Lam’s filmmaking team deliver thrills on schedule with solid effects, crisp shooting and fast cutting.

Creepy enough to get the job done, but not sufficiently extreme to fulfill the initial setup.

Pfister, who, like his mentor Nolan, adamantly continues to shoot on film (not digital), shows a sure hand at staging scenes, creating visuals and setting a tone -- if only all the diverse elements here fit comfortably under the same tent.

Wallace made a lot of shrewd decisions to sock this movie home, but he can’t entirely overcome the dramatic thinness of the original material.

A slick, occasionally hilarious but ultimately uneven appraisal of France’s favorite extramarital pastime.

Despite its careful control of tone and a raging central performance by Ciaran Hinds, which is actually sufficient reason to see the film, this story of a man who plunges into childhood memories in the aftermath of his wife’s death remains admirable but wingless.

Recognizable human behavior is not this film’s forte -- which wouldn’t be a problem if something else would take its place but Punch never finds the right tone for the heterogeneous material, with sweetly melodramatic scenes alternating with high drama, some light action and farce.

Debuting directors Damon Maulucci and Keir Politz have a better sense of storycraft than the filmmaking on display.

Whatever doubts the viewer may share about the true circumstances of this tragic event are quickly erased by the ineptness with which the story is dramatized.

Disneynature’s Bears combines sweeping vistas and remarkably intimate wildlife photography to typically stirring effect.

This fascinating tale is told with uncommon depth and nuance.

Despite its occasional missteps, the film relates its important and sadly too-little-known story with skill and efficiency.

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.

Finely acted and minutely observed, Ilo Ilo certainly has the texture of real life. The performances feel authentic, the emotional shadings agreeably nuanced.

Over the last couple of reels the film shakes off its self-conscious inhibitions and displays some healthy unruliness, and just as we're warming to a group of characters whose indulgences have been not only culinary but emotional, it's all over.

In his most effective full star turn in perhaps a decade, Kevin Costner dominates as the greenhorn general manager of the beleaguered Cleveland Browns.

The story's conclusion benefits from a closure that is satisfying despite — and even because of — its predictability.

The film is elevated by the quality of the performances, with Breslin and Henley movingly affecting as the closely bound sisters and Sorvino convincingly conveying her character’s inability to function.

Half of a Yellow Sun is the kind of ambitious literary adaptation that wants it all kinds of ways, not all of them compatible.

The plot gets itself tangled up in multiple villain strands, but in the main this installment is emotionally weightier and more satisfying than its predecessor.

Hank and Asha takes an unremarkable situation and renders it completely banal.

The personalities and rhetoric are colorful and the film's presentation is lively, though some viewers will wish for a little more rigor.

While the film doesn’t dig deeply enough into the myriad political and social issues it raises, it’s nonetheless warmly entertaining, thanks to Dulaine’s ever genial presence and the irresistible appeal of watching young children overcome their instilled fears and prejudices.

The film relies on high production values and sense-battering shock tactics to make up for wooden performances and an illogical, silly script. As an exercise in retro pastiche, it impresses. But as a postmodern genre reinvention, it fails to deliver.

That the film works to the extent it does is due in large part to the filmmaker’s ingratiating, amusingly self-deprecating personality and his emotional honesty.

Though not the finest screen outing for Coogan’s best-known alter ego, this is a worthy addition to the ever-growing Partridge archive, with enough weapons-grade comic zing in the first half to excuse the less sure-footed second.

Despite a neat narrative twist delivered during the end credits, Alien Abduction is ultimately a by-the-numbers enterprise that will please only the most undemanding audiences at midnight screenings.

Displaying a rare inventiveness and technical facility in this increasingly tired, cliché-ridden format, Afflicted delivers a genuinely suspenseful ride while making you wonder how its more elaborate effects were achieved on its obviously low budget.

A dazzling introduction, both immersive and sweeping, to one of the planet’s oldest primates (who knew?).

A chilly allegory whose antihero is both compelling and repulsive.

Formulaic and often hard to swallow, the picture offers little beyond the familiar pleasures of Duvall's old-coot mode.

Less time spent fetishizing his own image and more on building credible character dynamics and psychological complexity might have helped make this film the dramatic equal of its technical craftsmanship.

Leveraging limited resources to impressive effect, writer-director Chris Eska’s empathetic scripting and well-tuned casting reliably guide The Retrieval’s memorable trajectory.

What's most remarkable about this big, dumb exploitation movie is how carefully anything approaching psychological texture appears to have been peeled away.

Katz has a clear investment in Healy's character and convincingly depicts his choices as inevitable even when they become anything but.

This effort offers some mild amusement but lacks the anarchic wit to make it anything more than a slight diversion.

Suffering from tonal inconsistency and all-too-familiar thematic elements, as well as an absurd framing device whose logic is not even consistently maintained, Locker 13 hardly deserves being opened.

Patterns emerge by virtue of repetition.

Under Saldanha's guidance, an extensive team of animators and visual effects artists elevates the 3D format to an alluring level, with character details, dense background imagery and often complex action and aerial sequences (including a requisite Busby Berkeley-inspired musical number) appearing effortlessly executed.

Carbone's script doesn't tell a story so much as watch the fluctuations in emotional energy here, quietly observing activities both directly and indirectly related to the loss. As a director he's patient but never sluggish, taking time to appreciate the still landscapes his characters move through.

This film neither really embraces the mechanics of primitive cinema nor creates a coherent syntax of its own.

Less a rock-doc than a surprisingly affecting look at sibling dynamics in a creative family where one brother is vastly more successful than the other.

Cory Monteith in one of his last screen roles may be the best thing going for McCanick, a tired cop drama that recycles predictable narrative elements almost to the point of meaninglessness and then substitutes wildly improbable developments in place of actual originality.

Though it doesn't quite hit the target, Plotnick's vision of the future of the past is peculiar enough to resist quick dismissal.

The film has entertaining moments, but these are clearly secondary to its proselytizing intentions.

Beguiling in its strangeness, yet also effortlessly evoking recognizable emotions such as loneliness and the feeling of being stuck in a dead-end town and life, this moody and gorgeous film is finally more about atmosphere and emotions than narrative -- and none the worse for it.

Darren Aronofsky wrestles one of scripture's most primal stories to the ground and extracts something vital and audacious, while also pushing some aggressive environmentalism, in Noah.

For sheer plotting and audience involvement, this is a notch above any of the other Avengers-feeding Marvel entries, the one that feels most like a real movie rather than a production line of ooh-and-ahh moments for fanboys.

This low-rent, convoluted tale about a young woman returning home to solve the mystery of her mother’s violent death is amateurish to the extreme.

Despite the affecting performances by the two leads, this overly muted drama fails to make much of an impact.

So much better than one would expect for a fifth installment in a franchise, this tribute to female friendship and girl power is a kick.

Featuring generous doses of raucous humor as well as a haunting atmosphere of dread as Tommy and Rosie’s exploits prove increasingly dangerous, Rob the Mob is a true-crime tale that boasts an uncommon emotional resonance.

This intelligent and comprehensive documentary not only conveys the genuine nature of Hill herself, but also recreates the national sensibility of the time, an era when sexual harassment in the workplace was not yet a national concern.

Some years from now, Starred Up, a rough, violent and, to American ears, half-indecipherable British prison drama, will be remembered as the film that announced a new star, Jack O’Connell.

Meyer and Luke Matheny's script is full of the kind of nit-picky detail one hears when birders converse, and milks some life lessons out of philosophical differences between "listers" and "watchers."

Revealing tour doc showcases a quick wit and a bruised soul.

This is the rare film that would actually seem even creepier watched from home on your computer, preferably alone to enhance its voyeuristic effect.

Quai d’Orsay zips along at a good clip and benefits from the gruffly benevolent gravity of Arestrup, which offsets the machine-gun pace set by Lhermitte.

Sadly believable and benefiting from an unshowy performance by first-timer Gina Piersanti, it will have many viewers eager to see what Hittman does next.

The film's impact is greatly enhanced by the superb performances by the young lead actors who handle their characters’ complexities with impressive skill.

Frost is a likable lead and an easy rooting interest. But his affability isn’t enough to give this silly-sweet feature the edge and dimension that would make it a memorable contribution to the subgenre epitomized by The Full Monty — comedies in which middle-aged, unassuming Brits discover their inner showman.

Director Neil Burger struggles to fuse philosophy, awkward romance and brutal action. Even with star Shailene Woodley delivering the requisite toughness and magnetism, the clunky result is almost unrelentingly grim.

The film’s beauty lies in its carefully observed details and the larger story’s got nowhere particularly surprising to go.

The only things left out of The Single Moms Club are genuine humor and emotion.

A powerful documentary that reminds those of us who've moved on to other worries that this one is far from finished -- and that a government that proclaimed outrage during the summer of 2010 has seemingly done little to prevent or prepare for another such catastrophe.

Fort Tilden, the debut feature co-written and directed by Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers, showcases a satirical voice so dyspeptic it’s almost endearing, never letting the abrasive lead characters – or anyone else for that matter – off the hook for their self-absorbed entitlement.

Awkwardly condensing more than 20 years into a running-time well under two hours, director/co-writer Cao Hamburger needs a bigger canvas for his well-intentioned but underpowered saga.

Young leads Shota Sometani and Fumi Nikaidou – both experienced film actors – grow in stature as the film progresses to the achingly real final scene, where they are extraordinarily intense and effective.

A blandly generic romantic comedy mainly notable for its largely centering on Iranian-American characters, Shirin in Love demonstrates that clichés cross all ethnic boundaries.

Rife with rom-com cliches and jaw-droppingly idiotic situations, the story is so off-putting that its irrationality becomes almost secondary to its pointless attempts to prove that opposites really do attract -- when they’re actually not as divergent as they first appear.

Although the film’s dark humor and colorful, thriller aesthetics provide some juicy material at the beginning, its overindulgence in chatter, fornication and occasional gore feels too blatant to make Sono’s social commentary run anywhere but skin-deep.

Allowing its subjects to bare their souls as much as their bodies, Exposed is as frequently moving as it is entertaining.

An episodic coming-of-age story whose plot holes are paved over by strong performances and a few emotional highlights.

What makes 20,000 Days on Earth distinctive is that it provides an overview of the man and his art while creating the illusion that this has come together organically -- out of poetic ruminations, casual encounters, ghost-like visitations and good old Freudian psychoanalysis.

The overstuffed film is definitely less than the sum of its admittedly occasionally scary parts.

Amusing but not as funny or suspenseful as it could be.

The repetitive storyline about successive heists during a Muppets European tour grows tiresome and the fun is intermittent.

Need For Speed is a flat, sexless movie that seems not to understand why people like to sit in the driver’s seat and rev that big engine: Because of the transgressive rumble in your nethers.

A spookily effective fright-fest.

Enjoyable heist pic is more talk than action.

Captivating for a long stretch.

Very funny at the outset and escalating steadily for most of its brisk running time, the film represents a big win for neophyte screenwriters Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O'Brien.

The easygoing comedy keeps a familiar story going despite minor plot hiccups.

Thomas’ direction, especially of the villainous roles, gives a lot of the action a self-conscious, not-quite-real quality. Some aspects of the movie’s intentional artifice work better than others.

The main point of the film remains its style, which is so constantly and loudly reinforced that it’s often hard to concentrate on the story.

The proceedings quickly degenerate into deafening video game-style fiery mayhem featuring endless explosions and depictions of human combatants melted into anguished looking skeletons.

Journey to the West may not rank among Chow’s classics, but it’s a crowd-pleaser that also serves as a reminder of what the director can accomplish when he’s on his game.

Respectably crafted but short on invention and serious scares.

Awful Nice, about two perpetually warring brothers, grates on the nerves from first moment to last.

An impressively mature directing debut from Italian actress Valeria Golino, who crafts an often engrossing character study around an assisted suicide activist.

Particle Fever succeeds on every level, but none more important than in making the normally intimidating and arcane world of genius-level physics at least conceptually comprehensible and even friendly to the lay viewer.

Annette Bening captivates as the self-delusionist, with Ed Harris ruggedly irresistible as the object of her fantasy.

More a tone poem or gallery installation piece than a verite outing.

Other than for the pleasure of watching Green try to conquer ancient Greece dressed as a distant forebearer of Catwoman, more is less and a little late in this long-aborning sequel.

A likeable if familiar underdog tale.

Overlong, willfully obscure and scatologically extreme, the film will elicit a variety of negative responses despite offering some individual elements that, on their own, would surely impress any of Barney's admirers. The work simultaneously is more fully realized and less creatively inspired than the Cremaster cycle.

Features fine performances from the veterans in its cast. But it ultimately comes across as little more than a compendium of cliches.

This quite mediocre spawned-from-television feature feels like a Jesus film designed primarily for true believers, meaning that the faith-based public that has already been put on alert by seal-of-approval-dispensing church leaders that this is a film to see will make the Fox release into a significant Heartland attraction.