Given all the ways a project like this could have gone wrong, the result is surprisingly good on several fronts, beginning with a shrewd structure that fosters an intelligent dual perspective on the public and private aspects of the Deep Throat phenomenon.

The impression is that De Palma is indulging himself with homages to his own Hitchcockian greatest hits, with results that veer close to self-parody on occasion and emphasize just how far this once-outstanding director's creative star has plummeted.

Superficially provocative but ultimately pointless, this is one punishing vacation.

The story is told in a hammer-on-anvil manner that evinces no gift for social satire or sharp cultural insight.

Basically the film consists of a bunch of techies in white shirts and glasses laboriously discussing their views, exchanges you get the feeling the filmmaker thought would come off as humorous.

[A] sweet, semi-romantic road trip.

Because Cutie and Boxer resists easy sentimentality, its view of life and love is all the more powerful.

The absurdist comedy Oconomowoc is not only named after a place but dedicated to it — “a city we love very much,” the end credits declare of the titular Wisconsin town — so it’s doubly disappointing that there’s not more there there.

Although it sketchily touches on many provocative issues -- the inhumanity of this form of incarceration, the relationship between the artist and subject -- Herman’s House fails to explore them in a fully satisfying manner.

The strained results eventually prove wearisome, although the sexy Winter is effectively scary and at times even moving as the psycho femme fatale.

The Lords of Salem is more creepily atmospheric than truly scary and eventually lapses into silliness. But it does provide some evocatively spooky moments along the way.

Even if the story grates in places, Laurence Anyways is perfectly enjoyable as an immersive orgy of pure sensory pleasure.

Propelled by Mads Mikkelsen’s shattering performance as the blameless man whose life threatens to be destroyed, the film is superbly acted by a cast that never strikes a false note or softens the impact with consolatory sentiment.

A dynamic breakout performance from Gina Rodriguez helps this rap-infused drama about a young Los Angeles Latina overcome its patchy storytelling.

While the core elements of this reluctant buddy movie could almost constitute a pared-down theater piece, the film breathes with real cinematic expansiveness. Green’s poetic observation skills are the key to that seeming contradiction.

Pretty pictures alone do not in themselves great cinema make - not for the first time, Reygadas' waywardly wilful approach to screenwriting and structure severely outweighs whatever fleeting pleasures his movies may impart.

The story in itself is first-rate. However, it’s the very measured handling that makes it distinctive.

This latest installment of the horror movie spoof franchise is mainly notable for its Charlie Sheen/Lindsay Lohan cameos.

Kim Ki-duk is back in fighting form in Pieta, an intense and, for the first hour, sickeningly violent film that unexpectedly segues into a moving psychological study.

Tale of the Cultural Revolution is strictly for scholars and students.

Although Graham Meriwether’s film is far less incendiary than such similarly themed efforts as "Food, Inc." and "Fast Food Nation," it nonetheless offers considerable — pardon the pun — food for thought in its exploration of modern-day cattle, hog and chicken production.

Crude, repetitive and rigorously single-minded, the popular actor’s writing and directing debut lays it all on a bit thick, as the few points the film has to make are underscored time and time again.

A genuinely moving look at life in a group foster home that avoids most of the usual routes into viewers' hearts.

Working from a ruthlessly efficient script by husband Mark Duplass, Aselton effortlessly sets up the women’s reunion scenario before effectively flipping the action from drama to thriller.

Oblivion is an absolutely gorgeous film dramatically caught between its aspirations for poetic romanticism and the demands of heavy sci-fi action. After a captivating beginning brimming with mystery and evident ambition, the air gradually seeps out of the balloon that keeps this thinly populated tale aloft, leaving the ultimate impression of a nice try that falls somewhat short of the mark.

Pretty when it should be gritty and grandiosely noble instead of just telling it like it was, 42 needlessly trumps up but still can't entirely spoil one of the great American 20th century true-life stories, the breaking of major league baseball's color line by Jackie Robinson.

Watching a bunch of people take a drug trip is seldom either entertaining or edifying, but Chilean director Sebastian Silva manages to make it at least tolerably amusing.

Although ragged in its presentation and frustratingly unfocused in its storytelling, Babe’s and Ricky’s Inn is an endearing cinematic valentine that pays well-deserved tribute to a vanished musical institution.