thin as consomme, and the thudding score is distracting, but the heartfelt storytelling and Michael Bertl's disarming cinematography make this a food film to savor.

When the Powerpuff Girls blink those soulful dinner-plate peepers, you could forgive them anything - even their movie's wafer-thin excuse for a plot.

Fairly entertaining, if hardly surprising, results.

Doremus can’t quite make the emotional breakthroughs rewarding enough to justify the slow buildup, but the icy beauty of the film makes it worth watching.

Aaliyah rules as the undead Queen of the Damned, even if she has scarcely half an hour of screen time in this campy Anne Rice vampire tale.

With action aplenty, talking animals and enough gags to make any sane grown-up groan, "The Revenge of Kitty Galore" is a harmless but fun hot-weather diversion for the family.

The Upside has a downside: We’ve seen it a million times before.

Except for the rock soundtrack, these movies could be silent - and probably should be.

The screenplay also fails to put the unconventional relationship into context. It never lets on that Andrea helped Duras produce some of her best work, including the autobiographical "The Lovers."

Shamelessly derivative, contrived and predictable, The Proposal is nonetheless a crowd-pleasing romantic comedy.

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

I'd guess Turtle: The Incredible Journey will appeal most to kids, though they will have to wrestle with 3-D glasses.

There's some lumpy writing and uneasy acting, but it's easy to see why this charming, inventive film won prizes at festivals in Berlin, San Francisco and Newport, R.I.

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.

On the plus side, Definitely, Maybe has an appealing cast, some amusing scenes and at least tries to do something different.

Has moments that are eerily beautiful and genuinely moving -- and some that are surprisingly vulgar.

At heart a rather chilly and clinical portrait of four very selfish people.

Saint Laurent was known for an almost monk-like focus on his work. And so this film springs to life — the actors, the camera, the editing — when we see his creations the way they were meant to be seen: in motion, and worn by beautiful women.

CSA would have benefited from a bigger budget and better actors and it gets weaker as it goes along, but it's still thought-provoking stuff.

Much has, and will, be made of the grisly scenes throughout the film.

Mostly, this frantic film is yet another attempt at “Spinal Tap” silly. At times it goes for the heart of “Almost Famous,” and its sense of rock is that of a barely acquainted observer.

Walking a tightrope between high farce and emotional truth, writer-director Gabriele Muccino's breathlessly paced Italian comedy The Last Kiss manages to stay just this side of melodrama.

Fun but somewhat exhausting.

The biographical bits soon feel like a distraction from the music, performed by Gavilán. It’s heard often, but not often enough. Judging by the movie, Parra’s songs are fiery and haunting, sometimes sensuous, sometimes bleak. When Parra sings, the movie becomes worthwhile.

Swank's character, Erin Gruwell, is a real educator who, in the years following the Rodney King riots, coaxed her students into writing about their bullet-riddled lives.

The concert footage is stirring, the recording sessions are intriguing, and -- on the way to striking a blow for artistic integrity -- this quality band may pick up new admirers.

Visually dazzling, intermittently funny.

So full of solid performances and appealing characters that I wished writer/director/producer Preston Whitmore (“The Walking Dead") had considered the dictum “less is more."

A flawed labor of love that's definitely worth a look.

Never-quite-believable crime drama.

Much of the resulting material is very funny, though there are a few times when the filmmakers patronize or mock their subjects in a way that makes you uncomfortable.

Ultimately, this is a film from a group of terrific talents that never quite comes together the way you'd hope. It's just too fluid to wholly take shape.

That insinuating, sublime atmosphere is consistently being intruded upon by the distractingly silly plot.

Peter Farrelly is angry at Miramax for marketing his and his brother Bobby's new film as a follow-up to their surprise smash hit, "There's Something About Mary."

An anti-date movie if there ever was one, Teeth is a darkly engaging if uneven horror movie spoof centering on men's fear of castration.

Maddeningly pretentious and often slow to the point of tedium, Humanite is also hauntingly original and truly strange.

Though the filmmaking is not terribly exciting, Fela’s life and music are.

It would be possible to appreciate Shannon's fabulous work in Take Shelter far better if the filmmaker lost a quarter of the two-hour running time -- there are many overlong scenes that make this a needlessly tough sit.

Winterbottom's bold film, its gritty visuals offset by Dario Marianelli's lavish score, makes real the desperate lengths that refugees -- those running from poverty as well as dange -- will go to.

Cadigan is honest enough to leave in a disturbing scene in which he talks about the "violent imagery" in his head and fantasizes about using a kitchen knife on his mother, before breaking down in tears. It's raw stuff.

If you like your language blue and your humor coarse, Margaret Cho is for you.

May not be vintage stuff, but it goes down fairly smoothly.

An unassuming love comedy with plot problems.

R0bert Duvall as a pee wee soccer coach? Great idea, but Kicking and Screaming should have had him roar, "I love the smell of juice boxes in the morning."

The heavily symbolic The Dying Gaul doubtless worked better as a play, but the film is worth seeing for its peerless cast.

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 snarly Euro-thriller with crust under its fingernails and bad breath. It doesn't care if you like it, which is why I kind of do.

For a 90-minute movie, Margaret has a thin story. So it's unfortunate that it runs 2 1/2 hours.

The shamelessness with which Star Wars: The Force Awakens replays the franchise’s greatest hits is startling. To put it another way, it’s a satisfying meal — but it’s $200 million worth of leftovers.

Carlyle gives a quietly engaging performance as a Golden State farmworker with a secret in the likable indie California Solo.

The premise is so sad it's impossible to chuckle at the often heavy-handed humor.

Tabatabai delivers a strong performance and the script, although not always plausible, touches on important issues like bias against gays and Muslims.

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.

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.

Somehow, mostly through the impassioned performances of its young actors, the film finds its footing in the third act, as the narration goes quiet and tragedy unfolds with precision, even elegance.

11 Flowers boils down to a coming-of-age tale merged with a why-dunit — not unlike “To Kill a Mockingbird” — but the plot is molasses-slow, as threads are dropped, picked up and dropped again.

Exciting stuff in its primitive, predictable way.

It may have the faintest relationship to any kind of reality, but Jones' tart performance cuts through the saccharine.

Secretariat ultimately delivers where it matters, in the home stretch.

A calculating crowd-pleaser that sometimes feels like a movie equivalent of the corporate chains it's decrying.