The teen-abortion factor tags Never Rarely Sometimes Always as an issue drama, and in the most unconventional way, it is — raw, haunting and painfully real. But it's perhaps better defined as a moving snapshot of female friendship, solidarity and bravery.

More or less playing straight man to Keough's comically unflappable liability, the incandescent Paige conveys the disappointment, even disdain, of Zola for a woman she believed was a friend, but also subtly introduces notes of poignancy as she figures out ways to stay safe in the stickiest situations. Her self-possession is a thing of beauty.

There's definitely a tighter, more disciplined movie trapped in here begging for a more rigorous edit. Like a head full of split ends, it needs trimming.

Palmason boldly risks audience disenfranchisement by pushing his disturbing story to unexpected lengths dramatically and stylistically, thereby winning a creative wrestling match with a potentially intransigent narrative.

A shaggy-seeming but carefully modulated affair, To the Ends of the Earth gradually emerges as an offbeat but persuasive investigation of culture-clashes and the potential for trans-global bridge-building.

Unfortunately, the poor production values, ham-fisted screenplay and uneven performances prevent it from achieving the desired dramatic impact.

The only thing it delivers is unrelenting tedium. Every aspect of the production proves so amateurishly realized that it begins to feel a put-on, although the humor seems to be strictly unintentional.

What's ultimately very endearing about Swift is her intelligence and self-awareness, qualities that also make her music compelling, sophisticated and capable of appealing both to adolescent kids and hipster musicologists.

Punctuated with moments of illumination, humor and even occasional visual flair —the opening shot executes a stately 360-degree cityscape pan from a high crane — Present. Perfect manages to retain interest despite a certain repetitiveness and some patience-taxing longueurs.

Clearly qualified in the physique department, Crews is an actor with enough charisma and range to carry either gritty genre adventures or more cartoony showdowns; but Forbes' tonal uncertainty and a stiff script leave him stranded here, in a world that lacks the gravity to put his conscience-driven reticence in context.

The Turning sacrifices narrative and emotional coherence in favor of a series of would-be scary set pieces that seem mainly designed to discourage aspiring nannies from pursuing the vocation.

This Vietnam War-themed drama is one of the dullest films made about that oft-dramatized conflict.

Though it follows a familiar format, devoting its middle third to the games leading to Homecoming and the final act to the game itself, All-Americans doesn't really play like a sports drama; football is mostly an excuse to pay attention to these kids. But that focus is diluted by the number of people we're spending time with.

This is a wisp of a film that for many will lack payoff, but it has a depth of feeling, strong sense of frustration, and hunger for growth and change that heighten involvement. Its sensitive portrait of being young and gay in an unaccommodating culture also makes it deserving of attention.

Despite the frequent use of graphics and animation to help alleviate the tedium of numerous talking heads (we hear from several other scientists as well), the film fails to makes its significant points accessible.

Director Newbery proves ill-equipped to handle the convoluted narrative shifts of the screenplay co-written by Finola Geraghty, Brendan Bishop and Laurence Lamers. But to be fair, even Hitchcock would have thrown up his hands at the illogical plotting and over-the-top contrivances that make "North by Northwest" look like a documentary by comparison.

The film's apparent desire to channel heartland morality is weirdly undercut by a glib (and unsatisfying) vigilante move at the end, but only the least critical viewers will make it far enough into the pic to add moral confusion to their list of complaints.

Though hardly groundbreaking in either its content or its aesthetics, the film is more serious than it initially lets on, and can only benefit from the VHS nostalgia that has, often irrationally, taken root in some quarters.

Davis isn't given a very satisfying backstory to work with, but when has she needed one? The actress strikes a satisfying balance between reluctance and protectiveness. Gaffigan and Janney offer just what their parts in the story need, but Davis keeps it all on the rails.

Dealing with its potentially discomfiting subject matter with sensitivity, insight and humor, the pic marks an auspicious debut for its director-screenwriter, who also plays a supporting role.

Sacrifices its potentially compelling central storyline to an elaborate, meta-style intermingling of supposed fiction and reality that turns out to be far more confusing than intriguing.

This is a film that just very expensively sits there onscreen with nothing ever seeming even remotely at stake. It has no weight or substance and delivers no impact of any kind.

La Belle Epoque is the sort of vastly entertaining mainstream French film that was produced with regularity during the 1970s-'80s and was sometimes remade by Hollywood. Those days are long gone but it could happen with this witty, sexy and original romantic comedy that touches many points of satisfaction.

It’s impressive and enjoyable to behold how easily Smith and Lawrence slide back into these characters and actually make them more accessible and fun to be around than before.

Far from the filmmaker in both life experience and proximity to the cosmic unknown, the subjects making up this constellation — elderly men and women who evince no self-consciousness around her — are diverse enough to support any number of theories about this graceful film's ultimate meaning.

Nearly every scene offers a general backdrop of tragic sadness leavened by the quotidian necessity of fulfilling basic requirements, doing a job, tending to the moment-to-moment needs of others and finding hope wherever one can.

There's visual command and a compelling intimacy to the storytelling, plus intellectual engagement in the reflection on who gets to claim nearness to God.

Like his (Farrands) previous effort, this film takes a real-life tragedy and manages to treat it in horribly tawdry and tediously uninteresting fashion.