Viewers will likely be as confused as the protagonist as to what is going on, and the vague, episodic proceedings ultimately prove repetitive.

What at first looks like a mumblecore comedy with a supernatural twist turns into something darker, and many viewers will not feel like going along for the detour into psychological horror.

A missed opportunity on multiple levels, T2 is stylistically an overwrought rehash which relies heavily on over-caffeinated camerawork and flashy effects (cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle's trademark gritty flair is overwhelmed by a flurry of Dutch angles and freeze-frames) to distract us from its essential paucity of raison d'etre.

Instead of exploding into crime-clan war, the picture trickles into a kind of shrugging, "it is what it is" look at life on the wrong side of the law.

For all its potential, the movie ultimately feels like a frustrating miscalculation; the ingredients are there — it's the recipe that's off.

Visually, the results are quite often striking, and they are also sharply cut together. But there’s a nagging suspicion throughout that there’s been more preparation for especially the set-pieces than would normally be the case on a documentary.

In the moment, the film's simplistic spirit is intoxicating. But take my word for it — the real-world hangover that follows is fierce.

Manages to squeak by with enough charming set-pieces and amusing sight gags to compensate for a stalling storyline.

While the well-acted film's unselfconscious depiction of male desire and homoeroticism is also distinctive, it's undone by muddy storytelling and a shortage of emotional payoff.

Despite some clever touches, the derivative film doesn't manage to live up to its clever premise.

Sutherland brings some believable warmth to a film whose spiritual "aha" moments are generally packaged too tidily to hit home.

There's enough variety in the workplace settings here to keep us interested, but the doc's chronology isn't the smoothest.

Anne Frank's story has always been a moving way of personalizing the horrors of this war, and that remains the case here; but Fouce's dry doc is best suited for screening rooms in history museums.

The glacially paced film is ultimately more interesting for its ethnographic and technical aspects than its rudimentary storyline, although the marvelous deadpan performance by Nyima, an acclaimed Tibetan theater performer, provides a much-needed humanistic quality.

There is not a lot of risk-taking involved in the visual storytelling or in trying to find a cinematic equivalent of the novel’s style, making In Dubious Battle a rather classical period piece for the most part, though one with at least one very solid performance at its center.

It’s an impressive backdrop to what’s otherwise a polished period piece without much of a bite to it, hitting all the right notes but doing nothing that feels exciting or out of the ordinary.

Wheatley's riotous Looney Tunes action comedy is a sporadically amusing assault on the senses, but it looks like it was more fun to make than to watch.

Danger doesn't quite translate into sustained drama here, in part because the reliance on voiceover distances us from the action.

By sticking so slavishly to the original Blair Witch film’s template, the result is a dull retread rather than a full-on reinvention, enlarging the cast numbers this time but sticking to the same basic beats.

As lovely to look at, relaxing and soporific as the perfect summer day sung by David Bowie at the beginning of the film, Wim Wenders’ The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez scatters some nice ideas amid non-stop French dialogue that only speed readers of subtitles will be able to follow fully.

Mainly of interest for the latest impressive turn from British national treasure Timothy Spall — snorting and blustering his way through the plum role of Protestant uber-firebrand Ian Paisley — deficiencies in script and direction render the vehicle less than road-worthy.

With a slick, outsider’s perspective on the City of Angels and some interesting possibilities that are set up early on, this Message gets off to a great start. But the screenplay becomes a muddle and then a mess in its second half.

Strong performances and outstanding cinematography aren't enough to rescue an unfocused and episodic screenplay, which will leave many stranded in a purgatorial cinematic-halfway house between bliss and despair.

The event-stuffed screenplay seems frightened of the running time associated with historical romances, though, excising any occasion for reflection or distraction; as a result, the picture moves with a mechanical predictability that would be considerably more annoying with a less watchable cast in front of us.

A film that admirably tries to remain true to the slightly gritty spirit of its source material. Unfortunately, it also occasionally sprays the wall with maudlin touches and misjudged additions to the story.

Everyone is clearly hiding something. But more pressing than the mystery of Mike’s silence and his parents’ toxic relationship is the sense of a missed opportunity that permeates the movie, sapping its final twist of the solar-plexus wallop it should have delivered.

The Best Democracy Money Can Buy certainly makes many valid points, but they tend to be lost amidst the overriding cutesiness.

Not for the squeamish, Ovredal's chilly slab of body horror ultimately proves less than the sum of its forensically fileted parts.

The handsomely downbeat atmospherics overwhelm its themes of love, parenthood, crime and punishment. The narrative doesn't quite coalesce, and except for a few late-in-the-proceedings moments, it doesn't deliver the grim, indelible shivers of the best noir.

Despite all the splendor, there’s little sense of vision.

The film’s main problem is that it can’t decide what it wants to be and ends up not having enough time to develop anything in any depth.

This is a self-satisfied exercise that's only occasionally as much fun as it thinks it is.

Fin Edquist's generic but pleasant script offers only a couple of groaner puns to those chaperoning kids in the audience ("got a reptile dysfunction, have you?" is an example); but it's brought to solid life by Aussie thesps Toni Collette, Richard Roxburgh, and others.

Hong has a distinctive voice and an interesting track record, but his latest exercise in flimsy whimsy is for indulgent hardcore fans only.

Cassie Jaye's The Red Pill is clumsy and frustrating in many ways. But it demonstrates enough sincerity and openness to challenging ideas — letting representatives of this problematic movement make their case clearly and convincingly — that one wishes it were able to look at multiple sides of this debate at the same time.

Though there’s clearly a compassionate impulse behind Leon F. Butler’s class-conscious screenplay, it rapidly devolves into implausible melodrama.

Dallas Jenkins’ dramedy about a washed-up actor who learns the error of his ways through being exposed to religion doesn’t have an original cinematic bone in its body. But it’s also refreshingly genial and lacking in preachiness for a faith-based film, demonstrating that a lighter touch doesn’t necessary dilute the obvious messaging.

Christopher Smith’s self-consciously stylish genre homage finally feels like a baby film noir, playacting without the requisite bone-deep dread.

Loaded with dark humor, Bates’ script faces considerable challenges developing sympathetic characters.

The subject is a rich one, but the film simply isn’t incisive enough.

It’s all about metaphor and mood, while the storytelling is so lightweight it might not exist. Without it, this drunken boat sailing on poetry can't hold interest for its entire two hour running time.

For those less interested in horticultural matters, however, this Dutch documentary is akin to, well, watching plants grow. The sort of film frequently described as "meditative," it produces a calming but ultimately soporific effect.

Despite its appealing performers and some tasty comic moments, Wilson overestimates our affection for a grating antihero only mildly warmed by Harrelson's ambling charm.

Only the faintest glimmers of genuine, earned emotion pierce through the layers of intense calculation that encumber Ava DuVernay's A Wrinkle in Time.

As with many other portrayals of this ugly period, the movie's central figures and their experiences have been cleansed of complexity, embalmed in a sort of hagiographic glaze that makes even the pain look pretty. Harrowing things happen, but it’s the easiest kind of "tough watch”; we know exactly what we’re supposed to feel and when we’re supposed to feel it.

Proves alternately inspiring and depressing even while skirting uncomfortably close to voyeurism.

While one can admire the commitment, technique, concentration and stamina required to keep the pressure cooker at maximum temperature, it still feels like an exercise, one so dramatically monotonous and tonally high-pitched that you want to escape almost as much as the characters do.

Handsomely packaged, the film unfortunately is also too well-behaved and lacking in psychological depth to really set itself apart from countless other WWII dramas.

Honest performances from Fichtner, Jon Voight as the school's principal, and others make the picture watchable, but can't make up for lackluster storytelling.

Ratcheting up Eddie’s malevolence in ways large and small, Cage delivers the latest installment in his singularly unfettered brand of over-the-top screen madness.

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

If it had skipped the clichéd supernatural elements to instead concentrate on the relationship between the two central characters, Don’t Knock Twice might have emerged as an interesting film.

The screenplay, credited to the five original Blazing Saddles writers as well as Ed Stone and Nate Hopper, is relentlessly silly but only intermittently funny.

Doesn't bring anything new to its very tired genre.

The film is ingratiating enough, but its main value is to make us eager for another, more substantial Shelton movie long before another decade has slipped by.

A pervy premise and top-flight cast yield a mixed-bag spy flick.

The film is often so deterministically plotted that a sense of creative detachment hangs over far too many scenes, leaving an impression that the filmmakers may sometimes be more interested in making grand statements than in engaging interest.

It’s all about as clichéd and predictable as it sounds, although the proceedings are mildly enjoyable in an old-fashioned, Andy Hardy sort of way.

Klein conveys his characters’ shifting mental states with expressionistic sequences that are often unevenly framed, shot from behind his subjects or even unfocused. The result can be intentionally disorienting, but not always particularly revealing. By contrast, the performances are far more compelling.

Despite the strong efforts of everyone involved, Havenhurst proves all too unimaginative in its formulaic recycling of genre tropes.

The movie flirts with the usual mixed-signals of romantic comedy, but is on much more solid ground with sight gags (as when Drac's jello-like blob friend happily absorbs the slice-and-smash violence Ericka aims at the vampire) and character work that depends less on celebrity voice talent than on body-language animation.

Unfortunately, he (Schwarzenegger)doesn’t quite have the chops to do full justice to the material, and his decades-long, popcorn movie image proves a further impediment. Despite the seriousness of his intentions, Aftermath doesn’t pack sufficient emotional punch.

Even if the immediacy of the director's approach gives the material an electric charge, 100 minutes of it becomes monotonous.

If you’re going to attempt a quasi-farcical look at the behavior of thirtysomething strivers in Hollywood, you need to cut more sharply and dig more deeply than does L.A. Times.

Donald Cries demonstrates that cringeworthy isn’t necessarily the same as funny.

First-time director McMurray, who worked as an associate producer on Fruitvale Station, does a decent job of staging the action and maintaining viewer attention on the straight-line story. But there’s no subtext, investigation of his characters’ various stories or motivations for doing what they’re doing. It’s a very shallow film.

Australian director Jonathan Teplitzky has fashioned a small-scale chamber drama from huge historical events, with a functional script and modest budget that fails to match the grand sweep of its story.

That the film works to the extent that it does is a testament to Murphy’s ability to command the screen with stillness. His anguished expressions and halting body language go a long way toward filling in the frustrating narrative blanks.

On the plus side, Mifti does at times become an endearing person despite her big mouth and bad behavior, with credit due to Bauer for her rather subdued depiction of a girl searching for emotional attachment in a world where everyone seems blinded by their own pleasures or problems.

A little more subtlety and a more nuanced approach to the dynamics of this culture clash would have made the film that little bit more effective.

With its uneven performances and purposeful touches of theatrical artifice, Alligator Girl is finally more distancing than involving.

Give Me Future only comes alive when it focuses on the underlying forces that allow the trio's radical sense of fun to take hold.

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.

The film conjures a strong sense of atmosphere, with the gritty NYC locations — yes, there are still some in the gentrified city — well captured by cinematographer Juanmil Azpiroz. And the performances are first-rate.... But by the time it reaches its hoary climax...Wolves has reached such an absurd level of schmaltz that it practically feels like a parody of itself.

The Demon Strikes Back soldiers loudly along, alternating between high-octane, digitally enhanced skirmishes and the equally cacophonic bickering between the monk and the monkey.

The lead performers deliver faultless performances, and are certainly not tough on the eyes. But their efforts are not enough to lift this moody erotic thriller above its pretensions.

The movie is well acted and mostly absorbing, but it spells out everything so painstakingly that there's zero room for subtext.

The Ticket is underwhelming in several ways, but the performance driving it is magnetic — and helps alleviate some of the bludgeoning obviousness of a morality tale that New York-based Israeli writer-director Ido Fluk hasn’t fully figured out how to tell.

Chadha has distilled a fascinating and epic true story into a starchy, stuffy, sanitized period piece that never fully engages on an emotional or educational level.

It’s tricky, to put it mildly, to use suicidal impulses as a story engine for a comedy, and director Rob Spera and screenwriter Jared Rappaport don’t quite pull it off as they navigate the middle ground between dark humor and emotional catharsis.

While the fuzzy take-home message of peaceful coexistence is something most viewers can get behind, it is also too simplistic and banal to sustain an entire movie.

The warming affection that the director has bestowed on so many of his best characters is largely missing. In fact, he seems barely engaged.

In Water & Power: A California Heist, Zenovich tackles a subject of enormous importance, but fails to match that import with dramatic storytelling.

It feels too much like we’ve been here, done this already.

Below Her Mouth (you can use your imagination regarding the title) is an undeniably steamy effort that delivers plenty of heat in its sex scenes while falling significantly short in dramatic terms.

Meyer aims to emulate the jagged freeform jazz that permeates his soundtrack, but this wan indie is strictly middle-of-the-road background music.

Olszanska gives an impressively intense performance, if a little too mannered at first, but neither she nor the filmmakers ever get beneath the character's skin.

The filmmakers take a heroic, action-packed, high-tech approach that empties out some of the originality of this unique female heroine.

Carax’s trademark bonkers magic elevates many of these scenes, to be sure. But there’s also a nagging naiveté, even a silliness to the storytelling that kept bumping me out of the sluggish drama.

Visually atmospheric but tonally all over the place, Hot Summer Nights, a first feature by Elijah Bynum, has much to appreciate but ultimately possesses the sampler-platter vibe of a director’s demo reel.

Mary Magdalene is an uneasy viewing experience, ponderous and disjointed in places, but also crafted with conviction and a strong aesthetic vision.

Rather than relying on amplifying typical genre conventions, Wingard methodically lays the foundation to set up this particular Death Note adaptation for a potential sequel, but the outcome is more deliberate than inspired.

An amiable if hardly unusual buddy pic.

Although imparting an important message about the devastating effects of global warming, The Penguin Counters is too rambling and diffuse to have significant impact while lacking the accessible qualities that would make it appeal to younger audiences.

Suburbicon is just too obvious in its satirical depiction of the dubious morality and social inequality behind the squeaky-clean façade of postwar American life, though it's watchable enough, and a distinct improvement for Clooney on his last directorial outing.

Like an athlete who leaves it all on the field, the film leaves it all in the moment and on the screen, and there's really nothing to take away afterwards. There is nothing to think about, no nuances to contemplate, no connection with these characters who exist only in moments of hyper-tension and crisis, no greater truths to consider other than to prevail.

The pic relies almost entirely on the subtle comic gifts of its two leads, finding little in the way of plot to kick its characters into laugh-generating action.

The circus theme already feels played out from the start, while the story heads in mostly predictable directions despite the limited pleasure of seeing those mighty morphin power crackers in action.