One is apt to mourn the time wasted not just by the movie’s living participants, but also by the VW bug. All participants could have gotten up to something far more enjoyable.

The two-hour-plus “Ride,” No. 10 in the series, at least offers a few intriguing new variations on the usual Sparks formula of pretty bland people falling in love against a backdrop of verdantly green landscapes most often located in coastal North Carolina.

Clouds of Sils Maria is oodles more poetic and enigmatic than the term “backstage drama” generally encompasses.

Farhadi’s orchestration of all these elements is complex and viscerally kinetic; few viewers will experience it without holding their breath at some point.

A rare and welcome exception to that norm.

Ned Rifle, the final chapter in a strange trilogy with “Henry Fool” and “Fay Grim”, is a movie about damaged people coming to terms with their damage by turning to others. And it’s Hal Hartley’s best movie in years.

While Mirren unquestioningly rules this roost, one cast member’s late arrival onscreen did get the audience murmuring in recognition. Namely, Lady Grantham herself — Elizabeth McGovern — who appears as a judge during one of the key moments in the legal case. One can assume that the “Downton Abbey” star took the slim part as a favor for her husband, who happens to be the director.

It has a beautiful, low-key approach that earns its cheers and tears without resorting to the manipulative or dramatic tricks of a typical feature film.

Eventually, the fact that the characters are all aware of the multiple clichés they’re uttering — an exchange between Brian and a young editor (Olivia Thirlby) is particularly excruciating in this respect — doesn’t redeem or excuse the clichés.

From the beginning, Cut Bank isn’t just tonally inconsistent, it doesn’t really have one. It’s flat. There’s no sense of rhythm, tension, or atmosphere.

As Ruskin, Thompson’s real-life husband Greg Wise looks exactly like surviving photographs of the man he is playing: handsome, gloomy, lofty, and a little blank and bland.

A sharply crafted, highly entertaining portrait of two young Londoners who made their names and fortunes by managing a fledgling band called the High Numbers, who became The Who.

It’s tightly directed and well-performed, particularly by Columbus Short and a career-redefining turn from Wilmer Valderrama. If anything — and trust me when I tell you this is the opposite of most independently produced noirs from debut directors — there’s an overabundance of ideas in The Girl is in Trouble, sometimes to a distracting degree.

Last Knights is so thoroughly mediocre, so dully empty, that it’s difficult to summon the enthusiasm to trash it.

So while Cheatin' does have a narrative spine, it's most entertaining when it's hardest to pin down.

Like Lee Daniels' hit TV drama “Empire,” Furious 7 is stuffed with situations that require go-for-broke absurdity, but even Daniels and his nighttime soap predecessor Aaron Spelling would pause before attempting the level of “get the f—k outta here!” style shenanigans director James Wan and writer Chris Morgan employ.

Nightlight is a perfect example of a film with interesting ideas that are totally smothered by poor execution.

Despite the harrowing stories that fill the film from start to finish, Dreamcatcher is not hopeless.

It’s tedious at best, almost unwatchable at worst.

Balancing itself with an enviable self-assurance between drama, comedy, character study, and, in the last ten minutes, suspense, the film sends the audience out of the theater with a sense of shame for laughing when the narrative wanted us to.

Genre fans ought to check it out post haste. I’m one myself, and my admiration for the superb conception and execution of the film goes hand in hand with disappointment and irritation.

It’s a film that seems to have no further point than to remind us that some powerful jerks were once powerful jerk kids. Point taken, but it’s not cinematically satisfying.

It’s a flat-out disaster, the kind of film that its cast and crew hope gets buried as quickly as possible as they race to move on to other projects.

The result, though not without flaws, is an invigorating and interesting observation of the man, his work and the entire medium of photography.

If you love rape jokes, Get Hard is your movie.

A brutal but stirring fantasy.

There are traces of Woody Allen at work here as While We’re Young vividly makes fun of a specific subculture of hyper-articulate New York denizen, as well as the way its characters try to stave off the malaise of aging by clinging to characters who radiate the exotic promise of youth.

I kept thinking about “Lilo & Stitch” while watching Home, a decidedly disappointing effort based on the popular kid-lit book “The True Meaning of Smekday” from the already embattled folks at DreamWorks Animation.

This is pretty much the opposite of a contemporary American comedy: rather than broad, The Kidnapping of Michel Houllebecq is an exemplary example of narrow.

It’s all pretty effective but in the end, somehow empty. Not to make an unfair comparison to a classic, but the movie “Deliverance” actually followed through on all of the themes that its storyline suggested, while in Backcountry, we end up with a storyline in which all but the most elemental stuff winds up as window dressing.

A film that starts off on a reasonably restrained note but which quickly grows so ridiculously ham-fisted that it almost makes its predecessor seem reasonable and open-minded by comparison.

Amour fou, has gone some of the way towards correcting the historical imbalance of interest in the suicide pact. She’s taken liberties with the facts of the case for dramatic effect, but also because two centuries is a long time to go without someone wondering whether Vogel being shot point blank in the chest was entirely consensual.

Given Russell’s involvement and a fairly solid cast that includes Jake Gyllenhaal and Catherine Keener, just how awful could it be? Really awful. Unwatchably awful. As in, “Give it the Razzie now and be done with it” awful.

If its account of Randi’s work as an exceptional entertainer and a zealous debunker were all that An Honest Liar gave us, it would be a tremendously fascinating film. But the movie also contains a third-act surprise – which won’t be revealed here – that makes it both unexpectedly revelatory and deeply moving.

First, and foremost: Zombeavers is exactly what it sounds like, a stoner-friendly horror-comedy about undead beavers. This needs over-stating since high-concept humor doesn't get higher than this.

The Gunman isn't the worst action film that you will see this year — you will be lucky if you even remember anything about it a couple of weeks after seeing it — it will probably go down as one of the more dispiriting ones.

The process of discovery that Evan goes through to get closer to Louise is what makes Spring special. But what Evan discovers about Louise feels like an after-thought that frustratingly overwhelms the film once it gets to where it's going.

An appealing comedy with an unabashed streak of melodrama, sharp dialogue, and a superb ensemble cast, anchored by a lead performance by Al Pacino in lovable scamp mode.

Easily the most astonishing and important movie to emerge from France in quite some time. While its style deserves to be called stunningly original and rapturously beautiful, the film is boldest in its artistic and philosophical implications, which pointedly go against many dominant trends of the last half-century.

Directed by action specialist Robert Schwentke (“Red,” “Flightplan”), Insurgent surges along with capable set pieces but less meaningful human interaction than in “Divergent.”

The movie doesn't quite hold together at times, and some of the darker elements (like what it feels like to be shamed and shunned at every moment of your life) are soft-pedaled. But it has a strange charm nonetheless.

A curious, ultimately unsatisfying romantic comedy about two sisters in love with the same man.

The scenic cinematography by Ben Nott is often beautiful, which distracts, at times, from the fact that the storyline is both convoluted in the most gratuitous way possible and that it’s enacted in the most unengaging way imaginable.

The number of important, enduring 1960s and early ‘70s songs that a group of studio musicians known as The Wrecking Crew brought to life is staggering.

The fact that a woman has Crohn's disease is meant to be hilarious, in a nudge-nudge wink-wink "You know she's not giving her husband any sex" kind of way. It's wretched.

Champs is a documentary that wants to say something sociological about the sweet science of boxing. In this regard, it has an undeniable power.

Throughout the picture, Bernstein interacts with genteel folk who quietly deplore what they see as the American perception of art and art-making.

Gibney crams as much material as possible into a quick two hours (he really knows how to edit and pace a piece like this one as it feels much shorter) and yet, to be fair, there’s still an angle missing just by virtue of the fact that he couldn’t get anyone from the Church of Scientology today on camera.

No, what's most disquieting about It Follows is the way it presents sex as neither abnormal, nor beneficial.

The Cobbler is almost fascinatingly awful enough to recommend. If one subscribes to the theory that you can learn as much from a bad movie as from a good one, this one’s a master class in what not to do.

Most of the rest of the film surrounding it is a conceptually weak and dramatically muddled mess that has acquired a game and good cast and then given them precious little to do.

Run All Night is proof that quality action films don’t really need to reinvent the wheel each time out as long as they make it spin this smoothly.

Still, you can’t fault a family entertainment extravaganza too much if it actually goes out of its way to integrate the ensemble of a fairy tale in an Old World European setting with a diverse array of supporting players. Branagh deserves an extra bravo just for that. And we mean it sincerely.

While it does have a few things of interest going for it, this low-budget effort ends up arriving at its necessarily predictable conclusion in too many unnecessarily predictable ways.

The Champagne experience is a particular one, and even if you don’t imbibe this movie can give you an appreciation for what makes it special.

The filmmakers were able to pay his fee, and so Hopkins shows up for another rubbishy, misbegotten project and shames the whole enterprise with his open and volatile face, his incisive voice, his mere ultra-soulful presence.

Faults is a richly-textured movie that concerns the weird space between thinking you know what you're doing, and actually knowing what you're doing.

As exceptional as the acting in the picture is, and it is wonderful — Whitaker and Keitel are as inventive and surprising as they’ve been in years, and the supporting roles played by the likes of Ellen Burstyn and Stan Carp are well-sketched — it can’t entirely lift the movie from the rut it has all but plowed into by the end credits.

This is a huge, unwieldy topic. The filmmakers do an admirable job of condensing their information and making it comprehensible. They don't really succeed in unifying it, though, or in making the whole enterprise seem like more than a collection of talking points for people who are mad about climate change deniers, people paid to sow doubt about the damage caused by smoking, and their ilk.

The rare documentary that gets more and more interesting as it goes along, even ending with an update on this still-unfolding story that just took place.

The best parts of this tepid thriller, which seems designed to actually lower audience’s heart rates, arrive before the plot kicks in.

Under Potrykus’ clever direction and with a striking performance from Joshua Burge, Marty goes from quirky to desperate to dangerous gradually and effectively. He’s not a character to be taken lightly, or quickly forgotten.

The characters are not people, but rough drafts of simplistic character-traits, and the actors (game as they all are) cannot create something out of nothing.

An exhausting slog through overly familiar cliches that is nowhere near as profound or touching as it clearly thinks it is and is utterly lacking in the kind of intelligence and artistry that it so often pays lip service to in the dialogue.

That Guy Dick Miller is the perfect title for Elijah Drenner’s wildly entertaining documentary chronicling the 50-plus years of Miller’s career.

The result feels strained and slapped together, crammed as it is with silly mistaken identities and misunderstandings, adolescent jealousies and slapstick jokes. It’s a sitcom in a sari.

The Widowmaker, narrated by Gillian Anderson, is a disheartening portrait of blatant greed, as well as a fascinating examination of the trial and error process used in the scientific method.

Ultimately, Futuro Beach is a film about displacement and identity, love and its costs. Its considerable satisfactions, though, come mainly from the way the story is told, which spells nothing out, and in fact is so reticent that the viewer is constantly drawn into the creation of meaning.

Out of the Dark never leaves much of an impression despite character actor Stephen Rea's endearingly cocky performance, and an exotic—though largely under-utilized—South American setting.

I walked away from My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn having enjoyed the time spent with Refn, his family, and Ryan Gosling, but without any further insight into the production of “Only God Forgives,” filmmaking in general or this particular talent.

The consequences of seemingly innocuous careless moments, the inexorability of fate, and the possibility of grace or just mere reconciliation in the face of disheartening catastrophe: these are the themes of Bluebird.

Nothing like a trashy, all-hell-breaks-loose onslaught of blood, bullets and babes that borrows inspiration from a recycling bin stuffed with leftovers from ‘60s grindhouse films, Japanese horror, “Kill Bill,” “Saw” and splatter-fest videogames to cleanse one’s visual palate of those highbrow Oscar contenders.

A Danish revenge Western starring Mads Mikkelsen, is a very real movie, and it is directed by Kristian Levring (“The King Is Alive”), whose sensibility is a little more nuanced than that of the sensationalist Refn, which is all to this movie’s benefit.

Last seen in “Starred Up” and Angelina Jolie’s “Unbroken,” O’Connell continues to bring equal measures of toughness and vulnerability to his characters. Despite his good looks, there’s an everyman’s quality to him, which he uses to full effect in ’71.

It is an infuriating reality that The Hunting Ground exposes. I was rattled watching it, finding it hard to catch my breath and harder still to imagine how many people are in positions of power who have heard these stories so many times and turned their backs on victims.

By the time you get to the end, Cronenberg has pinned all his people against the screen like so many laboratory specimens, ripped off their scabs, and vivisected their longings: an old wound here, a long--deferred dream there. Still, the movie sticks with you. It's a fleeting nightmare that refuses to fade.

This isn't a real horror movie — this is the kind of horror movie that the characters in a real horror movie watch in order to comment on the lameness of the genre before their authentic terrors begin.

Co-stars Will Smith and Margot Robbie remain consistently charismatic, even once the script for this heist caper collapses in a punishing pile of its own twists and double-crosses.

The movie is significant as a movie: it's intelligent, sensitive and expertly made. But it's also significant because of its ability to provoke introspection and arguments. In its deceptively modest way, it's as much a Rorschach test as "American Sniper." Everybody who sees it will draw a different picture of the elephant.

Documentary films often find their value in taking us to places that are challenging, even painful. Farewell to Hollywood offers the rewarding difficulties of that type of filmmaking, along with additional challenges that stem from questions about its own ethics.

On paper, Wild Canaries sounds like it has all the ingredients for a reasonably diverting comedy, but they just never quite pull together into a cohesive or entertaining whole.

With Gett, the Trial of Viviane Amsalem, siblings Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz prove that they rank with the finest filmmakers alive.

Green, who plays a snotty version of himself, doesn't follow through on any of the ideas that make his film stand out. As a result, Digging Up the Marrow just uselessly lies there, like a cat during a heat wave.

Drunktown's Finest shows a filmmaker struggling to find her voice. It's a whisper here, but we can hear it.

Ultimately amounts to a visually ambitious tone poem about the none-too-surprising caprices of male adolescence.

Deserves to become a serious art-house hit in the U.S. thanks to its skill in deftly overcoming the form’s usual deficits, for a result that feels as amazingly cohesive as it is relentlessly clever and entertaining.

If Hot Tub Time Machine 2 accomplishes anything — and it really doesn't — it is that it too never manages to find a way to justify its own existence.

Quickly and convincingly, it becomes its own funny and fast-paced phenomenon with its own modern-day charm.

Costner’s uncanny evocation of Gary Cooper masculinity and Gregory Peck compassion in the role of coach Jim White is the glue that holds it together, but the rest of the cast is equally inspired.

Given its loose-knit narrative, the film doesn’t have anything like a conventional structure. Yet it’s steadily engrossing due to Boorman’s surpassing skills as both a storyteller and a director.

While it has some good performances and noble intentions, it doesn't really bring anything new to the conversation and ultimately fails to give viewers any compelling reason to wade through all the bleakness and misery that it has to offer.

An irrepressibly charming B-movie that never over-stays its welcome, and is both conceptually clever and admirably well-executed.

Swartzwelder, going for “thoughtful,” instead achieves “glacial.” A romance wants to sweep viewers up, not bog them down. Still, Old Fashioned is both unusual and intelligent enough that, despite it not being entirely MY cup of tea, I’m hoping that it’ll succeed at doing at least a little more than addressing the converted.

Ultimately, the success of Wyrmwood comes down to confidence. Roache-Turner is like the mad doctor in the film itself, experimenting with his genre with a dance in his step and a maniacal smile.

By no means watch this if you’re looking for a nourishing cinematic experience. But if your idea of a cozy rom-com is an old Hugh Grant one, this has some cine-comfort-food-carbs for you.

As a date-night viewing option for this weekend, this nearly all-sung autopsy of a failed marriage would pretty much qualify as a Valentine’s Day massacre.

It sounds fun in theory, I guess, and there are some entertaining moments of rude irreverence here and there but the giddiness gets a bit tedious after a while.

In the annals of sexually-charged event cinema, Fifty Shades of Grey barely lights a candle let alone combusts with unbridled forbidden passion.