Thoughtful and less sensationalistic than its premise might suggest, it's made for arthouses and offers a fine showcase for costar Rutger Hauer.

Reitman keeps a strong grip on all the aspects of the story to prevent it from becoming corny, unduly melodramatic or obvious.

Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Bruhl excel as, respectively, British wild man and hedonist James Hunt and Austrian by-the-books tactician Niki Lauda.

Perhaps the nature of the story is such that the film can’t help but be obvious and quite melodramatic at times, but it gets better as it goes along and builds to a moving finish.

If certain pieces of the last act are less convincing than what precedes it, the themes underlying the illicit emigration resonate with the viewer's knowledge that, in the real world, two of these Cubans actually did escape.

Prisoners can at times be a hard film to watch, but thanks to all the talent involved, it’s even harder to shake off.

Solid performances are undercut by lack of storytelling integrity in this plodding biopic.

The actress (Amanda Plummer) delivers a beautifully understated, emotive turn that gives this otherwise opaque movie some much needed heart.

For all its thoughtful analysis, the film is more anecdotal than truly enlightening. While its cheerleading approach to the problem is admirable, it seems more designed to appeal to the heart than the head.

The film is that rare modern horror movie that doesn’t simply fabricate its scares with the standard bag of postproduction tricks. Instead it builds them via a bracing command of traditional suspense tools... This is polished film craft.

Getaway seems built for non-English speaking territories in which dialogue is as disposable as Bulgarian police cars. If only those audiences were as dumb as the action itself.

At once the most realistic and beautifully choreographed film ever set in space, Gravity is a thrillingly realized survival story spiked with interludes of breath-catching tension and startling surprise.

Unfortunately, writer-director Scott Walker's film is a muddled and strangely inert one, generating little of the suspense or anguish its subject requires; despite its high-profile cast.

A couple of scenes toward the end do generate the suspense that the whole movie needed. But the impact is too muted, and an air of tired familiarity ultimately curdles the entire enterprise.

Co-directors Jason Lapeyre and Robert Wilson balance humor and fun with a little fear in a thoroughly accessible way.

The real defeat in this ambling fairy tale of hardship, abandonment and resilience is that two potentially winning central characters -- and the tender young actors who play them -- are let down by a programmed screenplay that’s short on narrative muscle.

The democratic nature of the project and its exploration here jibes with the story of the Vogels, who (to put it mildly) don't conform to the stereotype of the filthy-rich art patron.

There’s no denying the inherent emotional power of watching Wampler, aided by two experienced climbers, endure his arduous quest to climb a mountain twice the height of the Empire State Building.

The filmmaker documents the proceedings in refreshingly matter-of fact-fashion, thankfully avoiding the temptation to overly sentimentalize or mine cheap humor and contrived suspense from the proceedings.

Director Suri Krishnamma has taken it upon himself to create one of the most depressing films of the year.

Annette Haywood-Carter’s slow-paced film features a plethora of colorful characters and incidents that register with little dramatic impact.

The filmmakers’ intent to depict them as “normal guys” mostly succeeds, primarily due to their not inconsiderable charm.

Despite the overstuffed assortment of vampires, werewolves, warlocks and demons of all shapes and sizes, The Mortal Instruments seldom feels like anything more than a shameless, soulless knockoff.

Though full of material that will move sports fans, some questions of emphasis and lack of polish make the film less galvanizing than it might've been.

While its theme of youthful empowerment inevitably strikes an emotional chord, the film never manages to achieve any dramatic steam, plodding along in mildly diverting but essentially bland fashion.

Even as a quasi-experimental work of subjective surrealism, Escape From Tomorrow is massively erratic and isn't particularly original. But it must also be said that its take on Disney World, as well as many of its individual images, are indelible and won’t be easily forgotten.

Evans directs energetically, and the personable actors help to keep us involved, but the picture skims stubbornly along the surface.

In the absence of sympathetic characters, a little humor would have gone a long way here.

Although it offers some insight into his distinctive technique, it could have gone much further. But viewers will appreciate spending time with this cheerful, unassuming man, and will enjoy seeing the artist acknowledged by celebrities who owe him so much

It’s not bad, but it’s ineffectual -- shuffling from one semi-satirical vignette to the next and then veering into soul-searching territory while generating only mild engagement.

The film doesn’t fully succeed in elucidating its complex issues. But the wide-spread problem it explores is clearly undeniable, and at the very least this rough-hewn but provocative documentary will hopefully inspire further discussion.

The film delivers almost exactly what fans of the first installment are hoping for.

Capturing the spirit of an artist and the quickly-fading moment in media history when his work could have real nationwide impact, Michael Stevens' Herblock: The Black & The White pays homage to the great editorial cartoonist with testimonials from a who's-who of D.C. journalists and opinion-makers.

A luminous central performance from Golshifteh Farahani distinguishes an ambitious if somewhat monotonously wordy adaptation of a prize-winning best-seller.

Although the film serves as a charming introduction to audiences new to the Bollywood genre, those well studied in the history of Shah Rukh Khan movies will be most rewarded, since the screenplay and songs make dozens of references to his earlier films.

Perhaps keenly aware of the short attention spans and the reluctance in the ordinary viewer to countenance long-lingering malice on screen – especially among good-looking, self-proclaimed friends – everything gets neatly resolved sharply and swiftly, so that shouting matches will quickly give way to yet another round of gags and all-round tomfoolery.

Funny but less successful as comedy than as a cry of you-screwed-us-up solidarity.

The filmmakers may have hoped to make a timely commentary on the amorality in our executive suites, but they end up merely restating the obvious. Maybe the whole thing would have played better as a corporate comedy, the kind that Doris Day and Rock Hudson made some 50 years ago.

Inspiring if not inspired, Lee Daniels' The Butler is a sort of Readers' Digest overview of the 20th century American civil rights movement centered on an ordinary individual with an extraordinary perspective.

A compelling tale even for viewers with no interest in the sweet science.

There are just enough laugh-out-loud moments here to excuse the lurches into shameless, tear-jerking sentimentality.

Though it lacks the specific argumentative point of view that might have carried it into the mainstream, its sympathetic approach to subjects offers a compelling human perspective on questions that get too little attention in debates about health care.

While visually engaging, this production of Disneytoon Studios -- it was originally slated to go direct-to-DVD -- lacks the sort of character depth and dramatic scope normally associated with the Pixar brand.

Tiny Times certainly offers fantastical lifestyles which is nearly unattainable for most of its viewers. But what makes the film even more beguiling is probably its inability to create empathy, as it goes without accounting for where these individuals came from and why their friendships were so rock-solid.

The Thor Freudenthal-helmed sequel lacks the energetic zip of its predecessor.

The film's slender conceit is given some weight by its 11-year-old leading lady Sydney Aguirre, whose portrait of a flinty, instinctively mischievous tomboy growing up without benefit of parental guidance provides gratification even when there's not much going on.

La Camioneta: The Journey of One American School Bus is just what the title indicates — and that turns out be an intimate and vivid report on a surprising connection between North and Central America.

Director Rawson Marshall Thurber adequately manages the mechanics demanded here but adds no finesse or grace notes.

Only the bravura of the cast, first and foremost Park and Lee (both veterans of Unbowed), generates sufficient interest to see the film through to its surprising conclusion, recounted in a respectful coda many years later.

Watching your friends’ actual wedding videos, however painful, would be a more edifying experience than sitting through Breakup at a Wedding.

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

Thematically diffuse, tonally inconsistent and blighted by an inauthentic feel for its story’s time and place, it sits awkwardly between sober human drama and lighter dysfunctional-family turf, constantly striving for unearned emotions.

What makes the film work is that this potentially lurid material is treated at all times with sensitivity and probing psychological seriousness.

All the interest and good will built up by the sharply conceived preliminaries is washed away in a succession of scenes that feel crushingly routine and generic, not to mentioned guided by ideological urges.

A riveting and often hilarious demonstration of the Slovenian philosopher’s uncanny ability to turn movies inside out and accepted notions on their head.

Narrated in unobtrusive fashion by Forest Whitaker and featuring a jaunty Afropop soundtrack, the film is crisp and economical, with the filmmaker carefully avoiding extraneous melodramatics. They are, after all, hardly necessary in a tale that already contains such inherently powerful drama.

You can’t make this stuff up. But Smash and Grab: The Story of the Pink Panthers would be fascinating even if it wasn’t so timely.

The picture survives its excesses thanks to winning chemistry between stars Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg, who animate banter-heavy dialogue and click so well one wonders why they haven't shared the screen before.

Linsanity reaffirms that the best sports stories originate with dimensional, relatable subjects who earn respect and admiration through their personal struggles and triumphs.

The movie becomes a survival tale and is more successful in its grueling, slightly crazed second half. The Goetzes do a better job capturing the terrain's physical extremes and the challenge of endurance than they do depicting a relationship.

As a National Geographic-style pictorial, The Machine is modestly engaging.

Beyond a few chuckle-worthy one-liners and some amusing visual comedy, there’s not much to engage adults, although the wee ones should be distracted enough.

A no-budget "Alien" ripoff with little reason to exist beyond the few creature-effects shots its design team now can add to its reel, Roger Christian's Stranded might leave viewers yearning for the director's "Battlefield Earth" -- a film that, terrible though it was, at least couldn't be accused of a lack of ambition.

More a filmed haunted house than a movie, the picture is in love with the cobbled-together monsters on offer and will engender similar emotions in many horror buffs.

Babbit's flat direction has none of the lurid appeal or humor that (along with a much more appealing cast) sustained John McNaughton's notionally similar "Wild Things" through crazy plot contrivances.

The basic story has been told many times before, but it’s intriguingly retold by screenwriter Philip Gelatt and director Sebastian Cordero in this low-budget, bare-bones rendering of a familiar theme.

Far from the renegade, boundary-pushing, sexually explicit sensation that its makers have been suggesting, The Canyons is a lame, one-dimensional and ultimately dreary look at peripheral Hollywood types not worth anyone's time either onscreen or in real life.

Reteaming to play a duo similar to the one in A Prophet, Rahim and Arestrup maintain the film’s tense and sinister tone – the former providing a convincing mix of fragility and machismo, and the latter looking and acting more and more like Brando in the latter half of his career.

Whether one is pro-life, pro-choice or without an opinion on the issue, After Tiller provides personal insight into a heart-wrenching, complex reality. The film does not pretend to be an answer to the abortion controversy but rather a presentation of the people who are demonized, correctly or incorrectly, for their actions.

You ought to have to be an unusually interesting person, or at least be capable of presenting your commonplace tribulations in an interesting light, before you can ask moviegoers to spend fifteen bucks to watch you onscreen. Nina Davenport's First Comes Love doesn't buy into this rule.

Making a convincingly assured feature debut, TV and web series writer-director Carey's script nails the raunchy-sweet tone required to bring off this R-rated teen-centered comedy with remarkable charm and relatability, mining a rich vein of girl-centered sexual curiosity and experimentation "loosely inspired" by personal experience.

Until a third act that collapses in a harebrained heap, the director largely succeeds in keeping the more cartoonish aspects at bay, roughing up the surface with organically staged fight scenes and, crucially, raising the stakes by stripping his hitherto indestructible hero of his self-healing powers.

While this is indeed a likeable enough group, watching them interact with each other over the course of 80 minutes becomes a bit wearisome.

Doesn’t exactly dig very deep, but its often fascinating archival footage and stories of royal lineage dating back to the days of Queen Victoria (who bore no less than nine children) surely will delight devoted Anglophiles.

This is a second-rate special effects-dominated 3D entry that will join several prominent would-be blockbusters that need not be mentioned on the summer junk heap.

Although marred by a couple of too-convenient plot contrivances, this often humorous drama lands firmly in the plus column among the Woodman's recent works.

This stupefying dull mockumentary purports to explore themes of media manipulation and political propaganda, but whatever points it’s attempting to make are buried amidst the ponderous goings-on that will result in a quick exit from theaters.

Marked by incisive characterizations and fine performances, Big Words is aptly titled, referring not only to the name of one of its lead characters but also to the torrent of dialogue driving its skimpy but evocative narrative.

Whatever suspense that might have been generated by the violently gory goings-on is dissipated by the sheer visual incomprehensibility.

In Drug War, Hong Kong genre master Johnnie To gives a superlative lesson on how to give an updated, thoroughly engrossing twist to the classic cops-and-robbers chase.

The problem is, despite the fact that the cast is filled with a gallery of veteran comic performers, few of the characters they portray are very interesting.

While weighed down by digressions and contraptions, Man of Tai Chi is an adequate and ambitious effort from a first-time director, who could have enhanced his on-screen philosophical arguments with a bit more depth and done with a touch less of the admittedly riveting man-to-man melee.

Not that it isn’t entertaining, but the film's premise is certainly well past its “use by” date, resulting in another passably palatable sequel distinguished by a lack of narrative and stylistic coherence that could potentially underpin a really viable franchise.

There are simply too many characters jostling for attention and too many competing plot strands in a not-quite-seamless marriage of hard-edged social realism with a lyrical novelistic overlay. That said, the film is rich in poignant moments and negotiates its frequent shifts from violence to gentleness to sorrow with sensitivity.

The handsomely shot, expertly button-pushing scare-fest has the polish and the cast to draw older audiences who grew up on shockers built from performances rather than CGI.

While the pleasures of the brief (65 minutes) Viola are modest, it displays an imagination and stylishness that marks the young filmmaker as someone to watch.

Beneath gets capsized as much by its knuckleheaded script as by its somewhat risible giant flesh-eating fish.

An attractively designed but narratively challenged, one-note film.

Surprisingly for a writer turned director, the most evident shortcomings with Garcia’s feature originate with the script. With barely any backstory to support them, the characters consistently appear to lack the motivations necessary for their actions.

Wasteland is a deconstructed heist film that eschews the genre’s usual quick cutting and gritty visuals in favor of a quieter, more intimate approach. While it doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel, it does offer a distinct way of watching it spin, with a young, fresh-faced cast to help bring it to life.

Obvious parallels to "Thelma & Louise" do little to raise the dramatic stakes here.

Now that the filmmaker has reached a certain age, she no longer seems to have her finger on her generation’s pulse. Case in point: The Hot Flashes, a ribald comedy whose menopause-referencing title is all too indicative of its pandering humor.

Copeland's film benefits from a cast familiar from such offbeat TV comedies as "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" and "Parks and Recreation," but it tends to embody conventions instead of subverting them, resulting in a product with only a bit more personality than the generic caffeine dispensary at its heart.

Featuring veteran Austrian theater actor Philipp Hochmair and former circus performer Walter Saabel playing loosely fictionalized versions of themselves, The Shine of Day sporadically registers with beautifully observed moments even while suffering from its lack of a compelling narrative.

Throughout, gags are cartoonishly broad and afforded so little time for setup and delivery we seem to be watching less a story than a catalog of tossed-out material.

This striking cinematic collage provides a hauntingly personal perspective on a country that has been wracked by strife from its very beginnings.

Despite its noteworthy cast who presumably had some time to fill between better gigs, this is the sort of instantly disposable B-movie effort that Quentin Tarantino would have chucked in the wastebasket after a first draft.

Director Vincent Sandoval (Senorita) seems most interested in is using the convent as a metaphor for Filipino society in the Seventies, which buried its head in the sand while president Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law and police tortured and murdered opposition protestors.