Despite a fierce lead performance by Naomi Watts, The Painted Veil is a quaintly bloodless, picture-postcard adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's 1925 China-set novel - more Merchant Ivory than David Lean.

The gory-as-hell movie is as campy and fun as any chapter in producer Sam Raimi’s four-decade-old horror series. But trapping kids in an apartment — as opposed to college-age friends in a cabin — raises the stakes and brings on legitimate scares. And some hearty laughs, too.

The literal ghouls here take a back seat to the subtler ones, which are really where It shines darkly.

Per Swanberg’s signature style, the dialogue is largely improvised, the performances loose and funny. This may be his most star-studded cast yet, but the work is as intimate (“mumblecore” is so passé) as ever.

A dry but enlightening documentary.

Giamatti tries very hard to put over Cold Souls -- some of his reaction shots are priceless -- but it's going to leave some people, well, cold.

Butterfly doesn't require much knowledge of history to appreciate, but it really isn't suitable for very young audiences either.

This film is no fairy tale for children. Not only does it contain nudity and sex, both straight and lesbian, but it also presents childhood as a time of terror.

A creative mix of horror, noir and psychological thriller. At times the story defies logic, but viewers who can accept that will find themselves caught up in the film's intensity.

While it obviously isn't for all tastes, this is a big, thematically rich step forward -- mostly it's about tolerance and forgiveness -- from the empty provocation of Solondz's "Storytelling" and "Palindromes." About time.

One of the most beautiful per formances I've seen this year is given by Blanca Engstrom in the Swedish coming-of-age charmer The Girl.

Q Ball is a moving and dynamically shot portrait of the Northern California prison’s basketball team, which is sponsored by the NBA champion Golden State Warriors.

Morris is likely to disappoint liberals in The Unknown Known by failing to take down an apparently weak target.

Packs a dramatic wallop that makes it one of the year's best movies.

Director Ferzan Ozpetek's film doesn't break any new ground; rather, it recycles every cliché about gays in what is essentially an extended soap opera.

Petty larceny - but Allen's fans won't want to miss this lowbrow caper.

A cute, spunky found-footage thriller undone by a lumpy plot and a weak ending, Operation Avalanche revisits the urban legend that the moon landing was faked, with some fresh twists.

The filmmakers are clearly fans, and any of Vreeland's personal shortcomings - child-rearing, for instance - are only hinted at.

Alcoholics Anonymous founder William G. Wilson, known mostly as Bill W. before his death in 1971, was played by James Woods in a fine 1989 made-for-TV biopic. But the drama didn't have room for some of the darker corners of Wilson's life, fascinatingly explored in Kevin Hanlon and Dan Carracino's documentary.

In the film’s most visceral scene, as the trio stands on the site of a mass grave in Lviv, Ukraine, von Wächter still can’t bring himself to admit his father’s direct culpability.

Blockers is the latest example of the millennium’s most dispiriting film trend: Stupid drunk people making stupid drunk decisions for two stupid hours.

The lighthearted drama, about a road trip by two men — one white, one black — is unflinchingly optimistic.

The movie focuses tightly and obviously on role playing, but the most unsettling observations concern how fragile it all is - our health, our minds, our denial of death.

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.”

Boy Erased is the second gay conversion therapy movie of the year, after “The Miseducation of Cameron Post.” Both are worthwhile. Where “Cameron” was an intimate charmer focused on the importance of camaraderie to get through hard times, the more dramatic Boy Erased is about accepting our family for who they are, in whatever condition they arrive in.

The Avengers is neither overwhelming nor underwhelming. What it expertly is, is whelming.

It isn’t quite as clever as it thinks. This is one of those man-written feminist parables that looks an awful lot like a Penthouse art director’s idea of a feminist parable.

This oddly cheerful, decreasingly dark comedy actually works and can boast some of the most enjoyable performances of the year.