However nuanced and artful, the nightmarish unease is laid on so thick that, in combination with the cryptic narrative, it gradually turns to murk.

Opening action sequences project a cartoony comic flavor that has promise, but that peters out as the battles grow increasingly cosmic.

The finished product, though plenty embarrassing, isn't quite involving enough to merit the kind of pile-on mockery that greeted Ayer's DC Comics abomination Suicide Squad.

This ersatz portrait of American big-top tent impresario P.T. Barnum is all smoke and mirrors, no substance. It hammers pedestrian themes of family, friendship and inclusivity while neglecting the fundaments of character and story.

Whatever charms the first two movies possessed (and they were considerable thanks to the talented and appealing cast) have been thoroughly lost in this soulless installment.

It's a true-life yarn loaded with extremes, of wealth, personal eccentricities, grief, tension, daring, criminal means to political ends, maternal drive and luck, both bad and good. It is also a peek into a rarefied world where money knows no bounds and yet means everything.

Arquette is charmingly endearing as the frustrated Jeanne, Wilson movingly conveys his character's vulnerability as well as his bluster and McLean is terrific as the beleaguered young girl desperate to have a mane like Farrah Fawcett's.

This Canadian indie mostly avoids the sort of vulgarisms attendant to films of that ilk, displaying a slyly droll humor that proves consistently engaging.

Its running time is a mere 78 minutes, but the pic feels like it takes much longer getting to nowhere particularly interesting.

Though its dark riches can at moments feel like overload, and its narrative thrust occasionally grows diffuse, the story casts an undeniable spell.

Soul of Success does little to capture the eureka moments Canfield evidently produces for his followers. Maybe the doc is worried about giving the goods away for free.

It’s commonly thought that artists seldom make stories about happy, stable marriages because where’s the drama in that? Ethel & Ernest, a deeply affecting feature-length animated film, disproves that assumption by unfurling an emotionally rich story about the lifelong marital love affair between two kindly, modest people living in an inconspicuous corner of suburban England.

Youth is a whirl of grand, dramatic gestures.

Soufra's lasting impression is one of empowerment and the energizing sense of purpose and community that the women derive from the enterprise along with their incomes.

The film is frustratingly disjointed and hard to follow at times as it inundates viewers with a torrent of information. Nonetheless, it proves compulsively fascinating.

Things get tedious as the filmmakers reach the end of their money and have to pack it all up without getting any celebrities on their record other than Glee's Naya Rivera.

Viewers who push through this silliness will be rewarded with an action climax that, while just about as ludicrous, is at least enjoyable.

In the vein of Ma Vie en Rose (if not quite as polished and mature) and other gay adolescent coming-of-age films of comic rebellion, it's a congeries of brilliantly achieved cinematic moments and repetitive, massively self-indulgent gestures of acting out.

The result is a lovely, upbeat, even life-affirming film. It's a work which certainly doesn't soft-pedal the less appealing sides of children's behavior, but shows that empathy, given appropriate circumstances and resources, can be taught just as effectively as arithmetic and spelling.

His unpolished voiceover and the general sense of overkill aside, Panico delivers a quite respectable doc production.

In terms of its overall look, Cinderella the Cat blends blocky, videogame-like 3D/CGI animation and voluptuous, watercolor-like 2D animation. It shouldn't work, yet it does create a coherent universe.

Loaded with action and satisfying in the ways its loyal audience wants it to be, writer-director Rian Johnson's plunge into George Lucas' universe is generally pleasing even as it sometimes strains to find useful and/or interesting things for some of its characters to do.

This stranger-in-a-strange-land adventure has enough appeal to sustain its limited theatrical release.

The film's main appeal is in watching familiar actors pretend to be ordinary kids grappling with their new selves.

The film is ingratiating enough, but its main value is to make us eager for another, more substantial Shelton movie long before another decade has slipped by.

With lucidity and deep feeling, Nancy Buirski's documentary maps an ugly trail of injustice and then widens its lens to pay tribute to the women of color whose refusal to be silent helped drive the evolution of the Civil Rights movement.

Hollow in the Land traffics in familiar rural thriller territory, but it features an excellent performance from its lead actress and a strong atmosphere of moody tension courtesy of its writer/director.

Director/screenwriter Jones displays an ability to sustain simmering tension that's impressive for someone directing only his second feature film.