More shakily, Payne’s obvious pathology isn’t probed as deeply as it should be. A jaunty musical score smooths over what might have been a tougher profile about an expert liar, to self included.

As a procedural study, Night Moves is undeniably effective: The buildup is slow, painstaking and intense, the fallout inevitable but still shocking...But the soul is somehow missing.

The most gratifying thing about the film is feeling Moodysson’s warmth return to him.

It goes off the rails early and often. You almost have to give it props for how resolutely batshit it is. Almost.

The script—which Jones, Kieran Fitzgerald and Wesley Oliver adapted from Glendon Swarthout's 1988 novel—shifts uneasily between tragedy and comedy.

It’s nice to see this great filmmaker sculpting something that feels genuinely revelatory. That’s not to say that the 3-D Goodbye to Language is always an easy sit.

Once Miller lays all his cards on the table, however, you realize you haven’t been watching people struggling with the very real temptations of unchecked privilege, so much as fumbling blindly in a glib, gloomy satire of American exceptionalism.

Nicholas Wrathall’s documentary—rough-edged in style, yet anchored by pointed and poignant interviews with the man himself — is mostly for those already fascinated by Vidal’s colorful life.

A full-bodied and mischievous autobiography in the spirit of Federico Fellini’s "Amarcord," Alejandro Jodorowsky’s return to filmmaking after 28 years of financial frustration explodes with great ideas.

Mostly, though, this Creek has run dry.

There are sweet moments and callbacks to "L’Auberge," including a neat trick in which we see snippets from all three films in the credits, but ultimately Puzzle lacks the magic of its predecessors.

You may often find yourself second-guessing the film, questioning how—and if—it will all come together. But by the time of the intense and impassioned climax, a storm of emotion is ensured: a great movie rising before you like a delusion, like a dream.

What keeps you watching is the charisma of the performers: Hamm does an amiable riff on his Don Draper persona (he’s cynical before the big melt), Lake Bell is a delight as his tart-tongued love interest, and Sharma and Mittal are all charm as the cultures-uniting underdogs.

It’s always fun to watch scaly, skyscraper-size behemoths lay waste to civilization, but a bit more human drama wouldn’t have gone amiss.

Fortunately Coppola’s sensitivity is always evident, especially in the open-hearted performances she gets from Roberts and Kilmer (whose father, Val, has a funny, pot-addled cameo).

The material isn’t excited or shaped toward any insight — the Mike Leigh of "Naked" did this sort of thing brilliantly — and the arrival of a sluggish investigating journalist (Richard Jenkins), himself a bar fixture and underachiever, doesn’t offer a valid counterpoint.

A meandering middle and sticky-sweet third act can be overlooked if only for the savviness with which Favreau portrays the food world.

Marvin Kren’s enjoyable if ephemeral horror movie gets by for a while on its dopey premise.

The whole sorry enterprise leaves you feeling, well, shafted.

Closer to a special episode of "Diff’rent Strokes" than to "12 Years a Slave," the movie seems to exist to give its white characters belated moments of conscience.

It’s unfortunate that Stelling and his cast aren’t able to lift the story much above mawkishness.

The result is a film that starts with a bang and ends with a shrug, but keeps us entertained throughout.

Fortunately, a few striking sequences break up the tedium.

While Transcendence has tons of money to spend on unpersuasive digital effects and dronelike music, it shows little interest in exploring the potentially tricky benefits of a computer-enhanced intellect; it’s not even in the enjoyable realm of starkly ridiculous Cold War thrillers like "Colossus: The Forbin" Project.

You could hardly ask for a more beautiful vision of souls in transit.

Turturro, writing and directing in a register light-years from his nebbishy turn in "Barton Fink," has a more sensual NYC indie in mind.

Director Samantha Grant scores an interview with Blair himself, whose too-little-too-late admissions (along with his reemergence as a postguilt life coach) might drive your crowd to hisses.

Perfect Sisters, which takes a dark, matricidal turn (inspired by an actual Toronto case), was never going to be a new "Heavenly Creatures." But give credit to director Stan Brooks for allowing his two former child stars some real meat to sink their teenage chops into.

Yet Green, as is his wont, too often strains for poetic effect through flowery voiceover and tone-deaf interactions — like those between Joe and his latest short-term girlfriend — that undercut the genuineness.

If Jim Jarmusch’s languorous, laconic style isn’t your bag, his stone-faced vampire comedy won’t make you a believer. Those who’ve already been bitten, however, will swoon like the film’s toothy leads whenever their lips touch neck juice.

All of this is fascinating in the moment, yet the doc never yokes all these threads into anything particularly deep or illuminating. The Galapagos Affair is less social commentary, more gossip.

Only Gaby Hoffmann makes a lasting impression, as the thick-skinned pariah of the bunch. Somehow she’s able to give the ring of truth to even the hoariest of Hennelly and cowriter Sarah Adina Smith’s conceits (notably a rally-the-troops speech cribbed from founding father George Washington). The rest makes you long for Armageddon.

None of this is pushed into comic relief—the filmmaker lets his drama play out with gentleness — and you smile at the many evolutions.

Along the way, director Chris Eska provides ample space for his principals to breathe, wisely homing in on the uneasy gaze of the guidance-starved Will, whose struggle will resonate with anyone charged with an unenviable task.

You’re thankful when Ayer stops trying to artistically tart up this Peckinpah-lite tale of vengeance and just lets his leading man do what he does best: blow the bad guys away.

Darren Aronofsky’s big-ticket retelling of the biblical legend of Noah (Russell Crowe, so damn serious) is a wildly stupid, yet still train-wreck-fascinating piece of work.

Cheap Thrills is little more than low-budget torture porn for the doobie-addled dudebro contingent.

Maier’s images are truly stunning—vivid documents of the working class that are off-the-cuff yet rigorously composed, always capturing that enigmatic bit of her subject’s soul that leaves you in spine-tingled awe.

The brotherly-love epiphany to which the film builds does effectively pluck the heartstrings, but there’s a lingering sense that we’re being had.

Morris's new subject looks relaxed and comfortable as ever lobbing out the same old evasions. He probably loves the attention from the Oscar-winning director.

Swinging it to compelling are irresistible performances from Felicity Jones and Guy Pearce.

This installment delivers a heavy and welcome dose of paranoia, administered between fleetly paced smackdowns.

One would be better off experiencing Woodley via her heartbreaking turn in last year's "The Spectacular Now," a drama that actually has more to say about nightmarish cliques and individuality than any lackadaisical slide into future schlock.

Writer-director Freida Lee Mock’s concise and potent chronicle uses a wealth of archival video and numerous new interviews with its subject to properly contextualize Hill’s testimony as a landmark moment in the fight for gender equality.

The filmmaker has fallen for some of indiedom’s worst clichés, including our main character’s sad stare out to the ocean, and soft camerawork that’s beginning to sound like a Klaxon: Hug me, hug me, hug me.

Early on, the film bristles with endorphins and oddness.

Either via clay dolls or fragile flesh, the truth is unmissable—as is Panh’s film itself.

Frank Pavich’s fun documentary captures an unbowed, exuberant Jodorowsky, who recalls his team of “spiritual warriors” with the camaraderie of a battle-scarred veteran.

Family members fight and reconcile over delicious-looking regional cuisine, new romantic possibilities present themselves, and Deneuve swans through all the heartstring-plucking silliness like the ethereal superstar she is. There are worse things in life.

The film is made up of plundered parts from the "Oceans" series and "The Usual Suspects," and—like several of the forged tomes that figure in the plot — it’s a pale imitation.

Bad Words soars in the bits of riotously offensive chitchat between Guy and a young Indian hopeful (Rohan Chand); it wobbles in plot developments involving the effortlessly starchy Allison Janney as the contest’s “queen bee”; and it splats in the I’m-secretly-hurting conclusion.

All the way back to "Donnie Darko," Jake Gyllenhaal has had an inchoate sense of evolution about him, a tricky quality that better actors can’t pull off half as well. So it’s hard to say if splitting the star into two doppelgängers — Adam, a mousy college professor, and Anthony, a rising actor with a healthy ego — is the best dramatic plan.

The film lacks background and cultural context, a surprising choice considering the rich history of the art form. But the interviewees are so compelling that their stories stand on their own.

Make room for the modest but affecting pleasures of veteran actors tearing into the subject of golden-years resignation.

Cry foul, you documentary purists, but narration by Jena Malone and others pulls the gamble off. The film makes its point ingeniously.

Anyone who has ever loved a television show can see that Thomas and his crew are working overtime to give VM aficionados everything they want.

Melodrama often risks the ridiculous to achieve the sublime, and though this unabashedly earnest tearjerker doesn’t completely transcend its narrative absurdities, it’s enough of a distinctively odd duck to keep you engaged.

Densely plotted by director Yuval Adler and Ali Wakad (the former Israeli, the latter Palestinian), this informant crime drama finds admirable complexity in the folds of its shifting allegiances — even if you’ve seen this dynamic done better in movies like "The Departed."

This is hardly a symphony of terror, but it’s still a solidly composed exercise in suspense.

Brief yet underdeveloped, Interior. Leather Bar. has a faux-documentary vibe about it.

The auteur’s style — dramatic zooms, winking symmetry — is balanced against a newfound political context; this one’s his "To Be or Not to Be."

Particle Fever is that rare, exhilarating science doc that’s neither dumbed down nor drabbed up.

Would that the climax lived up to the tension-filled first two thirds. Let’s just say that Non-Stop reaches for some pointed post-9/11 political commentary that almost entirely exceeds its grasp. Total brainlessness, in this case, would have been a virtue.

Hollywood does this too; truth be told, Russia’s high-tech whitewash goes down smooth like vodka.

May’s biggest get, however, is Ciavarella himself—a man forever rationalizing his shady actions, who emerges as a more complexly tragic figure than you’d think possible.

Director Tim Story (Fantastic Four) locates the right blend of humour and action in a couple of taut sequences, but Ride Along is saddled with an uninvolving plot, and largely content to coast on cop-movie clichés.

There’s not enough villainy—nor lip-smacking comeuppance—to justify a smiting by ash or falling column. The movie in your head melts ten times better.

This is a life lived, perhaps not always well, but certainly to the fullest.

A complex final scene — in which everyone finally lets the tears flow — only deepens the sense that well-meaning mother love can be as poisonous as it is nourishing.

Jessica Lange, as rare as a unicorn these days, seizes on the role of a grieving mother with two taloned hands. If there are any tremors of shame to be felt here, they emanate from her.

But scary? Not so much.

Bakri has charisma to burn, but the complexity of Abu-Assad’s previous movies is traded in for weak genre thrills.

Imagine "His Girl Friday" crossed with "Armageddon" and you’ll get a sense of the unfortunate disconnect that prevents an enjoyable light entertainment from achieving rom-com nirvana.

Since this marks the directorial debut of Hollywood hack Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind), there’s a heavy foot applied to the era-skipping leaps made by source novelist Mark Helprin.

The performances, especially from the bed partners, are complex; even if you weren’t wanting for an exposé of adult-entertainment violence, here it is.

The story beats are as familiar as they come, and there are a few halfhearted stabs at redeeming Roberts’s clueless character when it would have been better to push her feeble-mindedness to Anna Faris–esque extremes.

Too many characters contribute to a dulling of the cross-cultural spark found in the original (and in the better-known A Prophet). Kinnaman doesn’t have as much to play with this time — without his double life, he’s just an unsmooth criminal.

Del Toro and Amalric’s concentrated performances — the former resigned and shell-shocked, the latter agitated and servile — have an anguished grandeur.

LaMarque foregrounds her scenario’s awkwardness—it never quite feels like a comedy—and the pair of male suitors she brings in (Jake Johnson and Ron Livingston) are, refreshingly, as unfixed as her main character. But you still wish Kazan had more to work with.

Lanzmann’s feisty exchanges with Murmelstein, a brilliant talker, become an emotional symbol for the pursuit of slippery truth, while the filmmaker’s recently shot footage of Yom Kippur services show a way of life in robust continuation.

Clooney occasionally shows a surer hand: He gets great work from Downton Abbey’s Bonneville — notably in an emotionally charged scene revolving around Michelangelo’s Madonna of Bruges — and has a fine monologue himself, in which Stokes dresses down a high-ranking German commander (a moving encapsulation of the American spirit at its best).

Probably best to dissuade the so-bad-it’s-good crowd: There’s nothing here to laugh at with the communal glee of a "Rocky Horror" or "The Room"; only a spectacularly bad composite shot of a fire-fighting plane induces any real giggles.

There’s bleakness in the beauty: What begins as a personal coming-of-age story ends as a tragic tale of a community’s stunted adolescence.

Charlie Victor Romeo would probably work best as a training tool for commercial airline pilots (the play, interestingly, has already been used in this fashion by the Pentagon). In a movie theater for a paying crowd, it’s little more than minimalist snuff.

The film will do until "Fifty Shades of Grey" turns up. The more you think about Labor Day, the more calculating it gets.

Unusually moving (not only to stray film critics in your crowd), director Steve James's keen profile of the late, great Roger Ebert works both as a compact appreciation of the reviewer's vast public impact, as well as an unflinching peak into a cancer patient's final months, fraught with pain, hope and constant treatment.

The real richness of the movie, though, comes well in, as the improvised script gets around to deeper anxieties of aging and avoidance.

Love Is Strange emerges as a total triumph for Sachs and his co-leads, John Lithgow and Alfred Molina, who, despite lengthy filmographies, turn in career-topping work. a sensitive domestic tragedy about the finite nature of any union.

Ruffalo, a master of rumpled befuddlement, finds his signature role here—it can't be overstated how deftly he eases into the tricky creation, a blue-blooded slacker who aches when the world won't hug him back.

Persuasive sci-fi tech talk, soulful romance and an earnest stab at metaphysics combine in director Mike Cahill's polished second feature.

Just as you're reeling from the tackiness of this premise, set within such an explosive context, the plot doubles down on it.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

On purely formal grounds (the ones on which the genre lives or dies), Kent is a natural. She favors crisp compositions and unfussy editing, transforming the banal house itself into a subtle, shadowy threat.

If you'll pardon the cleverness, Frank takes time to wrap your own cranium around, faults and all, and that's a wonderful thing.

No other filmmaker on the planet can touch Evans for long-take beatdowns and wildly inventive flourishes.

Whiplash scrapes the far edge of crazy passion. It never apologizes.

The Aatsinki siblings never rise past a kind of rotely anonymous masculinity, and overall the film tends to lull rather than engage the senses.

Though Stranger by the Lake leans a bit too heavily on its long-take, slow-cinema bona fides, there’s a clear purpose to Guiraudie’s rigorous perspective. He’s out to unearth the very potent (and often terrifying) emotions underlying every explicit act, sexual or otherwise.