Expertly conjured atmosphere only gets Muschietti so far, but there's enough genuine promise here that you're willing to cut this talented newcomer some slack.

Though its insights are slight-the movie feels as delicate and ephemeral as its sleepy winter surroundings - you can't help but admire the overall generousness O'Brien shows to his characters and performers.

It's unclear what drew the likes of Billy Bob Thornton, Eva Longoria and Andre Braugher to this tepid grindhouse retread, but at least they liven up the proceedings whenever they're onscreen.

An engaging study of the disparate characters who are drawn to speak out when the authorities crack the whip.

Then observe as all but the hard-core Colferphiles slink out embarrassed, feeling as confused and discombobulated as if they too just took an electric bolt to the brain.

If such outré flourishes don't fully lift the story past the limitations of innocence-lost storytelling, they do suggest Ávila is an artist worth keeping an eye on.

Ceaselessly upbeat and just short of zany, Let My People Go! will bring smiles of recognition to anyone who hasn't seen early Woody Allen in a while.

My Best Enemy bleeds suspense like a pin-pricked tire. It wants to be clever, but survivor tales bring with them too much muck.

The curtain can't come down fast enough.

Though based partly on actual events, Ruben Fleischer's ludicrous shoot-'em-up plays fast and loose with the facts, and plenty else besides.

Time to fire up the critical Black & Decker: Somebody-there are six credited screenwriters-really wasn't clear on the concept.

The film's notion that a little understanding and a lot of e-mailing would basically solve the Middle East crisis, however, is as reductive as it is utopian.

Apted once wanted to give us "glimpses into Britain's future," per the archival-footage announcer. With this installment, he's delivered an intimate portrait of settling down and finally making peace with one's well-publicized past.

What, exactly, is the payoff for suffering through such painfully bad filmmaking for 93 minutes? Forget about getting "A Few Good Men"–style military melodramatics; this movie quickly proves that even a few good performances, lines of dialogue or music cues are a pipe dream. Your loyalty will not be rewarded.

Yet worst of all is the way the film ultimately reveals its humanistic setup as a lazy pretext to redeem Damon's big-business apologist through the healing power of nature. He's not the only one who should be put out to pasture.

The whole second half suggests a new way of storytelling-like one of those Wes Anderson montages done by an obsessive fan of Hatari! To judge from Tabu's first hour, pacing is not Gomes's strong suit, yet the filmmaker who emerges might win you over.

Whether blithely comparing American prisons to retirement homes or gleefully recalling the time he chewed off his own fingers in Siberia, the moonlighting German New Wave auteur injects some much-needed black humor into what is otherwise a soporific star vehicle.

Berlinger and Sinofksy merely suggested Hobbs might be responsible for the crime; Berg goes in for the kill, inconclusive evidence and docu-ethics be damned. The queasy certainty with which the filmmaker jumps to her conclusions, however, is all too reminiscent of the original prosecutors' zeal. It's hard to imagine how someone could study this case for so long and yet miss its most critical lesson.

Best is Viggo Mortensen's William S. Burroughs proxy Old Bull Lee, holed up in a perspiration-saturated Louisiana mansion with a shell-shocked Amy Adams and a gas-huffing chamber at the ready.

When it comes to human emotions, however, the filmmaker is all thumbs, crassly fumbling for audience response via clichéd uses of dropped-out sound and the occasional twinkling piano.

Despite being the subject of nearly every shot in the film, Hoss maintains an air of mystery, simultaneously projecting severity, sensitivity and sensuousness throughout.

It isn't until the story reaches its fancifully abstract final passages, where cinema displaces music as Douglas's weapon of choice, that Chase's reverie reveals itself as a particularly exceptional exploration of how art ceases being an idle hobby and becomes an obsessive vocation.

What's surprising is that Rogen and Streisand have a genuinely complementary chemistry, feeding off each other in a way that suggests that, given a halfway decent script, the two would make a better-than-decent screen duo.

Vibrating with the geekery of a filmmaker off the chain, the movie plays like no other this year. Tarantino, steeped in even the smallest Leonean gesture (what's with the weird terrain shifts?), knows how to satisfy fans of scuzzy Italian horse operas and badass superviolence in equal measure.

A genuine labor of love and fictional self-loathing, Sullivan's animation style is undeniably compelling, whether he's channeling Grant Wood's paintings or Robert Crumb's monochromatic sketches. But the interweaving stories of commercialized religion, rancid Americana and alcoholic wretches start wearing thin around the movie's midpoint; by the end, the whole morose endeavor risks becoming downright threadbare.

Whether it's Caplan and Webber trading goofy dance moves or Brie being perkily OCD-ridden, Date works best as a collection of winsome, unconnected vignettes; its ideal distribution model would be piece by piece on YouTube.

More of a massive back-patting for bleeding hearts than a comprehensive-or even semi-comprehensive-survey of DIY protest art, the film unintentionally makes the perfect valentine for the OWS version of radicalism: It's righteous, full of rage and cripplingly unfocused.

It's one thing to call a film about homophobia and human rights Any Day Now; it's another to actually have your character sing "I Shall Be Released" in full at the end. The intent is righteous. The dramatic overkill is deadly.