The film definitely gets it up, but has some commitment issues.

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

Filmed in the usual crisp AIP style, with dazzling sunlight and ominous shadows.

Barreling toward its rapidly modernizing future, China takes Internet addiction more seriously than most nations: To watch Web Junkie, an often scary yet half-realized documentary, is to see a society trapped in its old solutions.

An energetic, low-budget Pandora's Box of delights, tailor-made for the disposable '90s.

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.

Schrader can’t seem to choose a proper outcome, and the lack of a higher morality is weird, especially from a filmmaker who managed hints of spirituality in a movie about Bob Crane. Still, if you suffered through Schrader’s Exorcist prequel Dominion, you’ll know he’s somewhat back on track.

Hitchcock is reluctant to follow the subversive premises of the story through to their outrageous logical conclusion; the dialogue's sexual innuendoes now seem coy and awkward; the male leads are wooden; the ending too complacent; and the discreet style stranded by that dreaded British restraint so dear to the director.

It's only during the last third that the film finds its footing, as the PTSD fallout and collective sense of disillusionment suggest a bigger picture regarding why we fight, etc. Otherwise, this decent, if decidedly personal, look at small-town soldiers works better as an erratic scrapbook than a representative statement.

Likeable performances (backed by a sterling supporting cast), plus good Jule Styne-Sammy Cahn songs, make it all pleasantly painless.

We like our secondhand vengeance as sleazy and bloody as the next grindhouse fiend, but even an intentional throwback shouldn’t feel content to coast on so much déjà vu.

Like all of Tarsem's films, story takes a backseat to visuals, and there's plenty to pop the eyes-love those life-size string-puppet assassins!-if not, ultimately, to stir the soul.

When it comes to scenes in which characters are asked to say more than two words, however, the filmmaker's a decided amateur; Moretz, in particular, seems hopelessly stranded as the attitudinal wild child.

But while it may not be strong on nuance and the story moves with all the careful pacing of a human cannonball, it’s got gusto and verve in abundance. An old-fashioned musical with a none-more-zeitgeisty songsheet, it may not be a flawless piece of storytelling, but it’s a pretty decent show.

Some moments are so deliciously shivery-our heroes' breath condensing in the air like in John Carpenter's "The Thing"-that you wish the film were naughtier and less nice.

The problem is that the two moods aren't properly cross-fertilised, with the resolute bleakness of the settings and Wilder's direction positing a reality that is constantly undercut by the comic opera crew of Germans headed by Preminger. A fascinating film, nevertheless.

Working from autobiographical material, Sebastián Silva does wonders with these two dedicated performances — the ice king and the earth goddess, both of them neurotically detached from their sunny surroundings.

Until the movie's cathartic showdown (and a few backstory revelations that impress too late), The Drop putters along in a dozy register, less a simmering pot than a cooling one.

Welcome to the Jungle is mostly great fun, with Jack Black outrageously entertaining as a teenage girl. But we need to talk about Karen. As Ruby Roundhouse, Gillan is stuck in less clothes than one of Rihanna’s backing dancers. It’s a dig at the hypersexualization of women in video games, apparently. If so, perhaps the male director (or one of the four male writers) can explain how fixing the camera on a skimpily dressed female character makes the point.

Whereas the later film built up an impressively complex series of narrative strands and psychological motivations, this is far more one-dimensional, and is so laxly structured that its rambling story seems to last longer than the (almost) three-hour Prince of the City.

The Horse Boy comes off as both an edifying work of advocacy and an invasive home movie.

For a drama pretty much aimed at 12-year-old girls, it’s less superficial than you’d expect.

It helps that Milo (Hader) and Maggie (Wiig) are cranky adult siblings, sharing a whip-crack shorthand that longtime skit partners know how to muster effortlessly.

An early twist means that the bloodletting develops a repetitive feel, and there are unfortunate parallels with the recent Ready or Not 2, but the wincing and guilty laughs never quite dry up. Cult status may await.

Director Harris's strength is his ability to flesh out routine crime scenarios with credibly motivated characters, adding emotional depth and texture to familiar generic pleasures. That said, Snipes never quite finds the measure of his role; so, despite Hopper's unusually funny and warm performance, the final impression is tepid.

Ex-Glee geeks and those who sing in the shower: Your passable time-waster has arrived.

An inferior reworking of The Thing from Another World, which still manages to keep interest alive despite some poor special effects, a flat jokiness and stereotype characters.

Satisfyingly spooky, Hollywood's second attempt at Stephen King's undead pet yarn is half wild, half declawed.

This is a lazy, episodic, conventional but strangely charming variation on the old comedy formula of initially hostile misfits falling in love (here platonic).

The meal here is mainly nostalgia, larded with a thick sauce of irony.

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.

The longer the film goes on, the more it seems like a collection of gorgeous images without an overall organizing structure. Our youthful lead’s slow disillusionment with his complicated surroundings ultimately plays less profound than petulant.

Although the script (by Faulkner, among others) gets stranded with the usual slightly wooden dialogue considered necessary for ancient times, the story moves along at a stately but never sluggish pace, and is scattered with lovely moments, most notably the grim finale when Collins gets her ironic come-uppance.

The film delivers on its most crucial idea by being an inventive relationship dramedy with actors who handle the dual challenge thrown at them with distinguished poise.

In his documentary-cum-video essay Orwell: 2+2=5, director Raoul Peck juxtaposes the British writer’s words with a flood of the same distressing images inundating our social media feeds, from Ukraine to Gaza, South America to the United States.

Undeniably, The Post feels timely, but there’s a counter-argument to be made that, in our current era of “fake news” and easily swayed public opinion, it’s actually a dinosaur of a film—and not Jurassic Park. Thank God for the owners, it ultimately says, who sometimes do the right thing. That’s a perfectly fine idea, but our times could use something sharper.

The film, meanwhile, gives Wahlberg and Ferrell beautiful opportunities to turn their anger-mismanagement-meets-milquetoast act into an absurdist version of Abbott and Costello.

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.

Between epic bouts of bickering, Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham save the world in an offshoot that gets the job done.

It's obvious from Easy Money why Espinosa would be going places. So long as he takes Kinnaman with him, the gentleman can have our hard-earned cash.

La Mif (slang for ‘the fam’) is sensitively written and superbly acted. There are non-professional actors here who would put a few of their formally-trained counterparts to shame.

The film works to inform as well as to preserve an air of mystery around Bernstein, an apt approach that occasionally slips into the willfully opaque. By all accounts, this secretly important man was tough to live with, but not too hard to love or admire.

What’s refreshing about Pascal-Alex Vincent’s dramatically thin but richly atmospheric feature debut is that it recognizes the essential truth of the conceit: all seminal voyages are journeys of heightened awareness, as visceral as they are emotional.

The filmmaker provides intellectual rigor to spare, yet precious little narrative focus (you virtually wander into plot strands) and there's a stiffness to the proceedings that neither Wilson's charisma nor Ulliel and Thierry's screen-ready beauty can remedy.

While Leone's vision still has a magnificent sweep, the film finally subsides to an emotional core that is sombre, even elegiac, and which centres on a man who is bent and broken by time, and finally left with nothing but an impotent sadness. 

How the geriatric ensemble dramedy became the last bastion of British cinema is a bit of a riddle, but like Cadbury Creme Eggs and Manchester soul, it doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon.

Coogler, who grew up in the same neighborhoods as Grant, evokes a tangible sense of place, and his staging of the climactic incident hits like a fist in the gut. It’s not enough to wipe out his reduction of this real-life figure into a composite-character martyr or the lukewarm filmmaking that’s come before, even if you’re left shaken all the same.

With its peppy cast, streamlined story and about a bazillion pixels’ worth of VFX cyclones to sweep you back in your seat, it’s a fun and refreshingly old-school night at the pictures.

The Israel-Palestine conflict is reduced to a crystalline, though still complicated, essence in Nadav Schirman’s alternately tedious and engrossing documentary.

Escalation is the main thing Margin Call has going for it, as more substantial actors are trotted out to have their way with Chandor's realistic-sounding boardroom dialogue.

Nice to see Poitier back and full of pep, albeit in a routine thriller.

Concussion could have used the political backbone of Smith’s Ali director Michael Mann; instead, it has Peter Landesman, who steers both lead actor and screenplay away from the sharper edges.

Though Reeder's attempts to unnerve sometimes veer close to enfant terrible posturing, The Oregonian knows how to work its unpleasantness to primo psychotronic effect.

Once the rote plot takes over - the tension brought on by the film's you-are-there verisimilitude quickly devolves into soapily overwrought theatrics.

Yes, it’s basically an episode of the show stretched out to two hours, but like the Crawley family silver, it’s so polished you can practically see your face in it.

The Italian-born Covi and her Viennese partner keep things breezy, letting real-life theater actor Hochmair go about his backstage business and watching Saabel chat up various locals in dive bars (you can tell the filmmakers cut their teeth making docs).

Suffering through flatlining romantic and dramatic interludes isn't any less painful now than it was in '84, but when this musical occasionally kicks off its Sunday shoes, the dynamic memory-lane trip actually approaches - Kevin help us! - something resembling genuine fun.

Despite impeccable performances from its talented cast, we never get to know the characters intimately enough to connect.

If you don't take it seriously, it's a lot of fun.

‘Painful to watch’ isn’t often a term of praise, but this action-comedy about a man who loses the ability to feel physical discomfort channels its unusual, nerve-numbing premise into a fun and oddly romantic ride.

Like the "Scream" series, Hot Tub Time Machine is a cake-and-eat-it-too experience; you get both a vintage Brat Pack comedy, albeit one regrettably drenched in post-Hangover raunch, and an ongoing metacommentary at the same time.

Winterbottom's risks are welcome; it may be time, though, to invest more heart instead of head.

What Lilti’s cinematic mural does is remind us that the political is always personal—and in Israel’s case, vise versa.

For a movie defined by its restraint, this travelogue is remarkably physical; as a valentine to the rueful desire of grown-ups acquainted with both joy and disappointment, the film is a true rarity.

The tongue is in cheek and the tone is ironic and bleak, at least until the should-we-stay-or-should-we-go climax punctures the mood. Still, welcome back, Danis.

Church oozes lonely-patsy schlubiness and Shue radiates crazed heat, but the movie ultimately relies too heavily on dry wackiness and goes too light on the fatalistic bleakness.

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.

Kidnap may strain plausibility, but it's no more absurd than "Taken," and it’s a kick to watch Karla, a woman with no particular set of skills, become a capable warrior based on pure maternal ferocity.

Despite the constant threat of untimely death, though, the consequences never seem too dire, and MacFarlane’s irreverent humor feels subdued without the jolt of animation that gave his previous big-screen effort, "Ted," an extra oomph of shock and awe.

Imagine a male Lifetime movie fueled by Middle Eastern tensions, and you’d have Ziad Doueiri’s torn-from-Tel-Aviv’s-headlines melodrama, one which drops its handsome husband of a hero into a domestic nightmare.

Murder, skulduggery and an avalanche of plotting makes Rian Johnson's latest a retro pleasure for those who enjoy being dizzied.

Measured rather than playing to the gallery, The Choral is Brassed Off in a minor key – an elegant, Yorkshire-set exploration of music as a spiritual morale-boost in the darkest times. With Ralph Fiennes gravely essaying the controversial choirmaster at its heart, it does a lovely job of swerving the obvious notes but misplaces its stirring crescendo.

The film boasts impeccable performances (von Sydow is splendid as Anna's father). But with a running time of three hours, this weighty drama tests the most patient soul.

There’s still too much flashback material here about apprentices and evil cops. But if you’ve ever raged at nameless, insensitive service people, you won’t mind seeing them strapped into a rotating turret, the shotgun cocking.

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.

If you go into Maleficent expecting Jolie to be the badass of Sleeping Beauty, you’re going to get burned.

Though he's too ubiquitous now to dupe real authoritarians, his film nevertheless proffers plenty of cheek - even if most of its gross-out gags come signposted.

Crisply and efficiently, we're transported to the realm of the kidnapping thriller--and if Brit writer-director J Blakeson knew how to sustain tension for another hour and change, we'd be heralding the next Jonathan "Sexy Beast" Glazer.

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.

While her focus has drifted away from the upper middle class, Jaoui’s sensibility remains rather middlebrow; there’s the distinct feeling that she’s preaching solely, albeit with impressive subtlety, to the same bourgie choir as before.

The Mouth’s dubious legacy and his many off-camera complications are examined with a coarse affection of which he himself would surely approve.

They (Bullock/McCarthy) deserve a much stronger showcase than this Laurel & Hardy Go Policin’ vehicle.

It’s almost churlish to complain that some of the carnage is too basically carnage-y, but at 169 minutes there’s a lot of it to sit through. That running time might test the casual fan, but for Wick devotees this character’s battle through assassin hell will be close to action-movie heaven.

Craven tries to do this 'veggie-man' horror in a suitable DC Comics style; and with Louis Jourdan as arch-villain 'Arcane', not to mention Adrienne Barbeau (Mrs John Carpenter) as the Thing's object of desire, he's definitely on the right track. At other times, the picture is right off its trolley.

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.

Don't go in expecting scares so much as laughs. Scream 4 is a better "Scary Movie" than any of the "Scary Movies" ever were, from its inventively gut-busting kills (watch out for that mail slot!) to the unintentionally humorous sight of the three leads acting as if they're in three separate films.

Headily atmospheric, Duigan's film takes place in an outback of 'perpetual tumescence'. It's all very DH Lawrence, and consequently a mite predictable. The picture's strongest suit is Duigan's deft, witty touch, and the confident, classy playing (Grant's familiar stuttering Englishman notwithstanding). Duigan seems to lose his sense of irony entirely, however, when it comes to celebrating the standard soft-core coupling.

All a bit soulless, but at least there's no equivalent of the 'Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head' sequence. All those who liked the earlier film should enjoy this as much.

The movie feels like too much of a lark. To paraphrase the play’s voice of reason, Friar Francis, it would be better if Whedon paused awhile and let his counsel sway us more.

As a tone poem, Tocha's documentary can be mesmerizing. As a memento mori, It's the Earth feels a little lost in space.

Within the first ten minutes, the movie proves the point that exploitation in Africa is rampant, but never goes any deeper than that; it's an undercover endeavor that never feels as if much is actually being uncovered.

If this glorious pile of horror-fantasy hokum has lost none of its power to move, excite and sadden, it is in no small measure due to the remarkable technical achievements of Willis O'Brien's animation work, and the superbly matched score of Max Steiner.

Like Moore’s modus, Shamir’s stroll is sloppy, but his willingness to tip sacred cows is truly courageous.

Though wrenching moments are effectively delivered, the film teeters into clunker territory, with repetitive tasting scenes and cheesy shots of exploding glasses of vino. Too bad, because it’s an otherwise fascinating look into an ultraexclusive process, persuasively depicting the power of the palate.

Sinatra displays great competence as an action director, and a sequence where the Americans attempt to capture a boat laboriously built by the Japanese is beautifully choreographed, ending with a memorable shot of both sides staring in silence as a hand-grenade destroys their only means of escape.

Despite its wealth of detail and sharp observations about morality, the film remains curiously insubstantial with its refined dabbling in the elements of satire, sentiment and melodrama exploited with such panache in Chaplin's starring comedies.

It’s an intelligent and intriguing meditation on issues concerning what it means to be Chinese in today’s and tomorrow’s world.

The fancifulness wears out its welcome, though, and you often wish the film would treat its subject with a bit more seriousness.