It's as haunting and heroic as anything you'll see on the big screen this year, even if the film itself has a tendency to traffic in an abundance of dead air.

This is strictly an amateur-hour affair.

Anna Wintour? Feh! There never was, and never will be, a style icon quite like Diana Vreeland.

Underwater shots of spherical midsections floating past the camera prove that they understand the beauty of bodies in motion, even if their storytelling feels a little stillborn.

Adams gets a delectable onscreen partner in Justin Timberlake as a novice scout who takes an interest in Mickey. Even the old half-naked-moonlight-swim gambit feels fresh with these two involved.

You can feel Chbosky's blood, sweat and tears oozing out of this highly personal project, but that holy trinity of fluids isn't enough to wash away the sense that you've seen this before - many, many, many times.

It almost becomes comical to count the number of "who's holding the camera now?" reverse shots that the filmmaker haphazardly inserts to propel the story forward. Such visual ineptitude, like much else in this tediously cocky enterprise, is downright criminal.

The impressively lean script by Alex Garland (28 Days Later) is shorn of almost all superfluity beyond a few dud Schwarzeneggeresque kiss-offs, while Anthony Dod Mantle's sensational widescreen cinematography harkens back to the tension-inducing inventiveness of early John Carpenter.

The true value of the film is universal: These kids study the knotty viral science, pressure doctors into taking daring, inventive steps and make their cause a global emblem.

Anderson utilizes slow-motion 3-D to hyperbolic effect while again casting Jovovich as the epitome of badass sexiness.

The tone here is unhurried and the bursts of violence and narrative played at an aesthetic remove, but the cycles of languor and activity ultimately feel too calculated-the strained overlay of sensationalism onto a desiccated canvas.

Sensibly rationing his facial expressions at this early stage in his career, 29-year-old actor and future Superman Cavill lacks the gruff authority of Liam Neeson - the go-to guy for tacky Euro-thrillers about dogged men shooting up the Continent - but looks better in a tight T-shirt.

Step Up to the Plate doesn't skimp on the food-porn goods, but the dynamic between its two stoical subjects is too undercooked to truly resonate.

The movie might very well have come off as a too-clinical experiment if it weren't for Leo, who maintains a rivetingly mysterious aura even as her character's behavior becomes increasingly bizarre.

A cut above most nonfiction explorations of Katrina, thanks to the ever-empathetic Demme's talent for showcasing the uniquely human qualities of every person he films.

There's too much going on here - of a winning, thoughtful nature - to dismiss Josh Radnor's back-to-college romance as the nostalgia bath it mainly is.

While that mood is ultimately a bit too monotonous to be completely persuasive, a strong cast convincingly captures the many ways in which adulthood proves far more complicated than what's imagined at 18.

Amazingly, Gere keeps it all together, via a kind of seething anti-rage that speaks reams to the character's survival instincts.

I'd trade much of The Master for one extraordinary moment played by the ever-improving Amy Adams, in front of the bathroom mirror with Hoffman.

A breezily entertaining profile of painter, puppeteer and performer Wayne White, Beauty Is Embarrassing places the kindhearted, foulmouthed subject front and center.

Ditching the mock-doc aesthetic is a bold formal move, but without its immediacy and realism, [REC] 3: Genesis becomes just another walking-dead movie-and clocking in at a mere 80 minutes, one with no time for character development.

Rather than presenting the original Czech version, American distributors have opted to release an English-dubbed edition, headed up by writer, director and actor Vivian Schilling (who voices the kidnapped doll Buttercup) - and the result is a tonal disaster.

A study in simplicity, perhaps too much so. The writer-director is working in the same patiently observant vein as Argentine confederate Lisandro Alonso (Liverpool), especially in the intriguing early scenes, where the adults communicate mostly through furtive glances and expertly modulated body language.

Schepisi is deft with the social-strata stuff, introducing a large Gosford Park–like ensemble to tease out the central trio's dysfunction. So it's a shame that both book and film tilt away from the tart-tongued exchanges, giving increasing weight to a buried trauma that feels a little soggy.

Even the show's disciples may feel like they've been cheated.

Lynskey has raised the quality of innumerable feature films (as a soft-spoken New Republic reporter in Shattered Glass; a housewife on the verge of a nervous breakdown in Away We Go-that film's sole saving grace). So it's a delight to see this stalwart character actor move to center stage, even when the result is so by-the-numbers.

Bitchy histrionics curdle faster than a spoiled soy latte in this distinctly unlikable comedy about a trio of coked-up gal pals who barely muster the strength to celebrate their happier friend's wedding.

Unfortunately, Kim nearly wrecks the film's observational acuteness with a climax that shamelessly steals from Bob Rafelson's classic blue-collar drama "Five Easy Pieces," and this faux-gut-punch finale feels haphazardly sutured on rather than arrived at organically. Guess that ham-fisted opening shot was a sign of things to come.