This is a movie too enamored of its own tawdriness, turning every violent act and violation into gratuitously salacious grindhouse set pieces.

Starring a tough-minded band of scrappy teens who actually do some solving, it's the movie "Super 8" wanted to be - or should have been.

It's a sluggish portrait that neither captures nor replicates the dazzle, pacing and polish of an El Bulli meal. Check, please.

The mood of this movie will brew with you for a while, even if it swirls around characters who aren't quite persuasive.

It's after the sex friends go back to being just friends that the film really hits its stride, and that's also when the excellent Patricia Clarkson and Richard Jenkins enter the picture as loving but imperfect parents who help explain what's made both leads so gun-shy.

The old-fashioned vibe, in fact, does more than just distinguish the story of skinny runt turned supersoldier Steve Rogers (Evans) from every other comic-book movie out there, though its fetishization of retro-techno gizmos and getups-call it leatherbucklepunk-immensely adds to the fun.

Jendreyko elegantly sketches in the details of his subject's life and the historical events surrounding her coming-of-age-out of which emerges a fascinating subtext about the malleable powers of language.

When Sarah's Key leans into the horror (as it should), it's harrowing. Alas, that's only half the time.

Best seen on the big screen; even those with a cursory grasp of avant-garde cinema are likely to come away with their minds opened and altered.

Swaddled with a lacquer of nostalgia that passes for cultural insight, this one-night-in-sweatpants drama will make you yearn for a moratorium on teen movies-at least ones so aggressively dewy-eyed.

Another Earth is a movie you take home and write your own ending to.

While Fischer handles every emotional curveball, she's not helped by the film's reliance on rote notions of piecing your life back together. Is it worth putting a good actor through the screen-martyrdom wringer for a minuscule payoff?

Suddenly, everything clicks; this snooty art merchant may love the sound of his own voice, but you're reminded how much Rohmer valued the sound of others' voices above all, and why going out on a whimper occasionally works wonders.

The movie's mundane account of moving on is ultimately more gripping than its wooden metaphors.

Fans of the spectacle of Kevin James falling over (nine times in 104 minutes!) and shockingly brazen product placement ("Is T.G.I. Friday's as incredible as it looks?") may dig this deranged comedy; everyone else will be scratching their heads.

Unlike a great Morris film such as "Gates of Heaven" or "Mr. Death," where the quirks of character feel connected to a larger, profoundly insightful vision of humanity, Tabloid never gets beyond its idiosyncratic surface.

Set mostly in modern-day Shanghai and involving two other girlfriends (also Li and Jun), this parallel plot feels less like an attempt to broaden the book's horizons than to cash in on "Joy's" cross-generational appeal while doubling down on cheap-shot melodrama.

Mostly laugh-free black comedy, which gathers an impressive cast - Marisa Tomei, Jennifer Connelly and Ciarán Hinds round out the ensemble - for bad sitcom-level shenanigans.

It gets bogged down in slo-mo indie quirk when it should be faster, more in our face.

The sincere director, Oliver Schmitz, injects too much movie into his movie; life (above all) would have been enough.

It never feels as if we're watching a brand-name cash-grab, but instead as if we're participating in an endlessly imaginative afternoon of play.

The final Harry Potter movie, above all others, supplies Radcliffe with the gravitas of not just an epic story come to completion, but some real dramatic heft. Not so bad for a Hogwarts dropout.

All the put-upon boorishness of an office drone (Bateman), a chemical-plant manager (Sudeikis) and their sexually harassed buddy (Day) might be forgivable, were Horrible Bosses actually funny instead of sporadically amusing and desperately vulgar.

Lacking a single serious scare or sly idea, the movie dies in ways that merely mediocre horror films can't even dream of.

Though Summer of Goliath has its share of grace notes and gorgeous shots, the anxiety of influence hangs heavy over every real-time interaction, every direct testimony, every re-creation (and re-re-creation) of allegedly true incidents.

As intriguing as the movie is, there's the sense that its free-associative story line has been dredged up from its maker's unconscious and recounted without filter or shape.

Belvaux's tension-building setup is stellar; the follow-through, less so.

The good news is that the film's stylistic excesses don't negate the many fascinating aspects of Nim's story.