Davidson’s essential likability shines through, thanks in part to Aramayo’s endearing, guileless performance and in part to writer-director Kirk Jones’ machine-tooled script, clearly fact-checked and vetted by the film’s exec producer, the actual John Davidson himself.

The storytelling goes haywire, to the point where you’re unsure what the Australian writer-director wants to say, though her game lead, Midori Francis, keeps you watching.

Perhaps if the film was more polished, and had some added depth, it might feel more substantial. As is, Hanging by a Wire is a gripping story not told thoroughly enough.

I appreciate that Manners and Battye are trying to add some extra flair to what is otherwise a fairly conventional growing-pains narrative, but too often Extra Geography seems located outside any map of the real world.

By remaining purposely vague, whether about locations or the real-world stakes at hand, this modern-day political parable doesn’t hit you in the gut the way it’s meant to.

If the film captures something of the concept’s intriguing unease — with 20-year-old director Kane Parsons drawing from his own Backrooms-set short films, created when he was just a teenager — its underbaked storytelling made me wonder if some spooky ideas might be better left as whispers in the dark.

Despite all the insider’s access, though, in the end the behind-the-scenes episodes offer the illusion of intimacy, rather than anything really illuminating.

As bloody, dumb shark thrillers go, it stays afloat, gaining some credibility from the natural disaster element.

If its exploration of these ideas is ultimately too incomplete to feel fully satisfying, its performances are strong enough to draw attention throughout.

Even if its elements don’t always gel, The Beloved offers another prime showcase for Sorogoyen’s art of unease, as well as for Bardem’s talent for playing men who can fly off the handle at any moment.

A pileup of movie-ish improbabilities in the climactic act notwithsanding, the new film is a taut nail-biter with a strong cast.

It’s a handsomely mounted film, full of precise period detail, but is otherwise undistinguished from many solemn, exacting biopics that have come before it.

The Japanese director has no shortage of ideas — chief among them the potential for advanced robotics to bring closure to the bereaved. But too few of those ideas yield satisfying conclusions, resulting in a drama that becomes treacly and insubstantial, reaching for a profundity that remains elusive.

Balagov is indisputably a filmmaker with his own distinctive vision, ideally matched with Evgueni and Sacha Galperine’s glowering score and with Fray’s nimble shooting style, which often takes its cue to get in close from the knotted bodies on the wrestling mats. Story-wise, however, Butterfly Jam is too diffuse to measure up to the brutally transfixing Beanpole.

Barnard has always coaxed layered, thoughtful performances from her cast and knows this kind of battered but unbowed community like the back of her hand. But the drama here feels too diagrammatic, foretelling a tragic fate from the first scene onward as everyone parties down like their lives depend on it.

This not-quite-a-feature is basically harmless, a wallow in nostalgia so innocuous that it’s hard to begrudge its aviation-crazed creator with connections sufficient to indulge his whim.

An overly mannered affect undermines the rawness of the emotions, keeping them from landing with the impact they ought.

Aesthetic flourishes abound, which make it an entertaining viewing experience, but one does wish that the narrative was a touch more complex. Lelio embeds some compelling meta-textual moments — ones that mostly address that fact that he’s a man tackling this subject — but the actual story of Julia can feel secondary to the melodic pageantry.

Yet another Hollywood romantic comedy that's all but devoid of romance and laughs.

Travolta has/is a blast in an action-thriller-comedy that otherwise comes up short.

The film, while heartfelt and directed by multiple-Oscar nominee Lasse Hallstrom, is dramatically stillborn.

It never rises above formula fare.

Jackson and his team tell a fundamentally different story. It's one that is not without its tension, humor and compelling details. But it's also a simpler, more button-pushing tale that misses the joy and heartbreak of the original.

The Spierigs have assembled a strong cast, but even their best efforts -- notably by Neill, whose Bromley is the ultimate vampire squid, tentacles wrapped around the face of this scary new world -- can't pump any real life into the bloodless script.

Most of The Spy Next Door is pretty tired stuff from "Pacifier"-style slapstick to comic relief delivered by, of all people, erstwhile country star Billy Ray Cyrus.

The disappointments here are many, from a starry cast the film ill-uses to flat musical numbers that never fully integrate into the dramatic story. The only easy prediction is that Nine is not going to revive the slumbering musical-film genre.

Not even the estimable comic chops of Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker can lift it above the level of ordinary.

This is a movie not built for subtlety, but it does tackle a subject American movies have mostly avoided -- that of racial profiling and the plight of Muslim-Americans.