Even by adolescence-is-hell standards, this poor sap is the embodiment of how ugly the so-called wonder years can be for some — a painful notion that’s as close as Faxon and Rash’s directorial debut comes to evoking an emotional response that hasn’t been sifted through dozens of nigh-identical films.

Witty despite Hiller's direction.

A meandering middle and sticky-sweet third act can be overlooked if only for the savviness with which Favreau portrays the food world.

The more substantial material, including Spitzer's feuds with vindictive New York politician Joe Bruno and financier Ken Langone, gets short shrift.

Imagine if Frederick Wiseman and David Lynch had a bastard child, and you'll get a sense of the movie's off-kilter aesthetic, a potent and pointed mix of firsthand observation and surreal flights of fancy.

Price is fun (this was the film that typed him as a horror star), the fire in the waxworks is good for a gruesome thrill, and De Toth brings off one classic sequence with Kirk fleeing through the gaslit streets pursued by a shadowy figure in a billowing cloak.

This vintage tale of camaraderie flaunts an old-fashioned innocence and some endearing defiance, exemplified by its sweet original song “Do-Dilly-Do (A Friend Like You).”

An eerie resurrection regains some good will, but we'll have to wait for Neshat to catch up with the art of storytelling.

Although several sections deal with the Ceausescu-era party apparatus, Mungiu's interest lies more in how the nation's political confusion affected the general populace. It's history told from the bottom, where what everyone thinks happened matters as much as what actually did.

Writer-director Freida Lee Mock’s concise and potent chronicle uses a wealth of archival video and numerous new interviews with its subject to properly contextualize Hill’s testimony as a landmark moment in the fight for gender equality.

This muted mobster story reminds us that the ties that bind can also gag you, garrote you and slowly deaden your soul.

Two of Hollywood's best-loved veterans deserved a far better swan song than this sticky confection.

It's a shamelessly sentimental interpretation of history, with television ushering in a generation which has lost the art of communication and the ability to care. Against this blinkered vision, even Levinson's confident direction and ability to capture the absurdities and rhythms of everyday speech fail to provide sufficient compensation.

The middle section of the story is where Rise truly takes off, perhaps in ways that will have viewers forgiving the rest.

The result, if you can get past some of its absurdities, is a slight, enjoyable, lightweight jaunt. Just don’t expect anything more.

You get why the pair would fall for each but you also get where the faultlines lie. Cullen maps it all out in an impressive, touching debut.

This lumbering, overwrought, and wildly self-indulgent adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer's frail short story is clearly cranked up with the full quotient of sincerity and conviction.

It’s anchored by a dangerously glum performance by 21-year-old Ross Lynch, who becomes more interesting the more you watch him.

Densely plotted by director Yuval Adler and Ali Wakad (the former Israeli, the latter Palestinian), this informant crime drama finds admirable complexity in the folds of its shifting allegiances — even if you’ve seen this dynamic done better in movies like "The Departed."

Super skilled and eminently likeable, Nyong’o is a saving grace in the eye of the storm.

It’s refreshing to see a grown-up big-screen thriller this well crafted – and one that cares for its grounded characters and their predicaments. If it comes off the road once or twice, it’s still well worth the ride.

Photographed with an alluring sheen that complements the coldly commercial wheelings and dealings of its subjects, Red Obsession fascinatingly reveals how Old World vintner artistry is being shaken up by New World supply and demand.

The 3-D process leaves the image somewhat murky, but you can discern sparks of authentic pulp poetry throughout.

For better or worse, that detour into proverbial uncharted waters ends up hipchecking a by-the-book hagiography into the realm of compellingly cracked vérité.

Often has the feel of a film-school exercise in which the object is to wring maximum suspense from rudimentary tools.

By whatever metrics you measure a Bond movie – tight plotting, gnarly villains, emotional sincerity – Craig’s final outing is a rip-roaring success.

It’s anthropology, not violence, that provides the sting in the tail – a thought-provoking coda to an often pulse-pounding survival horror.

Relaxed and leisurely, it's an effortless blend of documentary and fiction, part road movie, part sociological satire, part polemical reminiscence.