What the film lacks in plot twists it makes up for in sheer amazement.

The Nut Job has an interesting anti-socialist subtext, with the seemingly benevolent raccoon revealing himself as a power-mad dictator. It’s the most political non-Pixar cartoon feature since the very left-leaning “The Ant Bully’’ eight years ago.

Ride Along tries to be a comic version of “Training Day,” only there’s nothing in it as funny as Denzel razzing Ethan. There’s nothing much funny in it at all.

Soundly structured, smart and fast, with a plausible central scenario, several gripping moments and well-wrought dialogue.

A film so self-serious that it demands to be remade as a Seth MacFarlane farce, The Truth About Emanuel mixes the ludicrous and the pretentious in a story about mommy issues gone wild.

It settles for being a bland and preposterous thriller.

It’s unspeakably depressing to see Anna Paquin playing the mom (of a teenager!), but the pointlessness and mediocrity of the Paquin-produced Free Ride is even more depressing.

Long on atmosphere and less sentimental about poverty than “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” the film carries a potent charge of authenticity.

Ultimately, though, the lack of story and relentless suffering make Raze appealing for hard-core genre fans only.

Imagine the French lesbian romance “Blue Is the Warmest Color’’ as a raunchy American exploitation flick with loads of fake gore. That’s a rough idea of the latest from Lloyd Kaufman, the exuberant shockmeister whose Troma Team is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.

In terms of its outlook for young girls in Georgia, the movie title might as well be “Buried Alive.”

Shooting in South Africa and Botswana, director Kamaleshwar Mukherjee never lacks for atmosphere, but his film is painfully awkward in execution, from the stiff dialogue to the time-padding slo-mo sequences and glaring CGI.

Beyond Outrage fails to live up to its title as Japanese superstar Takeshi Kitano can’t find much in the way of fresh ideas for the genre.

An intriguingly Hitchcockian premise gradually takes on a preposterous air in the art-world noir The Best Offer.

Even the audience at whom the movie is aimed — the crowd for whom dinner and a movie means meeting up at 3 p.m. — will be bored by the stale funk coming off every scene.

There’s little sense of urgency, or — oddly, given the film’s title — of scale. You never really think that the 47 are truly outnumbered, and the large action scenes are often just incomprehensible.

By refusing to consider that Dickens and Ternan ever brought each other any happiness, the movie is more Victorian in its attitudes than even some Victorians were.

Hoogendijk ends the movie just before the museum reopens; but her last, soaring image is a stirring vision of what made all the agita worthwhile.

If The Past doesn’t equal the masterpiece that preceded it, it’s still an exceptional film from a man who is clearly one of the best working directors.

Poor John Leguizamo, who hopefully got well-paid to voice a stereotypical Latino bird providing a stream of nonsensical narration.

This is, by some distance, the best movie of the three, and it showcases the impeccable symmetry of his compositions, while retaining his compulsion to wag a finger in your face.

It is admirably unsparing and gloomily atmospheric. And I looked at my watch a bunch of times.

The story of a guy who never goes anywhere or does anything. Until he goes everywhere and does everything, but he might as well have stayed home.

There hasn’t been this bizarre mixture of hooah and death since John Wayne hung up his combat boots.

There is still enough venom spilled in August: Osage County to make this drama relatable to anyone who’s suffered through a wildly dysfunctional family dinner — and who hasn’t, especially at this time of year?

Jonze seems to be heading for a far quirkier ending than the one he actually delivers, but he does tap into the zeitgeist with his unlikely romantic fable.

Anchorman 2 is like watching “Anchorman” being re-enacted by semi-professionals trying to cover up their lapses by being extra-emphatic, super-doofy: 2013 Steve Carell does a lousy impression of 2004 Steve Carell.

If you’re going to invest three hours watching a movie about a convicted stock swindler, it needs to be a whole lot more compelling than Martin Scorsese’s handsome, sporadically amusing and admittedly never boring — but also bloated, redundant, vulgar, shapeless and pointless — Wolf of Wall Street.