Beyond the Hills is less fun than any film about lesbian nuns and their psychotic ex-lovers ought to be. But it is an engrossingly serious work, and confirms Mungiu as a maturing talent with more universal stories to tell than those defined by Romania’s recent political past.

This material would never have attracted a major studio, so Christy Walton — heir to the Wal-Mart fortune — financed the picture herself, not because of any desire to become a movie mogul but simply because of her passion for the novel. She allowed the filmmakers to work without major stars or obvious commercial hooks added to the story. Although the film doesn’t always sustain dramatic impact, its fidelity to the spirit of the novel is impressive.

The opportunity to see the stunning footage on the big screen is not to be missed, and the narration by Daniel Craig, delivered with James Bond-style drollness, makes it as much fun to listen to as to watch.

The director mixes moods with a playfulness that is both brazen and carefree and yet precisely modulated, yielding results that amplify the specific content of the screenplay. This makes for a film that, however cheap it was to make, is incredibly rich to watch.

It has hypnotic visual style and a dense, driving soundscape. But it’s also too monotonous and thematically empty to be seriously provocative.

Sanders and DeMicco’s script doesn’t have the robust plotting, consistent wit or flavorful character development of the best family animation. And some of the voice actors have too little to work with.

A character-driven take on true-crime fare, Alex Karpovsky's Rubberneck marks a solid dramatic turn for a filmmaker best known for playing comedic parts in indie films like "Tiny Furniture."

Unusual for this sort of thing, Snitch is a film after which you remember the characters and actors more than the big action moments.

The picture has enough entertainment value to tickle its target audience and even offers a few chuckles for accompanying adults. A strong cast and bright -- if uninspired — animation help to offset a thin story.

A curiosity telling the President's story through the eyes of longtime friend Ward Hill Lamon, it's of interest only to serious history-hounds and techies curious about its unusual green-screen production.

A thriller element that has not been present in earlier Sparks movies is designed to draw reluctant male viewers to see the picture, but they won’t respond with the same enthusiasm as his core audience of woozy romantics.

Unfortunately, John Moore has directed these sequences in a way that makes the incidents look so far-fetched and essentially unsurvivable that you can only laugh.

Nicely cast and made with as much conviction as can be brought to something so intrinsically formulaic.

This lushly and pretentiously made drama about a young American whose worst instincts are unleashed during a stay in Paris endeavors to entice with details of the seedy underworld of La Pigalle but is a turn-off in almost every respect.

Nutty, arcane and jaw-dropping in equal measure, this is a head-first plunge down the rabbit hole of Kubrickiana from which, for some, there is evidently no return.

True to Wong’s style, The Grandmaster is infused with melancholy and a near-existentialist resignation to the uncertainties of fate.

The work Richard Linklater and company started in 1995's Before Sunrise retains a clarity of spirit undimmed by 18 years.

Overlong and aimless documentary.

Considering the importance of the still active 93-year-old poet’s art and social activism, the film seems slight and discursive, more of an introduction than a definitive portrait.

Anchored by an admirably measured performance from Gael Garcia Bernal as the maverick advertising ace who spearheaded the winning campaign, the quietly impassioned film seems a natural for intelligent arthouse audiences.

You'll never play the titular parlor game again after watching Would You Rather, director David Guy Levy’s clever exercise in torture porn that manages to display as much restraint as genuine sickness.

With Melissa McCarthy playing a one-woman demolition team who, for 95 percent of the running time, is a genuine affront to nature, there are unavoidably some laughs here, although the gifted comic actor got more of them in less screen time in her previous films than she does in this starring role.

A rare example of a grown-up story compellingly told from the perspective of children, The Playroom is a modest gem.

This is a looser, grittier film than their work of late, and while it’s more successful in the sequences of bold theatricality than in the faux-cinéma vérité of the surrounding scenes, the mix is nonetheless an interesting one.

A visually lavish epic fantasy that happily marries the latest advances in CGI and action techniques with ancient Chinese fable and a Buddhist atmosphere.

With such an in-house cast of extended Coppola family sparklers, one would think things couldn’t go too wrong in the comedy department, but they have little chance to oil the wheels of a creaky script written around Sheen.

Upstream Colors certainly is something to see if you’re into brilliant technique, expressive editing, oblique storytelling, obscuritanist speculative fiction or discovering a significant new actress.

Park's unsettling visuals and his handling of the cast make the occasional holes in Wentworth Miller's script practically irrelevant.