William Faulkner's oft-cited quote has rarely been more apt: "The past is never dead. It's not even the past."

What's most endearing about "Taxi," as well as Panahi's earlier films made under repression, is the lack of righteous anger.

There is nothing visually or thematically interesting about it. Nobody grows or changes. All the football coaches speak through clinched teeth, even when they're addressing 10-year-olds.

What happened in Chile really was a triumph of the human spirit, as cliched as it is to write that sentence. The miners deserved a better movie, but that's not how it works.

A snapshot of what happened at a particular time and place and doesn't try to glamorize its subjects or make any larger points about what it all means. By refusing to do so, by celebrating the process over the outcome and the work over the reward, it becomes a special experience, a movie that matters.

Ultimately, The Keeping Room feels more like a clumsy melding of "Unforgiven" and "12 Years a Slave" than a unique take on violence, race, and gender.

What makes Miss You Already work (when it does work, which is most of the time) is that it shows imperfect characters dealing imperfectly with situations ranging from the maritally frustrating to the existentially overwhelming.

There's plenty of sweat but no blood or tears in Love. Without talented actors or a compelling story, it's not love. It's just sex.

With such actors at work and with locations including a first-time use of the Houses of Parliament, Suffragette should look and be a richer experience than it is.

Not bad, no need to wake Roger Moore from his mid-morning nap and bring him out of retirement, but not special.

Boosted by award-caliber performances and a perfectly struck tone, it becomes one of the more moving dramas of the year and an early, dark-horse award-season contender.

Oddest of all is how Truth whips through this, making noble statements about journalism while brushing off the failures to get it right. Mapes was busy and stressed. (Slow down!) The document authenticators had doubts. (Listen to them.) The source said he was lying before but is telling the truth now. (Don't trust him.)

The well-chosen supporting cast — Anthony Edwards as a test subject, Jim Gaffigan as one of Milgram's confederates, and especially Winona Ryder as Milgram's wife — help tremendously to keep The Experimenter humming along as entertainment rather than dry docudrama.

It's also exhausting, despite an engaging premise.

Political machinations, emotional revelations, and a few well-choreographed fight scenes ensue, but Hou focuses less on the satisfactions of plot and action than on crafting, if not quite bringing to life, his auteurist vision of the past (both historical and cinematic).

Murray blusters and hams his way through the first two acts before turning all mushy in the third.

Director Douglas Tirola threads his way through a minefield of egos and grudges in his interviews and does some interesting stuff with animation in his presentation of some of the magazine pieces.

The real star is Attah, a Ghanaian street kid plucked from obscurity, who imbues Agu with just the right mix of terror, brutality and the last remaining vestiges of boyish innocence.

A movie that underplays its many strengths. You don't realize how good it is until it's over.

Crimson Peak ends up feeling like a bit of make-work, a project to keep the visionary filmmaker busy until something that truly sparks his passion comes along.

It's exhausting, impressionistic, and ultimately hollow, extraordinarily well-acted but not nearly as relevant as "The Social Network."

Uses a deft mix of archival footage and interviews with historians and some very articulate Panther veterans.

The result is an uneasy mix of social-issue realism and escapist excitement that's ultimately disposable.

It's not that Pan isn't entertaining. There's plenty of color and action and some inventive 3-D effects. Jackman's unhinged performance is either gloriously great or gloriously terrible, but captivating either way. There's no magic, though.

There's a Gordon Gekko vibe to Shannon's reptilian, charismatic villain. Like Oliver Stone's "Wall Street," 99 Homes understands that people don't sell their souls because they're inherently evil — they do it because being rich is cool.

Freeheld isn't bad -- with that kind of source material and topline acting talent it almost couldn't be -- but it could have been much more than it is.

Historical resonances aside, Coming Home functions well as an impeccably crafted, compellingly acted tale.

Most of the time, Goodnight Mommy creates its air of supreme unease quietly, even subtly, but even hardened horror fans might be shocked by some of what goes down in the movie's second half.