While the two leads deliver the goods and manage to combine a frisky sense of first love with the movie's gloomier arc, they are well-served by a terrific supporting cast.

Genre enthusiasts will lap up the mixture of action and fantasy, while history buffs who don't mind a bit of rewriting will dig into an alternative spin on the Civil War period.

Playing an emotionally burdened small-town Catholic priest in culturally isolated 1950s Ireland, Martin Sheen does his best work since "The West Wing" in Thaddeus O'Sullivan's Stella Days.

With its sharp script and bittersweet humor, the audacious premise feels fresh enough to earn a large word-of-mouth audience among moviegoers who would normally avoid a more conventional rom-com, potentially becoming a left-field breakout hit in the mode of "Juno" or "Little Miss Sunshine."

Kirby Dick's shocking investigation into widespread sexual assault in the U.S. military is an urgent call to action.

As overcranked as it is -- the film is directed as if it were an action drama, with two or three times more cuts than necessary -- People Like Us has a persuasive emotional pull at its heart that's hard to deny.

Allen the writer-director has gone tone-deaf this time around, somehow not realizing that the nonstop prattling of the less-than-scintillating characters almost never rings true.

With enough wedding-related shenanigans to pull in the date crowd, the guffaw-to-gag ratio remains relatively respectable, though there's nothing here that hasn't been attempted many times over.

An insightful film about the creative talents that have made hip-hop an original, enduring American musical tradition.

The primary appeal of Americano lies in witnessing the attempt of a famous progeny to forge his own creative path, as Demy's struggle with artistic inheritance resonates throughout unmoored Martin's voyage between past and present.

Matthew Akers' film is a personally revealing look at an artist most famous for maintaining stone-faced silence for three months.

Visually stunning and strongly voiced, but doesn't take any real risks.

He (Shankman) succeeds in draining most of the fun from a vehicle that was all about the winking humor of its flagrant cheesiness.

An eye-opener about what it's like to live with a variety of mental illnesses, including obsessive-compulsive disorder -- and, however tenuously, to recover from them.

Instantly proves itself an invaluable historical document. Shot verite-style with no narration, soundtrack or other embellishments, Tahrir: Liberation Square simply depicts the events of late January and early February 2011 with a vital immediacy.

If viewers have any remaining doubts as to whether or not the dams are a good idea, the gorgeous shots of the threatened landscapes are bound to erase them.

The film has a winning combination for all sorts of platforms as the story is highly intriguing and the music speaks, or rather sings, for itself.

Never less than watchable and loaded with trademark negativity so extreme it's sometimes funny, the new film is nonetheless saddled with a protagonist so narrowly and unlikably presented that, in the end, he doesn't seem worth the time devoted to him.

Aubrey Plaza proves she can carry a film with this multiplex-friendly comedy about time travel.

The saving grace to the utter predictability in Christina Mengert and Joseph Muszynski's screenplay is reasonably personable characters and spirited acting by director Bruce Beresford's cast.

Convincing in its depiction of late-20s romantic anxiety (if not of that age bracket's real estate realities), it is broadly appealing without bowing too deeply to formula.

A flavorless literary adaptation sunk by a lead actor, screenwriter and co-directors that are all out of their depth.

Much like the recent, similarly themed "Life in a Day," the results are more admirable than enlightening or even entertaining.

The proceedings have a certain haunted quality, thanks to the dramatic setting and the stark black-and-white cinematography by Steve Cosens that fully conveys its bleakness.

It's easy to imagine exhibitors running scared from the documentary, but audiences who find it will be rewarded with a serious and provocative film.

An ineffective indie variation on the sort of generic romantic comedy that should be starring Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson.

As sequels go, Piranha 3DD has barely enough heft to squeeze out 83 minutes of ho-hum entertainment, although it faithfully delivers plenty of menacing fish and bouncing boobs, as amply advertised.

Its low-rent cast and unappealing key art won't help at the box office, but viewers who stumble across it on cable may be pleasantly, if mildly, surprised.