This mostly unfunny effort -- though it might have made them laugh silly in its home country -- is unlikely to appeal to art house audiences on this side of the Atlantic.

The numerous fight scenes, which often lapse into extreme gore, are as amusing as they are exciting.

Ultimately A Bottle in the Gaza Sea adds little insight into a conflict that has already inspired several powerful dramas, such as the recent "The Other Son," and is sadly likely to be the subject of many more.

The movie's structure is peculiar, laying out a mystery and solving it early on, then spending half the film making us wonder how satisfying that solution was.

Gleefully gory and darkly funny, Monster Party is the sort of extreme genre exercise that separates real fans from mere dilettantes.

All the pieces are there, but Late Bloomers ultimately fails to sell the film’s core relationship.

This story of sibling camaraderie and familial strife at a Burgundy winery unfolds against the backdrop of reliably picturesque views, with its bouquet of largely familiar elements presented with a modern finish.

Blandly interesting.

It's a testament to the complexity of the subject and her positivity even in the face of the most culturally entrenched caveman attitudes that we come away from this flawed, chaotic film with a warm appreciation for her achievements and her indestructible generosity of spirit.

The film’s combination of psychological drama -- cue the childhood trauma -- with blood-splattered limb-cutting, talking heads in the fridge and talking pets on the couch is a risky one that finally works because Perry and Satrapi find the right tonal mixture for the material.

Worth a look, though it's unfortunately a far too academic affair that never surges with the suspense of many a WWII drama.

The movie makes an excellent primer about the world of stock car racing for fans and nonfans alike. In 48 fast minutes, the Simon Wincer-directed film gives you a genuine sense of this particular sport, its rigorous demands and the fan base that supports it with such wildly enthusiastic devotion.

The film's main appeal is in watching familiar actors pretend to be ordinary kids grappling with their new selves.

The wistful pleasures are stretched awfully thin at almost two hours in a film that blurs the line separating self-irony from tiresome self-consciousness.

Shifting the film into action mode necessitates several leaps of faith to keep pace with the plot as Powley goes crashing through the forest with near abandon.

The fun of a movie like this is not found in its logic, but in scary stunts and supercharged emotions.

Having downplayed its love story at the start, the picture swells romantically in an unexpectedly pleasing way. It may not be enough to convince audiences that Starr should be Hollywood's next romantic lead, but for these two characters, the chemistry is just right.

Hodge’s performance is what keeps Brian Banks on track. He is powerful in scenes of anger, but he may be even better in purely silent moments where his unspoken reactions are eloquent.

The fact that Norwegian Wood is based on Haruki Murakami's 1987 international best-seller should encourage many viewers to give this long, elegantly shot, sporadically involving Japanese film a try.

This is a handsomely produced, solidly acted thriller that’s certainly watchable, though the perplexing subtitle is not its only issue. Unlike its riveting predecessor, it’s absorbing but never quite gripping.

Despite four credited screenwriters, including Evrenol, the mysteriously titled Baskin is thin on story, instead lurching in and out of a woozy dreamscape before arriving at its extended terror and torture set piece.

A film that seems drained of life and ideas rather than sustained by them.

Spectacular photography bolsters this shallow ski movie.

[A] simply lovely comedy-drama.

For the most part though, O’Connor’s direction is disciplined. He wrings humor from nearly every moment by staging action scenes as blunt as Christian’s commentary and employing transitions as precise as the accountant’s aim.

An unwieldy, excessively talky affair, unintentionally exhibiting all the clunky stops and starts and self-conscious ramblings of a particularly awkward first date.

Manages to be effective even though the Indian drama is rough around the edges.

Series woos fans by returning to its straight-horror roots.

In the end, Baby God does little more than check one more name on a list of predators.

Isaac and Kingsley bring quite a bit to Orton's dialogue, sometimes seeming to mean it at face value and sometimes inviting skepticism.

A spirited comic drama, toplined by Moore's lovely performance.

This neatly written Heathers-meets-Groundhog Day high-concept package delivers both technical polish and a toothsome yet likeable cast.

Life in a Day is an experimental project driven by the Internet at its best, where connectivity among the planet's population has become a reality.

Even more so than last time out, Smith focuses a great deal of attention on the details—the day-to-day minutiae of the facility’s rescue and rehab work that elevate what could have otherwise been another well-intentioned but soggy fish-out-of-water yarn.

Wells directs the actors smoothly enough in individual scenes, but his work lacks the cohesiveness to really pull all the characters together and convey their shared past.

Though Muschietti occasionally finds lovely filmic ways to transition from one to the next, the stories don't get to resonate with each other in a meaningful or emotional way — as they might in a series of well crafted hour-long episodes.

Amusing but the most lightweight of the five diverse features he’s made so far, it finds other members of the Baena gang (Aubrey Plaza, Molly Shannon) fleshing out an eccentric ensemble, many playing characters as unpredictable as Brie’s is straight-laced.

Alternately incisive and uneven.

Director Morgan Neville does an adequate job in retracing the explosion of singer-songwriter talent out of West Hollywood's legendary Troubadour club, but makes a bad choice by starting now, not then.

Tokyo Tribe is a spectacle more in its form than its content.

If you’re going to attempt a quasi-farcical look at the behavior of thirtysomething strivers in Hollywood, you need to cut more sharply and dig more deeply than does L.A. Times.

Regrettably, Storm Over Brooklyn is only a rudimentary primer on the case, rather than a particularly comprehensive or insightful one. Many of its shortfalls have to do with director Muta'Ali's (Life's Essentials With Ruby Dee) narrow focus on the Hawkins family, especially since the film is most compelling when it evokes the pressure cooker of racial hostilities that New York City had become by the late '80s.

Less horrific than it is horribly didactic.

Davis isn't given a very satisfying backstory to work with, but when has she needed one? The actress strikes a satisfying balance between reluctance and protectiveness. Gaffigan and Janney offer just what their parts in the story need, but Davis keeps it all on the rails.

An atmospheric chiller that’s just quirky enough to achieve cult status.

In F9’s would-be showstoppers, the thrills are mostly AWOL or the feats are simply too idiotic to embrace, even guiltily.

Though the picture is not without its wow-inducing, SFX-driven moments, that potent X-factor is considerably diminished in Singer's absence.

The madness of Holocaust survivors is here played mainly for dark comedy. The film's dazzling central performance in a mental institute finds Jeff Goldblum in the role of his career.

Jarhead refuses to engage in its own point of view toward events it depicts. So the film feels empty and tentative, uncertain of what if anything these events add up to.

After a strong run of films during the past decade, David Cronenberg blows a tire with Cosmopolis.

The new film may also serve a purpose by showcasing a dynamic and attractive new actor, Kenny Wormald but, otherwise, this is a by-the-numbers affair.

Up until a narratively implausible and logistically ridiculous climactic motorcycle chase through Vegas that feels like a sop to the Fast & Furious crowd, Jason Bourne is an engrossing re-immersion in the violent and mysterious world of Matt Damon's shadowy secret op.

Without them (Geoffrey Rush and Judy Davis), the melodramatic chronicle of real-life swimmer Tony Fingleton's formative years would have very little going for it.

It’s not quite enough to prevent this B-grade rendition from feeling rather familiar and unsuspenseful, even if stars Sydney Sweeney (Euphoria) and Madison Iseman (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle) provide a decent level of tension throughout.

It's not a trip of ''Nashville'' sweep. In fact, it's closer to Dullsville. [13 May 1996]

The film’s lengthy chronology and constantly shifting tones would be challenging for any director, but Longoria, making her feature debut, handles things expertly, infusing the proceedings with a loving appreciation and authentic-feeling depiction of the Latino community at its core.

Fine performances from a cast of pros generally win out over the story's more formulaic aspects.

This funny-sad chamber piece is underwhelming in cinematic terms, but its perceptive script and the incisively etched characterizations of a sterling ensemble make it warmly satisfying.

In their matter-of-fact toughness and mostly unshakable composure, Knightley and Coon are riveting as their characters navigate boys’ club politics and newsroom dynamics — and Cooper provides a superb foil with his thoroughly lived-in embodiment of a newsman undergoing a reluctant awakening.

It's unfortunate that a film designed to renew interest in Ulmer is this flat.

Heneral Luna is a sturdy, stirring if perhaps sometimes simplistic historical epic about bravery and treachery in a country at war.

Though we care for those who lost loved ones, and root for them as they pursue a decades-long hunt for the killers, No Stone Unturned plays like a very well made piece of true-crime television.

Tellingly, all of the film’s emotional highlights come from scenes involving the animal rather than the human protagonists and there are only very few scenes in which the two interact in a manner that feels entirely synergetic.

The real pirate radio ships, whose days ended in 1967, wound up being towed away for salvage but the film avoids that fate -- like the best rock songs -- with a rousing finish and a pleasing climax.

An engaging period drama. But German postwar guilt is not the most winning subject matter for the holiday season.

Hammering home every gag as if to make sure we don't miss them, Balls Out garners a few laughs but mostly seems far too taken with itself.

Ultimately fails to illuminate its subject, though it does offer some evocative moments and terrific music along the way.

The child's discovery of the beauty of nature, the workaday brutalities of farm life and the adult world's disappointments and betrayals rings true, to a point, and the young actor in the role is memorably guarded and watchful. In Hjörleifsdóttir's adaptation, though, the themes are too studied and neat, playing out in a way that can feel oppressive rather than revelatory.

Clearly made with the best of didactic intentions, and especially affecting when paying tribute to “original gangster” film theorist Laura Mulvey, interviewed all too briefly here, the film is founded on a simplistic, poorly argued thesis that is way out to sea, many waves of feminist film theory behind from what’s going on these days in academic circles and feminist discourse.

Freaky Tales is a genre-defying riot. Come for the crazy mix tape of circuitously connected plotlines, stay for the joyous explosion of vintage breakdancing on the end credits.

The most affecting scenes, however, involve the class of Israeli teenagers visiting Auschwitz.

Most of the laughs seem unintentional and come too late in the movie — after several reels of serious build-up — for the audience to adjust to its tongue-in-cheek qualities. Making a good horror-thriller, or even a good horror-comedy, is not child’s play, as this schizoid film all too unfortunately proves.

Park's unsettling visuals and his handling of the cast make the occasional holes in Wentworth Miller's script practically irrelevant.

Beautifully shot and well acted, the film might well cause controversy among fundamentalist believers as a provocative allegory challenging the power of faith.

A likeable cast of relative newcomers buoys the film, which never quite finds the sweet spot.

Eastwood is vastly entertaining as an old-fashioned scout who disdains computers and fancy statistical charts in favor of his own time-tested instincts.

To pull this kind of thing off you need exceptional performances, and the two leads rise commandingly to the challenge. Wilson, best known for his work in the screen version of "The Phantom of the Opera" and HBO's "Angels in America," keeps his true colors effectively muted throughout the bulk of their face-off, but it is Page who astonishes.

An agreeably goofy road movie.

That butting of heads, as performed by actors as strong and soulful as Craig and Schreiber, lends Defiance an emotional charge, even as the film itself struggles dramatically to find its way out of those woods.

Fortunately Schulman and Joost keep the film visually engaging.... All that busyness onscreen distracts somewhat from the impression that Roberts and Franco don't look much like teenagers, although they form a fairly good team as long as they’re pursuing specific challenges rather than sharing their nascent emotions for one another or attempting to unravel the intricacies of the game.

The premise is so cute it’s surprising a movie hasn’t done it already. Eternity mines its compelling conceit for both peppery comedy and bleary sentiment.

What might have looked intriguing on paper appears to have been largely pared away in the artsy mannerisms and loaded silences of Brit director Daniel Barber’s self-consciously elliptical treatment.

Costner and Harrelson both give fine performances, but when it's time for each to have his one allotted dramatic monologue, you can practically hear the movie clearing its throat: Shut up and listen while the man is speaking, folks.

An American Pickle is neither the most substantial nor the most sophisticated comedy, but its soulful sweetness outweighs its flaws.

In their awkward attempt to shoehorn these kids into the first pic's formula, Stoller and his writing collaborators care far less about creating believable characters than getting to the next laugh.

Say what you will about the confused narrative, blatant borrowings and wildly over-the-top gory violence of Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning -- at least you can see what the hell is going on.

Gayby doesn't break a lot of new ground in the rom-com or parenthood fields, but its agreeable balance of humor and sentiment makes it worth adopting.

The Rocketeer is low-octane Steven Spielberg — projected in the right happy direction but lacking the gritty accelerant and around-the-edges humor and humanity of other heavy popcorn-load adventures.

Viewers who don't mind the lack of dramatic tension may appreciate Dorff's credible take on his modest, gentlemanly character.

Triet tempers her style a bit while upgrading her production values (especially the vivid and colorful cinematography of Simon Beaufils), resulting in a movie that can feel both original and somewhat conventional — a classic working girl rom-com with just enough kookiness to set itself apart from the pack.

Hollow in the Land traffics in familiar rural thriller territory, but it features an excellent performance from its lead actress and a strong atmosphere of moody tension courtesy of its writer/director.

The movie is stuffed with talent and buffed with hipster-indie polish. It’s also frequently silly, only fitfully involving and often surprisingly banal despite its outré premise.

Though it’s a series that has seen its day, this swan song should attract genre die-hards with its elegant visuals and some humorously imaginative murders which are the director’s trademark.

A high-risk shot at a screen adaptation of a novel within a novel, The Motive is entertaining and buzzes with fun ideas, but as an involving drama, it never gets past the first chapter.

Ly and Gederlini weave in keen analysis about political manipulation, structural violence and community organizing — a perceptiveness that makes Les Indésirables resonate despite its flaws.

If you come to this film looking for a brisk overview of his achievements in couture, you might find High & Low more than serviceable. . . But if you’re expecting the definitive closing leg of the redemption tour, it’s unlikely you’ll find this a persuasive argument for separating the art from the a-hole.

Less cranky and inciting than Gran Torino but persuasively expressive in conveying an old man's regrets along with his desire to improve himself even in late age, The Mule shows that Eastwood's still got it, both as a director and actor.

Reveals a definite been-there, done-that feeling.