Italian director Carlo Carlei has a background in TV movies, and this film, plodding and earnest, seems meant for the small screen, too.

Entertainingly gruesome in parts, and not without a certain anarchic wit, it’s the kind of movie you pause to watch when it’s on TV, but after half an hour, you’ll click over to something else.

The closing subtitle says that no one was ever prosecuted for this madness. The pure-archive approach leaves a taste of despair; civic governance, it seems, can’t even promise not to kill you.

Their misadventures in the Big Apple, including Giamatti’s involvement with a Russian house sitter (a bizarrely cast Sally Hawkins) are neither funny nor touching, just tedious.

Remember the old Ben Affleck, the one who made 28 consecutive bad movies before he turned out to be a pretty good director? He’s back! Behold, the second coming of . . . Badfleck.

All of this is secondary, even tertiary material, even if much of it is interesting and even wrenching to behold.

Leong’s film isn’t particularly stylish, but it makes the most of the climactic Knicks footage, as well as showcasing a sweetly goofy side of the 25-year-old, now playing for the Houston Rockets.

A Touch of Sin is by no means subtle, but it is composed with a passion and sinuous grace that makes it far more effective than many other sincere message movies.

A contrived comedy that could have made an especially weak episode of “Everybody Loves Raymond.”

Director Anthony Leonardi, in his feature debut, litters the film with inconsistencies.

Compared by some to “2001: A Space Odyssey,’’ Cuarón’s relatively intimate space epic is equally groundbreaking in the spectacular way it depicts space.

This comedy is cringe-inducingly lame and the dramatic turns are visible as far in advance as utility poles on the prairie.

Can’t somebody come up with a monster that does something more interesting than run at you screaming, “Yeeaaaarrrrgh”?

After Tiller is groundbreaking in giving voice not only to the doctors, but to those who always seem to get overlooked in the high-volume political debate about this topic: the women themselves.

Rush, though it will win no trophies, is fine filmmaking, a smart, visually engorged, frequently thrilling tale of boyish competition — inspired by a true story. At heart it’s “Amadeus” on wheels, only this time Salieri is the Austrian.

Is torture ever justifiable? A twisty, compelling, brilliantly acted (if sometimes difficult to watch) thriller, Prisoners, asks this question not in the usual contemporary context — anti-terrorism — but instead as a gruesome option deployed as a response to every parent’s worst nightmare.

At the risk of sounding 100, I think it’s regrettable this film had to be shot in digital 3-D. Both those formats actually do a frustrating disservice to the depiction of the action, making them look choppier, more flickery and occasionally blurrier than they would otherwise.

The film also drags a bit toward the end, but neither of these is a major flaw in a movie with more funny lines than in most of Allen’s movies these days — not to mention a saner, clearer moral perspective.

What makes the movie so delightful is that Wadjda isn’t trying to make trouble; she’s just being herself. A shot of the system of wire hangers attached to her radio so she can pick up Western music stations sums up her can-do attitude.

Darci Picoult’s script renders all of these characters, if not always sympathetically, humanly and fully.

Overall, the rambling Jayne Mansfield’s Car is almost as big a wreck as its namesake.

Blue Caprice takes a minimalist, documentary-style approach that proves harrowingly effective.

Gorgeous location filming on Italy’s Amalfi Coast and a voice-only performance by the great Claire Bloom as an elderly woman remembering World War II are the main attractions in Kat Coiro’s familiarly snoozy romantic drama.

At the start of Insidious 2, a young woman opens her mouth to speak and someone else’s voice comes out of her. Demonic possession? Nope, just some inexplicable dubbing to kick off this clunker of a horror sequel.

Remember when Robert De Niro was an interesting actor? These days his talent, like his character in The Family, is in the witness protection program, never to be seen again.

As a distinctly not-insider, though, I would have benefited more from a broader portrait of the woman herself, and how she became such a legend.

The sweet-faced Kelly is a lovely and humble storyteller, and her enduring affection for John, Paul, George and “Richie” is palpable.

The birth of the titular infant — what the whole movie’s leading up to — is just an anticlimactic mess.