Efficient, if ultimately rote, political thriller.

Its Hitchcockian aspirations are sabotaged by a tendency towards lurid melodrama that is more laughable than chilling.

Ultimately, there’s little to distinguish the proceedings other than their brevity. By the time the piece reaches its familiar death-strewn conclusion, with guns taking the place of swords, it has come to seem like little more than an ill-conceived exercise.

Sluggish pacing and sub-par special effects mar this would-be epic adventure film.

The production squeaks by on the visual charm of art director Ian Hastings’ period touches and warm autumnal hues. The voice talent is a decidedly mixed bag.

It relies too heavily on shock value rather than solid facts.

Concerned more with inspirational messages than dramatic subtlety, it remains an item best suited to believers.

Much of what transpires is wholly unconvincing, although the proceedings are made palatable by the highly appealing performances by the two leads, who display a genuine onscreen chemistry.

Director Won Shin-yun delivers a seemingly non-stop series of exciting set pieces that are only slightly marred by occasional visual incoherence.

If The Legend of Hercules were just a little more inept or over-the-top, it might have been ridiculous fun. As it is, unfortunately, Harlin embraces the mediocrity of the screenplay with a dour straight face, draining it of any enjoyably camp possibilities.

Creadon's doc benefits substantially from these kids, resulting in a film with modest commercial appeal that should have a healthy video afterlife with activism-minded students in college and graduate programs.

If it was still the 1980s, then Dumbbells might actually be a hit.

Blair Erickson’s inventive low-budget horror film doesn’t fully live up to its provocative premise, and its extensive use of the found-footage style gives it an all too familiar feel. But it offers some genuine scares along the way, as well as a terrific performance by the ever-reliable Ted Levine.

Boasting uncommonly handsome production values and a stellar cast, the awkwardly titled The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box nonetheless feels like a stillborn attempt at a franchise starter.

While the actor lends his formidable presence to the proceedings, this rote thriller mainly succeeds in squandering his talents.

The maverick Japanese writer-director-actor known for his vicious set-pieces and macabre sense of humor eventually delivers some lip-smacking pleasures in the slow-ignition yakuza thriller Outrage Beyond.

The screenplay by Eddie and Chris Borey fails to live up to the juiciness of the original premise, lacking meaningful character development and teasing out its unveiling of its mysterious plot elements in dull, plodding fashion.

The film's generosity toward Christina's decision-making is, however true to life, dramatically unsatisfying.

A cinematic hangout with a playfully prickly but very sympathetic subject, affording us a chance to sit at his feet while sampling a body of work that impresses on many levels.

Despite a premise with broad appeal and a script boasting plenty of laughs among its misfires, the high school fable falters.

The script succeeds by expanding the Paranormal Activity mythology with additional details and even a few surprising twists.

The story is rich in juicy anecdotes and epochal events, even if the man behind these striking images remains a little too elusive throughout.

Strip away the Middle East backdrop and Bethlehem is a fairly routine thriller about good cops, corrupt bureaucrats and armed criminal gangs.

Strictly for the Beliebers.

The tone veers into film-fan geekery in places, but Jodorowsky is such a natural showman and irrepressible egotist that his ancient anecdotes never become tedious.

The movie only wakes up when Hart and/or Arkin are on screen (preferably together).

Young actor Sitthiphon Disamoe helps keep the tale of a can-do kid from becoming too cute.

While Leather Bar will surely make some viewers itchy, its most compelling subject isn't whether straight guys can stand to watch one man pleasuring another. More interesting is the question of what would make this project art as opposed to porn.

Battles are sickeningly brutal, and viewers who have no ethical problem with that may object to their sheer lack of imagination.

Though it begs for a little lightening up, a moment of irony, a wink at the audience, this dead-serious fairy tale about a mysterious young woman (and a phantom automaton straight out of Hugo) is worth watching for Geoffrey Rush’s sensitive, never pandering performance.

It falls short on character definition, emotional involvement, narrative drive and originality.

Audiences willing to tune in to its blend of surreal fantasy, droll comedy and poignancy will be rewarded.

Blue Ruin is a talented but sophomoric low-budgeter that straddles the divide between genre thriller and art piece with mixed results.

The young Spanish director Eugenio Mira and his American screenwriter Damien Chazelle have fun paying homage to the pulpy potboilers of yesteryear.

With jokes that fall flat so often, the film’s cardiograph flatlines before the first five minutes are over.

Volume two gets down in ways the first half doesn't, although anything resembling real sensuality remains MIA.

It is never boring and does provoke and stimulate, although not as a turn-on, not remotely.

Nearly as extravagant as the characters it depicts, Martin Scorsese's comic, operatically-scaled film is, on a moment-by-moment basis, often madly entertaining due to its live-wire energy, exuberant performances and the irresistible appeal of watching naughty boys doing very naughty things.

Walking With Dinosaurs takes rewarding advantage of a much bigger budget and state-of-the-art technology to bring its impressive collection of Cretaceous creatures to vivid life. But while the walking part’s pretty impressive, the talking part — not so much.

Comedically, everyone's on the same page here, which means that, even when things flag, more fun isn't far off.

Though convincing in its argument that pimps and clients are treated much better than they should be in our legal system as compared to prostitutes, the film presents a picture of America's sex-trade landscape that will feel incomplete to many viewers.

A breathtakingly immersive travelogue that packs a persuasive environmental undercurrent.

The clunky narrative doesn’t ring true for a second, and the hackneyed dialogue is even worse.

Choosing it for his debut as director, Bateman demonstrates the same knack for timing and fine shadings of attitude as he does onscreen.

Although diffuse at times, this documentary delivers a vibrant portrait of a fascinating subculture.

Despite its flaws and unevenness, White Reindeer at least deserves points for not providing another sugarplum-infused view of Christmas.

The film is rugged, skilled, relentless, determined, narrow-minded and focused, everything that a soldier must be when his life is on the line.

Adapting their highly successful stage version to the screen with keen comic-timing but much less cinematic panache, Mathieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patelliere offer up a lively take on love, friendship and baby-naming.

Featuring superb performances by the principal actors, Big Bad Wolves is mesmerizing from start to finish.

It makes savvy use of the well-worn found-footage format, modulating its creepy scenario with considerable skill.

Where Attenborough's script lent an air of dignity to the shorter film, Allen's reading of Philip LaZebnik's cutesy narration has a canned feel, and is unlikely to connect with viewers too young to appreciate cliched humor about the joys of bachelorhood versus the duties of parenting.

After exhibiting an almost craven fidelity to his source material the first time out, Jackson gets the drama in gear here from the outset with a sense of storytelling that possesses palpable energy and purpose.

In this fast-moving, densely plotted black dramedy, a faux scandal raised by an ambitious web TV editor comes close to destroying a number of lives, offering a masterful panorama on urban, middle class China.

Dripping with floridly phony dialogue that no actor should be forced to speak, this paternity mystery uses the Bosnian conflict as the manipulative backdrop to a preposterously overwrought and overlong melodrama.

Park Hong-soo’s debut feature includes enough kinetic action sequences to satisfy genre fans even while its dramatic elements leave something to be desired.

Alternately haunting, inspiring and dreamily meditative, this is a visually majestic film of transfixing moods and textures.

An infectious blast of funky jazz played by a terrific cast and a director at the top of their respective games.

A delightfully old-fashioned kid’s flick with a meaningful message.

The whole thing reeks of fiction being used to process missteps in its makers' own lives. This story isn't nearly ready to leave the shrink's couch.

Though on paper the idea has some potential -- as a historical meditation on the suffering of East Berliners and the arbitrary nature of borders -- its execution stumbles on multiple fronts.

It all goes down easily thanks to a terrific cast.

Mandela is straightforward storytelling of a type that’s somewhat out of fashion, but ultimately no less stirring for it.

Documenting the 2010 journey in somewhat haphazard but always compelling fashion, Pad Yatra: A Green Odyssey well reflects its subjects’ goal of merging spirituality and environmentalism.

Rescued from decay after the director's 2011 death and looking radiant in a 2K restoration, this quiet gem is a time capsule whose potential audience may be small, but will be transported.

A loving biography of a guitarist whose work was "not folk, not blues, not gospel," but drew from and colored those genres and more.

The wholly amateurish doc offers much that has been explored more effectively elsewhere; though it makes a few fresh points as it gets into its second half.

Pray does not browbeat viewers into applauding the artist’s achievement. The filmmaker thoughtfully documents a phenomenon and allows the arguments to continue to rage after the lights come on.

While Lee leaves some of Park's more memorable outrages behind, he and screenwriter Mark Protosevich find one or two ways to up the taboo-testing ante, small surprises that retain the tale's edge without pushing into the realm of exploitation.

This holiday extravaganza with an all-star cast has a lot of failings. But it seems likely to tap into the audience’s enthusiasm for uplifting entertainment.

The proceedings are largely engrossing and the performances are mostly excellent, with especially strong turns by the female leads.

Gori Tere Pyaar Mein’s characters are so engaging, and the stars complement each other so well, that it’s easy to overlook the film’s faults and wish the best for them.

Ever-curious, self-deprecating about occasions in which his fumbling English keeps him from making questions clear, Gondry works with sweet earnestness to understand his subject and convey that understanding to us.

Page's no-regrets spirit and the enraptured testimonials from those who knew her in her prime (including some swooning ex-lovers) overpowers clumsy filmmaking.

As a document of the American political process, Caucus offers an intriguing if limited snapshot of a specific campaign season, but lacks either breadth or depth.

Directors Patrick Alexander Stewart, Gina M. Angelone and Mouna B. Stewart have failed to construct the often emotional personal accounts into a compelling film.

Although a bit too leisurely and featuring a few too many interminable group therapy scenes, the film nonetheless succeeds in packing considerable dramatic impact thanks to its incisive characterizations, realistic dialogue and well-drawn milieu.

Beautifully acted by the largely unknown cast, This is Where We Live is as reticent as its characters, its emotions emerging as much from what’s unsaid as expressed. Its admirably understated approach infuses what could have been an all too predictable, feel good drama with an intriguing complexity.

Passably absorbing to start, Shaul Schwarz’s examination of the issues surrounding Mexican and immigrant musicians who glorify drug lords and their exploits gradually bogs down in repetition and narrative inertia.

Stephen Frears is in full possession of his filmmaking talent in Philomena, one of his most pulled-together dramas in years.

Its hopelessly stodgy execution will test the patience of even the most enthusiastic audiences for faith-based films.

Homefront is sufficiently silly and low-down to be entertaining on a certain marginal level, but it wouldn't appear that those involved, with the possible exception of Franco, approached this with the idea that they might be making good trash; it looks too elaborate and costly for that and the script exhibits no self-aware humor.

A compact, effective thriller set in way-rural Ireland, Jeremy Lovering's In Fear makes the most of three actors, a car and a network of narrow roads winding through the woods.

Gimmicks aside, this decently acted and paced effort shows that the 74-year-old auteur can still be marginally transgressive, if not entirely original.

While a composited scene, in which has-been Lenny lectures his younger self about work ethic and wisdom, has an undeniable poignancy, actual tragedy remains far beyond the film's grasp -- as does any illumination beyond the unsurprising suggestion that Cooke just didn't want success as much as peers like LeBron James.

The doc happily devotes most of its time to a stylish, energetic account of Hanna's career to date and the impact it has had on a generation of women.

The filmmaker, who co-founded ADI with his wife Jan Creamer, documents the dramatic developments in compelling cinema verite fashion.

A quietly effective thriller with a few clever narrative tricks up its sleeve.

Art doc's stylistic quirks detract slightly from a sometimes fascinating portrait.

For all its fandom and self-indulgence, Dear Mr. Watterson does offer some insightful musings about the decline of comic strips in general, with their content ever shrinking due to the diminished state of the newspaper industry.

All of the cast members deliver smooth, capable performances, but this sequel clarifies why Howard has become the biggest star from the original ensemble. (He also gave one of the strongest performances in Lee Daniels’ The Butler this past summer.)

Weekend of a Champion begins as a motorsports movie but ends up a portrait of two wily elder statesmen who have survived into their seventies by skill, stealth and sheer luck.

An admirable idea in theory proves to be a real slog to sit through in Everyday.

What Amir Bar-Lev and Charlie Lightening’s documentary provides that hasn’t been previously available is an amusing portrait of the backstage goings-on.

Proves lightly entertaining in spite of its more heartfelt tendencies.

This is a safe, serviceable, carefully crafted action drama in which the subversive seeds planted in the first story take welcome root.

A self-aware laffer that indulges in rom-com contrivance up until the point it judo-flips them to its own ends.

While the portrait of domestic malaise is occasionally intriguing (and owes much to the original comics), things wind up all-too easily working themselves out in the long run.