It's a pleasure to watch the granite-faced action star do his own stunts, particularly a death-defying leap from a bridge. Yet everything feels hurried.

Unfortunately, Mumbai Diaries addresses these weighty concerns with such delicacy that they barely make an impact, thus calling further undue attention to the creakiness of the warhorse plot.

Remember the "Seinfeld" episode in which Jerry and Elaine try to become friends with benefits, and set up unsustainable ground rules for their new arrangement? Imagine it rewritten by the Romantic Comeditron 2000 as a profanity-laced schmaltzfest, and you've got this tone-deaf dud.

If The Woodmans has something profound to say-and it does, unwittingly-it's that art can't raise a child solo.

An hour and half of comparable barbarity follows-all of it monotonous, none of it enlightening.

The major change is that the domestic, Eun-yi (the great Jeon, star of "Secret Sunshine"), is now more of a victim than an aggressor.

Her (Steen) emotional acrobatics are reason enough to sit through Applause's parade of pain, though it's a movie to admire rather than enjoy.

The Way Back then takes its time, creeping through gorgeous locations in Bulgaria, Morocco and Pakistan, and basically feeling like a two-hour-plus version of the desert scene from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."

Never saccharine, My Dog Tulip does justice to the rare experience of heartfelt, mutual love in any form

How does one remain an unapologetic fan of Vaughn, abrasive though he is, even as his material fails him?

This tale of a rich brat (Jonet) is a banal, tone-deaf dud.

Every bit as unshakable as "An Inconvenient Truth," Werner Boote's documentary isolates the mysteries (and possible dangers) of that ubiquitous titular substance.

The question remains: Is Mugianis a shaman or sham?

Levine's dramedy not only gives Ned's middle-class crises a static, by-the-numbers treatment, it also feels compelled to adopt a ridiculously righteous moral tone.

Despite a few moments of surprising insight, Twelve Thirty comes off as more mechanistic than organic; it's composed rather than truly lived.

Injecting a devil-may-care attitude into a franchise-focused blockbuster only gets you so far. When all is said and done, this wasp's got no sting.

Feste's ode to showbiz clichés is closer to contemporary Nashville pop: twangy enough to qualify as Southern-fried, but too slick and disposable to be truly deep.

It's "Centurion Deux" without the second-coming-of-Carpenter pretense, though you still wish the trashiness were more distinctive.

Suleiman can be criticized for failing, ever so slightly, at crafting an overall structure-his latest, based on his dad's diary and other memories, is an autobiographical story of exile and return that skips like a stone over water, fleetly but not so deeply. Still, this is a welcome example of kitsch wedded to serious indictment.

Despite the faux-realist aesthetic (gritty handheld camerawork; all-natural sound), we never feel like much is at stake, though Pistereanu and Condeescu have an easygoing rapport that makes the quieter moments between them affecting.

It's a well-constructed and long-overdue tribute, yet Fortune refrains from delving into larger questions that surround Ochs's work. Did the singer's unwavering dedication to agitpop leave him stranded in the '60s? And does Ochs's diminished legacy among today's essentially apolitical neofolkies amount to a second tragedy?

A typically lax late-period Ferrara work, far from the glories of "King of New York."

Uniting Sacha Baron Cohen's daredevilry with Werner Herzog's bombast, Brügger aims to expose "the evilness of North Korea" with a gloriously incoherent, kazoo-and-whoopee-cushion–inflected stage show starring a self-proclaimed "spastic."

Summer Wars surprisingly celebrates togetherness and bravery as much as binary-mathematics expertise, all helped along by a kick-ass synthesis of traditional hand-drawn scenes and fluid, rainbow-explosive CG artistry.

Its stunningly composed images showing how Isaac is himself something of a ghost-given to staring off into the distance, being condescended to by those around him, a man perpetually outside the times. What he needs is to take that one extra step toward his spectral siren; the scene in which he does so might be one of the most exhilarating visions of death's sweet embrace ever filmed.

These characters are more than what we see on the surface, and it's thanks to Leigh's rigorous yet generous eye that we never just gawk at the drama.

We've come to expect diminishing returns from the once-promising Mexican director who then gave the world "Babel," but the combination of wallowing humanistic-cinema overkill and outright ridiculousness he lays out here represents a new low. Biutiful is not a tragedy. It's a straight-up travesty.

Blue Valentine has a quiet, resigned wisdom to it.