Seldom has a film explored such exotica as Valentino's world -- the gowns, the galas, the villas, the private jets -- with such a sense of momentous drama behind the glitz.

Narrated quite drolly by comedian John Hodgman, Class Action Park is very funny in its dark way, the interviewees are all charmingly surprised that they lived through their teenage years and there’s a remarkable amount of action footage from the park, considering that it predates cellphones. (The animation by Richard Langberg is amusing, too.) Where the film has a problem is Mulvihill.

The worthwhile Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me explains much, about the star, the culture and maybe the moment.

The movie also fights for what it wants - to touch us in the course of entertaining us - and it succeeds, with its zinger-studded script that transcends clumsy mechanics and a spirited cast that includes Marisa Tomei as a nymphomaniacal middle-school teacher, and Jonah Bobo as a lovesick eighth-grader.

It’s ultimately a genre film with all that implies, meaning omissions, simplifications, conventional heroics, dramatic banalities and, given the narrative’s limited scope, little sense of the event’s complex causes or its environmental cost.

In scene after scene we don’t know what’s going to happen, but we’re sure it will be worth the wait, especially because of Ms. Rapace’s presence.

Shallow down inside, End of Watch is a music-video Frappuccino of quick cuts, sparkling banter, serial crises, grisly violence and tongue-jerk profanity. But the film is exciting, in its manipulative way, and exhausting.

Who doesn’t love Bill Shatner? The theatrical documentary “William Shatner: You Can Call Me Bill” reminds us why, stylistically channeling what became the actor’s signature: a dedication to sustained gravitas so portentous that it becomes absurd, then keeps going until it emerges, triumphantly, into the realm of the genuinely spellbinding.

By the end I felt sure it was the most obsessively, graphically violent film I'd ever seen, but equally sure that Apocalypto is a visionary work with its own wild integrity. And absolutely, positively convinced that seeing it once is enough for one lifetime.

I never saw the original, but the sprightly remake couldn't be more delightful. As the ultra-suave Lawrence Jamison, Mr. Caine wears his hair and mustache Niven-like -- slicked down but never greasy. He manages to draw more laughs by merely reacting than most comics can pull out of a punchline. With his calculated coarseness, Mr. Martin is a perfect foil. Behind the scenes is former Muppet Man Frank Oz. He pulls the strings so deftly he never disturbs the froth. [15 Dec 1988, p.1]

The motion-capture animation is spectacular..Yet the action grows wearisome as it grinds on, and the film becomes a succession of dazzling set pieces devoid of simple feelings.

The big difference is that "The Exorcist" took the nation by storm with fresh ideas and brilliant filmmaking. The Conjuring conjures with amped-up echoes of old ideas, and represents a bet that they still retain their creepy appeal for today's audience.

Susan Sarandon is Marnie Minervini, a recent widow and the meddlesome mother of The Meddler. Marnie is an Italian iteration of Molly Goldberg minus the charm. She might be charming if there were a full-fledged movie around her instead of a display case —Ms. Sarandon is, of course, a deft comedian.

Roger Donaldson's film is endearing in its own right as a celebration of a strong-willed eccentric, and memorable as a showcase for a brilliant actor in a benign mode.

In addition to the dismaying facts and figures is a fuller sense of what hunger can look like, and feel like, among the millions of Americans classified as "food-insecure" — those who may not know, for themselves or their children, where the next meal will come from.

Never mind the awfulness of the three madwomen being relentlessly mad, or the silliness of their journey’s logistics; not for a moment do you believe that this grievously afflicted trio actually inhabits what amounts to a small, rickety and unadorned paddy wagon. What’s definitively awful is the spectacle of unrestrained vanity.

I found it insufferably fatuous and damned near interminable. [26 Jun 1998]

In short, every element here has the dusty funk of an item pulled off the back shelves at the Goodwill store for blockbuster story beats. Your enjoyment of the film will thus largely depend on the overall vibe: whether you enjoy hanging out with the new gang as they strategize and quarrel and banter, with occasional interjections of everyone punching, kicking and hurling each other meaninglessly around the set.

It's a fleeting but memorable image in a film that defines Leonard Cohen largely through the admiration of fellow artists, who performed his songs at a tribute concert last year at the opera house in Sydney, Australia. Their admiration borders on the reverential, but reverence doesn't get in the way of their performances, which are varied, impassioned and thrilling.

Here's a case of images in the service of important ideas, rather than entertainment, yet they could hardly be more powerful, from roaring torrents released by a dam in China to a lyrical helicopter shot of a glistening river in British Columbia.

Lushly visual and much of its cinematic power arises from the seductively dreadful space and starkness of the Norwegian landscape in winter. And in the way Mr. Moland and his cinematographer, Rasmus Videbæk, use their delicately detailed, even painterly depictions of the flora and fauna surrounding the film’s very complicated people to put the latter in their cosmic place.

Monster House benefits from strong graphic design and lovely lighting, but the script is nothing to write home about.

The film, directed with exceptional flair and elegant concision by Scott Cooper, even comes from Warner Bros., the studio that specialized in psychopathic monsters played by such stars as James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson during Hollywood’s golden age.

The Wave, Scandinavia’s first-ever disaster film, is the polar opposite of a disaster. It’s a triumph of modest means, a tribute to the power of storytelling on a human scale.

Given the white-on-white color scheme, I didn't expect so many shades of feeling.

Uncommonly smart and interesting.

The Hateful Eight wears out its welcome well before the halfway point, leaving the equivalent of a whole other movie to sit — and suffer — through.

Mr. Dujardin won a best actor Oscar in 2012 for his buoyantly funny performance in “The Artist” as George Valentin, a silent-film star on the way down. Here he’s Georges with an “s” but without the buoyancy or the fun, a man descending into murderous delusion. Quentin Dupieux’s glum absurdist fable gives absurdism a bad name. It’s a facile notion inflated to feature proportions — just barely, since the running time is only 77 minutes.