The young Spanish director Eugenio Mira and his American screenwriter Damien Chazelle have fun paying homage to the pulpy potboilers of yesteryear.

With jokes that fall flat so often, the film’s cardiograph flatlines before the first five minutes are over.

Volume two gets down in ways the first half doesn't, although anything resembling real sensuality remains MIA.

It is never boring and does provoke and stimulate, although not as a turn-on, not remotely.

Nearly as extravagant as the characters it depicts, Martin Scorsese's comic, operatically-scaled film is, on a moment-by-moment basis, often madly entertaining due to its live-wire energy, exuberant performances and the irresistible appeal of watching naughty boys doing very naughty things.

Walking With Dinosaurs takes rewarding advantage of a much bigger budget and state-of-the-art technology to bring its impressive collection of Cretaceous creatures to vivid life. But while the walking part’s pretty impressive, the talking part — not so much.

Comedically, everyone's on the same page here, which means that, even when things flag, more fun isn't far off.

Though convincing in its argument that pimps and clients are treated much better than they should be in our legal system as compared to prostitutes, the film presents a picture of America's sex-trade landscape that will feel incomplete to many viewers.

A breathtakingly immersive travelogue that packs a persuasive environmental undercurrent.

The clunky narrative doesn’t ring true for a second, and the hackneyed dialogue is even worse.

Choosing it for his debut as director, Bateman demonstrates the same knack for timing and fine shadings of attitude as he does onscreen.

Although diffuse at times, this documentary delivers a vibrant portrait of a fascinating subculture.

Despite its flaws and unevenness, White Reindeer at least deserves points for not providing another sugarplum-infused view of Christmas.

The film is rugged, skilled, relentless, determined, narrow-minded and focused, everything that a soldier must be when his life is on the line.

Adapting their highly successful stage version to the screen with keen comic-timing but much less cinematic panache, Mathieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patelliere offer up a lively take on love, friendship and baby-naming.

Featuring superb performances by the principal actors, Big Bad Wolves is mesmerizing from start to finish.

It makes savvy use of the well-worn found-footage format, modulating its creepy scenario with considerable skill.

Where Attenborough's script lent an air of dignity to the shorter film, Allen's reading of Philip LaZebnik's cutesy narration has a canned feel, and is unlikely to connect with viewers too young to appreciate cliched humor about the joys of bachelorhood versus the duties of parenting.

After exhibiting an almost craven fidelity to his source material the first time out, Jackson gets the drama in gear here from the outset with a sense of storytelling that possesses palpable energy and purpose.

In this fast-moving, densely plotted black dramedy, a faux scandal raised by an ambitious web TV editor comes close to destroying a number of lives, offering a masterful panorama on urban, middle class China.

Dripping with floridly phony dialogue that no actor should be forced to speak, this paternity mystery uses the Bosnian conflict as the manipulative backdrop to a preposterously overwrought and overlong melodrama.

Park Hong-soo’s debut feature includes enough kinetic action sequences to satisfy genre fans even while its dramatic elements leave something to be desired.

Alternately haunting, inspiring and dreamily meditative, this is a visually majestic film of transfixing moods and textures.

An infectious blast of funky jazz played by a terrific cast and a director at the top of their respective games.

A delightfully old-fashioned kid’s flick with a meaningful message.

The whole thing reeks of fiction being used to process missteps in its makers' own lives. This story isn't nearly ready to leave the shrink's couch.

Though on paper the idea has some potential -- as a historical meditation on the suffering of East Berliners and the arbitrary nature of borders -- its execution stumbles on multiple fronts.