In spite of good performances and colorful design, The Rider Named Death is too grave and remote to stir much emotion.

The documentary is fair-minded but vague, and disturbing only when it describes the cat-killing in gruesome detail...Someone should take another crack at this story. Call it "The Art Of Killing Of A Movie."

More speculative than deeply felt.

Tell Them Who You Are is indulgent by design, and the elder Wexler may be right about his son's aesthetic failings.

It's sweet, but way too silly.

The World's dull weave of frustrated romances and worker exploitation is far too obvious, and Jia can only relieve the tedium so many times.

Pachachi doesn't integrate her interviews into any kind of comprehensive portrait of recent Iraq history. They're bunched together randomly, like a collection of vignettes.

Viewers will either be transported by Honkasalo's somber artistry or begging for someone to stick a gasoline-filled syringe into their veins...As art, 3 Rooms is magnificent, but as a viewing experience, it's almost impossible.

Argo's job should only be a minor piece of this Gotham mosaic, but Jones makes the racketeering scenes so familiar that they grate against the rest of the movie.

While Bitton engages in some penetrating conversations, and shoots some artful video footage, Wall never really tops its first scene.

In the end, all these sexual shenanigans just provide an excuse to play some seductive music and drink in some seaside scenery. Ah, Europe.

But compared to great documentaries about the process behind performance-"Last Dance" and "Original Cast Album: Company" spring to mind-Finding Eléazar is too choppy and fussy.

The more overtly allegorical Innocence becomes, the duller it gets.

Ends up being another one of those life-of-an-entertainer films that reduces an artist to his most embarrassing moments.

For all its documentary-style urgency, Private often feels forced.

Ewing and Grady practically squander the African material, and The Boys Of Baraka doesn't really come to life until the boys return to Baltimore for what turns out to be a permanent summer vacation, due to political unrest overseas.

In spite of a handful of striking images--4 never resolves into anything special.

Still, after an hour and a half of exquisite photography and mushy action, audiences may well ask the unspoken question that plays across the faces of the Rolling Family clan right before the closing credits. Was it worth it?

There's been a proliferation of "globalization sucks" documentaries over the past couple of years, but few have been as blunt as Black Gold.

The filmmaking here is flat, straight, and thoroughly lacking in poetry, and the script--co-written by Cattaneo, Rice, and Phil Traill--tells instead of showing.

Nolte almost makes it work.

The band is sincere, and many of its followers are just as sincere, but there's always a danger that too much "screaming" can turn a meaningful statement into an inarticulate din.

Maggenti is still trapped behind surfaces, enamored of the IDEA of making a buoyant, urbane romantic comedy, while falling short of anything really resonant or personal.

Loktev's efforts to universalize this story by avoiding specifics ends up making Day Night Day Night broad and blank, reducing the lead character to one more generic nutcase for us to fear and pity.

Pierrepoint is handsomely crafted and well-acted, but its sense of scale is as constricted as a noose.

The gold standard for the modern monster movie remains "Tremors," which combines genuine thrills with clever plot twists and distinctive characters. By contrast, Black Sheep has a bunch of one-note living jokes running around willy-nilly while being chased by killer sheep.

Given the gift of Posey at the peak of her powers, Cassavetes squanders her star in low-key, go-nowhere conversations, shot without flair and drained of any improvisatory energy.

The Last Winter's heart is in the right place, but it isn't pumping any blood.

Finishing The Game doesn't get anywhere that "Hollywood Shuffle" didn't go to first, even if it has its own set of specific complaints about how show business treats Asians.

Wagner and company fail to follow Langella's primary rule of storytelling: "Follow the characters around until they do something interesting."

Broderick, Alda, and Madsen are all fine--and Alda has some poignant moments as he realizes the implications of his forgetfulness--but their presence in a movie like this reaffirms its conventionality.

Something is missing here.

There's little here that's especially cage-rattling or side-splitting. Ultimately, Allah only made these guys mildly likable.

It's an old-fashioned hoke-fest, in which the otherness of Germany is connoted by having everyone speak with a British accent.

The Edge Of Love is more like a museum piece, placing historical figures in frozen positions, and asking us to judge them as the curators do.

Well-produced and engaging, but it’s also anecdotal and conspiratorial, and damnably non-confrontational.

Jaud isn’t telling a story so much as he’s making a case, and while his case is persuasive, it doesn’t really work as a movie. The information in Food Beware could fit just as easily--and just as effectively--into a pamphlet.

Foster and Harrelson always stick to the Army's orders about what to say and how to behave. After a while, The Messenger starts to feel equally dogged about following a pat script.

While Mammoth is frequently poignant and beautifully acted--especially by Williams, who’s so lost and lonely that she becomes casually cruel--the movie lacks the personal touch that’s distinguished even Moodysson’s “difficult” films.

For a movie about the unpredictability of life, Pippa Lee plays it awfully safe.

What begins as a multilayered tale of scientific discovery and cultural history gets reduced to a single maudlin idea: that even Charles Darwin had to evolve.

Stolen is mildly engaging, inasmuch as it poses a riddle and makes the audience wait for the answer, in the classic mystery mode.

Once again with the Duplasses, there just isn't enough of anything: not enough funny lines, not enough variation of mood, not enough plot. If these guys were students, Cyrus might merit a "promising." But this is their third movie. It's time for them to stop turning in first drafts.

Kisses is dreary to a fault. It looks fantastic, with its shadowy Dublin alleys illuminated by the heroes' light-up Heelys. But the writing doesn't have that same glow.

The problem is that Hughes fails to imbue this homage with anything personal. Aside from splicing together a policier and a Western, there's no spin here, just a checklist of clichés.

Writer-director Dan Rush could've approached this material in dozens of ways, but the way he chooses-turning it into an occasionally wry, ever-earnest dramedy-is precisely the wrong one.

The trolls are the best part of Troll Hunter; they're funny and creepy.

The Ledge is a sometimes-fascinating, often-aggravating chamber thriller that works best when it's doubling as an inquiry into faith.

Say this for Albert Nobbs: It's not some run-of-the-mill "life lived in service" drama.

Angels Crest has weaknesses that are tough to overcome. It relies too much on two particularly played-out indie clichés: a spare, plunky soundtrack, and a narrative structure that teases out characters' backstory far longer than necessary.

It's About You's sound is relatively clean and dynamic, but there's nothing remotely resembling a narrative here.

It's a shame that a movie about the pope as a man shows such scant fascination with the actual papacy - or with humanity, for that matter.

That seems to be one of the main theses of Unforgivable: that nothing is as dramatic as it appears, and presuming otherwise means risking unnecessary trouble and pain.

If nothing else, the shaggy romantic comedy Celeste And Jesse Forever establishes that Parks And Recreation's Rashida Jones is a movie star.

Three Stars works best as straight-up food-porn.

There's nothing wrong with the idea of trying to make a Bad News Bears for the '10s, and Rohal has the comic talent in front of the camera to do the job. In addition to Oswalt and Knoxville, he has Maura Tierney as Knoxville's wife.

Since there's no plot, just a series of anecdotes, much of the meaning in the movie version of On The Road is meta-textual, relying on the viewers' knowledge of who Kerouac was, and how the novel's vision of America differed from how most of the rest of popular culture documented the '50s.

The result is a movie largely devoid of attitude or suspense. My Best Enemy is brisk and eventful, but after a while, it begins to seem like Murnberger is rushing through this material, afraid to dwell too long on any one situation, lest it tip too far into exploitation.

Candis and Wilson sandbag their actors with dialogue that's a mix of dull exposition and pulp clichés, and rarely natural-sounding or colorful.

Director Dante Ariola and writer Becky Johnston have such a strong idea at the core of Arthur Newman that it’s all the more frustrating when they follow it down the most familiar path.

Christopher delivers cutesy jabber and one-note characters, as oily and devoid of substance as... well, you know.

The problem with Desert Wind is that Kohler takes everything at face value. Wouldn't it have been more useful to make this trip the centerpiece of a longer documentary that follows the men before Tunisia and, more importantly, after?

The Sutherland segments are the most bothersome, because they never really reach a resolution, and because they're betrayed by Avelino's uni-faceted approach.

The sketchily symbolic characters and flat plot just frame an atmosphere of sticky heat and Biblical reckoning.

The drama feels factory-cut and shrink-wrapped, with each of three kids' stories following predictably twisty paths to ironically hopeful conclusions.

Oskar Roehler's serio-comedy Agnes And His Brothers tries to make some incisive points about the damage wrought by society's sexual hang-ups, but though Roehler throws three different characters at the subject, only one halfway sticks.

The one bit of artsy business that McGee pulls off well is the recurring image of snapshots, serving as a kind of map to who these people were and who they're becoming.

It isn't exactly a waste of time, but anyone who's seen a mob movie or TV show in the past 30 years has pretty much seen 10th & Wolf.

Burns has continued to cram one-dimensional characters into thinly plotted comedy-dramas, hoping to re-impress moviegoers with his aloof leading-man charm and faux-natural, trying-too-hard-to-be-funny dialogue.

All the nudity in Zerophilia is either prosthetic or body-doubled. Which means the sex scenes--and the feeling and meaning behind them--are just as phony.

Bercot moves the characters up and down like lines on a chart, never granting full access to what any of them are thinking. And access is what Backstage promised.

The flat, pat talk is symptomatic of Amu's overriding problem: It has no sense of personal style.

In the words of his own character, this young filmmaker hasn't found his "inner fat girl."

Manda Bala is exciting and stylish, and Kohn knows exactly what he wants the movie to say. But he makes most of his points in the first 10 minutes, with disgusting slow-motion frog footage and sound bites from social scientists pointing out how "corruption is what links all other crimes." The rest is just so much show.

Aside from a smattering of irony and a resolution for one of the storylines, the security cameras aren't really threaded into Look's essential purpose. If the idea is that we're always being watched, why does it seem that in this movie, no one's really paying attention?

Has its moments of wonder and beauty, but the film is obscure by design, and meant to appeal to those who favor the alternative canon of directing greats: the one that includes the likes of Alejandro Jodorowsky, David Lynch, Crispin Glover, John Cassavetes, Claire Denis, Abel Ferrara, and Vincent Gallo.

It's hard to overlook how much of Elsa & Fred is rote and pre-chewed.

Forever Strong is generic faith-and-redemption fare, devoid of nuance.

Nothing in How About You is the least bit surprising; the film hits its marks with dreary precision.

All the performers are fine--even the miscast Romijn--but they're still too much like actors playing dress-up.

Skills Like This is never great. But for its first half-hour, it's more fitfully amusing than a movie about a bank-robbing playwright ought to be.

Undoubtedly, everything documentarian Darius Marder shows in his debut film Loot actually happened, but Marder’s approach to this “truth is stranger than fiction” story is so forced that the movie FEELS phony.

Director Tom DiCillo does his damnedest to make his documentary about The Doors unwatchable, but the subject matter is too compelling--and the vintage footage too electrifying--to be completely worthless.

Cox’s character is a living, hissing embodiment of the idea that no good deed goes unpunished. As an actor stuck in a movie that wastes his talents, Cox can surely relate.

Branch also adds some welcome visual pizzazz when needed, and admirably tries to keep the movie from becoming the story of a heroic creative adventurer and the people who try to drag him down. The characters in Multiple Sarcasms are more nuanced, and don’t reduce to a generic good or bad.

At the start of Gerrymandering, Reichert quotes Thomas Pynchon, writing, "Nothing will produce bad history more directly nor brutally than drawing a line." The same could be said of documentaries.

It's a lousy movie, but it has spunk.

Nothing about The Ward's script or direction has much snap. The dialogue is never witty, the characters are indistinct, the story is set in 1966 for no relevant reason, and the scares are strictly of the "thing jumps loudly out of the shadows" variety.

It's tough to keep track of everything Jeff Warrick's subliminal-advertising documentary Programming The Nation? does wrong.

Roughly 99 percent of the time, if a movie that seems like it should be a big deal appears almost out of the blue, it's because it's lousy. The Double doesn't exactly buck that trend.

There's a difference between "funny" and "comedy," and the movie adaptation of Killing Bono tries way too hard to be nutty, at the expense of just getting across what McCormick knows.

Give Don't Go In The Woods credit for not being a wholly conventional horror movie. Debit it for not caring about horror in the first place.

This is an inspiring and important story, but worthiness doesn't automatically equal quality. Had Besson looked for unexpected ways into Suu Kyi's life, or even had he indulged his old impulses and made a slick, surface-y Luc Besson movie, then The Lady might've been more memorable.

There's a solid framework in place here for a fun, original twist on a conventional science-fiction premise, but aside from the occasional quirky touch - Vigalondo fails to fill that frame with a picture worthy of it.

Red Lights' setup is silly but fun, with a fair degree of self-awareness that the film's entire "super-scientists vs. celebrity spiritualists" premise is a hoot.

Rites Of Spring does have a real "no idea what's going to happen next" quality, which is rare. Then again, that's because the movie feels haphazard and unfinished: more weed than plant.

What's missing from this movie is any of that sense of what made Chapman so important, or why he was so often at the center of Monty Python's best skits and movies, up until his death from cancer at 48.

The best parts of Deadfall are absorbed into a scenario that frequently ditches the cat-and-mouse routine and tries instead to be about three dysfunctional families working toward reconciliation.

Fairhaven's location is lovely. Its actors are terrific. All of them beg for something better.

More than anything, The Playroom feels like an excuse to explore this retro house from a child’s point of view—which is perfectly okay, provided no one breaks the spell by talking.

Friedrich’s snide tone gets in the way, turning a study of capitalism run amok into one artist who just can’t stand all these rich squares and their “fancy dogs.”

It’s too broad in both its humor and its melodrama, and there are so many narrative threads that none of them aside from Driver’s really get their due.

This time out, Bahrani’s push to make a point wins out over the strong sense of character he’s cultivated in his earlier films.

Pelosi should be roughed up some, though, for what little she does with her access to the then-president-to-be and the political circus surrounding him.

It's just mediocrity, further soured by bad intentions.

Bounce Ko Gals ultimately devolves into a litany of social ills, with not enough of a proper story, and Harada loses the thread of the film whenever he slips into slapstick comedy, or has his female leads play the role of giggly best friends.

Nods at objectivity but announces its activist intentions throughout.

The energy of Workman's editing and the innate value of seeing the creative process play out makes House watchable.

Hoge, who scripted and directed The United States Of Leland, caters to his cast too much. He gives almost every character a way-too-involved subplot, which distracts from the heart of his story.

The outsider road picture Gypsy 83 means well, but writer-director Todd Stephens can't keep his aesthetic out of the way.

The two leads help create an atmosphere of quiet surety, but they can't elevate the film beyond its self-imposed smallness.

Evergreen suffers from creeping indie-itis, epitomized by the low-light digital video and droning electric-guitar soundtrack, but its biggest weakness lies in Zentelis' apparent fear of surprise.

Reconstruction doesn't evoke much emotion beyond cool ennui. At that, the film excels.

It's hard for Rick to maintain this jangled tone, which aims to be simultaneously heartbreaking and broadly satirical. The latter tack pushes Rick too far, and too soon.

Palminteri and screenwriter David Hubbard desperately want the crazy misfits in their movie to move the audience, but they're all too cracked to inspire empathy. There's no holiday magic, just famous faces playing people who don't exist.

For all the smart visual design, though, She's One Of Us is frustratingly clinical.

In the process of becoming characters, the writer-stars have diminished themselves.

What's most surprising about Never Been Thawed is that it's not completely awful. It's just a little awful.

The result is a movie that feels both fussed-over and meaninglessly cruel.

Everyone in Bee Season is chasing spiritual peace and falling behind, and McGehee and Siegel catch them at their most worn-out and static.

There's enough mystery and agony here for an engaging documentary, but Rossier fails to produce one, largely because he doesn't approach the material in the spirit of true inquiry.

As documentary drama, 39 Pounds Of Love is as ungainly, blunt, and icky as its title.

Weaver's overacting and Dorfman's bold-faced dialogue oversell the scenario. Only Kingsley's sly turn gives Death And The Maiden any real feeling of disquiet.

The movie's more damnable problem is it irrelevance.

Give Fitzgerald credit for ambition and good intentions, but for all its truth-to-power saber-rattling, 3 Needles is distressingly dim.

It's a rare moment when the STORY makes the point, not the speeches.

At one point, David Cross tells Gurwitch to enjoy being unemployed, because "When you're fired, you're interesting." But as Fired! proves, that ain't necessarily so.

The faux-documentary aspect of Radiant City is a huge gamble that doesn't pay off. If anything, the movie's observations about the corrupting social influence of cluttered mall spaces get undercut by the fact that Burns and Brown feel the need to INVENT characters to prove their truth.

The result is either one of the most self-indulgent vanity projects in the history of the Hollywood star system, or a rare revealing look at a distinguished actor who usually keeps his real self out of the spotlight.

It's neither conceptually bold nor slyly satirical when Billy dresses up as a Southern evangelical and sings made-up hymns about "the shopacalypse."

The characters Lehmann and company use as generational mouthpieces bear no relation to any people who have ever existed, and they barely work as parody.

This isn't really a movie made for audiences; it's for casting agents and studio execs, to show off one man's acting chops and his skill at writing dialogue.

Mainly, Good Dick just proves that TV actors like Ritter make good indie-film hires, because they'll go along with whatever ridiculous nonsense a novice filmmaker concocts.

In short, this is a movie about bruised people bruising each other, and if Downloading Nancy had more of an openly pulpy sensibility, then the repugnant premise might’ve had some lasting impact.

The film isn't erotic or profound. It is occasionally comic, though-like reading the finalists for one of those Bad Sex In Fiction awards.

Salvation Boulevard doesn't seem to have any higher aspiration than illustrating how religious people can be hypocrites. (Gosh, who knew?)

Seen as some kind of absurdist, meta-textual horror story, American Animal almost works. In every other way? It's fuckin' poopy-loopy.

LaLiberte is the best thing about Girls Against Boys. She has an unforced coolness, even when Chick sticks her with sub-Quentin Tarantino business, like having a conversation about the nutritional value of Captain Crunch, or singing along to not one, but two Donovan songs.

A series of non-answers isn't enough to build a documentary on, especially when they're strung together by insufferably self-congratulatory voiceover narration (de Ponfilly plays up his agony over whether documentary filmmaking helps or hurts its subjects) and corny stylistic effects.

Becomes hard going the longer Baur stretches out the parade of narcissists, all spouting received wisdom, cultural clichés, and bad poetry.

A series of third-act complications provides much-needed narrative surprise, but until then, The Three Marias is a disappointingly flavorless genre exercise.

What this Singing Detective really needed was to be reworked top to bottom, preferably by a writer fleeing some demons of his own.

An oafish bore.

Reilly's appearance in Piggie amounts to little more than a cameo, but he's lively and real in ways that the rest of Bagnall's cast is not. It's the material's fault.

She acts amazed by her own work, in hopes that we'll be too. To help the matter along, Lee underscores the action with a Mickey Mouse score, cutesy animation, and a relentlessly chipper tone. Her technique is pretty much everything that's wrong with documentary filmmaking today.

Their attempts at wit seem forced, and the overall point of each installment is too minor to spend nearly 30 minutes exploring.

A movie about self-absorbed douchebags that wallows in their douchebaggery.

Guttenberg adapts James Kirkwood Jr.'s humanist black comedy -- and drains all the recognizable humanity out of it, turning it into a morose, unlikable reflection of its sad-sack lead character.