The real star is Rafie, the golden pup that plays Quill; dogs can be taught to sit or lie down, but they can't fake the sort of connection he makes with the people around him.

There's nothing strictly wrong with any of this, except for the fact that even a buttoned-down period piece like "Topsy-Turvy" feels sexier.

If What to Expect represents the best tearjerking laugh-machine that Hollywood can birth, it's probably time to get those story ideas implanted in vitro.

It also serves to undercut fine performances by Connelly and Harris, whose choices are constantly destabilized by scripted swings between comedy and drama, realism and fantasy, genuine catharsis and indie-film ornamentation. Black's overactive melodrama is more than a representation of schizophrenia; it's the embodiment of it.

Polisse builds to one of the most hilariously misguided climaxes ever conceived; let's just say that this soapy symphony of squalor literally doesn't stick the landing.

What's the word on the film debut of Rihanna, playing a sass-mouthed petty officer? Dreadful (ella, ella).

Rarely do movies-never mind foreign ones, of any nationality - explore an honest-to-God ethical quandary. Elena, in its concentrated austerity, often resembles a lost chapter of Krzysztof Kieslowski's Ten Commandments–themed Decalogue.

Though the finale feels a bit anticlimactic, the lysergic atmosphere, synth-heavy score and logic-resistant story line more than earn Beyond the Black Rainbow's concluding quote, borrowed from another classic midnight movie: "No matter where you go…there you are." See the late show.

Some will call The Color Wheel daring. Others will remember that it takes more than desperate shocks to add substance to the sloppy diddlings of a dilettante.

Even the stoniest face will crack when Aladeen sums up our cultural moment in a rousing, uproarious climactic speech worthy of both Chaplin and Team America.

Filmmaker Gérald Hustache-Mathieu has fun recasting Monroevian moments and setting up parallels between the fromage-hawking hottie and the late silver-screen sex symbol - bring on the Miller, DiMaggio and JFK avatars.

Though overly dependent on a roundelay of talking heads, the film escalates into an ace legal thriller, spinning a web of shame that snags everything from the Austrian government to America's most beloved not-for-profits.

Oddly enough, the film's best pro-tech argument is its look; shot on a consumer-grade digital camera, it's a testament to how elegantly framed low-budget projects can look these days.

Look elsewhere if you want a linear timeline of Sebald's life or don't possess that titular virtue; everyone else will want to make a beeline to their local bookstore.

The real scam was the filmmakers tricking Rebecca Hall (and a cameoing Amanda Seyfried) into participating in this blunt instrument of an indie.

Uneasily poised between glib irony and earnest melodrama, Patricia Riggen's coming-of-age tale is as scattered as its manic pubescent protagonist.

You can go to one of those sweaty, immersive outdoor music fests and get splattered with the mud and euphoria that always engulfs fans. Or you can cheap out and see this predictable rom-com-shot at the 2010 edition of Scotland's then-in-progress T in the Park­-and boggle at finding strangers in the audience more appealing than our main characters.

Time and changing tides have been kind to Graceland (and to the local musicians who've since become internationally renowned), but an on-camera meeting between the songwriter and ANC leader Oliver Tambo finds their conflict between creative freedom and revolutionary solidarity fascinatingly unresolved.

Cristián Jiménez's dust-dry dramedy attests to the writer-director's own bibliophilia (the film is literally divided by chapter pages), as well as his lead actor's ability to milk a deadpan look that would make Buster Keaton proud.

It's Goldthwait's first misstep, a serious one. He's simply not the filmmaker to mount a fierce takedown of Kardashian culture, thorough though his script's rage is.

By the time the film takes a glib turn into role-switching farce - as Muslims become Christians and Christians become Muslims - the overall toothlessness of the satire becomes damningly apparent.

Shots of the kids and their friends running around unfamiliar environments have the fantastical qualities of Spike Jonze's "Where the Wild Things Are," minus the forced whimsy.

By paring down to the bare processes of the pair's work, The Observers creates a haunting sense of people engaged in an otherworldly duty-huddled over incomprehensible charts and dials, they seem like they're busy maintaining the clockwork mechanism of the world itself.

An American remake is already being prepped. We suggest Hollywood simply cries uncle now and calls it a day.

Burton, as usual, is great on atmosphere and comic timing (these are his weirdest moments since Ed Wood), but less so at reining in an overcomplicated plot and dimly lit action scenes.

By the time they've taken full control of the movie's alternate universe-as the melodrama morphs with marvelous ease into a musical comedy-you feel like anything is possible. Cinema this alive is a rare bird, indeed.

Why anyone would want to spend time with a foursome whose bathetic misery is, like the overly mannered visuals of writer-director Dennis Lee (Fireflies in the Garden), defined by such insufferable quirkiness is anyone's guess.

Still, the problem that often fells these documentaries - humorlessness - has been licked: Jack Black makes an exuberant cameo pitching recycled toilet water (his fake brand is called Porcelain Springs). Sound gross? Open wide, because it's on the menu for all of us.