Anyone who paid the slightest attention to the Jayson Blair story when it broke will find nothing new here, though director Samantha Grant does a solid job of laying it all out. What’s disappointing is how little time is afforded to subsidiary aspects that are arguably more significant than Blair’s anomalous transgressions.

It’s clunky, it’s hokey, it was clearly made on the cheap. It’s also ambitious in a way that more expensive films are rarely allowed to be anymore.

Only Lovers Left Alive accomplishes the neat trick of reinventing a moribund genre as a distinctly Jarmuschian hangout movie.

The songs are fine; the slaughter is sub-standard.

Neither Hank nor Asha ever says or does anything that suggests they’re vital, complex individuals, and even their mutual interest in the arts is utterly generic, devoid of any intellectual exchange or even real curiosity. People this dull are available all over YouTube, for free. It’s unclear, however, why strangers would bother watching.

Hateship Loveship is unimpressive as a whole, but it’s stitched together with small, memorable touches.

Joe’s brilliance doesn’t lie in its destination, but in the gripping, intense, surprisingly joyous and funny journey it takes to get there.

A deeply dopey, distinctly not-terrifying, unintentionally hilarious supernatural thriller.

A rote, unimaginative entry in the found-footage subgenre of science-fiction/horror. It looks better than a YouTube video, but it’s rarely more engaging.

Carano deserves better: She’s a formidable physical performer, and the current state of the MMA film on the DTV circuit is strong enough to shame this wan, drama-clogged effort.

Frankie & Alice gives her the rare opportunity to play a film’s hero and its villain inside the same body, and she does a memorably dreadful job in both capacities. That trainwreck fascination is about the only redeeming facet of a prestige picture gone terribly, though not entertainingly, awry.

The extraordinary achievement of Under The Skin is that while Laura develops some human qualities, Glazer resists the temptation to turn this alien’s story into the story of what it means to be human.

There’s a difference between an exhibition of one photographer’s work and a speedy tour of a museum’s entire photography wing, and Watermark feels more like the latter, despite Burtynsky’s involvement.

The fact that Morris applies the same basic methodology to The Unknown Known that he did to the The Fog Of War makes the contrast between the two men meaningful, and says something profound about Rumsfeld, too.

This film can’t decide whether it’s a Noah Baumbach-ian character study or an episode of NBC’s Revolution.

Panning across still photos and scouring island maps like Ken Burns hunting for treasure, Geller and Goldfine (Ballets Russes) whittle a truly insane murder mystery into a competent artifact for Weird History buffs.

While what will happen next is never especially interesting, how it will happen, and from what unusual angle, generates enough excitement to keep things intermittently lively.

While The Retrieval’s sense of place may ultimately be stronger than its sense of purpose, it works as the story of a young boy realizing his agency, and it galvanizes as the story of an independent filmmaker realizing another portion of his medium’s infinite potential.

Shepard’s image de-habilitation on Law smacks of gimmickry—and the world has no immediate need for another vulgar British crime picture—but the actor seems invigorated by the change, and the film matches his robustness to a fault.

Arriving in the middle of Phase Two of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Winter Soldier is among the best of the nine films released so far—roughly on par with the first Iron Man and The Avengers—but if the film has one major flaw, it’s the obligation to serve a larger franchise that keeps taking on weight.

Sabotage’s mystery component is mostly dead on arrival, and poor Olivia Williams has the thankless job of carrying it as the no-nonsense detective searching for the killer. But as Ayer proved with his previous film, End Of Watch, he has a natural eye and ear for the ecosystem of law enforcement.

Chavez was a man of intense, overriding passions, his biopic feels strangely academic and detached, an unimaginative, straightforward catalog of his greatest hits and most historic campaigns that provides precious little insight into his inner life.

Smiling Faces is a strongly promising first effort, introducing a talented filmmaker who’s still in the process of finding his own voice. Still, don’t be too surprised if, three or four features down the road, it retroactively looks much more singular.

It’s an unwieldy, sometimes overreaching effort, but the laudable ambition makes it easy to forgive some rough patches.

Mistaken For Strangers, which covers Tom’s time with the band and his subsequent attempts to piece together a movie about that time, is a sweet, funny, and sad film, but also an exceedingly odd one.

Locker 13 isn’t a film so much as a dire symptom of a culture in which the ability to fund a movie has become reason enough to make one.

The question of whether Maier, a recluse, would have ever wanted someone like Maloof to bring her into the light is troubling, and perhaps impossible to resolve, but Maloof’s passion for her work and his boundless curiosity about her history certainly make for a riveting documentary.

Goldberg sneaks in some whispers of spirituality, but Refuge’s true effectiveness lies in Ritter’s distinctively non-angelic performance. It’s the work of a woman who knows she’s been dealt a bad hand, but can’t bring herself to leave the game.