Safety Not Guaranteed doesn't quite know what kind of comedy it wants to be; the humor works best in its first hour, when the news-of-the-weird plot takes on a suggestive dimension of romantic desperation.

Dree Hemingway, daughter of Mariel, commits to some unnecessary nudity, but also impresses with her subtlety.

The opinions assembled are impressive: everyone from "Rounders'" Matt Damon to former senator Al D'Amato, a poker defender. But where's the voice of reason? It's card playing, not a dependable income.

The precedent for a movie like this is Ang Lee’s bruised "The Ice Storm," but whereas that film sprung from a novel that burns with indictment, Julia Dyer’s effort — scripted by her late sister, Gretchen — is a more open-ended affair and slightly unsatisfying for it.

I'd trade much of The Master for one extraordinary moment played by the ever-improving Amy Adams, in front of the bathroom mirror with Hoffman.

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.

There's too much going on here - of a winning, thoughtful nature - to dismiss Josh Radnor's back-to-college romance as the nostalgia bath it mainly is.

This film could have done with a few more mouth beats and unlikely moments of extracurricular celebrity.

Director Lauren Greenfield has a catty eye, but she's not after simple schadenfreude as the Siegels' time-share hotels are foreclosed, the kids have to fly coach [gasp], and poops go unscooped by a phalanx of laid-off servants.

The movie strays too far into fantasy - Abe suffers mightily - but Solondz still has an ear and an eye for a specific hell in the real world.

The general takeaway, occasionally swaddled in pot clouds and boisterous laughter, is that verse-slinging requires serious thought and planning.

Predictably, the documentary got a rousing reception at hipster-laden SXSW; real people might find it a touch easy.

So why is this songwriter, so articulate on vinyl, so vague and spacey in current-day interviews? Something happened here, deeper than an aborted quest for fame, and the documentary hasn't gotten to it.

Best are the film's tender ghostly visitations from Dad, evoked with a minimum of artiness, and the authentic, impoverished locations.

The way forward, both in Caouette's real-life situation and his development as an artist, remains unclear, yet that frustration makes it to the screen, in spiky waves that signal a vital personal quest.

For all its episodic, gleeful inappropriateness, the movie Klown most resembles - not that it tries to or anything - is Alexander Payne's half-soused flight from maturity, "Sideways."

The images wash over you - lush, gorgeous, impeccably framed - just as they did in Ron Fricke's wordless meditation "Baraka" (1992).

To be sure, the film as a whole feels like a creaky vehicle, belabored with plot strands and stereotypes that only serve to highlight Winstead's ragged commitment to something real.

Holy Motors is aggressively "wild," a puzzle that tweaks the mind but doesn't nourish.

Schepisi is deft with the social-strata stuff, introducing a large Gosford Park–like ensemble to tease out the central trio's dysfunction. So it's a shame that both book and film tilt away from the tart-tongued exchanges, giving increasing weight to a buried trauma that feels a little soggy.

Snitch is a movie that cries out for the wiry B stars of yore: Robert Forster, a younger Tommy Lee Jones. And it would have occurred to a craftier screenwriter to make his hero’s walk on the criminal wild side a touch more tempting.

Yet after the actorcentric fireworks of Cianfrance’s "Blue Valentine" (2010), it’s impressive to see him going after a wider sociopolitical scope, one that would have been better served by a less repetitive structure.

The film feels naive for an audience that's ready for some harder truths.

There's a Polanskian black comedy buried in here somewhere; a sassy neighbor girl who knows too much hints at the right direction, which is never fully explored.

A deep supporting cast brings its A-game to the ridiculous dialogue.

The most heart-wrenching thing about the film is watching Fanning’s transformation from idealist to wreck, the father’s free-thinking daughter turned into the mother’s double in the space of a dinner argument. It’s not quite enough for a film, but it is for one magnificent scene.

No exchanges flare into true weirdness; rather, the mood is lingering and tentative. Undoubtedly, this is the movie's intent, but it's a fairly banal comment on foreign estrangement (or love) that could have used some roughing up.

Ultimately, points may be scored on the balance sheet of workplace exploitation - usually we see it go the other way around, gender-wise - but these conference-room banalities have been better explored elsewhere, and the effort here feels like a rough draft.

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.

Even at this short running time, there's a looseness to the kaleidoscopic adventure that becomes slightly wearying.

No one is going to explain any of this for you — and the slightly snobby implication of Upstream Color is that explanations are for suckers.

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.

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.

The fine cast takes the movie as far as it will comfortably go, until Bahrani gets a case of Great American Play–itis.

Barely over an hour, the sketch feels lovely, unhurried and a bit insignificant. That may be your definition of cinema, but if you've hired a babysitter, this isn't the film for your date night.

This may be terrifying news to Rob Zombie fans, but after years mining the 1970s for gunky shock moments, the musician-turned-filmmaker has emerged as an unusually sensitive director of actors.

The navel-gazing artist class that gave Williamsburg its character (now more of a marketable “brand”) has in Friedrich both a vigorous defender and, it must be said, something close to an angry parody of itself.

Young Aprile is a real find, investing what might have been a symbolic part with a visible sense of craft and patience (this isn’t merely cute-kid cinema), but it would be a shame not to mention the risks taken by Moore and Coogan, pushing difficult parts into daring registers of irresponsibility.

This is another dinner conversation that races and lingers, making you want to do more with your own life.

Uncourageously, the plot gets a case of cold feet, looping back to half-written family members left in the dust. But when it’s being wild, the drama has nearly enough character to pass for distinct.

This is the ultimate sin of the film, generically helmed by lad-auteur Guy Ritchie: Logic seems to be thrown out the window in order to make room for clashes on a partially completed Tower Bridge. It’s way too elementary.

While the movie isn't "Witness," you know that comic scenes of target practice are going to make sense around the bend.

The set pieces are grand—gloriously dumb and never realistic enough to make you wince at the fact that billions of microscopic souls are dying before your eyes. Rather, you wince at everything else.

An unfocused comedy about weird Army pseudoscience, ends up blinking before we laugh.

It takes a long time for Brothers to become the movie it wants to be, and even then, it stumbles.

Cutesy and generic, New York, I Love You is almost colossally inept at capturing five-boroughs flavor.

Shockingly dull.

Once you get over the droll joke of seeing an equine Web surfer wearing a bathrobe and sipping his morning coffee, the movie settles into a shrill groove from which it never escapes.

"Southland Tales" was a soporific mess, and while The Box (based on material by novelist Richard Matheson) is superior by a certain margin, Kelly derails his newfound discipline with the usual shimmering portals and hazy notions of apocalyptic sacrifice.

Unfortunately, none of the subsequent noise is all that scary, and the striving for "Paranormal Activity’s" buzz is shameless.

Adult children and friends watch nervously as Pippa reclaims a measure of spunk; too bad it all feels like one of those pharmaceutical ads for longer, healthier lifestyles.

The film is set in a celeb-owned Miami restaurant and many of the gags--exploding entrees, the swallowing of a diamond ring, on-the-job drunkenness--feel like leftovers.

There are sparks here that suggest the smarter movie a more scientifically minded director--say, David Cronenberg--might have made.

Better to defrost "Alive" or "The Edge" from the video icebox.

Not since a Nam-scarred Sly Stallone asked, "Do we get to win this time?" in "Rambo: First Blood Part II" has an American action star been deployed to rewrite history so thoroughly.

Diced into hash, the action sequences are unusually painful: poundingly loud and punctuated by Liam Neeson's bark, Bradley Cooper's manic heehawing and a total lack of clarity.

The sequences in Micmacs are contorted too: impressive and bendy and aggressively shallow.

The Losers is the ultimate example, scraped from the bottom of the comic-book barrel, where writer Andy Diggle’s figurine-like characters first had their exploits in an exciting War on Terror.

An eerie resurrection regains some good will, but we'll have to wait for Neshat to catch up with the art of storytelling.

With this depressingly bland sequel (scripted by snark specialist Justin Theroux), he’s (Robert Downey Jr.) stranded in lightweight arrogance.

The big absence here is the man himself; Gibney couldn’t get the jailed Abramoff on camera, either due to unwillingness or a Justice Department intervention. Whatever the reason, it’s crippling.

No viewer goes into this movie expecting John Cassavetes's "Husbands," least of all from soft-serve director Denis Dugan (You Don't Mess with the Zohan).

A proper profile of Hefner would start and end with sex, and not merely glance on casualties like Dorothy Stratten (and even the loveless Hef himself). The movie can't seem to get it up.

Never is the material excited into the kind of playful uncertainty that Rivette all but trademarked; the inertness of the performances robs the movie of spirit.

The movie you were hoping to avoid.

Marvel at the desperate spectacle of three comic leads-Aniston, Bateman and Watchmen's Patrick Wilson as the original donor-being outperformed by the wide-eyed Robinson, a quiet collector of silences. These stars will never be as young as he is; you wish they'd all stop trying.

Like a stumpy limb requiring quick cauterization via steam pipe (our first cringe), the Saw series is begging for closure.

The script, credited to one Bert V. Royal, seems to have been run through an out-of-control sass machine (seriously, it'll make you appreciate Diablo Cody's tact).

Material like this doesn't require the additional strain of overnarrated freeze-frames, a "Cuckoo's Nest" supporting cast of adorable crazies and a Glee-ified musical number set to Queen and David Bowie's "Under Pressure."

There's really no focking place for the franchise to go anymore.

Here's a film that definitely wants to play Hollywood dress-up.

You keep waiting for the movie to grow a brain, for that random attractive neighbor (Wilde) to turn out to be a decoy, for Banks herself to become suspect. Nope. The Next Three Days morphs into "The Fugitive" on steroids.

What was Clint thinking? (Or Martin Scorsese, when he made "Shutter Island," for that matter.)

A new Red Dawn could have been so much more fun had it thrown a properly out-of-bounds tea party. (It lacks the signature brawn of original director John Milius, a guns-first libertarian.)

A perfectly boring movie from Julian Schnabel - is it possible?

The movie dies onscreen; it might be the best advertisement for avoiding the glories of Italy ever released by a Hollywood distributor.

Listen to the rhythms of "Broadcast News" - from Holly Hunter's daily crying jags to William Hurt's cock-of-the walk patter - and you'll hear how romantic comedy can approach an art form, a roundelay that requires the ear of a conductor. How Do You Know, James L. Brooks's latest, has such tone-deaf passages that it feels made by a totally different man.

This can't be a faithful facsimile of the literary phenomenon currently turning soccer moms into Scandinoir crackheads. Nor can ethical journalist Mikael (Nyqvist), an uncoverer of conspiracies, actually be the dull, Windbreakered nonaction hero onscreen.

The more substantial material, including Spitzer's feuds with vindictive New York politician Joe Bruno and financier Ken Langone, gets short shrift.

How does one remain an unapologetic fan of Vaughn, abrasive though he is, even as his material fails him?

We've seen Nicolas Cage when he's angry-and we like him when he's angry. So why does this painfully loud revenge movie skimp on the Cage rage?

From its title on, Come Undone is as dully generic as is imaginable.

A typically lax late-period Ferrara work, far from the glories of "King of New York."

Sandler's puppy-dog persona is just about ready to be put down. From its title on, this is entertainment for extremely lazy audiences.

The original film, for all its zaniness, existed in a recognizable Koch-era metropolis, one that paradoxically added to our hero's likable haze of denial. This time, the town is far shinier (what recession?).

None of this is particularly well wrought, and only a bizarre gas mask worn by the séance leader counts as an inspired (if slightly silly) touch.

The new movie is simpler plotwise (a race to the Fountain of Youth), while at the same time being somehow more deadening.

Please. If you're going to ask audiences to submit to a dim theater themselves, at least greet them with the proper monster they paid for.

In theory, there's nothing wrong when a movie reminds you of TV. (That's where the fun is, anyway.) But when a movie resembles a long-lost, corduroy-clad episode of "The Rockford Files," that's a problem.

To the movie's small credit, there's very little grasping for larger significance: It's a dumb horror film, complete with a sexy female lust object (Kaboom's Mesquida) undraping for a shower scene.

Depending on what you need from this movie, there's slight redemption in its full-on commitment to raunch, both in baby-shit–to-mouth scatology and some choice zingers.

Dedicating a movie to John Hughes doesn't equal capturing the master's ear for the universality of adolescent angst.

Controversially, Escrivá started the Opus Dei, and There Be Dragons is best appreciated by those seeking more realism than the albino self-whipper of "The Da Vinci Code."

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

All of them slog through countless boring sword-and-sandal skirmishes, none of which feel remotely suspenseful, until the hugeness of it all becomes a mildly passable joke.

Some kind of napping for sure: The line between rigor and tedium is crossed in this Madrid-set home-invasion thriller, captured in a dozen or so claustrophobic shots but impoverished as a piece of drama.

It gets bogged down in slo-mo indie quirk when it should be faster, more in our face.

Breillat, as always, goes her own way, but her impressionistic scenes barely cohere, even at this brief running time.