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.