Despite some game acting (and one truly superb moment from David Strathairn), Maladies remains on too low a boil to communicate any sense of stakes for the various characters. It seems to be trying to say something about creativity, and living one's life on one's own terms, but it's a muddle.

The best part of Lars von Trier's fascinating, engaging and often didactic Nymphomaniac is that, despite the sometimes-grim tone and bleak color palate, it's an extremely funny film, playful, even.

Woodley, though, by virtue of the sheer likability of her presence, keeps you hanging on, keeps you rooting for her.

The star turn, and the only major element in Bewakoofiyaan that transcends the by-the-numbers assembly line rom-com, is Rishi Kapoor.

A documentary that manages to be jaw-droppingly provocative and genuinely endearing — sometimes at alternating points, and by the end kind of all at once.

The living legend certainly deserves little blame for this misfire but she can't handle the heavy lifting required by a script and director that feel as unfocused as the film's protagonist for at least an hour.

The Cold Lands is less a story than an experience, and that, as such, anything one might say about it could be considered a spoiler.

Playing namby-pamby is not Sam Rockwell's strong suit.

It's those bigger questions about our nature and our capacity to think beyond self interest that will stick with you.

These are tantalizing glimpses, hinting at the deeper psychological abysses at play here, but they are left unexplored.

When Michell is on his game, as he definitely is with Le Week-End, he unearths small, invaluable and even profound truths about the human condition that are often as inspiring as they are devastating.

Shirin in Love blends tangy romantic comedy and tart social satire into a cinematic cocktail that's pleasingly off-beat, warm-spirited and knowing.

The Right Kind of Wrong is the kind of comedy that asks an audience to find borderline-stalking behavior charming.

A little bit of nuance, which might seem out of place in such raunchy environs, actually goes a long way.

Enemy, Villeneuve's latest, differs from the earlier works not only in being set in Canada, but also in offering a story that's ostensibly less concerned with painful real-life struggles than with dream-like subjective perplexities.

The resulting mishmash is as exciting as getting a tow from AAA, and just as slow.

Ernest and Celestine is the coziest movie you'll likely see all year. Every frame is suffused with a fireplace kind of warmth that, for me at least, cast an immediate spell that didn't let up.

At least it's admirable that Donohue manages to do almost all his shooting with either web cams, phone cams or surveillance cameras. But that does not translate into an entirely enjoyable viewing experience. Plus, there are almost no real shocks or scares to rattle you out of the stupor that inevitably develops from observing someone else fiddle with their laptop for much of the running time.

I can't imagine anyone who liked the show not enjoying this film, even though the first half is stronger than the second, which spirals into a frenzy of double- and triple-crossing that's less engaging than watching the characters reconnect, awkwardly but with feeling.

For the most part, A Farewell to Fools rollicks along on its own bizarre and not successful path, comedic moments falling flat, emotional moments running shallow, but in that moment we can feel something else striving to break free.

Bland and bordering on nonsensical, Haunt trots out all the standard haunted-house tropes without breathing any new life into them.

The main takeaway from War of the Worlds Goliath is that such a yearning still burns in some folks. If its articulation here were more compelling, it might have struck me as stirring rather than merely odd.

A good ride for the most part, but not much more than a ride; still, genre fans will be keeping their eye out for whatever Lovering does next, with good reason.

By turns daffy and dazzling, awkward and artful, Journey to the West takes an ancient tale and gives it contemporary flair.

A tidy and tension-filled exercise in terror that takes stage fright to literal extremes.

When it stays with the two leads, one Israeli, one Palestinian, it makes a compelling story.

And yet it's impossible to deny that what Special ID does well it does extremely well.

If Nancy Meyers ever decided to dabble in gothic romance, it probably would turn out to be something like The Face of Love.

Anderson the illusion-maker is more than graceful, he's dazzling, and with this movie he's created an art-refuge that consoles and commiserates. It's an illusion, but it's not a lie.

Entirely more engaging by dint of being absolutely impossible to take even a little bit seriously. The ruthlessness of Green's character is taken to extremes that meld Medea to the cheesiest serial you can name, and is hence delicious.

It's better than OK, and a few elements sing; but overall it frustrates. Its delights come from its willingness to depart from formula, but formula still rules it.

The Bag Man is so sloppily executed it feels like they didn't have enough light fixtures to get the effects they wanted. But that's only one of the problems.

HairBrained is painfully contrived and self-consciously quirky from the word go.

Odd Thomas becomes a film that's going through the motions with too little character, style, or atmosphere to keep it engaging.

It's a mixed bag overall — hence my star rating — but it's worth seeing nonetheless, largely because of the explicitly Russian qualities its sustains.

Son of God's earnest-ness is not necessarily a strike against it; it was made by earnest people who want to spread the word. But it's a tough draught to swallow if you're not in the mood for a sermon.

Wind is both benign and ominous.

If I wanted to read my way through a film that features words dancing around the screen as if they were waltzing Post-Its, I would have sat through a foreign movie with subtitles instead.

The action's top-notch, the songs are good, and with the above-mentioned assets, "Gunday" is an unqualified success on its own terms: a solidly entertaining pop movie.

It's an extremely strong and upsetting film, yet another example of the fascinating things going on in Romania's new wave, with a breathtaking lead performance by Luminita Gheorghiu as Cornelia.

There is one thing about Barefoot that makes it at least a guilty pleasure. Once you ignore how improbable Daisy is — there is something oddly captivating about Wood's performance.

There's a lot to like in Ali's latest, Highway, which is a gorgeously assembled, ambitious piece of work, although it doesn't coalesce into a holistically successful film.

In Secret is a costume drama with a gigantic accent on the drama. It's my kind of crazy, and I was quite entertained. To borrow again from Shakespeare, "'Tis Madness, but there's method to't."

Stritch is a documentary subject as fearless and raw as her stage persona.

This is a surprisingly old-fashioned disaster movie. In point of fact its old-fashioned-ness is really the only surprising thing about this eye-popping 3D spectacle.

Omar is a thriller and a romance, with unabashedly melodramatic elements (there's even a love triangle), all of which are brought into stark relief by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Costner responds by bringing an easy integrity and seemingly effortless humanity to his part. And hence making a messy, meandering and silly movie rather more watchable than it deserves to be.

The New Black is an informative, measured, and never-not-engaging documentary about the emergence of LGBT consciousness in African-American communities across the U.S., and particularly communities with a strong church presence.

If you DON'T go into this movie knowing it's a sequel, you're gonna have at least 20 minutes of rough sledding ahead of you, because there's no recap from the first movie.

The word convoluted does no justice to just how poorly designed Girl on a Bicycle is. It is also stereotypical, unfunny, unromantic, absurd, sitcomish, insulting to several European ethnicities and a slave to what Roger Ebert used to call "The Idiot Plot Syndrome."

It is less of a horror flick and more of a suspense thriller with sci-fi elements that possesses both brains–some sacrificed in messy fashion, of course–and a heart, as it makes a statement about an imaginary social issue that reflects those conflicts facing our country today.

Pseudo-sensitive bro-dude rom-com Date and Switch comes out today, and it already feels dated.

Cusack's distinctive handling of his sullen poet offers an opportunity for Adult World to make a statement about youthful ambition and middle-age disillusionment beyond Billings dubbing Amy and her peers as "Generation Mundane." But the film just stops short of truly achieving that goal.

The movie offers the most psychologically complex screen portrait of a Native American character in at least twenty years, probably more.

Winter's Tale probably won't please anyone: neither fans of the book nor those who have never read it. It lacks visual splendor (except for one or two scenes). It lacks emotional depth. It lacks scope and magic.

It's awfully tasteful and emotionally detached in its blissed-out depiction of beautiful young people cavorting in the sunlight.

The film's best asset, and the thing that elevates it above the 1986 version, is how well it is cast.

The main thing wrong with Robocop is that it's dumb, and it's trashy, and it's both of those things in a not-good way.

Both David-Stahl and Bell are appealing actors but unfortunately their easy-to-relate-to storyline is pretty much upstaged by the rowdy air-sex scenes.

While it does profile the work of brilliant dancer, the film also contains two complex and moving love stories as well an account of a physically devastating tragedy followed by an extraordinary tale of struggle and survival.

But because the movie is at heart as fake-sentimental as any other such motion picture, or greeting card, or what have you, there's a lot of backpedaling after, say, a random attempt to milk laughs out of human trafficking.

You wish the material were more consistent for these two. Some moments are screechy, others aren't deeply emotional enough. The in-between moments in which LaMarque hits just the right note can be charming, though, and they promise better things to come.

My hunch is that most viewers, whatever their previous views on this fraught subject, will come away not only fascinated but largely convinced by Murmelstein.

7 Boxes is both a tense and frightening crime film as well as a sometimes-dreamy evocation of life in the sprawling underclass, its hallucinatory aspects, its chaos and violence, its fantasies.

The Outsider is a subpar version of "The Limey" starring a subpar version of Terence Stamp.

Heart alone does not a good film make.

It is ridiculously lurid trash from start to finish and anyone trying to argue otherwise is as crazy as its central character. However, while its aim may be low throughout, it at least comes close to consistently hitting its targets.

Everything in The Lego Movie is, indeed, awesome.

Lack of specificity in the writing aside, the opening of Brightest Star — which had its title changed, to no avail, from "Light Years" — tells the viewer loud and clear that this trek is not going to lead anyplace new.

There are two scenes in Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer's Best Night Ever that work: they are screwball and goofy which, unfortunately, only serve to highlight the fun film it could have been.

A thin, problematic and amateurishly-made documentary, 12 O'Clock Boys plays like two films awkwardly grafted together.

At Middleton is the just the sort of trite if inoffensive diversion that barely tiptoes into theaters before landing in the cable and video-on-demand listings.

The movie is straightforward, brisk, engaging, and sometimes even moving. One might entire feeling wary that the movie, in depicting an attempt to duplicate Vermeer's achievement, might also glibly undercut it; but that's not the point at all. Rather, Tim's Vermeer wants to expand the audience's understanding of what the actual practice of art is.

At the very least, the makers of That Awkward Moment should get credit for savvy casting.

Actors of the caliber of Brolin and Winslet can do nothing but the best with what they're given, struggling to find nuance and humanity in romance-novel archetypes.

Jean-Claude Van Damme, whose work as the villain in Enemies Closer is the only reason to see this film.

It's Glass who gives Visitors something like a structure, alternating between long, contemplative stretches and moments of ecstatic grandeur, like the crowd of sports fans who erupt in (extreme slow-motion) joy at some victory.

This latest, a thriller about a photographer who might be a killer, is wild pop fly that disappears in the stands.

The film never says the words "pro-life" or "pro-choice." It genuinely seems to be about how the system has broken down entirely, and how sometimes it is up to privately funded charities to provide a light at the end of the tunnel.

This all sounds painfully glum and ultimately mawkish. But—like the active verbs that constitute its title — Run & Jump is surprisingly alive, full of jolts and unexpected bursts of humor and earned emotion.

A grievously ill-advised motion picture on every level.

There is that feeling you get inside when a movie suddenly starts to push your every button, creating an emotional connection that goes beyond pure reason and mere emotion. It elevates your mood to such a point that you wish you could hug the screen out of sheer joy and recognition. That is what Gloria did to me.

Guiraudie's directorial assurance is stunning: the entire movie is a master class in audiovisual storytelling, as well as an exemplary case of immersing the viewer in an environment.

Some have compared Maidentrip to a young female version of Robert Redford's "All Is Lost". But in Dekker's case, all seems to be found.

The film is shot in a pretty stock manner, with jokes falling flat (when one does land, it feels like a miracle) and musical cues guiding us toward appropriate emotional responses.

The poems — and the film as a whole — fail to flesh James out as a whole and complicated human being worth rooting for.

Brown's story is a good one, though, and solid performances — especially from star Cuba Gooding Jr. — elevate the film slightly above the familiar trappings of its genre.

The movie finds its feet, and unrolls as a pretty suspenseful, largely engaging, and hardly ever too-over-the-top spy thriller.

Plays like an extended tribute to the torture scene in "Reservoir Dogs," a description that alone should tell readers whether they'll find it appealing or not.

Ride Along really isn't much of a movie, but the quality that makes it mostly watchable, and occasionally enjoyable, is the fact that it seems to know that it isn't much of a movie, and doesn't push against that fact too much.

Once this self-consciously campy fairy tale stops trying so hard to emulate every high-school comedy and TV show from the past 30 years and relaxes into a stream of clever repartee and amusing situations, it eventually offers enough LOL opportunities to deserve a passing grade.

Too bad that the makers of The Nut Job eagerly purloined Scrat's primal motivation—food—but failed to note the charm of his minimalist approach.

It's sad when a movie that aspires to tell a sad, even tragic, story can't quite connect, and lies there inert on the screen instead of galvanizing or even stirring emotions the way it means to.

While I’m not a parent myself, I can see how Like Father, Like Son would be a tough sit for any parent. Tough, but extremely worthwhile.

Devil's Due is one of those films that borrows so many key elements from other and often better movies that genre buffs could amuse themselves by composing lists of all the titles that it blatantly rips off throughout.

The compositions are dull. The scenes are flimsy and shapeless. The pacing is the direct antithesis of what normally induces the excitement of adventure.

It features one good performance from Dennis, who struggles to show us a real woman doing her best to live up to her expectations for herself and accept love into her life again. But Dennis can't save the whole thing. It's too big of a mess.

Worst of all: Dumbbells is never as shocking as it so desperately strains to be. What is shocking is the fact that this movie is seeing the light of day in actual theaters — even during the January dumping-ground time.