There's a wild, "Miami Blues"–like dreaminess to the movie that's addictive. If anything, it shows up exactly what "Little Miss Sunshine" lacked: plenty of ammo.

So narratively old-fashioned it creaks.

There's shockingly little thrill in watching Carano bounce off walls and pummel antagonists.

The movie amounts to little more than Marky Mark's South American Vacation.

There's a more courageous profile waiting to be made by someone who understands the man better.

Comparable works like John Gianvito's "Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind," or nearly anything from cine-essayist Chris Marker's oeuvre, mine similar territory much more rewardingly.

A sense of the man himself seems absent in Fábio Barreto's portrait, however, and other than a rally scene with prescient Occupy Wall Street overtones, you're mostly left with facts, dates and iconic poses.

Director Michael Corrente has delivered decent petty-criminal movies before - see 1994's "Federal Hill" - but every aspect here smacks of faux-street toughness at its worst.

When the action eventually switches to an Austrian rehab retreat, Dalle gets to make like the best of the Old Hollywood divas and waste away with devastating reserve - an icon quietly, crushingly crashing to earth.

Unintentionally true to its title, The Divide first goes for a similar bleakness (it barely registers as entertainment), then lurches into a rousing, vengeful finale; both sides of the equation add up to less than zero.

Innocence is lost - as well as 90 minutes of your precious, precious time.

More stupid movies should leave you with such a blissfully stupid smile.

Whatever possessed Bell & Co. to turn a slow-burning creepfest into a frenzied freak show of multiple exorcisms (including one in a moving car), the devil only knows.

It's here, in a keenly captured Forest Hills, Queens, land of low-lit bars and manicured lawns, that Roadie soars as a gently comic drama about living the dream - or trying to.

As a chronicle of grief and passion, however, the film is perilously close to being an exercise in tactile but touchy-feely passive-aggression.

There's too much beauty and ballast in the movie's early stages to dismiss Ceylan's cerebral cop drama, and too much genuine banality in its latter acts to justify a sluggish slouch into the shallow end.

By the time you realize how stealthy the film's critique has been, you've already fallen right into its trap.

Despite his repentance, you sense that this lost soul will be confessing his sins for all eternity.

This isn't the kind of doc to explain everything (or anything, really)-it does honor its subject, though, and that's plenty.

Too much of the movie feels predestined - down to the rainstorm on opening day - and subplots involving budding romance end up forcing what's implicit. Crowe, meanwhile, still can't stop abusing his vinyl collection; the aural wallpapering of Bob Dylan, Cat Stevens and others will surely please postboomer fans who haven't quite gotten the hang of silence.

What's missing, then? There's no fiery central performance in the mix (the horse doesn't count), and once Emily Watson's hardscrabble mom is rotated out of the action, you yearn for an anchor.

Occasionally, the movie italicizes its points with heavy musical drones, but its tone is remarkably even and concentrated: It makes sense that Jolie excels at stewarding the scenes she usually tears apart onscreen: two people struggling in an emotional death grip, the camera up close.

Zhang's mixture of unsparing violence, mawkish sentimentality and garish flourishes creates one uncomfortable aesthetic.

We might have all felt like lost children for a while, but ten years later, the innocence is shameless.

No matter how sensitive the orchestral-string score gets, the film can't locate the bone-deep sense of tragedy of Leslie Schwartz's novel - it just keeps belching out empty, grief-stricken histrionics devoid of insight.

The unintentional hilarity of the whole enterprise - especially when Albert attempts to romance one of the hotel's naive employees (Wasikowska) - at least keeps you engaged, as does the scene-by-scene suspense over which pitiably wide-eyed expression Close will choose to use next. Hopefully, she's practicing her gracious-loser face for awards season.

This lifelong Tintin fan was more than pleased, even while having to acknowledge that the movie lacks the subtle state-of-the-world commentary that Hergé often smuggled into his creation.

The drama it might remind you most of, oddly enough, is "Six Degrees of Separation," also about the snowballing connections between unlikely people. And as in that urban clash, the bedrock of it all is social responsibility, ever crumbling and rebuilding. A total triumph.

Establishing character, conflict and environment with astounding economy in the film's first ten minutes, Rees demonstrates the sort of filmmaking chops and personal storytelling (the director claims she drew on her own coming-out experience) that suggests the low-key epiphanies of Amerindie cinema at its best.

This iron lady of cinema deserves better.

As for parents: Are you cool with feeling like you're having artificial sweetener sandblasted into your eyeballs for 87 minutes?

You think you're in for another coming-of-age movie about getting into someone's pants until you realize Deep End's real goal is getting under your skin.

The movie indulges a few too many whims, but it's never less than alive.

Shadows still functions as a study in superior sequel-itude, building a fine showcase for a reimagined character and the compelling, twitchy dynamo playing him. Should Ritchie ever learn to be elementary instead of epileptically overwrought, he may one day do proper justice to both.

Pomes squeezes in a few well-observed details among the recycled white-trash clichés, but any AMC viewer who's tuned into the lead-in for Mount's TV Western - Breaking Bad - expects far, far more from his or her meth-fueled entertainment.

Watch the director's 1976 "The Tenant," and you'll know he can do more with less.

So long as we're watching DeNoble recounting the details of his laboratory experiments, Addiction Incorporated remains sufficiently gripping; when Evans is reduced to observing his saintly subject educating high-school students about the dangers of nicotine addiction, it's considerably less so.

After "Pineapple Express" and "Your Highness," is Green now contractually obligated to revive every dead comedic subgenre of the '80s? What's next, a stoner-friendly "License to Drive"?

Well, Ghost Protocol ultimately ends up as an eye-rollingly towering totem to L. Ron's favorite son, complete with treacly music cues and longing glances - bromantic and otherwise - that will send you screaming into the thetan-stealing clutches of Lord Xenu.

Fincher's film tips much more in the indulging direction of crowd Comic-Con - delighting the franchise junkie above all other considerations.

Here's where it's easiest to see Clouzot's advantage over his more famous peer, as he combines nail-biting action scenes - calibrated to the millimeter - with a Hawksian command of earthy performances.

Palmer's acknowledgement of his own involvement in, and thrill at watching, these events speaks volumes, but simply showing generations of pasty, fat men pounding each other to a pulp shouldn't be mistaken for an in-depth exploration of Gaelic machismo.

Both Reitman and his first-rate cast do their best to add depth. The real tragedy of Young Adult, however, is the story's lack of tragedy.

The movie toggles between two periods-before and after a catastrophe-and, were it not for Swinton's magnetism, it would be unbearable. Instead, you'll want to stay for the wallop.

The Cold War is over, but director Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In) and his collaborators have brought those suspicion-fueled days to vivid life in this masterful adaptation of John le Carré's beloved 1974 spy novel.

A Euro gloss on "Pretty Woman" suddenly turns into "Occupy Gaul."

It's a credit to both the actors and Franco-Algerian filmmaker Rachid Bouchareb (Days of Glory) that the film never dives headfirst into mawkishness.

You know the money-over-morality argument will eventually tilt toward righteousness, yet the film's turn toward charcoal-sketch notions of good and evil only fuels a simplistic view of historical tragedy in the worst sort of way.

An excruciatingly awkward stab at generational sympathy, I Melt with You presents a quartet of thickening college buddies gathering at a Big Sur rental house to mourn their lost ambition.

Director Garry Marshall continues his systematic defilement of society's most romantic holidays with another rom-com built - and executed - like a '70s disaster movie.

The unveiling is unnerving, and suggests that some dangers are now permanently beyond our control.

Like fellow countryman Park Chan-wook's vengeful epics, this man-on-the-run thriller knows how to deliver a rush; unlike those superior tales of lives on the edge, that's the only trick up its sleeve.

In lesser hands, this could have easily been some seriously detestable John Wayne jingoism. But via Fiennes, the film is a spiky and complex counterweight to Hollywood sentiment and indie cynicism alike.

Not one single character strikes you as being anything but a mouthpiece for writer-director Matthew Leutwyler's simplistic views on socio-emotional problems (racial self-hatred! post-rehab guilt!) or an excuse for self-satisfied, back-patting acting exercises. The title is an understatement.

At its best, Outrage offers a meat-and-potatoes look at an age when battles of honor and humanity are AWOL in yakuza society. As things wind toward the inevitable hierarchical breakdown, however, the movie too often resembles a repetitive cycle of tough guys shouting, shooting and shuffling off this mortal coil.

It's more a summarizing project than an act of investigative journalism or a revelatory indictment.

Leigh does a stellar job of showing how these events seep into the unaware girl's everyday existence - almost all of the film's sequences are photographed in precisely composed, inherently surreal single shots.

Fassbender and his multifaceted allure helps counteract any thematic or conceptual shakiness, as was the case in McQueen's highly uneven debut, "Hunger." One thing's for sure: McQueen has found his De Niro, and he better keep him close.

Tuschi leans too far into an admiring position, and you thirst for some commonsense critique. It's all a bit rich.

It's no recipe for hilarity or pitter-pattering hearts, but like our hero's sweets, this pleasant, delicate confection goes down easy enough.

The result is erratic, occasionally WTF hilarious (three words: revenge by panther!), and in its transgressive tracks-of-my-tears climax, capable of finding pleasure in being bat-shit crazy.

The film has its narrative flaws and, occasionally, distracting stylistic flourishes. Harrelson's portrayal of a swinging dick staring down the abyss, however, is perilously close to perfect; it's the finest, most harrowing thing he's ever done.

Simon Curtis's watchably third-rate biopic doesn't try to sort out truth from fabrication; that would be like "teaching Urdu to a badger," as the short-tempered Olivier - played by a whole-hog-slicing Branagh - might say. Better to print the legend and be done with it.

You still can't help admiring the project's ambition; an odd combo of "Babe: Pig in the City" and Godard's "Histoire(s) du cinéma," Hugo is the strangest bird to grace the multiplex in a while.

If the movie falls just shy of our highest mark, this is because Cronenberg is tamping down on his usually naturalistic performances - everything feels vaguely mad-scientist-ish.

A fascinating experiment is about to happen, and who doesn't want to be part of a little fun? That rarest of birds - a b&w silent film - is set to swoop into multiplexes. Trust us, it won't bite.

It would be a Christmas miracle save for one lump of coal: an ear-shattering Justin Bieber song over the end credits. Gotta sell something to the kids at Yuletide.

"Rosemary's Baby" it's not, but color us stoked that a Twilight movie even strays into evil-fetus territory.

Essentially a queer-cabaret-cum-performance-art-spectacle, the Croquettes went from local phenomenon to international sensation, opening up sexual mores in then-repressive Brazil and wowing Paris before their AIDS-fueled downfall.

You could get whiplash watching this bipolar drama jerk between extremes: For every extraordinary scene - such as an authentically awkward exchange between Bosworth and estranged dad Thomas Haden Church - there's a sequence or three that might be extended collegiate acting exercises.

Tyrannosaur won't translate into entertainment, nor as a wake-up call to the dark side of humanity - though it does work nicely as a tart slice of hard-bitten acting; the entire cast is superb.

O'Grady, at least, gives a nuanced performance, even if she appears to be doing an uncannily accurate impression of Kristen Wiig.

The movie meanders like its dissatisfied, part-time pothead protagonist, not wisely but too well.

As a micro-to-macro tour of Germany's fraught relationship with its Jewish citizens, In Heaven Underground couldn't be more connective; as a straight doc, its aesthetic choices couldn't be more confusing.

Whether sleuthing or smacking around thugs, Sisley makes a dashing hero, but this glossy action flick is heavy on tedious convolutions and depressingly light on character depth, suspense or political-economic intrigue.

The jarring juxtapositions only heighten the enigmatic air of the film's subject; even when he's right in front of us, he seems to be plotting his next wily act.

As this engaging, if rote, doc points out, the name Eames, much like Victorian, now defines the style of an era. Yet how many of us knew that the industrial designers behind those midcentury molded mod chairs were an eccentric married team?

Tomboy may add little to conversations about gender or sexuality. It has everything to say, however, about that period of childhood when identity is at its most malleable.

A veteran of the Saw franchise, Darren Lynn Bousman trades torture-porn antics for an old-fashioned Euro-horror vibe, complete with old dark houses and creepy maids; he then wastes what little suspense he generates with endless dorm-room philosophical debates about faith versus atheism and religio-conspiracy theories so far-fetched they'd embarrass Dan Brown.

The trek to get there is sluggish at best, torturous at worst. March away, penguins. Far away.

This is an exquisite portrait of a family navigating the wreckage imparted to them by one of their own.

The film is merely a series of random celebrity cameos and shameless product placements. (In one case, both-thank you, Jared from Subway!) But there are a few moments of inspired absurdity, mostly provided by a surprisingly energetic Al Pacino.

The filmmaker's work is infinitely more exhilarating when he's relieved of the need to be in any way serious. He should play dumb more often.

Subversive elements or not, this is essentially little more than a TV soap opera spiced with hot-button topics (gender issues, clandestine gay trysts), and the combo of TV melodramatics and mumblecore-ish aesthetics eventually wears out its welcome.

The story's half-baked environmental themes become more prevalent as Letters from the Big Man progresses to its back-to-nature finale, which unfortunately distracts from Munch's consistently sure hand with his actors.

It is during Melancholia's second half, after a ruinous conclusion to the wedding, that the real magic happens, with our heroine hardened into a wry, cynical Cassandra - the voice of Von Trier himself.

What does resonate is how the film captures McCartney in laid-back ambassador mode, walking around in midtown and turning big names into awestruck fanboys.

This full-clip misfire reminds us of a valuable lesson: Not even talent, tastefully dressed tough guys and a metropolitan backdrop dripping with after-hours menace can compensate for a complete lack of momentum or drama.

Into the Abyss is too self-admiring of its own loose ends to come to the indictment that would put it in the company of "The Thin Blue Line," but these personalities stay in your head - which is the whole point.

Content to be a typical piece of tween rural-versus-urban fluff from the old Hannah Montana: The Movie mold. Such lazy complacency is almost enough to make you see red.

Both responding to and rebutting critics who dubbed its predecessor fascist, José Padilha's superior sequel to 2007's "Elite Squad" doubles down on the kill-'em-all rhetoric while placing its trigger-happy heroes in a larger context.

A drama about the dirty business of gaining power, it needs bared fangs - and more bite.

This is no family-friendly "Peanuts" special.

J. Edgar is infuriatingly coy and noncritical about its subject, an undeniable patriot but also an alarmist and a ruiner of lives.

A set piece involving a skyscraper and a sports car proves he can induce sweaty palms, but one nail-biting moment and some much-misssed Murphy mouthiness won't keep you from feeling like you're the one being ripped off.

Unfortunately, Truffaut fell into a pit of awkwardness on the project; editingwise, he's hardly in the league of Hitchcock, his sequences rushing ahead, his ironies too obvious. The Bride Wore Black only makes you yearn for better imitators like Brian De Palma. (Unlikely agreement came from Truffaut himself, ever the film critic, who hated his own movie.)

Dragonslayer captures the aimless, ad hoc nature of this young man's life, leaving open the question of whether Sandoval is a free spirit or simply a leech.

There's an all-embracing openness here that belies the often cold and calculating characters she plays onscreen. She's the perfect confluence of brains and beauty, and it's a pleasure to be in her company.