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.

The uniformly awful performances seem beamed in from Planet Ed Wood, while the script is filled with mock-macho zingers (“If I wanted to hear from an a**hole, I’d rip you a new one!”) that would give former Governor Schwarzenegger pause.

People become mere punch lines: fleshy avatars for the gory grist.

Defined by "Three’s Company"–grade humor, this attempt at male-anxiety cringe-comedy is little more than a sitcom writ large that — courtesy of several awkward transitional fades to black — already feels constructed to accommodate commercial breaks.

Polley has gone further into the thorny subject of forgiveness than any of her peers. Her movies ache with ethical quandary; Stories We Tell aches the most.

Wheatley, underplaying his stylishness, goes for a subtle national satire about geeks gone wild, and that’s the fun here: On as mild-mannered a vacation as two Brits might devise, a killer comes along—and, after a while, is politely welcomed in, the kettle simmering.

This teen drama from Ireland is split almost perfectly down the middle: First, 40 understated minutes following a local golden boy named Richard (Jack Reynor) as he enjoys his last summer before college, trailed by 40-odd gut-wrenching minutes surveying the fallout from a single violent act he foolishly commits at a party.

You’ll learn that karaoke is an effective rehab tool; that their dad, Richard, the film’s real hero, molded his daughters into fierce competitors; and that Venus and Serena actually do love each other. Anyone looking for deeper insights than that or into what really makes this twosome tick will find themselves at a real disadvantage.

Shorn of its quintessentially American roots, a biting tale of adult extravagance becomes insubstantially tween-aged.

Sweet and fiercely humane, Song’s layered family portrait is decidedly Buddhist: silent when it needs to be and steadfast about approaching inevitable tragedy with care and patience.

Voyage to Italy is the kind of movie that makes those unhappily in love feel understood. And even if that’s not you (congratulations), it’s still possible to groove on Rossellini’s stranger-in-a-strange-land psychodrama.

Before long, the film spills over into a far less intriguing, and somewhat questionable, portrait of one hysterical woman.

The latest addition to the booming library of docs archiving the Nixon-Nam era, this magnetic pop-history memorial has everything: free sex, celebrity, psychedelic rock, polygamy and beyond.

For all of Dead’s beards and dirtiness, you never get over the feeling that you’re watching modern actors play frontier-drama dress-up. It’s a deathblow.

Other than an impromptu spectacle in a downtown record store, little of the chops and charisma Buckley fils had in spades is channeled; this is still the usual Let Us Now Praise Famous Men karaoke session, wrapped up in some extra-discordantly warbled notes.