A flawed but affecting two-hander that intrigues and frustrates in nearly equal measure.

Despite four credited screenwriters, including Evrenol, the mysteriously titled Baskin is thin on story, instead lurching in and out of a woozy dreamscape before arriving at its extended terror and torture set piece.

Mapplethorpe comes across as remarkably candid and unassuming, though his ambition was always clear.

This ensemble comedic drama maintains a light touch while surveying the challenges of accepting adult responsibilities.

The villain here, Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor, is so intensely annoying that, very early on, you wish Batman and Superman would just patch up their differences and join forces to put the squirrely rascal out of his, and our, misery.

From the very first scene, the rhythm is off, the staging and editing graceless, and the dialogue (the screenplay is by Kyle Pennekamp and Scott Turpel) alternates between trying too hard and not hard enough.

It’s only when the story heads to pure sci-fi territory later on that April stretches itself a bit thin, though a smart epilogue manages to put things in perspective for both the characters and viewer.

That it all works to the extent that it does is due to its undeniably sweet depiction of a close-knit extended family whose members truly care for and help each other. It's cinematic wish fulfillment in this era of broken families and far-off relatives who keep in touch via social media.

Even given the standards of off-the-rails cinematic family reunions, you'd have to look a while to find one as bizarre as Anders Thomas Jensen's Men & Chicken.

This is a laborious film that dulls the human drama at its core. Rather than pulling you into the protagonist's gradual acquaintance with his unfamiliar conscience, it shuts you out, leaving you bored and indifferent.

By turns touching, funny and sometimes strangely existential, David Osit and Malika Zouhali-Worrall’s documentary, destined for broadcast on public television’s POV program next year, succeeds in telling a highly personal story in a surprisingly relatable manner.

Making good use of his camera-department experience on Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations and elsewhere, Shirai seeks out the visual appeal of both the brewery's operation.

A resourceful dreamer needn't be alienated from fields of endeavor usually requiring years of training or unthinkable wealth. Imagination, seriousness and a small set of shop tools are sufficient.

It's so preoccupied with hammering home the point that Armstrong was a liar and a cheat, it can't risk giving him any credit for having charisma to spare, or at least enough cunning to know how to manipulate our current fantasies about heroic sportsmen.

Big Holiday’s episodic road-trip script is a good fit for the film’s sketch-based humor.

With its overt nods to movies, nonlinear structure and purple-tinged dialogue, the self-conscious artifice of Hauck’s first feature can be suffocating. This narrative puzzle should be more fun than it is.

Foodstuffs, metaphysics and a heap of raunchy action add up to something surprisingly hilarious.

The inspirational memoir Miracles From Heaven transfers to the big screen as a wholesome, crowd-pleasing drama, one whose subject is faith and gratitude. The tone is frequently more searching than self-satisfied, and the harrowing medical crisis that drives the family story gives it the nonreligious urgency to preach beyond the choir.

If the story is meant to represent a microcosm of the immigration problem, it’s woefully reductive. If it’s meant to be first and foremost an action thriller, it does have a few nice moves to offer.

Minimalist in terms of action and scope but attentive to the texture of what is onscreen.

Walken is the main attraction here; though the film identifies more with the wayward daughter, played by Amber Heard, it doesn't make her nearly as interesting as his name-dropping, spotlight-hogging entertainer.

This may not be adequate compensation for the end of their series, which gave them so many more opportunities to try on new personalities and take one-gag ideas for a spin. But it will delight the show's fans while winning over others unlucky enough never to have seen it.

The Young Messiah is just, like, barely competent enough that the faith-based target audience won't feel entirely cheated.

The director and his regular editor Eyas Salman notch up the tension by beautiful degrees as Mohammed overcomes each obstacle with ingenuity, charm and, hokey but true, sheer singing skill.

It's as honest and clear-eyed about the past as its predecessor, another in a filmography of unpredictable gems. It may be most like Dazed in that the public could take a while to appreciate it for what it is.

While Chow and Taiwanese star Eddie Peng aren’t going to make anyone forget Tsui Hark and Jet Li’s defining Once Upon a Time in China, or for that matter Jackie Chan’s earlier spin on Wong in Drunken Master, they do a frequently thrilling job with a familiar story.

Lerner alternates between well-observed character detail and clunky mystery-solving developments.

Beautifully captures the distinctive wit of its subject.