A well intentioned but uneven and overly sentimental film.

A thriller that tries aggressively, but not entirely successfully, to deliver the goods of three genres -- suspense, supernatural and horror.

Reminiscent of 2010 Sundance breakout "The Kids Are All Right," Ry Russo-Young's Nobody Walks captures the fallout of an open-minded Los Angeles family shaken up by the arrival of a sexy outsider, only this time, it's the outsider whose perspective takes precedence.

The Song of Sway Lake never finds a thematic center around which to pivot its action.

For anyone who grew up with “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” The Grinch won’t replace it, yet it’s nimble and affectionate in a way that can hook today’s children, and more than a few adults, by conjuring a feeling that comes close enough.

Infused with a strong sense of moral outrage, The Empire in Africa provides more heat than light while attempting to explain the motives and methods of combatants who waged the 1991-2002 civil war in Sierra Leone.

Writer-director Brian Savelson drags four characters all the way out to the woods to orchestrate the sort of politely confrontational chamber piece best suited to an Off Off Broadway stage in In Our Nature, an eloquent but overly rehearsed drama.

A raggedy but refreshing yarn about the near-terminal condition known as male adolescence.

Lam’s darkest work to date, one where violence is not just graphic but ugly, and Hong Kong symbolically comes to resemble a charnel house.

Suicide, hints of lesbianism, murder, staged accidents and every other applicable melodramatic contrivance is dragged in. Unfortunate thesps take it all very seriously, while technical aspects are emptily polished.

Not only is it highly unusual, but the picture is chock-full of surprise and unexpected humor to leaven its thriller trappings.

Routine in some aspects, but compensates via psychologically sharp writing and performances.

Even if this isn't Schrader's best, it's hardly his worst.

Maria Sole Tognazzi’s ultra-sedate romantic comedy A Five Star Life is full of aesthetic sophistication and luxurious ambiance, but its pleasures are all secondhand, and the whole endeavor is too starved of incident to really stick in the memory.

Although it avoids overt moralizing or clunky lesson-learning, pic's careful balancing act between tragedy and comedy eventually becomes its sole raison d'etre.

Deftly avoiding both the haphazardness of mumblecore and the fakery of studio romantic comedies, Khoury deploys a light directorial touch marked by assured thesping and a genuine appreciation for neurotic angst.

Given how much of 11 Minutes takes place in the glibly heightened realm of the Hollywood-molded actioner, its various fragments are rather short on intrigue, whether considered alone or in simmering context.

Little insight is gained from what’s on screen.

And that’s what this overly eager, fractious, Burtonized but standardized, loudly comic but ultimately rather mirthless remake does to Dumbo. It transforms a miraculous tale into a routine story by weighing it down with a lot of nuts and bolts it didn’t need. The character of Dumbo is still touching, but the tale of entrapment and rescue that surrounds him is not. It’s arduous and forgettable, done in busy italicized strokes, and apart from that FX elephant the movie doesn’t come up with a single character who hooks us emotionally.

Rough Night, a bachelorette-party-from-hell thriller comedy that’s got some push and some laughs, despite its essentially formulaic nature, is a perfect example of why Hollywood needs (many) more women filmmakers.

There’s nothing remotely fresh about this revival, but tight pacing and an overqualified cast keep things zipping along nicely.

It doesn’t sentimentalize Theo’s illness (much) or pull back from how disconnected he can be. “Lost Transmissions” may even sound like it deserves props for its straight-up, objective view of mental illness. Except for one small detail: That stance ends up removing the basic dramatic motor of the film.

Yes, it’s impressive from a visual effects standpoint.... However, had Potter lived to see what Hollywood has cooked up for her mischievous hero (who was sent to bed without supper in her own didactic tale), she almost certainly would have preferred for Peter (charmingly voiced by James Corden) and his three more cautious sisters...to have wound up in one of Mrs. McGregor’s infamous rabbit pies.

A sometimes hilarious, often wrenching pas de deux between actors Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson.

A story very much by, about and for middle-aged men, and with the commercial limitations that implies, this intermittently amusing outing is graced by one of Robert De Niro’s more engaging performances of recent vintage.

It is hard to believe that a film as beautiful as The Mosquito Coast [adapted from the novel by Paul Theroux] can also be so bleak, but therein lies its power and undoing.

Ungainly titled, overlong, intermittently funny.

Neil Marshall's flair for visceral action more than compensates for his script's lack of conceptual novelty in Doomsday. Principally South Africa-shot tale of a post-apocalyptic Great Britain cobbles together large chunks of "Escape From New York," "The Road Warrior," "28 Days Later" and "Resident Evil," but those with a taste for revved-up, splattery fantasy thrills won't be complaining.

Hard-boiled entertainment in the Tarantino mold is leavened with a distinctively Aussie sense of humor in The Hard Word.

An extremely silly but effective enough romp for family audiences.

A slowly inspiring saga of blood, sweat and horse dung, played with conviction.

A modestly engaging domestic drama that earns few points for originality but rewards aud attention with persuasive performances, outbursts of robust humor and a vivid yet understated evocation of time and place.

Linklater, as brilliant a filmmaker as he is, is a kind of Zen rationalist; his shot language and essential humanity invite us to look at Bernadette and think, “You need help.” But that stops the character, even in her baroquely witty lashing out, from becoming a projection of a larger passion.

Ritchie, working from a script he cowrote with Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies, has taken all of this and transformed it into a movie that’s so clever and airy yet grounded, so sparkling with devil-may-care bravado, so poised right where you want it to be ­— a step ahead of the audience but also leading us right along — that it gives off the charge of a great screwball comedy.

Poisonous incitement to do-it-yourself law enforcement is the vulgar exploitation hook on which Death Wish is awkwardly hung.

With a firm commitment to its alluringly offbeat premise and a grounding lead performance from Susanne Wuest, this indie oddity is an enjoyable descent into the absurd despite an apparent lack of interest in answering most of the questions it raises.

Humphrey Bogart's typically tense performance raises this average whodunit quite a few notches. Film has good suspense and action, and some smart direction and photography.

This is manufactured sentiment, less interested in provoking thought than in manipulating emotion, constructed of human obstacles overcome, stirring speeches delivered and heart-rending flashbacks unveiled, all suspended like so much Spam in the jelly of its own score.

A stillborn would-be comedy.

Quigley Down Under is an exquisitely crafted, rousing western made in Oz.

One more story about how the Great War’s casual disdain for human life planted the seeds for the social unrest that followed, the defiantly old-fashioned Private Peaceful nevertheless succeeds in hitting the right emotional notes, with a handy assist from Rachel Portman’s score.

At heart an unabashedly retro work, reveling in the cliches and conventions of the slasher horror pics that proliferated in the early 1980s.

Scripter Howard A. Rodman's treatment of an enthralling book is more a series of vignettes rather than a fully connected work, and helmer Tom Kalin seems unable to decide how much Sirkian melodrama to introduce into the heady mix. Gone are the reasons to be fascinated with these people, merely replaced with maddeningly over-arch dialogue and struggles with characterization.

Isn't about science vs. faith so much as that well-worn dramatic hook, the loss of a child.

Like a standup comic pouring 'flopsweat', this ill-conceived comedy about an infant whose thoughts are given voice by actor Bruce Willis palpitates with desperation.

The point is not very clear, but there's an impressive weirdness to Mad Cowgirl that elevated it above more strained attempts at transgressive cinema.

No Small Affair is an okay coming-of-age romance [from a screen story by Charles Bolt] in which the believability of the leading characters far outweighs that of many of the situations in which the script places them.

The movie is trying so hard to be a crowd-pleaser, in its reach-for-the-synthetic, sitcom-meets-Hallmark heart, that it will likely end up pleasing very few. It’s the definition of a movie that Tom Hanks deserved better than.

A melodrama with soft-rock ballads where its beating heart should be.

Amos Gitai's most satisfying pic since war drama "Kippur." Schematic set-up is given a human face by fine performances and a physical journey that's often more interesting than the characters' emotional ones, which are weakened by the Israeli auteur's tendency toward convenient doctrinaire-ism and chunks of expository dialogue.

Suffered from production fits and starts and reportedly has been cut down from a longer running time to a still tedious and repetitious hour and a half.

Any Which Way You Can is a benign continuation of Every Which Way But Loose. Original ape from Loose was not available to Eastwood here, but substitute performs heroically.

The Woman in the Yard never musters the imagination to horrify or even jolt you. It’s a tale of one-note inner demons.

Anvari has set out to make a mood piece that succeeds in scaring the audience senseless.

What might have been a cinephile's wet dream turns out instead to be seductive, stimulating and sodden, in that order, in the three-chapter reflection on love and desire.

It’s a movie that’s unapologetically basic and wholesome and, at 94 minutes, refreshingly stripped down. In its formulaic way, it works as an antidote to the bloat and clutter of your average “high-powered” teenage/kiddie flick.

It’s uneven practically by design, with a tone that slides all the way from kooky farce to anguished psychological study, just about held together by Mackenzie Davis’s lively, spiky turn in the lead.

Pic drifts onto a familiar obstacle course for its wide-eyed hero, but displays a spirited, open-hearted goodness along the way. Combination of warmth, humor, danger and a cosmopolitan take on young, urban Eire sets pic distinctly apart.

This represents at least as much of an artistic setback for Smith as "Chasing Amy" and "Dogma" were advances.

Despite a certain amount of production dash and polish and a few silly-funny lines of dialog, Barbarella isn’t very much of a film. Based on what has been called an adult comic strip, the Dino De Laurentiis production is flawed with a cast that is not particularly adept at comedy, a flat script, and direction which can’t get this beached whale afloat.

Courtesy of a vastly overlong, relatively unrousing 27-minute end-piece that may be the technical highpoint of the film, but lacks the punch and tightness of the earlier segments, the venture tends to run out of steam. Still, the net effect is an overridingly positive one.

Pretty Lethal is a wonderfully original idea, but its execution falls flat.

The fragrant aroma of magnolias is undercut by the distinct smell of mothballs throughoutThe Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, an admirably earnest but curiously flat attempt to film a long-unproduced scenario by Tennessee Williams.

Enter Charles Grodin, who upstages all involved via his savagely comical portrayal of a CIA agent.

The Accountant is nothing if not a puzzle — not so much a jigsaw as a three-dimensional brain teaser that gets deeper and stranger with each new revelation.

Once I Think We’re Alone Now establishes that Grace and Del represent love versus stability, the film doesn’t have a convincing way to reconcile the two.

A model of cohesion and clarity as long as it's dealing with Brown's exemplary public achievements. However, pic quickly becomes mired in tedium and confusion when it turns to Brown's scandal-ridden private life.

Ice Castles combines a touching love story with the excitement and intense pressure of Olympic competition skating.

Yet for all its surface pleasures, it’s a likable but underimagined one, with more enthusiasm than surprise and, at the same time, an overprogrammed sense of its own thematic destiny.

A small, carefully composed film that rejoices in the parochial lingo and mores of its richly textured characters.

As much a trifle as its title suggests, My Blueberry Nights sees Hong Kong stylist Wong Kar Wai applying his characteristic visual and thematic doodles to a wispy story of lovelorn Yanks.

Gorgeously lensed, photographer-turned-helmer Bruce Weber's heartfelt docu tribute to his dogs, his friends and his friends'dogs.

Ultimately there are a few twists too many, pushing the story into a realm of excess contrivance. There’s not enough time or nuance to lend numerous narrative turnabouts plausibility.

It’s naughty, campy and wildly uneven.

Virtually dialogue-free, the film opts for an almost perverse minimalism; even the camera is limited to the topography within the kids' purview.

Loves Her Gun ultimately doesn’t quite cohere as one part slackerish social observation in a nicely turned mumblecore mode, and one part cautionary psychological thriller about the dangers of treating fear with a loaded weapon.

Though it offers a decent enough primer on dance music history, it’s so eager to play all the hits that it never quite settles into any particular groove.

The film is a slow starter while the various characters are being established and has an over-abrupt and inconclusive ending. Intriguing are the relationships between members of the hunting party.

Expect no surprises in Falling for Figaro, a corny, cute-enough carpe diem comedy, in which it’s a lovable ensemble — led by Danielle Macdonald, and spiked by a deliciously imperious Joanna Lumley — that brings the grace notes to a pretty standard-issue script.

[Siodmak] delivers a good job of fantastic writing to weave the necessary thriller ingredients into the piece, and finally brings the two legendary characters together for a battle climax.

A straightforward account of the show’s journey from conception to rehearsal to Great White Way triumph, it effectively doubles as a traditional let’s-put-on-a-show musical in its own right, albeit one with heavier guitars.

The thriller telegraphs most of its suspense payoffs, and the audience is almost always ahead of the game. What's most disappointing is that the characters begin as well-etched individuals, but are gradually turned into mere plot functions.

Clothes make the man, but can’t save the film, in Yves Saint Laurent, in which the life of one of haute couture’s great innovators gets disappointingly by-the-numbers treatment.

Too often, helmer Rickman galumphs through what’s meant to be a witty romp, underlining the script’s most obvious, rigged qualities.

There’s a floridly sentimental heart fluttering beneath its tastefully solemn surface, but at times, you can’t help wishing the film would give in to its more expressive impulses.

Phantom is easily consumable eye candy, but it contains no nutrients for the heart or mind.

Though treading a firm, clear-eyed line between education and exploitation, the well-acted and technically proficient drama -- too chaste to scandalize, too dark for general audiences -- works as a mobilizing tool for its cause.

Ultimately, "Renee" feels less like a walk away than a retread.

This novel-cum-feature film (from Jay McInerney's book) is a distinctly morose and maudlin journey through one man's destructive period of personal loss.

Perfs are adequate in a movie lacking much use for better ones, though Brody disappoints by using the stock sotto voce rasp of the uber-macho action hero who really, really means business.

Ultimately warm and furry, with a wet nose buried in gross receipts.

Painting by numbers often gets a bad rap: While it takes little originality to fill in the romantic-comedy blanks, even a simple, competent job can sometimes feel like a breath of fresh air.

The film feels more like the ultimate scrapbook for the participants than the vicarious thrill the pair no doubt imagined for audiences.

The Program starts in a fourth-down situation by being a sports movie with virtually no one for whom the audience can root — a major drawback, no matter how hackneyed those “Rocky”-ized finishes have become. Instead, Ward and co-writer Aaron Latham seek to indict big-time college football through a collection of cliches (money-doling boosters, steroid abuse, academic negligence , shady recruiting practices) and still want us to care about whether these players and coaches win the big game.

On just about every level -- as a thriller, as a romance and as a character study of a complicated man nearing the end of his professional life -- the film fails, and the meandering, sub-Cassavetes approach is likely to be a turnoff for all but the most indulgent viewers.

So second-hand and disposable is it in every respect.

Lightness of touch, vibrant performances and a sharp script are the hallmarks of this delightful femme comedy.

A visually opulent but dramatically undernourished prequel to the 1979 hit of almost the same name.