The whole movie feels like a case of the sweats, putting you in desperate need of the chicken soup of recognizable human behavior.

To the Wonder is arty for sure, but for the first time, its maker is working with anxieties we all feel. Let’s hope this Malick sticks around for a while.

This is another dinner conversation that races and lingers, making you want to do more with your own life.

As its title suggests, this is more of a self-conscious attempt to court quirky cult-film status. Nice try.

The film does offer some revealing anecdotes about his infamous Monroe sessions, but mostly, it simply slouches from one sensationalistic, salacious bit to the next, sans any historical context. Worse, filmmaker Shannah Laumeister continually rhapsodizes on-camera about her own “soul mate” relationship with the subject—leaving viewers feeling mad as hell.

Brando-wheezing Gandolfini never slums it, but there’s still no shaking the sense that a pro has shown up for amateur hour.

This story is both uplifting and awe-inspiring. It deserves to be told better.

Ultimately, the silly material overwhelms the style, particularly in a final act involving magical hillbillies living in them thar hills — during which the movie attempts to make a serious point about the importance of faith in the midst of a lot of bad teeth, worse wigs and cheap jolts. Right.

Perhaps the director is trying to show her socialites’ path to finding themselves, but her point ends up as lost as the film’s aimless hedonists; like its characters, Lotus Eaters is a visual treat—and emotionally vapid.

The film feels like its over long before the credits roll — or perhaps that’s just wishful thinking.

Redford’s devotion to old-school liberalism and ’70s socially informed dramas has been a directorial-career constant, and at its best, The Company You Keep feels like a movie you’d have seen in 1975 — one informed by political righteousness and made for adults.

What really matters is seeing these pretty people get put through the gory wringer, and once the unholy spirit comes calling, Evil Dead more than delivers.

Even at its most affecting, Simon Killer rarely seems like more than a cinema-du-Gaspar-Noé simulacrum. The languorous long-takes, dissociative sound design and strobe-light scene transitions meant to mirror this emotional con artist’s skewed view of the world are anxiety-of-influence hand-me-downs through and through—viscera without vision.

The film plays like something Boyle could kick out in his sleep, all his supercool devices listlessly deployed in service of a mediocre wet dream.

No one is going to explain any of this for you — and the slightly snobby implication of Upstream Color is that explanations are for suckers.

Plays like a tiresomely extended evening of channel surfing.

That sort of fire-and-brimstone morality dominates this one-note sermon, which pairs its pedantic preaching with the campiness of Vanessa Williams speaking in an absurd French accent and Kim Kardashian as the protagonist’s bitchy fashionista coworker, vainly trying to act.

At least Mark Ping Bing Lee’s luscious cinematography distracts from the shallow storytelling. There are worse things than luxuriating in a two-hour Côte d’Azur travel ad.

Aside from a few witty Looney Tunes–esque sight gags, such as one hilarious image of a woolly mammoth being swallowed up by the tectonically shifting earth, the stereoscopic visuals are a busy, personality-free digital blur.

The time-killing universe Byington has created makes sure we never forget how absurd he thinks the whole movie is. Fun for him, perhaps.

Once a scarred shark hunter (Liev Schreiber) enters the fray, the film’s tone shifts from madcap to maudlin, and the narrative from being merely grating to actually galling. Artistic inspiration can be close to madness, but Mental is just plain nuts.

A rare Chilean film that doesn’t mention either the Allende or Pinochet regimes, Violeta Went to Heaven is a love letter to a lost 20th-century goddess. It’s hard to resist her.

Dog Pound only rarely finds the live-wire energy needed to make up for its amateur cast and staunch adherence to well-worn archetypes: cell-block bullies, sadistic guards, fresh-fish innocents, etc. Neither the film’s bark nor its bite leaves much of a mark.

Favoring style over substance isn’t a mortal sin, but Creevy isn’t as enthrallingly slick as compatriot Guy Ritchie, nor does he have anything like the "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" auteur’s feel for Britain’s criminal class.

Weird for weirdness’s sake gets you only so far, however, and when Dupieux tries to connect all these strange goings-on to Dolph’s corporate-drone despondency, the movie takes a spurious turn toward rancid sentimentality. It seems that even a piece of dog excrement has feelings. Yuck.

Yet after the actorcentric fireworks of Cianfrance’s "Blue Valentine" (2010), it’s impressive to see him going after a wider sociopolitical scope, one that would have been better served by a less repetitive structure.

An "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" retread told from a postoccupation vantage point, this adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s YA romance novel unfolds in a dystopian future when alien parasites have nearly won the battle for Earth.

It’s truly something to see these children come into their own, and to bear witness to the undeniable sea change Ganguly has set in motion.

Room 237 asks that you bring your own noodles; as docs go, it leaves you with questions, some worry and rib-sticking satiation.

Expressively (Berger knows his grammar), a white communion dress is dipped in black dye as her custodial grandmother passes away and an evil castle beckons.

A deep supporting cast brings its A-game to the ridiculous dialogue.

There are few artists better than Rivette at uncovering the magical (even at its most menacing) in the everyday.

The Sapphires might pass muster as escapist fluff, but its pretensions of significance go woefully awry.

The artist formerly known as Aragorn remains an engrossing screen presence, but this campy thriller is a tad too close to simply having him sing the telephone directory.

New World dishes out enough of the genre’s oldest pleasures to make it worthwhile.

What could have been one long, smutty joke ends up turning into a moving slice of midlife.

This remake of ’70s Spanish horror film "Who Can Kill a Child?" is less a contemporary upgrade than an eagerly creaky exploitative throwback.

It’s a lightweight drama filled with heavyweight war-is-hell monologues, delivered by a cast that lacks the gravity to sell them.

Even those who aren’t well-versed in the-’hood-always-wins dramas can see what’s coming. So it’s to newcomer Sally El Hosaini’s credit that she embeds a tangible, lived-in sense of the region’s diaspora community and urban criminal underbelly (wagwan, near-indecipherable East End patois!) that’s leagues away from anthropological fetishizing.

When it’s indulging in glammed-up musical sequences, Hunky Dory comes to life; everything else couldn’t seem less inspiring.

What begins as gritty realism ends up as the usual made-for-cable melodramatics—an apple that’s always better left unbitten.

Admission’s comedy has walls built around it; director Paul Weitz (About a Boy), normally a softener of harsh edges, might have been stymied by Fey’s snappy persona.

These two trash-talkin’ Picassos may or may not end up getting their due, but Leon and his two extraordinary actors (especially Washington) have already put us squarely on the side of the beautiful losers regardless.

Say what you will about this collection of less-than-feature-length films: There’s truth in its advertising. The sketchlike movies here are indeed shorts, and stars do lend their presence.

It’s a complex geometry that’s mined for some interesting perspectives on romantic fulfillment, but the film’s comic sense (exemplified by a drunken Harden acting inappropriately) is slack and its dramatic conclusion unfulfilling.

The movie builds to a particularly deflating anticlimax, passing over an inevitably apocalyptic confrontation between spheres with a wink-wink, nudge-nudge bit of dialogue that’s like a rejected punchline from a Douglas Adams novel.

Yes, it’s derivative to a fault — but a deserved midnight-movie cult following is all but assured.

Fortunately, Roth himself proves to be a fascinating presence — soft-spoken, sharp and bearing a vague air of melancholy that offsets the surrounding adulation.

This vision of contemporary Italy as a warped fairyland filled with corpulent slobs and seedy C-grade celebrities recalls the tough-love spectacle of Fellini’s "La Dolce Vita," but Reality frustratingly devolves into a far more tedious mass-media morality tale.

No matter; this aggressively humorless farce would play like a dead rabbit pulled out of a hat, regardless of the casting choices.

And though Capper captures a few truly intimate moments, like the star humbly participating in a Rasta ritual, the whole thing ends up feeling like a superficial cross between a starstruck version of Vice’s gonzo travelogues and a highly (ahem) stage-managed portrait of an artist in transition.

The most heart-wrenching thing about the film is watching Fanning’s transformation from idealist to wreck, the father’s free-thinking daughter turned into the mother’s double in the space of a dinner argument. It’s not quite enough for a film, but it is for one magnificent scene.

From Up on Poppy Hill — cowritten by Miyazaki, and directed by his son Goro — shows a different side of the Japanese animation house, one that finds equal wonder in comparatively mundane affairs.

Spring Breakers is either an inspired satire of the youth movie or the most irresponsible comedy mainstream Hollywood will never make. The bros in your crowd will call it rad — and radical it is.

A long, dull swim through narrative syrup interrupted occasionally by poorly choreographed acts of violence. It’s essential only for those wanting to hear Farrell try on a Hungarian accent.

It’s an earnest hope, to be sure, and the greatest strength of Sam Raimi’s imaginative, if highly uneven, take on L. Frank Baum’s series of children’s stories about that magical land over the rainbow is its unabashed sincerity.

In all aspects, The Girl can’t help it — this is headline-torn cinema du tearjerking at its most generic.

The sense of old-school piety as lust under inhuman pressure is juicy and polished, if a little earnest about spiritual conflict and too entranced with its LOTR-ish medieval trappings. In fact, as monksploitation goes, Dominik Moll’s film is sober and straight when it should be crazy and hot-blooded.

Even this early in his career, Godard knew how to make audiences viscerally experience and contemplate things they might otherwise not have wanted to.

The best moments in filmmaker Rebecca Thomas’s debut feature manage flashes of wide-eyed grace — that is, when the overly precious, half-formed story isn’t undermining her understated direction and the work of a fine cast.

Unfortunately for this rock documentary, this fan-to-frontman saga is not that interesting a turn.

Only Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, directors of 2009’s stylish Amer, emerge intact with “O Is for Orgasm,” a surging montage of fluid colors and moans.

By the end of the ride, the movie’s messy humanity has officially calcified into After-School Special clichés; given the choice between handcrafted whimsy and heavy-handedness, we’ll take the former, thanks.

Director Peter Webber, who once mined social unease from the painterly "Girl with a Pearl Earring," is out of his depth; this is a movie in desperate need of a no-nonsense Howard Hawks.

The navel-gazing artist class that gave Williamsburg its character (now more of a marketable “brand”) has in Friedrich both a vigorous defender and, it must be said, something close to an angry parody of itself.

As a macro- to micro-exploration of guilt—over giving in to sexual deviancy, its use as a psychological crutch or as something that keeps grief from transforming into closure — The Silence speaks volumes.

As in his much-lauded "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," the latest feature from Palme d’Or–winning filmmaker Cristian Mungiu takes a rigorous approach to the material. But where the previous film — about two women seeking a back-alley abortion — was a reductively dour slog, Beyond the Hills feels more caustically all-encompassing.

Neither as subversively fun as last year’s megadestructive "Project X," nor as creative as "The Hangover" (on which these codirectors broke through as screenwriters), this further installment in the millennials-acting-badly genre serves as a distinctly average placeholder.

So many blockbuster movies are impersonal, micromanaged hashes that Jack, with its bare minimum of craft and commitment, comparatively comes off like a diamond in the rough.

The filmmaker throws in a strangely irrelevant twist before he’s through, but despite a lavish dose of gothic style, The Condemned’s trek toward absolution is pretty familiar.

A ravishingly shot slice of teen-ness that eschews narrative altogether in favor of a moody, watchful wistfulness, this mild-mannered debut plays something like "Bestiaire" for contemporary slacker youth.

It’s a kind of self-portrait made out of quotidian meals, naps and scattershot car-seat conversations, and though the loss that underlies Mark’s emotional state feels like a scripted conceit, The End of Love excels at conveying the moment-to-moment frustrations and exhilarations of being a dad.

Here’s a mathematical formula for you: Take one overlong, nonsensical script; multiply it by terrible editing and design; then divide the whole thing by wooden performances. Voilà: You’ll have Jeff Lipsky’s unwatchable indie.

As an info dump, Table is admirably efficient, addressing everything from obesity to the limits of charity. As a film, it’s less compelling, with only one subject — Philadelphia single mom Barbie Izquierdo — getting enough screen time to put a human face on the crisis.

Fans of the gritty, era-defining precinct drama will bristle at how the program's realism has been replaced by a generic Tinseltown U.K. slickness. But regardless of whether you’re a longtime devotee or not, you’ll be left saying, “This is The Sweeney? I’ve been rooked.”

You couldn’t accuse the cast members of being good actors, yet this young performer knows exactly how to express Jackie’s confusion, vulnerability, instability and longing without any sense of judgment; the film would simply not work without her, no matter how sensitively Sallitt handles such provocative, ick-producing bait.

Drooling fanboys and "Buffy"-loving academics are sure to go wild — not that there’s anything wrong with that…right? Stoker is a gorgeous wank job; just prepare to hate yourself for loving it.

The film’s subject is almost too horrible to contemplate, but it finds a way to space out the blows without softening them.

Miller’s ace in the hole is the hulking, regal Harper, whose round face vacillates between childlike mirth and lung-stomping sadness. His casual charisma not only commands our attention and affection, it sidelines every social or thematic concern to this singular, tentatively aspiring life.

The first and only piece of advice needed on one’s way to the fishing pond is this: Bring your patience. Not surprisingly, the same could be said to a viewer of this slow-building but riveting experimental collage.

The real mystery of Dark Skies isn’t who’s pulling the paranormal pranks — it’s lanky visitors from above, not vengeful spirits from beyond — but why Dimension is treating this reasonably effective potboiler like something that should be hidden away at Area 51.

Manly, sharp-edged submarine B movies don’t come along often anymore — so consider this Cold War off-white-knuckler a welcome blast of recycled air.

Snitch is a movie that cries out for the wiry B stars of yore: Robert Forster, a younger Tommy Lee Jones. And it would have occurred to a craftier screenwriter to make his hero’s walk on the criminal wild side a touch more tempting.

Though often funny, there’s a reverse narcissism in the way Karpovsky wallows in his “character’s” off-putting flaws.

A too-pat ending also spoils Rubberneck (shorter: Mommy made me do it!), though it doesn’t ruin the steely pleasures of the filmmaking.

Once the murderer starts relying on the lad’s kindness, all the preceding kid stuff starts to take on a purposefully sour tang.

Waiting for Inescapable to finally reach its unearned, sentimental conclusion is a tiresome experience, but seeing Tomei submit to its badness is several measures worse.

The late Douglas Adams summed up Earth as “mostly harmless,” a description that also applies to this eminently tolerable animated time-filler.

Any residual charm evaporates when the third-act dramatics start piling up and a must-be-seen-to-be-believed final twist redefines the word shameless, even by Sparksville standards.

We’re a long way from this shoot-’em-up franchise’s John McTiernan–helmed heyday. Willis gives one of his laziest ever performances, leadenly tossing off each quip (“I’m on vacation!” is the most abused) and acting like he’s passing a kidney stone during the bathetic father-son bonding scenes.

Through it all, Henney is an appealing screen presence, but he’s trapped in a movie that puts regurgitated sitcom shtick and regional economic boosterism ahead of character and humor.

Though the director includes a few brief humdingers — a fight that involves a Rube Goldberg–ish tangle of wires; some munitions-fueled mayhem in a farmhouse — it’s not enough to keep viewers from wishing they were thumbing through a John le Carré novel instead.

The director has made disappointing films before — a more generous word might be transitional — but never one so slight.

The whole film seems dead set against offering up any kind of salaciousness. Like the overly arty "Zoo" and other indie experiments, it misses the point in a disturbing way.

As with many young-adult book-to-film series, Beautiful Creatures plays like an illustrated compendium of scenes from the novel, as opposed to a finely tuned narrative all its own.

The essential thrust here is both knowing and undeniable: No is pitched at the pivot point when the image makers were brazen enough to push ideology to the side. Considering how high the stakes were, it’s amazing they almost didn’t get the gig.

The precedent for a movie like this is Ang Lee’s bruised "The Ice Storm," but whereas that film sprung from a novel that burns with indictment, Julia Dyer’s effort — scripted by her late sister, Gretchen — is a more open-ended affair and slightly unsatisfying for it.

The story is ultimately nothing more than a decrepit vehicle for the moldiest of scary-movie clichés: screechy specters, inane character behavior and jump scares that a toddler could anticipate minutes ahead of time.