What elevates the film is a pervasive, palpable sense of loss — between lover and beloved, young and old, stage and screen.

Dirty Wars leaves some deeper questions unexplored, mainly the philosophical struggle between security and secrecy, but makes up grandly with raw data and one correspondent’s passion.

The filmmakers are too much in love with their made-up holiday to observe it to the fullest.

When Mark Ruffalo shows up as a crumpled detective, you expect a dose of reality, yet on his heels come twin hams Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman, whose solemn presences (as Christopher Nolan knows well) prove wonderful distractions from silliness.

What undoes the film is its rather rancid parent-child sentimentality (a Shyamalan staple, admittedly) and a charisma-free performance from the younger Smith that suggests the apple has fallen very far from the tree.

A sense of existential dread that would make the Russkie novelist beam is channeled beautifully, but for a filmmaker lauded for his minimalist aesthetic, Omirbayev sure loves broad-stroke symbolism and sloganeering.

The movie sags after Mary’s weak-willed acquiescence to crime, instantly turning her into a dull-eyed monster. You know her procedures are bound to stray from elective, but it’s hard to care.

Though its blanketed voiceover narration can be too on-the-nose—it’s a metaphor, we get it—the film packs a psychic punch, thanks to Gedeck’s spectrally wearied face.

There’s slow-burning, and then there’s simply slow; the difference between the two has never been so apparent.

Eager to please and easy on the eyes, The Kings of Summer sails right down the middle, safely tacking between sitcom setups and grandiose MGMT-scored montages without forming its own distinctive feel.

A movie of one billion cigarettes, Hannah Arendt is about moral reason, not personality. It could do worse than lead you straight to the woman’s books.

Eventually it’s go time, and if The East loses a little steam on the grounds of action mechanics (a skill these plots always require), it’s never dumb on the subject of covert allegiances.

You’ll leave knowing slightly more about the who, what and why of WikiLeaks; you’ll also wish the whole shebang didn’t fell like such a tone-deaf data dump overall.

The film’s cutesy vibe is closer to "Glee" than "Election" or "Waiting for Guffman," with Nathan Lane’s exuberant drama teacher pitching several yards of camp tent.

It’s to the filmmakers’ credit that we also see how insecurity and proximity to fame both drove him and drove him crazy, resulting in a layered look at a man who was a jack of all trades, but a master of one: being George.

The film isn’t exactly rousing in its conclusion, but it’s always respectful: a serious ethical inquiry into matters of women’s choice, both imposed and seized upon. Check it out.

That’s the subtle level this movie operates on, and by the time it arrives at its powerhouse climax, a ruinous argument in a hotel room where all lingering doubts are finally and furiously outed, there’s nowhere left for them to ramble. They’re pinned down and have to improvise, but this glorious movie has infinite space to roam.

None of it makes any sense, except within the high-octane logic of blowing stuff up onscreen. And, in case you’re wondering, sometimes that can be entertainment enough: Slack-jawed euphoria shoots like nitro through the film. (Please be careful in the parking lot afterward.)

It’s both a sly piece of ethnography and a social satire that reads like a cosmic joke…right up until its climax makes the chuckle catch in your throat.

Those unfamiliar with Verdi’s tragedy won’t understand why this production was significant, nor see much of the fruits of such hard work; those onstage may become La Traviata’s tragic characters, but it’s tough not to feel that we, the audience, leave only half-transformed.

Stick with the film, though, and you might find yourself strangely moved by its oddball mix of ripe melodrama, overwrought violence and regional verisimilitude.

A soundtrack of churning rock songs by the Kills is as close as this misfire gets to authentic grrrl power, borrowed as it is.

Daringly plotless and disconnected (“just like my life!” squeals the target audience), Noah Baumbach’s latest, a breeze, feels a lot less self-absorbed than usual, mainly for not having a neurotic at its core.

Plays like a gothic prequel to David Cronenberg's "A Dangerous Method," one in which human flesh is viewed as both horrific and erotic terrain.

At least the Abrams-helmed Star Trek from 2009 had a pretzel-logic playfulness; the portentously subtitled Into Darkness is attempting like hell to be a Trek for our troubled times. The franchise has been thoroughly Christopher Nolan–ized.

At least this tepid satire can coast on the charms of its cast.

Modest and affecting, it’s a portrait of the possibility of finding peace, contentment and self through both music and spirituality.

Eckhart’s status as the most likable too-handsome man this side of Chris Isaak will endure long after this film is erased from memory — which starts immediately.