For all its aesthetic deficiencies and self-promotional aspects, it at least provides a valuable and important message.

A true story of courage, determination and guts that deserves a more exciting approach.

The overall enterprise, for all its intrigue and visceral impact, feels overly thought out, affected and forced in its stylization.

This low-rent, R-rated "Rush Hour"-ish comic caper could have been several notches better with more charismatic leads and some dialogue upgrades but still would have felt like a genre hand-me-down.

While the overall theme is potentially rich, filmmaker Griffin merely bores us.

Never less than gripping.

A giddily over-the-top, super-entertaining goof on the Everyman crimefighter flick written and directed with evident relish by James Gunn.

With a homicidal tire as the main character, the film isn't scary enough to qualify as horror and not nearly as amusing as a black comedy should be.

That the film works to the degree that it does is largely due to the sensitive performances. Bonnaire delivers a beautifully modulated turn.

A well-told tale, and though its compact running time makes it a fine TV fit, its visual poetry is worth a big-screen look.

In The 5th Quarter, the filmmakers' hearts are in the right place but the execution couldn't be more wrong-headed.

Successful to a point (though seemingly unaware of the chuckles it produces in between shrieks), the movie has strong prospects with genre audiences but won't spawn a phenomenon resembling the filmmakers' previous franchise.

It's tempting to call The Four Times documentary-like, except that documentaries usually explain what it is we are seeing. Instead, Frammartino uses his background as a video installation artist to create something that one could just as easily come across playing at an art gallery.

Certain to create a gaping divide between generational and aesthetic camps, Sucker Punch is a largely grim and unpleasant display of technical wizardry wrapped around a story that purports to be inspirational.

This time, tedium sets in early and never loosens its grip. The gags are obvious, predictable and dull.

A terrifically engaging picture of life beyond the headlines, My Perestroika lifts the veil of Cold War mystery.

The grim drama is undeniably punishing, but Considine's screenplay laces in moments of warm human contact that puncture the harshness like delicate grace notes.

A Greek film with style and verve, writer-director Athina Rachel Tsangari's second feature, Attenberg, is an offbeat coming-of-age tale.

Dramatically but unevenly explores the lives of four Palestinian women during the years of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Could easily be filled with cliches but in the hands of filmmaker John Gray, it's a sparkling piece of entertainment that deserves a wide audience.

Has plenty of contemporary sparkle and life, courtesy of a masterful central performance by grande dame Catherine Deneuve.

After a promisingly tart start, the strident satire stumbles and falls into a sitcom-y hole from which it never emerges, despite the game efforts of its dynamic ensemble.

More stylishly filmed than many others of its ilk, but at the end of the day, is just an ordinary slasher film.

Part murder mystery, part dysfunctional family drama and part meditation on the elusiveness of the American dream, Motherland doesn't fully succeed on any of its levels.

An effectively emotional look at the power of music therapy to trigger memories lost after brain surgery.

Won't win many new fans for the high-stepping dancer. It might even cost him a few old ones.

Limitless should be so much smarter than it is.

The movie boils down to one character, acting under enormous pressures of space and time, racing to solve a mystery. In this case, that may be good enough.