Talented director Eran Riklis is interested in the coexistence of cultures, not violence, but that doesn’t mean his ending fails to carry an emotional wallop. It’s a doozy, and shows us that life can be a complex whirl of dueling identities.

Every so often he inflicts something like Irrational Man on the world, which is so awful you have to wonder if Allen wrote it himself or farmed it out to some look-alike cousin out to destroy him.

It’s cute and easy to watch, though we can’t overcome the feeling that it’s an unambitious film about an ambitious topic.

The straightforward, well-edited trial scenes speak volumes, not only about the defendant, but also about the racism that still haunts our country.

Although nothing really surprising happens (the film has no real plot twists), it’s natural and unforced, like real life. One can imagine that most pregnancies unfold like these, and Swanberg has crafted a universal story observed through small details.

When Paper Towns works, it’s fun.

The film falters a bit near the end, when it dwells on the romantic fallout of the affair, but all in all, “Amina” is an enterprising movie that makes this Internet story cinematically engaging.

The experience of Southpaw is rather like seeing the truth behind the cliches, revived in all their pain and power to surprise.

With a novel idea at its center and some good jokes scattered throughout, Pixels is a relief from the self-serious action films that invade movie theaters at this time of year. For most of the way, it’s good enough to enjoy, and for the rest of the way, it’s good enough to root for. But ultimately, it’s not quite good enough ... to be good enough.

To watch Boulevard is to keep circling back, over and over, to the question: Was it merely an actor’s misguided inspiration, to take a repressed character and turn him into a grievously depressed one? Or was Williams simply unable to do it any other way?

At least we get Pacino and Hunter. We may not understand why this story appealed to them, except for the fact that it gave them a chance to work together.

This is sublime filmmaking, a textbook example of how indies can tell groundbreaking stories in a way that Hollywood simply can’t match.

Smart, sedate and well acted.

Romantic comedies can go in all sorts of directions, but they depend on the audience’s believing that a couple should get together and stay together. But in Trainwreck, that belief is hard to come by.

By being more than a superhero movie, it reminds us of what it’s worse than. Its greatest virtue isn’t that it’s a superior comic book movie, but rather that it comes close to not being that at all. Close, and yet not close enough.

When the action focuses on the battle lines in Mexico, the results are nothing short of spectacular.

It’s hard to know what to make of this, but it’s quite enough that it happens at all. The film has some longueurs — it isn’t scintillating for every second of screen time. But Marques-Mercet and his actors establish an intimacy with the audience that’s practically unique. Even if you love it only a little, not completely, you will probably remember 10,000 Km for the rest of your life.

The bottom line is that the filmmakers are working with nothing here — no characters to speak of, no interpersonal relationships, no story with any suspense or capacity to engage, and no script with any humor or wit. What can they do?

In essence, everything good in Self/less was derived from “Seconds,” and everything bad the writers and the director came up with on their own.

A movie that has two good ideas. It needed three.

The movie makes something of a case for him, in that he is quite a good piano player, with absolute command of the blues, country and rock idioms, but there isn’t enough here to make someone a fan who isn’t already interested.

The short, sad life of Amy Winehouse is compellingly told in a new documentary that sidesteps sensationalism and dime-store psychologizing and lets archival footage do much of the work.

Fortunately, Beau Garrett brightens things up with her performance as the neurotic Brenda.

Don’t expect profundities on the ethics of cloning. And don’t expect Oscar-worthy acting. Senese’s accomplishment — and it’s done with a certain restraint — is to replicate the look and feel of ’70s horror films, which had become more assaultive on audience sensibilities than their predecessors, breaking taboos and borrowing techniques from exploitation films.

This sequel goes beyond disappointment into a sublime realm of embarrassment that's beyond and yet better than merely bad, because it fascinates: What on Earth were they thinking?

For all its weaknesses, Terminator Genisys is a "Terminator" movie that feels like a "Terminator" movie, more than did "Terminator 3," not to mention the ghastly "Terminator Salvation."

Isn’t a bad film. But it’s a little slow and a little too un-chaotic for its own good.

The film is a fascinating look at how a true event can become a media event — and how courting the media can have good and bad results so mixed up that it’s hard to know where the good influence stops and the corrupting influence starts.