The movie was directed by Jack Gold from a screenplay by John Briley and it's fuzzy on a number of key issues that possibly could have made it fun, had they been sharper.

Except for the locations, which are real, and the color, which is color, the whole thing suggests the dim listlessness of the late late show edging toward the catatonia of 3 A.M.

Pakula, when he is not in dulging in subjective camera, strives to give his film the look of structural geometry, but despite the sharp edges and dramatic spaces and cinema presence out of Citizen Kane, it all suggests a tepid, rather tasteless mush.

The Song Remains the Same is a movie to listen to Led Zeppelin by. If you want to listen to Led Zeppelin. If you don't, there's no point going. If you do, it's still a dubious proposition...The scenes showing the group performing are more informative though not much more powerful.They are dominated by the singer, Robert Plant. A great mass of yellow curls tumbling around his shoulders, Mr. Plant sashays around the stage, posturing, pouting and conducting a meaningful relationship with the microphone. It looks like a sheep trying to seduce a telephone pole.

It is truly providential that a new horror melodrama called The Blob is so woodenly presented on the whole, for a little astute showmanship applied to such a plot would have been enough to scare the quills off a porcupine.

It is not until Footlight Parade has been struggling through its plot for more than an hour that the fragments of song, costumed nymphs and technical virtuosity are finally integrated in a complete performance.

As Feral — directed by Andrew Wonder from a script he wrote with Priscilla Kavanaugh and Jason Mendez — moves forward, it doesn’t always do a great job of splitting the difference between a raw depiction of harsh reality and ostentatious deck-stacking.

Like the stage show, this Technicolored shindig, which laughingly pretends to be a biography of the famous swimmer, Annette Kellerman, is a luxuriance of razzle-dazzle that includes Hippodrome acts, water ballets, bathing suit shows, diving performances, low comedy, anachronisms and clichés. It also includes an abundance of Miss Williams and Victor Mature, but it does not include the felicities of a reasonably fascinating script.

Amiably anecdotal, the movie gets wry results from Dolan and other players, including Rob Brydon as a would-be ladies man and Tamsin Greig as a “hipper” mom than Sue.

Zaree makes an eloquent and arresting protagonist, though her documentary is a bit too tidy for its own good.

The harmony among the kids, particularly the older girls Kari (Lidya Jewett) and Sarah (Eva Hauge), is the film’s greatest asset, and the director, Elissa Down, uses their natural charm as a crutch for the run-of-the-mill story.

For a film granted so much up-close access with its subject, Picture of His Life hears surprisingly little from Nachoum himself. Between vérité clips of the journey, the film is inundated with archival footage.

The movie tries to convince you that Douglas is better than his worst self and can transcend the dehumanizing degradations in which he’s mired. But not even the filmmakers seem convinced, which may explain why they embrace baroque brutality topped by a dollop of audience-mollifying sentimentality.

In the end, Now and Then doesn't work well enough as nostalgia for adults or as a story that girls today might identify with. Yet its young ensemble makes it vibrant and enjoyable, even when it fails to surprise.

This is a pretty movie to be sure, with attractive cinematography, period costume and production design. But the film has no political or philosophical weight, and it is ultimately a movie that is as hard to take seriously as its somewhat dunderheaded protagonist.

Jones’s former affiliation presumably helped with access; adherents seem to trust her, and some clips are credited to the church. It also gives her a complicated, at times surprisingly sympathetic outlook on the cult.

For all the sincere and shrewd direction and the striking outdoor photography, this R. K. O. melodrama fails to traverse its chosen ground.

Complications culminate in epiphanies and brief triumphs, as is customary. But this genial, well-intentioned movie never quite lands a real emotional punch.

What's remarkable is how seldom it delivers. For all its technical brilliance, not even Ms. Foster's intense, accomplished performance in the title role holds much surprise.

The satire of the 50's is more bland than biting, dependent on authentically garish costumes and sets. And when the horror-film scenes begin to intrude on normal life (what is hanging from the cellar ceiling, anyway?) Mr. Balaban can't make the dark elements seem comic enough to mesh with the rest of this nightmarish joke.

Raggedy Man is something like a country-and-western ballad that relates a supposedly sad, melodramatic story but whose simple, repetitive, upbeat rhythms effectively deny the awfulness of the events being sung about.

Too listless to fizz and too peculiar to win us over, French Exit, directed by Azazel Jacobs, is hampered by clockwork quirkiness and disaffected dialogue.

The mood is meditative, the camera patient; yet the film is too dramatically shy and narratively slight to stir.

The competing agendas surrounding the case would prevent anyone from making a cohesive Hawkins documentary, and Storm Over Brooklyn never settles on a satisfying point of view.

Silent Running is no jerry-built science fiction film, but it's a little too simple-minded to be consistently entertaining.

Okeniyi has a strong presence that conveys a genuine moral authority.

Roth is never less than a treat as a woman whose veil of class and privilege is being slowly lifted to reveal her misplaced loyalties. The Crimes That Bind might feel leaden, but Alicia’s transformation feels lighter than air.

For the first half-hour or so of Eternal Beauty, Roberts and Hawkins take an unusual and intermittently illuminating approach to depicting mental illness. . . . But the movie doesn’t keep up its good work.