Ultimately the movie disappoints, falling between two stools and failing to convince either as spectacle or as a fable about religious obsession.

An excellent novel about the Iraq War and its homefront fallout has been turned into a rather flat and disappointing film in The Yellow Birds.

That the film itself is nearly as chaotic as the clan it examines can either be regarded as an admirable artistic correlative or a crippling defect, but the splendidly dextrous cast ensures that this goofy success story, which could just easily be titled American Hustle 2, keeps firing on all cylinders in the manner of the writer-director's previous few outings.

Stars Chris Diamantopoulos, Will Sasso and Sean Hayes are on the money as Moe, Curly and Larry in a film containing more plot and sentiment than the boys' shorts ever had.

As capable as the actors are, I can't say I cared much about any of the characters, which made the emotionally uplifting climax feel underpowered. The scope for which this handsome but bland film strives so hard is present mainly in the wide-open spaces of its picturesque locations.

Ultimately more laughable than illuminating, at times approaching a level of camp commensurate with John Waters.

Mother is a crisp, sardonic, darkly funny mystery thriller with a claustrophobic feel that occasionally betrays its roots as an Irish radio drama.

Pyewacket is a slow-burn chiller that is all the more impressive for its subtlety.

This odd collection of oddballs doesn't quite play out as a satisfying movie.

Gameau clearly has good intentions, and generally succeeds in sweetening a potentially bitter subject for easy public consumption.

Though its even-tempered account may be more thorough than print and TV coverage at the time, the doc doesn't offer anything dramatic enough to draw many eyeballs at this late date.

There is a nice mix of action with tender moments -- especially among the misfit monsters

Atkinson remains an expert clown, and there are sufficient numbers of gags to ensure that Bean fans worldwide will be kept fairly happy.

It's a gutsy movie but not necessarily a good one. Its greatest strength is that it wants to talk about what's on our minds right now and not wait for historians.

Zeroes in on retail mania with a flimsy wire hanger of a premise.

This lighthearted tale of repressed sexuality and marital woes seems to have a different kind of agenda, even if it often fits the mode of your typical mainstream rom-com.

Journey mostly works thanks to Dhanush's radiant charm, with the actor adding humor and sincerity to a project that can feel too overstuffed and wacky for its own good — mixing magical realism, deadpan comedy, musical numbers and moments of tear-jerking drama.

It's the kind of rollicking rebel-chick flick that should score well in venues that appreciate Quentin Tarantino films.

Despite shortcomings and implausibility linked to their roles as written, Rogen and Banks come off with surprising charm and grace.

An underwhelming vampire romance long on camp but short on emotional insight

This film is vital in uncovering a hazard that was kept hidden for far too long. At last the secret is out, and Landesman and his fine cast will help to keep the conversation going.

Earthlings is rather scattered in both its portrait of Van Tassel as a man and its explanation of his cultural impact.

An intense Mel Gibson performance anchors this brutally effective crime thriller.

As a film about animals, Remarkably Bright Creatures is human-centric treacle. But as a film about people, its gentle sense of humor and depth of feeling are enough to sweep you away on a wave of emotion.

An edgy entertainment, the movie also remarkably has the feel-good warmth of an old-time Irish film.

A promotional video masquerading as a documentary.

The documentary raises important and substantial questions about an issue that has only become increasingly relevant in recent years.

Bu I, admittedly, had a hard time getting on its woozy wavelength. But The Beach Bum is a work of undeniable commitment and craft — a gonzo picaresque, soaked with booze and filled with gyrating, jiggling flesh, that will play well to the not-negligible segment of the population where cannabis lovers and cinephiles overlap.

Laughs come less frequently here than in Humpday and Your Sister's Sister, but the writer-director's empathy for floundering characters is intact.

Richard Shepard’s film is far from dull, but it just doesn’t feel like the real thing, more like an artificial construct inspired by pumped-up crime favorites from a couple of decades ago.

Much of what is shown onscreen is atmospheric filler, while the various characters describe being made outcasts because of their sexuality while holding on to their commitment to their faith.

A lot of solid craftsmanship has gone into Spaceman, and there’s a disarming guilelessness to the solemn storytelling that has some appeal.

While Brosnan has quite a few opportunities to show his acting chops, Chan makes do with less.... In any case, it’s good to see Chan swapping his happy-go-lucky persona for two hours for some gravitas as a tragic rogue with a marked past.

It’s much closer to the work of its main subject: a bit hurried, inoffensive and ultimately unsubstantial. It’s loosely informative, rarely revelatory and, despite what the title might lead you to expect, never provocative.

Writer and director Portman's film seems conflicted over whether it is about young Amos or his mother, whom she portrays as a beautiful, cultured woman with a head full of romantic fantasies.

The film would make a better fit on television or at one of Disney's theme parks. In cinemas, Heart & Soul is an odd duck, out of sync with the current generation of documentarians whose films dig deep into stories and issues the media generally overlooks.

In a summer of remakes, sequels and movies swollen with effects, The Terminal stands out as a strikingly original comedy.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, David Cronenberg should be feeling pretty chuffed with son Brandon’s big-screen debut, a petri dish of high-concept perversity and cultural commentary teeming with lo-fi ickiness.

As it is, the family pic's light tone never lets its themes of addiction, abandonment and poverty hit home, instead focusing on its hero's unlikely accomplishment and the brotherhood of sport.

The pic is visually exciting and has a palpably organic quality that translates well to the screen. ... A refreshing and confident piece of work.

Odessa ... Odessa! could use a little more narrative substance to augment its haunting imagery but is ultimately a memorable portrait of cultural dislocation.

The co-screenwriter of "Kissing Jessica Stein" goes solo as writer and director with a romantic comedy that takes time to find its groove but steadily accumulates heart and humor.

Detour is a tautly efficient thriller that fully succeeds in making the viewer identify with its hapless protagonist’s desperate plight.

As much spectacle and action — minute-by-minute, frame-by-frame — as any movie anyone could think of. Zack Snyder’s huge, backstory-heavy extravaganza is a rehab job that perhaps didn’t cry out to be done but proves so overwhelmingly insistent in its size and strength that it’s hard not to give in.

First-time writer-director Robert Persons' documentary on the Deep South introduces a new filmmaker with a distinctive sensibility.

While its narrative elements threaten at times to descend from whimsical into hopelessly twee, My Name Is Emily ultimately finds a proper, if not particularly compelling, balance.

For those ready to view it on its own terms, its gentle focus on family and persistence should go down easy.

Although its plethora of painfully awkward comic moments will produce shudders of recognition for anyone who's been in a long-term relationship, its sweetly sentimental ending makes The Unicorn a perfectly acceptable date movie.

Aspires to the poetic but falls short because of a lack of dynamism.

Aesthetically, it's desultory. Talking-heads rants and ruminations are further stultified by the amateurish aesthetics. Visually, zooms, pans and filler moments enervate the message. Most annoying, the dour music grates throughout; its hollow grinding, we'd guess, is an attempt to impart profundity.

Doval’s handling of ideas, notably the bioethical issues raised by artificial insemination by donor, is deft, and she benefits immensely from the performance of Garcia (her husband in real life) in a role that requires him to weave between comedy and a portrayal of emotional growth.

While Freeland's plotting is graceful, there are occasional moments of stiffness in the dialogue itself, brief rough patches her largely neophyte cast can't fix in the delivery.

Embers strains for a philosophical profundity that eludes it. And despite its brief running time, so little actually happens in the plot that it feels much longer than it is. But the film has many resonant moments.

In terms of its overall look, Cinderella the Cat blends blocky, videogame-like 3D/CGI animation and voluptuous, watercolor-like 2D animation. It shouldn't work, yet it does create a coherent universe.

There’s no doubt Mirica can film the hell out of a location or a character’s face, but as for telling a fully gripping and involving story? The jury’s still out on that one.

Fine performances and powerful visuals only partially compensate for the inevitable air of familiarity that accompanies Marco Perego’s debut feature.

With strong performances and a fresh premise about an unexpected friendship in middle age, but far too many creaky comic tropes, the uneven film is always watchable but never pops off the screen in a gripping way.

American Fable possesses an amorphous, dreamlike quality that proves increasingly irritating as it wears on.

A feel-good raunch-com whose dirty-talk plot comes from a convincingly female perspective instead of feeling like cut-and-paste Apatow.

Zemeckis' A Christmas Carol is, in its essence, a product reel, a showy, exuberant demonstration of the glories of motion capture, computer animation and 3D technology. On that level, it's a wow. On any emotional level, it's as cold as Marley's Ghost.

Laughs do not exactly pour forth from this dreary and frequently insulting picture.

The movie strands you in two miserable flats with these cliche-ridden characters and a static love story that is as predictable as it is pedestrian.

The real key to the documentary's appeal is its writer-director Phil Rosenthal, creator of the long-running CBS sitcom.

What this twisty espionage thriller ... doesn’t have enough of is character depth or storytelling coherence.

Despite many interesting mise-en-scene moments, the film disappointingly feels as sterile as the family's immaculately clean house. In a sense, the movie is too ambitious.

The gimmickry ultimately wears thin and you find yourself thinking less about the inventive way the scenes were shot . . . than the flimsy narrative.

Fennell’s overhaul flirts with insanity, and if you can let go of preconceived notions about how this story should be told, it’s arguably the writer-director’s most purely entertaining film — pulpy, provocative, drenched in blazing color and opulent design, laced with anachronistic flourishes, sexy, pervy, irreverent and resonantly tragic.

Chronicling a covert World War II mission manned by a band of renegades, the movie is diverting but remains awkwardly stuck between a larkish caper and a more gripping combat action thriller.

Attempting to mix emotional pathos with broad farce, the film fails on both levels.

Viewers hoping to understand the senseless phenomenon of football hooliganism would do better to rent Alan Clarke's nearly 20-year-old "The Firm."

It's a low-wattage film about a high-wattage event. Which is somewhat disappointing, though you do get a thoughtful, playful, often amusing film about what happened backstage at one of the '60s' great happenings.

While the exact secret to the film’s high-grossing recipe remains a bit of a mystery, it probably has to do with the good-humored chemistry between the unlikely partners, pushing the limits of censorship in the sexual-innuendo department, and a well-written off-the-wall script that makes audiences laugh out loud.

Ambitious in scope, carefully crafted and featuring several fine performances ... But despite the worthy seriousness of its intentions and the parallels with the present it cleverly draws at every turn, the final impression is of dramatic opportunities left unexplored. While War’s dutiful sense of responsibility to its source material is laudable, it feels limiting.

If the pic is ultimately an entertaining ride, it is because Sudeikis takes the audience by the hand through this very unlikely story that was inspired by true events.

The Eagle is an engaging, if straightforward and one-dimensional.

An atmospheric thriller with a noir-ish undertow and strong visual style, Strange But True puts a classy spin on familiar ingredients. The twist-heavy, logic-bending plot will test audience patience in places, but the whole package is handsomely crafted and rich in strong performances.

An intelligent, visually sumptuous drama that embraces the grandeur of the Australian literary classic upon which it's based.

Though its structure doesn't always work to maximum effect, the grim picture gets more involving as it goes and benefits from a hell of a cast.

A couple of rather Dickensian supporting roles by Robbie Coltrane and Maximilian Schell fall embarrassingly flat as they are more creations of costumes and makeup than actual flesh-and-blood. But then the same can be said for the entire movie.

Not quite soaring into the heavens, but not exactly crash-landing either, Cloud Atlas is an impressively mounted, emotionally stilted adaptation of British author David Mitchell's bestselling novel.

An enjoyable spoof of Mexican soap operas and the entertainment business itself. The film doesn't ask to be taken seriously but if you absolutely insist, there is pointed commentary about the deep divisions within that society over skin color, gender politics and social backgrounds.

Despite its shameless manipulations and unsubtle approach, it’s an ambitious and well-intentioned feature debut from a director whose future efforts bear attention.

There's a richer documentary to be made, one you might crave even more after 90 minutes of being inspired and impressed by Lily Hevesh.

It’s not reinventing the wheel or breaking new ground; it’s unlikely to wow audiences with its bold artistic vision or profound emotional depths. But there’s a place for sturdy and familiar entertainment that delivers exactly what it intends, and Clifford the Big Red Dog is just that.

This narrative directing debut by Sacha Gervasi remains absorbing and aptly droll despite a few dramatic ups and downs and, led by large performances by Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren.

Ordinary World becomes raggedly enjoyable thanks to the unexpected charms of its leading man.

Majidi is surprisingly comfortable with the Indian setting and with his characters, for whom he exudes empathy. But the screenplay, written by the director with Mehran Kashani, has its ups and downs and longeurs.

Lee’s film plays it disappointingly safe, never deviating from romantic comedy conventions; there are no real surprises that you can’t already see coming.

Fun is banished from Aja’s latest, which starts out mildly intriguing and chalks up a few bracing jump scares before running out of juice.

For a movie about what’s going on under the elaborately staged surface, it’s pretty much all surface, right down to its shallow observations about gender fluidity, queer identity and the creative freedom of the alternate persona.

Charged by a knock-out performance from Samuel L. Jackson, this compelling story of manly redemption will deliver a winning boxoffice combination of word of mouth and ultimately step outside the generic ring of sports lore.

With a scare factor far greater than its modest dimensions initially seem to promise, The Canal is a polished indie psycho-thriller full of macabre twists and nerve-snapping tension.

Both in the writing and performance, China is a finely wrought creation, a young lady of manners and a degree of taste but who has been given no guidance, rules, motivation or a stern hand.

Bill Murray as FDR? It takes a few minutes to get used to, but once he settles into the role of the 32nd president, the idiosyncratic comic actor does a wonderfully jaunty job of it in Hyde Park on Hudson.

The feature-length film ultimately becomes repetitive, with the lack of contextual information about the subjects’ lives rendering the proceedings shallow.

The film is at its most potent delineating Hefner's role in the American civil rights movement, going beyond the pages of his magazine.

All three young actors who play the leads deliver solid performances that make them effortless tour guides through their intersecting stories.

Viewers who can take it at face value may find a chill or two here, but ultimately Old can’t escape the goofiness of its premise long enough to put its more poetic possibilities across successfully.