James D. Cooper’s rollicking film is a heady return to Swinging Sixties England at the height of the Mod explosion that’s packed with primo archival material and killer tunes. It’s also a vigorous testament to the rewards of creative collaboration, shining a spotlight on two highly unorthodox, self-invented rock entrepreneurs.

It's all very familiar in that Blair Witch kind of way, with neither the characters nor situations proving remotely interesting.

Ambitious and intricately plotted — at times distractingly so — the bilingual feature is an uneven genre ride, but its appealing cast and multicultural twist on a familiar format help to smooth the rough spots and keep things engaging, if not entirely satisfying.

A determined focus on tight plotting and engaging character development not only helps keep the budget in check, but also necessitates an economy of style that heightens the impact of the film’s numerous plot twists.

Technically puckish where appropriate but grounded by strong performances from Peter Sarsgaard and Winona Ryder, the film is not awards bait but makes some Big Thinker biographies that are look staid.

The two young female leads, exceptionally well cast, deliver strong performances, and the drama benefits from Weber’s interest in understanding rather than demonizing the bully.

Full of touching moments even if its emotional rewards remain somewhat muted, 52 Tuesdays feels highly personal and is never less than absorbing or sincere in its depiction of a non-traditional family navigating difficult changes.

The film never quite registers with the desired emotional impact, having the feel of an ambiguous short story rather than a fully-fleshed out drama. But the evocative imagery and subtly piercing performances provide a vivid portrait of lives of quiet desperation.

Director Jonathan M. Gunn and screenwriters Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon are hard-pressed to provide the superfluous characters and situations sufficient depth, with the proceedings featuring enough melodramatic plot developments and homilies to fuel a religious soap opera.

An inspired comic thriller.

As low-budget horror filmmaking goes however, this is derivative, uninspired material.

Intermittently amusing but rarely as funny as it wants to be.

Talky and cerebral, this theatrical drama juxtaposes space and light and explores ghosts from the past and love in the present.

[Marquardt's] film sustains tension and is arrestingly lit and shot, exhibiting a sharp eye for expressive compositions and a persuasive feel for the sheer alienating physical density of New York City life.

Of interest to Police fans but hardly a rock-doc for the ages.

Featuring enough clanging sword fights, severed limbs, slit throats and bare-bones dialogue to satisfy genre fans while pretty much failing to provide something of interest to anyone else, Sword of Vengeance has the feel of an 11th century-set video game.

How the film wound up in theaters rather than on the Syfy channel is anybody's guess, although the R-rated gore and sex is clearly a major factor. Nonetheless, it has a certain goofy, Troma Films-style charm, and the brief 77-minute running time makes it appropriate for the bottom half of a drive-in double feature

The Walking Deceased is strictly DOA.

Metalhead is uninterested in caricature or easy laughs, and its embodiment of guitar-hero obsession is one much more closely resembling someone you knew in high school, albeit someone who's had an exceptionally hard time dealing with childhood trauma.

Lee's eye for everyday Chinese life - whether in isolated rural villages or among aggrieved laborers on fish farms - compensates for the film's minimal commentary on the larger social trauma brought about by human traffickers, and the stigma faced by their victims.

What’s finally tragic about their destiny of choice is not that the couple succeeded in becoming immortal together but that everything leading up to their death was the result of very banal actions and shot through with an extreme sense of loneliness.

A passably silly but lowbrow buddy comedy.

Laugh-stuffed and making excellent use of its marquee-grade supporting cast, it promises to be a home run in its early summer release.

Cutting through many of the easy signifiers found in bad-behavior comedies to get at what it actually feels like to be an intimacy-phobic mess, Trainwreck finds Judd Apatow putting his directing chops in service of Amy Schumer's deeply felt but cracklingly funny screenplay.

A film that (whatever massive efforts were required to work around [Paul Walker's] absence) is as stupendously stupid and stupidly diverting as it could have hoped to be had everything gone as planned.

While this near two-hour feature debut does betray occasional signs of inexperience, on the whole it's a work of striking confidence.

While the film plays strongly as both mystery and haunted love story, Bush also gets plenty of mileage simply from the drama of one man's attitude toward himself, if such a thing even exists.

Has sturdy production values, a tony cast and middlebrow tastefulness up the wazoo, but barely any soul, bite or genuine passion.

Eva is a provocative and engrossing effort that, although trafficking in familiar themes, is a notable addition to the timeworn genre.

There’s no question that the feature is a leaner, meaner affair than its predecessor. That’s not enough, though, to counterbalance the often oppressive self-seriousness (though Miles Teller gives it a welcome shot) or to plaster over the holes in the premise.

It helps immeasurably that Gainsbourg, as an actress, is as intense as her presence feels evanescent, always seemingly onto the next moment already, leaving everyone in her wake.

The story keeps everyone in motion all night long, and frantically so, to the point that it could easily have been titled Non-Stop 2.

The kind of blithely confident, creatively impoverished dud that leaves you slightly stunned someone greenlit it, the movie has the distinction of feeling like a bad idea from its very first frames.

The spectacle of a dissolute hedonist suddenly acquiring a heart and a conscience late in life is shamelessly, and shamefully, contrived in its emotional trajectory.

Director Tim Johnson (DreamWorks’ Antz) and writing team of Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember (Epic), keep the momentum humming and the amusing bits reasonably entertaining, but they can’t vanquish the prevailing feeling of deja vu, and that the Boov are merely Minions of a different hue.

Ripe, borderline hammy turns from Javier Bardem, Ray Winstone, Idris Elba and Mark Rylance add some spice.

While most likely to appeal primarily to the comic's die-hard fans — and there are still plenty of them these days, thanks to his hugely popular podcast — Road Hard offers genuine laughs while displaying real heart along the way.

By the time the relatively brief but seemingly interminable proceedings reach their conclusion, viewers may feel like they've been held hostage themselves.

With unappealing one-note characters, retread concepts and implausible motivations, Chappie is a further downward step for director Neill Blomkamp.

Unfinished Business is the cinematic equivalent of sub-par fast food (think Carl’s Jr. or Jack in the Box); it’s cheap, easy and maybe even tasty for a second or two, but leaves you feeling queasy and undernourished.

The film navigates an abrupt turn when it explores an elaborate untruth in the subject's own life. But while that shift could have been smoother and its conclusions more coherent, this is nonetheless intriguing stuff.

Though heavy-handed in places, The Mafia Only Kills in Summer is a generally charming and engrossing debut feature.

The film is most successful when it concentrates on its subject’s personal life. His candor in discussing his sexuality and other subjects is endlessly refreshing in this era when politicians are mostly defined by their timidity.

Boy Meets Girl is a funny and touching comedy/drama boasting a superlative debut performance by Michelle Hendley.

This intriguing if hardly revelatory account offers some provocative moments, even if the personal access doesn't really add very much.

A shocking but ultimately galvanizing work of reportage that meets the same high standard of their previous collaboration, The Invisible War.

Karim Ainouz has always been more attentive as a filmmaker to the creation of atmospheric and emotional texture than to story or character, and that bias inhibits this visually seductive drama from fully engaging beyond the aesthetic level.

Despite an appealing cast, though, neither comedy nor suspense really takes flight until very near the end, largely due to a script that isn't equal to the filmmakers' enthusiasm.

Ejecta is ultimately too disjointed and incoherent to have the desired impact. But it certainly features some arresting moments during its wild ride.

Campillo thankfully refrains from offering on-the-nose explications for behavior and decisions, instead letting audiences infer psychology and motivation from on-screen behavior, with the entirely naturalistic performances of Raboudin and Emelyanov beautifully tuned in to each other and the material.

The Point Break-style plotline is merely an excuse for an endless series of scenes showing off the parkour practitioners in action.

While this effort directed and co-scripted by Georgina Garcia Riedel lacks true comic inspiration, it provides some genial laughs along the way.

This film complements rather than duplicating the recent fest title "Butterfly Girl," which also refused to settle for generic notions of bravery and endurance to hone in on an individual teen's specific experience of illness.

Joe Lynch's determinedly B-movie exercise is strictly formulaic but should well please genre enthusiasts who will relish watching the sexiest female badass since Uma Thurman in "Kill Bill."

From its generic title to its familiar child in distress storyline to its hackneyed depiction of things going bump in the night, Out of the Dark is thoroughly forgettable.

The screenplay by Luke Dawson and Jeremy Slater begins promisingly enough with its slow-burn examination of the various moral issues involved. But once Zoe is resuscitated the proceedings descend into familiar horror film film tropes.

This ultra-slick, fantasy-inducing visit to an international wonder world of wealth and deception plays more like an inventory of thieving and gambling techniques than a captivating diversion, even if it's hard not to be voyeuristically pulled in by some of its ruses.

Keeping exposition spare, Edmands’ storytelling displays a pleasing economy of means, and an empathetic handle on characters all flawed in one way or another, existing in self-imposed solitude.

Bert Marcus offers more sociology than boxing fans may expect, using mean-streets origin stories not just for biographical intrigue but to comment on hardships his subjects faced later in life.

Funny, dark, and riding a very fine line in its depiction of mental illness, it may be the best thing we could hope would emerge from the side of Wiig that gave us Gilly.

Solid performances from the small cast and robust visuals will be clear selling points with audiences seeking the raw excitement of an elemental survival film.

Over the long haul, the Wolfe brother never quite provide enough psychological and emotional ballast to flesh out their complex, conflicted characters. But these are minor flaws in an otherwise confident, gripping, highly charged debut.

Despite its effort to double as a sincerely impassioned message about female empowerment, My Way mainly comes across as a relentlessly self-serving promotional vehicle.

It is a testament to the immersive immediacy of Victoria that the scale of its technical achievement only really dawns on you afterwards.

This is not to say that there isn't plenty of obvious truth and common sense in many of the film's assertions. But then again, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Do not be fooled by the playful, irreverent tone. Behind its attractive surface sheen of lusty humor and ravishing visuals, this Trojan Horse drama makes some spiky topical points about the lingering scars of slavery, feudalism, misogyny and racism.

A playfully self-reflexive exercise whose endless in-jokes will best be appreciated by only the most ardent genre aficionados.

Unfortunately, A Convenient Truth doesn’t manage to sustain its comic premise over the course of even its admittedly brief feature-length running time. The thin joke would seem more appropriate fodder for a brief sketch towards the end of a Saturday Night Live episode when time needs to be filled.

A flop-sweaty cash grab that gives a bad name to sequels in which key talent has jumped ship... Viewers who expected nothing from the first but were pleasantly surprised will get burned badly here.

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is a sluggish also-ran compared to its predecessor.

Russell pulled off some outrageous moments in I Heart Huckabees, the feature he made before this film, but the evidence here suggests Nailed had issues even before the money ran out.

More a middle-of-the-road rom-com than a teen-spirit sendup, the pic weaves its lighthearted mix of silly and serious with increasingly heavy-handed spiels on self-esteem.

Screenwriter Chris Weitz embraces both the magic and the humanity of the classic fairy tale. He underlines the virtues of kindness and courage in a heroine right out of the pages of a traditional storybook, who gradually reveals the qualities of a self-possessed modern girl.

Rossier strikes a delicate but credible balance between the former leader's unambiguous statements that he didn't know anything about assassinations and critics' insistence that, even if he didn't specifically give orders, he was "politically and morally responsible."

Despite strong performances and impressive cinematography, the film ultimately has a paint-by-numbers feel that detracts from its overall effectiveness.

Although distinguished by some wildly staged vehicular chase sequences and genuinely witty deadpan dialogue, the film inevitably feels like a footnote to the plethora of similarly themed movies and television shows that seem to arrive on a weekly basis.

Immersive in ways that not many movies can claim, Humpback Whales is a prime example of the power of large-format documentaries to educate, delight and inspire.

The awkwardly titled Every Thing Will Be Fine seems more like a showcase for expressive camerawork pushing the limits of cinematography than anything else. Actors the caliber of James Franco and Charlotte Gainsbourg get the short end of the stick in this angst-ridden drama.

A loving, painterly evocation of a famously mysterious area of Spain, Coast of Death is a fine celebration of a landscape, but also of the people whose lives have been shaped by it.

It’s an altogether strange but astonishing work of craftsmanship.

Do not expect blazing emotional fireworks, just finely calibrated performances and deep reserves of inner torment.

With a loose-limbed naturalness, she conveys naiveté, intellectual curiosity and romantic yearning, and shows the unassuming Ana’s newfound thrill at being seen, however complicated the man holding her in his admiring gaze. She’s open and vulnerable but no fool. Best of all, Johnson and her director embrace Ana’s paradox: She snickers at Christian’s predilections, but they also turn her on.

If Chambermaid lacks the dramatic push to carry it through to the end, Seydoux’s performance remains robust and engaging throughout.

Throughout the film Moss traverses an astonishing range of emotions, from bliss to complete mental disintegration. She is fascinating to watch even when the film turns into a frustrating head-scratcher.

While Helen Mirren elevates the material with her usual aplomb and the events being depicted inevitably are stirring, this is a stodgy crusade-for-justice drama, directed and written with minimal flair.

Amazingly, Panahi turns the utterly simple, economical format of a camera inside a car into something relevant to his own artistic state and full of eye-opening insights into Iranian society.

The film mostly grasps for unearned emotions.

Hawke’s film is very well crafted, tightly edited and elegantly photographed. The acute musical selections only add to our appreciation of Seymour’s selfless devotion to his art.

Malick's most distinctive ambition here is his attempt to create an almost pointilistic portrait of a man by evoking acute moments of his past and present, and this sustains real interest for a while, as you wait to see how it all might come together. But as the film just keeps offering more of the same...it doesn't build or pay off with what it seems designed to do, which is to provide either a dramatic or philosophical apotheosis.

Despite the director's frequently stated mission to liberate the poetry in his material by excavating what he has described as "ecstatic truth," this is a literal, rather flat epic that keeps telling us in voiceovers of its spiritual dimension, without actually generating much evidence of it.

This is a ruminative film of minor-key rewards, driven by an impeccably nuanced performance from McKellen as a solitary 93-year-old man enfeebled by age, yet still canny and even compassionate in ways that surprise and comfort him.

Sumptuous and romantic in an attractively old-fashioned way despite a hitch designed to give some contemporary American idealists pause -- the writer's lover is married, with no interest in divorce -- the film satisfies in a wholly commercial way.

Even if the film does manage to reveal the splendor of each voyage, it tends to lose its characters in the landscape.

A schmaltzy, mildly satisfying Anglo take on the BFFs-to-bedfellows subgenre that’s been seen recently in romantic comedies.

The doc's structure is a countdown to opening night, but planning goes smoothly enough that little drama accompanies that ticking clock.

Screenwriter Adam Chanzit and director Gabriel Cowan don’t have the same flair for eloquent dialogue or vivid character creation. Instead they offer a lot of turgid exchanges filled with regret and recrimination.

Starts out as a potentially interesting psychological thriller before devolving into familiar horror movie tropes.

Mad as Hell is far too subjective to take seriously.