None of the actors has the heft to elevate this rote material, though to be fair, the task may be impossible. The dreamy shots of a poisoned sea in Little Birds show an imagination sorely missing from its drab plot and characters.

The film feels unbelievably long at 84 minutes, and the color-drained, hand-held cinematography serves only as a reminder of just how good "Night of the Living Dead" really was.

Ever wonder what "Scrubs" would've been like if Zach Braff's fledgling-doctor character was psychotic instead of goofy? I get the feeling John Enbom, screenwriter of The Good Doctor, has.

Picture Graham Greene crossed with James Bond, with a splash of Sacha Baron Cohen, and you'll start to imagine the nervy talents of Mads Brügger, the fearless Danish filmmaker who has for a second time come up with a stunning, funny, and vital piece of guerilla cinema.

Side by Side is an eye-opening, comprehensive look at the biggest technological revolution in Hollywood history. One huge irony is that digital formats are evolving so rapidly that the only foolproof way to archive and preserve a movie shot on video for future generations is . . . to transfer it to film.

It's hard to make a movie about moonshiners that isn't entertaining, but the lethargic, generically titled Lawless comes perilously close - at least a third of its two hours is devoted to "arty'' shots of landscapes.

It's a tribute to Birbiglia's storytelling chops that the most engaging part of the film is when he's talking directly to the camera. The fleshed-out story, with its first-rate cast, almost feels like gilding the lily.

This wispy story is distinguished by its sweetness of spirit, and it comes straight from Kold.

Wavers between extreme silliness and unbearable earnestness.

The film leisurely unfolds as a series of vignettes about class distinctions and crime, with an unexpected ending. It is beautifully filmed in CinemaScope and strongly acted (especially by Solha), and makes for mesmerizing viewing.

Biehn has appeared in dozens of B-movies and evidently had no greater ambition than to come up with a grindhouse movie full of sex, gore and cheap thrills, but there is far too little of any of these to maintain interest in a straight-on story that reserves its only surprise for the final 30 seconds.

About 30 minutes too long and somewhat clumsily executed, this zombie's-eye-view story still manages to evoke the comic and splattery spirit of the best '80s cult horror flicks (and features a car-horn shout-out to "The Lost Boys," to boot).

The documentary tells us little we don't already know and is overwhelmingly one-sided. It would make a nice TV infomercial, but certainly doesn't deserve a big-screen release.

The drawbacks to this often rhapsodically beautiful film lie not in the journey itself, but in the preachy detours taken along the way.

France's friendship dramedy Little White Lies is such a blatant rip-off of a far better American movie that it could have been called "Le Big Chill."

Burt Reynolds and Sally Field they're not, but you could do worse for mindless late-summer entertainment than Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell in Hit & Run.

Stakes aren't the only problem with this sloppy thriller, which combines careening images with turgid storytelling.

A shoddy, slapdash look at issues raised by the Great Depression that neither gives an adequate overview nor manages to argue a coherent thesis.

The feature directorial debut of Jake Schreier, has a smart script by C.D. Ford and an impressive supporting cast.

Acquires a little vigor and some fun from Tracy Morgan as a friendly drug dealer who lives with his mom.

Fortunately, Chicken With Plums does have its pleasures, including Isabella Rossellini as the silkily jaded mother.

Dire musical interludes are sprinkled throughout the sprawling mess Beloved, an uninvolving would-be romantic epic that spans 45 years in the life of a mother and her daughter, starting in the early 1960s.

The self-possessed Hall is well-suited to this proto-feminist role, smoking and rolling her eyes as the pasty old men around her exclaim, for what is clearly the millionth time, "An educated woman!" as if she were a zoo animal.

It's hard to get close to a wild creature, and True Wolf doesn't always manage, either.

The actors in Compliance perform with thorough and chilling sincerity.

ParaNorman is probably the year's most visually dazzling movie so far, and the stunning climax centering on an 11-year-old witch (Jodelle Ferland) is too good to spoil.

The climax is as dull as reading the dictionary of a language you do not speak.

For a movie called Sparkle, the absolutely least interesting or central thing about it is Sparkle (and Sparks), although the "Idol" singer does bust out one impressive performance.