It's ultimately a convoluted, muddy (both literally and figuratively) and overlong bore that takes an intriguing premise and does absolutely nothing with it.

Throughout, in an approach that gets close to the workers, activists, and more who help the staff at Hot And Crusty, Blotnick and Lears excellently merge the personal and political, but in a manner that never feels like it's proselytizing.

Tiresomely told, uninteresting, and turgid, Electric Slide is as insipid as it gets — a meaningless movie about almost nothing at all.

For a movie that rides on a well-executed, modest and at times playful B-movie engine, the film stumbles in its final third, with goofy plotting... and a turn from the subdued to the hysterical.

While it conjures up a winning swirl of themes, lines and images as it unfurls, one suspects that Schwartzman’s considerable talents are compensating for some core deficiencies.

While perhaps not perfect by Farhadi’s standards, About Elly is a classic tragedy that can be devastating and draining, and in that sense is an immersive, almost emotionally exhaustive experience.

There is enough in 6 Years from Farmiga and Rosenfield’s performances to warrant a watch, and Fidell’s ideas and subtle developments around such a challenging story are heartfelt and mostly well-rendered.

Black Souls is a solid example of the recent string of Italian mob dramas that utilize a somber and reflective tone as opposed to the more flashy and stylized approach of American crime epics.

Unfriended is sometimes a blast to watch and is occasionally funny and unnerving, but by its conclusion it becomes screechy and overwrought.

For its majority, the film is all comedic and political fire, but as its winds down, Timoner rounds it off with a tone of melancholic, tragic inevitability to Brand’s life.

John McNaughton’s return after too many years of absence is a dark look at the nature of overprotective parenthood, and how volatile it can become under particularly difficult circumstances. With that said, you’d do well not to take The Harvest too seriously but more, like its deliciously simple and 70s B-movie horror title suggests, as a wickedly fun time.

At its heart, Raiders! is an underdog story, and as with any underdog story, it becomes even more compelling as the stakes are continually raised against our heroes.

A stunner of a directorial debut.

Katz, with the help of an inspired cast and an emotionally intelligent and mature screenplay, has succeeded in depicting the trials and tribulations of adults who, all for respectfully different yet equally weighty reasons, often make a three-year-old the most mature person in the room.

Dior And I succeeds in bringing this exclusive world down to earth, knitting the viewer with its needles and threads and making a highly relatable story, no matter where you come from or how you feel about fashion.

Though Manos Sucias, like the compelling local songs used to supplement the melancholic mood, often feels like fragments of a picture glued together by a temporary adhesive, the experience will leave you believing that you've just witnessed something very real and, even with its all-too-short running time, still manages to pack quite a punch.

It roars to a bitterly funny pitch every so often, but from the lack of life in the picture and such a stacked cast, you get the sense that the lunch breaks between filming resulted in more adventurous storytelling than the events that made it into the final cut.

In noir, nobody is certified as who they claim to be. Boyle magnifies that aspect with a lean and gripping thriller about isolation, strangers, and the consequences of fame that satisfies despite some minor plot bumps.

While the experiment itself is fascinating, the approach taken by Almereyda in using distractingly peculiar storytelling techniques only succeed in distancing the audience from the film's inspiration.

The acting and the direction shows enough promise to keep it from being buried alive, but it might not be the worst idea to put it out of its misery and ignore it.

If DreamWorks Animation is hoping to get back on track with this movie, a lavish sci-fi comedy based on a recent children's book, they're pretty much doomed.

This is one of those films where the less you know going in, the better. It’s fair to say that some genre elements start to bubble up and then pretty much burst to the surface by the film’s end, all while remaining a romance at heart.

A dumb, loud action movie that aspires to forcibly entertain and provoke thought but fails miserably.

Can't Stand Losing You lacks that sense of the three dimensional when it comes to documenting the band, presenting a sanitized, bird's eye view of their history

The sequel to “Divergent” is the cinematic equivalent of the KFC Famous Bowl: a nutritionally devoid mishmash of elements and past films that somehow manages to be less than the sum of its parts once cobbled together.

It's an absolutely horrible, amateurishly assembled comedy that is more offensive than just about anything we've seen lately, a non-stop parade of racist, homophobic bile that would be bad enough from any comedian, but coming out of Ferrell and Hart has the effect of watching a childhood hero committing some horrible act.

What makes Amour Fou a fascinating, if at times frustratingly idle experience, is that it seems to be saying so much with its upfront style, injections of black humor, and focus on stifled feminine disposition, yet still feels disappointingly unresponsive when mulling it over in your head.

Feig's commitment to the genre, and some truly wonderful set pieces, make Spy as lovable as its main character.

A protagonist of stunted emotional growth is simply assumed from Apatow at this stage, but Schumer’s perspective and voice translates to a wealth of gags that breathe new life into the idea.

Cacophonous, gratuitous, and peppered with absolutely outstanding action sequences, Furious 7 finds the franchise at an unwanted crossroads, but it makes such a play for the diehard fans that it leaves everyone else at somewhat of a loss.

There are a thousand stories to be told in the studios where these session players cut some of the greatest records of all time, which makes it disappointing that there isn't more to be found in the documentary The Wrecking Crew.

For those willing to invest in the lives of these characters, even if the framework around them directly and without apology guides them toward inevitable tragedy, they will experience a drama of deep, genuine feeling.

A film that double-underlines the fact that Collet-Serra knows exactly what to do with Neeson's on-screen persona in what is ultimately their most satisfying film yet.

Erlingsson has delivered an attractive slice of Icelandic oddness that confirms many of the cliches about that country’s offbeat outlook, but in a good way.

Big Game comes away with the distinction of being watchably terrible. There is a certain ridiculousness that is engaging, but this shouldn't be confused for merit.

Marfa Girl is not going to convince Clark’s detractors, nor will it disappoint his fans, as most of what people consider his trademarks are in place.

Unfinished Business is the type of movie that is so awful that as it rolls along (its 91-minute runtime feels agonizing) you get more and more restless.

Uninspired films utilizing cinematic devices that felt old decades ago are a regrettable part of the cinematic viewing experience, and The Forger squarely falls into this category.

The idea of turning a true crime story into a intellectual cinematic exercise is novel, and could be witty and sharp, but 'Angel' never comes across that way.

Seedy, unsettling and nightmarish, director Gerard Johnson crafts a suspenseful and anxious journey despite the destination pointing to obvious points well known.

Smith, Nighy, and Dench aren’t delivering audacious, reaching performances here, but there’s still plenty of charm and authenticity.

The film's own spin toward a liberal audience means it chokes into ineffectuality when it tries to take a less ironic and more active stance on society's biggest current white whale, because the persuasive sermon it preaches, it preaches exclusively to the choir.

Between the charming Copley performance, the ingenious visuals, the absolutely incredible all-electronic Hans Zimmer score (seriously, this is one of his best ever), and the propulsive narrative thrust (Blomkamp is rarely singled out for how swiftly he moves things along, plot holes be damned), there is a lot to appreciate and even love about Chappie.

Kidnapping Mr. Heineken never conveys how a bunch of working stiffs transformed themselves into a coiled — if scrappy and ragtag — criminal operation.

It’s a curious, infuriating and haunting tale, and an accomplishment of documentary filmmaking.

Bringing someone back from the dead is one of the horror genre's oldest and most effective tropes, but with The Lazarus Effect, it just seems tired.

Focus only works if the balance of ingredients is right, and from the cast, Ficarra and Requa get everything they need.

If Playing It Cool is meant to be an ironic interpretation of what happens to these characters, the film isn't sharp, smart or insightful enough about how actual humans interact to pull it off.

‘71 is more than just a performance showcase, delivering a gripping, at times almost unbearably tense, incredibly involving anti-war statement, made the stronger for being set against the less cinematically familiar backdrop of Belfast in the year 1971.

A terrifically solid and sturdy effort across the board, Bluebird is the real deal and a true package of strong collaborators coalescing to make a wonderful debut film.

Tracking the rise of each fighter, Champs underscores the incredible skill, talent and fortitude each had on their way to the top, however it never shies away from pointing out the systemic failures that let them down.

None of this would be as funny if it was done by anyone other than Wiig, who has never been funnier. Her crass, narcissistic, capricious Alice is her greatest creation.

Well-intentioned and intimate, Alex Of Venice has its heart in the right place; its pains and struggles might be small stakes and personal, but they’re very genuine, relatable and universal. There’s a lot to admire, which is why the movie’s uneven grasp of narrative fundamentals is so frustrating.

It's an ambitious attempt to meld the kind of social realism that made the names of Andrea Arnold and Clio Barnard with a stripped-down genre thriller, an attempt that's only moderately successful, though it suggests Wolfe is a filmmaker of real promise.

Young Bodies Heal Quickly is a haunting film, mostly because the title remains forever in doubt.

Digging Up the Marrow could have been an effective riff on Barker's "Nightbreed," but instead becomes just another found footage horror lark, with occasionally nifty effects and an overriding sense that Green's ego, and not a wonderful Ray Wise performance, is what the movie is really about.

This first section is so charming and well-observed, and creates such real chemistry between the two terrific leads, that it's almost a shame that it's there to invest us in them just so the fast-paced genre flick to come has an anchor.

While it's not close to the level of "Stories We Tell" in terms of commenting on the reliability of narrators and the cozy comfort of dishonesty to smooth over thornier life issues, the finale of "Elliot" is murky enough to leave folks guessing as to the true motivations of the entire film.

The current of informed anger, directed at those who stand by while injustice and bigotry flourish, is unmistakable and turns the whole film into a kind of clever folk fable-cum-protest song.

Where Jacquot largely knows what he's doing on a micro-level within individual scenes, and the sets and costuming are pretty special, he seems unable to assemble the parts into a coherent, consistent whole. So the film meanders and hiccups.

A movie so simple, so elegant, and yet so devouringly empathetic that you might not notice its full magic until a few hours later.

This is one slow-ass "novel," in which no one ever cracks a joke and potentially melodramatic moments (a fairground ride collapse, the initial accident, a suicide attempt) are so painstakingly crafted to avoid splashiness that any momentum is killed. A little splashiness would have been most welcome.

Is it fair to make Woman in Gold representative of the failings of the whole historical-true-story-designed-to-remind-an-older-skewing-middle-class-white-audience-that-people-have-triumphed-over-adversity genre? Perhaps not, but as one of its most egregious and fallacious examples, it's as good a line to draw in the sand as any.

Without overly romanticizing it or suggesting that, ultimately, it is anything more than a business built around the talents of some very singular men, Sunada's film becomes a love letter of a most unusual kind, because it is addressed to a place that is unremarkable in every way except for the spirit that flowed through it.

The Forbidden Room is a cinephile’s delight, another Maddin dream fantasia that’s visually distressed, suffused in feverish melodrama, and strangely poetic. Surrender yourself to its demented genius. The Forbidden Room will trap you in its bewitching spell, and you’ll be better for it.

While McFarland, USA doesn't reinvent the wheel (in fact, it makes "Million Dollar Arm" seem even more abstract, due to its virtual absence of actual sports), it does deliver in all the ways you expect that a Disney sports movie should: it's heartwarming, handsome, and features an exceptional Costner performance at its center.

All The Wilderness may ultimately be hindered by a narrow scope, but within that view, Johnson gets pretty much every detail right.

Director Ari Sandel, working with a script by Josh A. Cagan, doesn't have the deftness to really convey how Bianca's personality turns conventional wisdom into her own unique, attractive qualities.

Corddry’s Lou was an enjoyable, over-the-top asshole in the first film, providing most of its humor, even while surrounded by an equally strong cast. However, here, he’s just a truly disgusting human being. Worse still, he’s not that funny.

With no sheen of reflexivity, and no in-jokey admission of its hokiness to hide behind, can this non-ironic un-re-invention possibly work? Actually, yes it can, and does surprisingly well, by approaching the story with a sincerity and sweetness that defy cynicism, and by casting Cate Blanchett.

So you have The Rewrite, which feels like it had a rewrite at some point, perhaps muddying the waters of the film's larger intentions. But there's enough from both halves — the more original dramedic vehicle and the less imaginative, predictable, mainstream-aimed entertainment — to make for one wobbly, yet enjoyable movie, if you just put your guard down enough to let it in.

Accidental Love is mostly a mess, a curiosity for fans, and a mangled misfire you'd understand anyone hoping to omit from their CV.

Ultimately, Fifty Shades Of Grey is embarrassing and depressing, especially when considering the picture as a reflection of the quality of mainstream modern romance today.

Perry’s observations of complicated female dynamics are extremely perceptive and the emotional specificity of alienation, disenchantment, and mistrust is wonderfully precise.

An insightful, enjoyable, absorbing ride that stands as a testament to its director's lively, ungovernable storytelling imagination.

It looks pretty, and is visually often a creditable recreation of times past, but it gives no substance to Stock and Dean's relationship, just circumstances. It lacks life.

Formally, it is even more abstract than previous Malick efforts, with on-camera dialogue kept to the barest minimum and the cast instead contributing poetic, banal or philosophical voiceover to the soundtrack, lines which overlap, fade up and fade down into music and silence, contributing to the sense of the film as a philosophical fugue state.

It's such a disappointment when you consider the wild portraits of pioneers that Herzog has given us before, that he's so reverent here. Isn't he the director who can locate the madness in everything he sees? Where is Bell's madness?

Nothing in Seventh Son is compelling, interesting or noteworthy, though you can feel the strain of the filmmakers attempting to set up a potential franchise.

Faults is a strangely funny, often eerie accomplishment, and it’s a testament to why people like us tend to call first features like this “promising.”

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water is a mild lark. It's odd, off-the-wall, and has enough jokes and gags that if you're forced to take your little one to the theater, you won't spend the entire time looking at your watch or planning your escape.

There is an emptiness that lingers around Jupiter Ascending. From the lack of original thought in its conception to the expensive excess in its execution, the directors' usual bag of tricks can't manage to fill the void.

Director Johanna Hamilton should be credited for getting these faces in front of the camera, to humanize political rebellion of an early era not as some sepia-toned memory, but a story of very human individuals.

Love, Rosie doesn't aspire to be anything more than a digestible rom-com trifle. It's a sweet movie about sweet people who are always sweet to each other and it's enough to make one sick on the saccharine.

As warped and sadistic as Entertainment is, its brilliance is in the embrace of humiliation and failure, and the way it forces us to confront and sit with those embarrassing, uneasy feelings.

Dreamcatcher is a love letter to a true American hero who roams our streets.

Ultimately, Gibney's film is fascinating for the people in it. The filmmaking is nothing exceptional, but what is remarkable is the bravery shown by those who speak out in the film.

Watts’ film is comprised of terrible coincidences, bad mustaches and a pervasive sense of desperation. It’s also wholly unable to live up to its obvious promise.

The movie's pace feels more like a plod, less deliberate than simply unsure of itself. Christmas, Again is a quiet film, but one that could perhaps use a bit more buzz of the holiday season.

Digging For Fire is low-lit and pitched in a minor key, a quiet meditation on compromise, individuality, the loss of identity within a marriage, and the aftermath of disorientation that comes with having children and losing touch with your former life.

Silverman is completely riveting as she tries and flails to do right, and her physical performance is remarkable: a change in her gait or expression signals the switch in her personality from human to addict.

It’s a journey deep into the psyche of the tormented genius, that is as all-encompassing and expressive of Cobain's spirit as a film could possibly be. It's a true achievement, both in documentary filmmaking, and in preserving the memory and legacy of Cobain.

An admirable and touching picture, Last Days In The Desert can be deeply moving in moments, but as restrained and elegant as it is, the picture never quite transcends.

With a dry and witty tone, it’s an amicable and appealing piece on love, both the romantic and family kind, and the ways in which it can change, evolve, and grow.

A dark, but spirited fable about the pitilessness of the West, the meaning of home on the range and the worthwhile qualities of wicked, seemingly irredeemable men, “Slow West” is a terrific little parable, and a strong debut by John Maclean worth treasuring.

Alvarez’s clinical but deeply engrossing execution of the drama is mesmerizing in its directness.

Headland doesn’t entirely subvert the romantic comedy genre here, but she certainly has fun twisting up some of its most obvious tropes for a little added pizzazz and some major laughs.

Results isn’t always a successful film, but its philosophies about the myths of perfection as they apply to love are at least credible, funny and well observed.