The terrorism thriller Java Heat sure is violent. I don’t even want to tell you how viciously Mickey Rourke mangles the French accent he’s trying to do.

The various witnesses tell contradictory tales that turn this into a real-life “Rashomon." The fact that two of the principals — Sarah and Michael, who delivers touching and eloquent on-camera narration that he wrote himself — are accomplished actors adds another level of confusion and interest that help make this compelling storytelling.

A weird mash-up of disaster, horror and dystopia genre pictures, Aftershock fails to make the Earth move.

While Greenwood and Posey turn on enough charm to make this a fairly painless experience, Zack Bernbaum’s And Now a Word From Our Sponsor is a mild, toothless satire — a “Being There’’ where there’s barely any there there.

What begins as an alert and witty barbed satire degenerates into a senseless bloodbath in the black comedy Sightseers.

Director Lenny Abrahamson’s latest film has its roots in the notorious death of a teenager outside a Dublin nightclub, later detailed in Kevin Power’s novel “Bad Day in Blackrock.” The pensive, gray-tinged What Richard Did unfolds this downbeat tale in long scenes, but seldom feels slow.

Chism’s characters are pleasingly odd, and though she can’t string much of a narrative together — there is a stop-and-start quality to the picture that grows tiresome — a few of the set pieces are funny.

Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby is the first must-see film of Hollywood’s summer season, if for no other reason than its jaw-dropping evocation of Roaring ’20s New York — in 3-D, no less.

Has the aroma of an autobiographical confession by someone for whom life hasn’t been overly difficult.

If anyone in the store’s history ever had a bad experience there, you won’t find it in this movie.

Give director Paul Borghese credit for daring in giving his movie a title that evokes Sergio Leone’s two most famous epics. The trouble with doing that, of course, is that you better be prepared to deliver a movie on the same level.

Director Mark L. Mann seems to be searching for the meaning in aimlessness, and in lowered expectations. But too often the narrative left me feeling the titular “um.”

For those willing to lock into Reygadas’ mad wavelength, the beauty is worth the puzzlement.

The sex is the main thing that makes Kiss of the Damned worthwhile.

This is a fine idea for a PSA TV commercial, but (a) they already did it back in the ’70s and (b) it goes on well past the 30-second mark.

Director Daniel Algrant chose well with Badgley, who transcends the rather made-for-TV vibe with a decent rendition of Buckley’s haunting falsetto.

Gil Kofman has an interesting and funny story to tell in his documentary Unmade in China. Too bad he spends more time talking about himself than detailing his misadventures in Xiamen, China, population 3.67 million.

The overall effect tends to be as chilly and monotonous as Shannon’s demeanor as Kuklinski — a real disappointment.

Love Is All You Need is entirely predictable, and that’s OK in a film as lovingly made, well acted and enjoyable as this.

The villains are all wrong, the motivations are muddy, even the gadgetry is off. And the swaggering genius at the center of it all has become a preening fool.

Just because two people are miserable doesn’t mean they’re interesting.

The agent in this interesting little thriller — well played by John Cusack — is up to the Company’s usual dirty tricks.

Alas, the film’s relevance — and ultimately sane upshot — is buried beneath a meandering and oftimplausible plot.

In the most thrilling sequence of this consistently rousing old-school adventure, Heyerdahl grabs a passing shark with his bare hands, thrusts a hook into it, drags it aboard and guts it with a knife. Now that’s what I call entertainment. I haven’t seen such crazed brutality since Lou Lumenick’s review of “Movie 43.”

The result is no masterpiece, but neither is it a disaster. In its steady great-books way, the film is often truthful and moving.

Morales’ spin on the old ransom plot is fresher and more gripping than most big-budget Hollywood products.

Seidl sternly rejects nuance. All the women are crude and insensitive, all the men are desperate and exploited. Despite copious full-frontal nudity, it’s an unrelievedly puritanical and didactic film.

Mud runs over two hours, climaxing with a shootout that belongs in a different movie. It’s a rare misstep in an art-house movie that will pull mainstream audiences along as inexorably as the Mississippi River. Go see it.