What starts out as a familiar kind of portrait...eventually grows a layer or two more complex.

For the most part the film is compelling, with Jones' riveting performance as the alternately sympathetic and nasty protagonist anchoring the proceedings.

While the violent sequences are very effectively staged, the results are a strange hybrid that doesn't quite work. Lacking the antic, witty humor of something like the similarly conceived Gremlins or the full-out gore of a traditional horror flick, Krampus never really finds it niche.

Victoria is definitely what you would call a passive protagonist, and although the film subtly explores questions of ethnic identity, it doesn't necessarily keep one engaged until the end.

Ericson Core’s Point Break strips the silly fun and relatively straight-ahead narrative from the original for a humorless, if photogenic spin on extreme crime.

Failing to live up to it anarchic convictions by adding sympathetic aspects to its central character shortly before the conclusion, Uncle Nick, much like the sorts of holiday celebrations it depicts, is ultimately too strained to be enjoyable.

A sort of maritime Donner Party, In the Heart of the Sea is a rugged but underwhelming true-life drama of a cursed 19th century whaling voyage.

Heneral Luna is a sturdy, stirring if perhaps sometimes simplistic historical epic about bravery and treachery in a country at war.

Ali has found his footing as surely as has his protagonist, Ved (Ranbir Kapoor), in this satisfying and emotionally challenging tale of a young New Delhi man struggling to determine which parts of his life are artifice and which are real.

At once comical and poignant, this offbeat, true-life show-biz tale deserves instant cult status.

Although undercut at times by self-indulgence that includes navel-gazing narration by the filmmaker, Rock in the Red Zone delivers a moving portrait of a musical community that's managed to survive under far greater pressures than worrying about the next gig.

With artistic flourishes, N.C. Heikin’s documentary portrait fits the exceptional life story into a biographical boilerplate that covers the general trajectory and turning points.

Pairing another Firth (no relation) with crackerjack newcomer Taron Edgerton, Kingsman's fizzingly droll chutzpah can't help but make Spooks: The Greater Good, for all Peter Firth's ballast, seem dowdily old-school in comparison.

Gathering vintage interviews from a couple of different documentaries, the film movingly observes a man who can be physically unsettled by things he saw several decades prior.

The seemingly autobiographical film from writer/director/star Philipp Karner may have been therapeutic for him, but it is too opaque and slow-moving to compel the attention of many audiences beyond the gay festival circuit.

Bolshoi Babylon explores the bizarre case in more detail, but grows even more interesting when it examines how this storied cultural institution struggles to survive tempestuous politics both inside and outside the theater walls.

If Berardini isn't very generous to the company's execs, shortchanging what is likely a genuine belief that they're doing good while making a ton of money, he does spend time with officers who, for a time, embraced the Taser eagerly.

Mostly one wishes for a more concise edit that would pull this impressive avalanche of memories and faded photos together a lot sooner.

"The truth is malleable,” an onscreen title declares at the beginning of the film. It’s also somewhat elusive in this saga, which is less an investigation than a spirited tribute. But the combination of humor and grit is always intriguing.

Despite it’s entirely predictable, cliché-embracing script, executed with a shrewd mix of forelock-tugging rectitude and cheekiness by director Julian Jarrold (Brideshead Revisited, Kinky Boots), it remains an eminently watchable diversion.

This earnest but painfully clunky film, though professional in tech respects and seemingly well financed, plays like the work of an ambitious high school history student.

McAvoy and Radcliffe are actors with charm to burn, but it’s only in brief moments that their characterizations cut through the film’s pandemonium, while the jokes they’re called upon to deliver land with a thud.

Though Whelan's debut filmmaking effort wears some of its homemade characteristics proudly, it wrangles more than enough credible interviewees to make its points.

Even if the now-veteran director lays everything on a bit thick, repeatedly makes many of the same points and lets things go on too long, he's still found a lively and legitimate way to tackle urgent subject matter that other filmmakers have found excuses to avoid.

Renzi's uneven script makes this a less sturdy vehicle than 2012's Arbitrage, and a less marketable one given the absence of thriller elements that sustained that film's character study. Still, there's plenty here for Gere's admirers to appreciate.

Buzzing attentively but not exclusively around cartoon editor Bob Mankoff, director Leah Wolchok strikes a pleasing balance between office minutiae and comic greatest hits; she gets enough face time with individual artists to please comedy nerds while keeping things wholly accessible to casual fans.

Infusing its generic horror tropes with vaguely satirical aspects, the film doesn't really work on either level. Unintentionally campy (or purposely, it's hard to tell) and marred by ridiculous plotting and dialogue, #Horror is mostly just a horror.

Be prepared to be emotionally devastated.