Cusack and Cage — who don’t have any scenes together until halfway through — do their best work in years, while erstwhile “High School Musical’’ star Hudgens shows off acting chops missing in “Spring Breakers.’’

Wong extracts magnetic performances from his two stars, and Philippe Le Sourd delivers gorgeous cinematography.

Una Noche is intriguing enough, however, to make you hope that both Mulloy and her actors are heard from again, sooner rather than later.

Now, here’s the trilogy’s second installment, in which the jolly Austrian makes it clear that women of a certain age do not have his permission to overdo it with religion, either.

Director Annette Haywood-Carter films the proceedings with a sepia-tinged prettiness, but this is a Southern “Downton Abbey,” minus the loopy plot turns and wisecracks that make that series so addictive.

Given that the opening shot shows the heroine on the toilet, what a nice surprise to find that this is a pure love story, told with elegance and simplicity on a low budget.

In some ways, it feels like an indie meditation on the eternal “When Harry Met Sally” question: Can men and women be just friends? Here, though, the focus is on the small, often unsaid moments that define a friendship — and a murky attraction.

Larson shines as an adult staffer assigned to keep these self-destructive kids safe while they work with therapists.

Bloody horror flicks need not be anemic when it comes to intelligence. The victims of You’re Next, as well as their slaughterers, are reasonably smart and resourceful. Their clash may not be as nasty as the battles of academia, but there’s a lot more common sense involved.

The movie independently bungles everything it tries, like a Central Park busker who simultaneously sucks at juggling, harmonica playing and skateboarding.

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones hopes to be the start of a new franchise for tweens and Twihards, but the twuth is this twash is anything but a twiumph.

A movie about bisexuals sounds fresh and fun on paper, but a sensitive acoustic song under the opening credits shows exactly where The Happy Sad is going. Deadly earnestness and sex don’t mix well at the movies.

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.

It’s an entertaining melodrama of the old school that plays out with the clockwork inevitability of a “Columbo” episode.

Twi-hards, Beliebers and Whovians have nothing on the cult of Jane Austen, whose beribboned ranks are ripe for satire. Unfortunately, this scattershot comedy only occasionally hits the mark.

In mashing together story elements from Terrence Malick’s “Badlands” with the look of Malick’s “Days of Heaven,” Lowery put 90 percent of his energy into the atmosphere and 10 percent into the script.

The friction between a couple of still-struggling artists sounds rather depressing, but in fact the film is often funny; it shows that love is present in even the couple’s harshest exchanges.

This one is essentially “The Firm” with smartphones.

Jobs amounts to, at best, a Cliffs Notes version of the man’s early life. If you want the real story, you’ll have to read Walter Isaacson’s fascinating 2011 biography, which would make a much better film than this one.

I do get a chuckle out of movies with wildly inappropriate behavior, rude language and ultramayhem, especially when they involve children, but Kick-Ass 2 sometimes felt like being trapped in a room with the funniest guy in seventh grade.

Although director Lee Daniels dials things down a bit here, subtlety is not what he does. That strategy worked for “Precious’’ but turned his more recent “The Paperboy’’ into a feature-length howler.

The landscape cinematography is often eye-pleasing, but the script is labored, filled with clichés and never allows for character development.

As pure comedy, it’s a hoot.

The Zipper is a carnival ride, a tumbling cage whose screaming customers are spun around like a Ferris wheel.

The final scenes, when Mancini meets Kim’s son, have the awkward feel of an “Oprah” episode, with the editing and music suggesting a catharsis that isn’t always backed up by what’s on-screen.

An uneasy mix of Richard Linklater and Abbott and Costello, Prince Avalanche is an oddment, but one that brings some small, peculiar pleasures.

This morbid, cruel movie seems leached of all things that might inadvertently give viewers pleasure.

My own voice-over would go something like this: “This summer. One woman. Will see this movie. Again.”