Never less than gripping.

A giddily over-the-top, super-entertaining goof on the Everyman crimefighter flick written and directed with evident relish by James Gunn.

With a homicidal tire as the main character, the film isn't scary enough to qualify as horror and not nearly as amusing as a black comedy should be.

That the film works to the degree that it does is largely due to the sensitive performances. Bonnaire delivers a beautifully modulated turn.

A well-told tale, and though its compact running time makes it a fine TV fit, its visual poetry is worth a big-screen look.

In The 5th Quarter, the filmmakers' hearts are in the right place but the execution couldn't be more wrong-headed.

Successful to a point (though seemingly unaware of the chuckles it produces in between shrieks), the movie has strong prospects with genre audiences but won't spawn a phenomenon resembling the filmmakers' previous franchise.

It's tempting to call The Four Times documentary-like, except that documentaries usually explain what it is we are seeing. Instead, Frammartino uses his background as a video installation artist to create something that one could just as easily come across playing at an art gallery.

Certain to create a gaping divide between generational and aesthetic camps, Sucker Punch is a largely grim and unpleasant display of technical wizardry wrapped around a story that purports to be inspirational.

This time, tedium sets in early and never loosens its grip. The gags are obvious, predictable and dull.

A terrifically engaging picture of life beyond the headlines, My Perestroika lifts the veil of Cold War mystery.

The grim drama is undeniably punishing, but Considine's screenplay laces in moments of warm human contact that puncture the harshness like delicate grace notes.

A Greek film with style and verve, writer-director Athina Rachel Tsangari's second feature, Attenberg, is an offbeat coming-of-age tale.

Dramatically but unevenly explores the lives of four Palestinian women during the years of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Could easily be filled with cliches but in the hands of filmmaker John Gray, it's a sparkling piece of entertainment that deserves a wide audience.

Has plenty of contemporary sparkle and life, courtesy of a masterful central performance by grande dame Catherine Deneuve.

After a promisingly tart start, the strident satire stumbles and falls into a sitcom-y hole from which it never emerges, despite the game efforts of its dynamic ensemble.

More stylishly filmed than many others of its ilk, but at the end of the day, is just an ordinary slasher film.

Part murder mystery, part dysfunctional family drama and part meditation on the elusiveness of the American dream, Motherland doesn't fully succeed on any of its levels.

An effectively emotional look at the power of music therapy to trigger memories lost after brain surgery.

Won't win many new fans for the high-stepping dancer. It might even cost him a few old ones.

Limitless should be so much smarter than it is.

The movie boils down to one character, acting under enormous pressures of space and time, racing to solve a mystery. In this case, that may be good enough.

This fascinating documentary about famed photographer Bill Cunningham features interviews with Vogue editor Anna Wintour, author Tom Wolfe and New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.

This touching if insular drama about a woman grieving over the recent death of her aunt is well acted and incisively observed, although it's ultimately too low-key to have much dramatic impact.

Documentaries have been coming down on humanity so hard in recent years -- from "An Inconvenient Truth" to the latest Oscar winner, "Inside Job" -- that it's refreshing to bask in a bit of optimism coming from a nonfictional film.

As it thuds along from one wolf attack to the next, Catherine Hardwicke's first film since taking leave of Bella and her toothy friends adamantly refuses to provide any wit, humor or fun.

The deadening and sometimes laughable litany of shouted military-style dialogue eventually pummels into submission any hope for fresh creative angles on this well-worn format.

The film is only "superior" though, not great. The themes feel shopworn and devotee of crime fiction can point to the any number of antecedents for these characters.

Horror film buffs like to giggle as much as scream but there're no giggles here.

The three most important things in movies are story, story, story so the movie never comes off as the considerable achievement it truly is.

A pedestrian chronicle of an eventful true story.

The most illuminating nuggets come from playwrights, authors and journalists, including Tony Kushner, Terrence McNally, Larry Kramer, Michael Cunningham, Paul Rudnick, Dan Savageand the late Dominick Dunne, who helped get the movie version made.

Monogamy doesn't manage to find anything particularly new to say, and says it very, very slowly.

Binoche has a chance to display her noteworthy gifts as a comedienne, switching effortlessly from English to French and Italian to build a character that is resentful, manipulative and seductive all at once.

Smartly observed and precisely visualized, 3 Backyards is nonetheless a bore: We never care for any of the characters and their lives of "quiet desperation."

Fassbender cuts a more prosaic, realistic figure as the tormented, romantic Rochester than did the screen's most celebrated performer of the role, Orson Welles, in the effective 1944 version.

Affectionate, funny and action-packed sci-fi spoof.

Think "Napoleon Dynamite" and "Little Miss Sunshine." In many ways, Win Win fits that mold, which should make it McCarthy's most broadly appealing movie to date.

Rarely do films from Hollywood emerge in such an inane manner. Its rote characters are inevitably in predictable situations with no subtext or subtlety to any of their predicaments.

Michael Dowse's aggressively unfunny film which seeks the lowest common denominator in nearly every scene.

The film is fresh and funny, but it is also meandering, at times vague and defiantly uncommercial.

It might even live up to that title: When it ends, you wouldn't mind a bit more, please.

On any number of levels, "Devil" is troublesome at best, offensive at worst.

Most exceptional is the visual style, which makes even the best animated 3D look like a poor cousin.

Director Patrick Lussier and his co-screenwriter Todd Farmer string together smash-up car chases, hyper-violent physical clashes, flying viscera and a dollop of sex and nudity with ludicrous dialogue and only a passing concern for logic in this high-octane trash.

The Grace Card is a surprisingly hard-edged, faith-based drama.

George Nofi pulls off a relative rarity in his feature film debut by creating a genuinely romantic fantasy suspense thriller.

The slapstick and action comedy interludes are haphazardly executed at best, and matters aren't helped by the film's incredibly ugly look.

Skateland is every coming-of-age-after-high-school movie you've ever seen with a formulaic plot and well-worn characters.

Militantly superficial and revels overmuch in its campy gay sensibility, but is sporadically fun if not taken too seriously.

There are eight individual decisions to be made here, yet Beauvois never humanizes any of his monks. The film instead consumes itself with songs, communal prayers and nightly meals.

Levesque, soon to be seen in an action movie, "Inside Out," that is probably more suited to his talents, is a reasonably engaging and likeable screen presence.

Squanders its timely illegal alien theme with a predictable and unconvincing story line that makes "Green Card" seem a classic by comparison.

Won't likely disappoint fans of men-in-drag comedy but doesn't offer much that's original or funny.

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

Director Will Cannon keeps the energy level cranked but over-amplifies the dramatics to shrill effect, resulting in an unfortunate tone that undermines the serious-minded intent.

The movie is a mixed bag, with many of the elements fun and intriguing, but since this is also a Michael Bay-produced movie, CG monsters and cartoon bad guys gum up a third act.

Director Jaume Collet-Serra provides a steady flow of suspense and a very Polanski-esque feeling of paranoia.

Whatever one's view of Christian evangelical beliefs, from strictly a horror-film standpoint the movie needs a better villain.

The clash of cultures isn't exactly groundbreaking but Qasim "Q" Basir's feature debut is told through the eyes of a young, black American Muslim, a perspective that has rarely been seen.

The predicable, overlong romantic farce has enough sass and sex appeal to appease fans of stars Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston.

Bound to disappoint diehard Winters fans while leaving the uninitiated baffled, Certifiably Jonathan doesn't begin to fully suggest the range of the comedian's brilliance and lasting influence.

Although scattershot in its approach and relying a bit too heavily on cutesy animation, Orgasm Inc. is an eye-opening exposé.

The movie comes up short on inspiration despite a stellar voice cast that includes James McAvoy and Emily Blunt and a toe-tapping songbook by Elton John and Bernie Taupin.

It generally succeeds, too, thanks to a visually energetic approach by director Jon Chu that keeps all the obligatory backstage/onstage bits moving fluidly.

While the concept may sound schematic, it is brought to vivid life by wonderful characterizations.

Designed to make you laugh and squirm, Lovers of Hate does more of the latter.

Entertaining and comprehensive in its account of the man's career.

Punishing for some, it could be just the cup of tea for the young male demographic.

Not everyone will wax lyrical about this enigmatic and troubling film, which is also Chan-dong's most slow-moving one. But those with an eye for reading between the lines can find layers of meaning.

It's not exactly "The Hangover," but the dialogue and situations often get distinctly gamey.

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

Managing nary a single original idea throughout its 93-minute running time, the film does benefit from a cast of sexy young TV stars who should attract the desired female teen demographic.

Mistaking arrested development for enlightened innocence, Waiting for Forever is an indigestible hash of whimsy, drama, romance and, for good measure, crime.

Banal dialogue, over-modulated performances and melodramatic scoring combine forces to sink the stirringly photographed proceedings quicker than that treacherous flash flood.

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.

Mumblecore meets Arthur Conan Doyle in the ambitious, if not always satisfying, Cold Weather.

Features sitcom-style stock characters and situations, not to mention the sort of ethnic stereotypes to be found in TV ads for fast-food Mexican restaurant chains.

Like many action stars, Statham is good at cool brooding, but West's frantic style works against this.

The Rite becomes more ludicrous as it goes along, with more than a few lines of dialogue from Michael Petroni's over-the-top screenplay eliciting unintended titters.

Compared to his stellar hit "Ip Man" - a biopic on the Wing Chun master who tutored Bruce Lee - Wilson Yip's more lavishly produced sequel Ip Man 2 is a fistful of hits and misses.

As frank, discerning and eloquent as its subjects, The Woodmans is one of the most affecting art-themed documentaries.

Easily one of the most dynamic cinematic portraits of that decaying, vibrant, impossible city ever made; it treats the city itself as a character.

A "non sequel" to Alex Cox's 1984 classic "Repo Man," the crazily plotted and deliberately garish Repo Chick only serves to provide further evidence of the cult director's diminishing talents.

The outcome is a flamingly sexy soap opera whose satire on high society is sometimes as savage as Claude Chabrol's "La ceremonie."

Never quite achieves the balance of melodrama and dark comedy for which it's aiming.

Predictable, cutesy and nowhere near hot-blooded enough.

Beyond its visual splendors, however, the film achieves searing moral power.

Fast-paced and episodic, the film at times provides such a torrent of information that it becomes more wearisome than enlightening.

While the film is occasionally frustrating in its lack of analysis, it nonetheless delivers a riveting portrait of the driven and troubled Mugianis.

There's a hint of 'Twin Peaks' and a large helping of the Coen Bros. in this offbeat, cleverly crafted French thriller.

As an allegory on power, corruption and rough justice, it has flashes of intelligence and political acumen.

Chen's direction is his most staid yet, but the riveting story speaks for itself.

The Dilemma is so tone deaf to its themes that it thinks it's a light and slightly rude Vince Vaughn movie. It's not.

Never achieves sufficient traction to go the blockbuster distance.

Played for laughs drawn from characters rather than funny lines, the Norwegian film is a charmer with Stellan Skarsgard for once in a role worthy of his attention.

Cage supplies energy but no depth in his portrayal of a disillusioned knight. Ditto that for Perlman, who never feels comfortable in the sidekick role so he pretty much goes through the (exaggerated) motions.