John P. McCarthy

Gingerly pieced together, The Woman with the 5 Elephants has a delicacy and indirectness that's alluring and provocative at the same time.

Trapped inside the German film Vincent Wants to Sea there's an affecting father-son drama, an amusing road movie, a quirky romantic comedy and a non-patronizing take on mental illness. What we actually get - a homogenized movie-of-the-week set against the Alps and punctuated by anodyne English-language pop songs - brought out the cynic in me.

All you need to know about this low-budget farce is that Amy Sedaris costars (yippee!) and New York pol Anthony Weiner would feel right at home with the sexting subplot (eeeuw!).

The equally simple and profound take-away from One Lucky Elephant is that the best thing we can do is let Flora be Flora.

This ho-hum offshoot of Megan McDonald's book series earns negative "thrill points" as it chronicles the mirthless backyard shenanigans of a suburban Pippi Longstocking.

Mr. Nice is hampered by tonal timidity and the inability to find a sufficiently entertaining through-line in Marks' life story.

The price for an invite to Stu's (Ed Helms) Thai nuptials is fewer laughs and an air of menace and mystery that won't endear Part II to escapist-hungry audiences.

A conventional portrait of an endearingly unconventional sister act-with roots in music halls and the dairy farm on which they were raised (and became expert yodelers)-The Topp Twins is a piece of hagiography.

Even given narrative license, South African-born screenwriter Ann Peacock has trouble cobbling together a truly compelling plot that deals with Kenyan history, including tribalism, in a detailed way.

It's difficult to imagine a more fascinating case of sociopathic, obsessive-compulsive behavior, or a more disciplined, engrossing study of it. And yet a vital ingredient is missing.

With his (Herzog) idiosyncratic blend of serendipity, bluntness and mischievous irony, he's able to get at deep questions like no other documentarian.

It's easy to get depressed by much of the behavior depicted in Phillip the Fossil, yet the talents behind the picture are a cause for optimism. The last thing they appear to be is hypocritical.

The barely coherent Footprints seems bent on erasing any nostalgia one might have for Hollywood's heyday.

The bright spot-and what saves Greenspan's debut feature from being nothing more than a long tedious draft of an ordinary craft brew-is James Liston's cinematography.

Has a stirring elemental feel and constitutes filmmaking at its most basic and transfixing.

Cary Joji Fukunaga's romantic thriller Jane Eyre is to 19th-century literature what "Black Swan" is to ballet: a thoroughly cinematic, occasionally exhilarating reimagining of a repertoire standard.

Starved of humor and energy, the interminable Big Mommas: Life Father, Like Son could force Lawrence and co-star Brandon T. Jackson undercover for real.

A superficially provocative movie that tries way too hard to be memorable. Horror aficionados will be tantalized before walking away unsatisfied.

Carancho's noir vibe stems from the scenario itself, plus claustrophobic cinematography and art direction.

What's most memorable about this plodding thriller are the copious amounts of foundation and lip gloss.

The profundity to tedium ratio is around 1 to 3. Not bad for a micro-release slated to screen seven times in a museum (NY's Rubin Museum of Art) but it's a film more interesting in theory than reality.

Not quite the yuk-fest one was hoping for or as perversely alienating as "Observe and Report," Due Date shares the schizophrenic quality, though not the numbing length, of another Seth Rogen movie, "Funny People."

Compact if not cohesive, this is an Age of Aquarius-meets-"Mamma Mia"! distillation of The Tempest.

It has sufficient flavor to perform relatively well in markets with significant South Asian populations or amongst serious foodies who'll flock to anything remotely germane to their passion.

The absorbingly bittersweet result ranks as one of the best non-fiction films of the year.

Although its claims about Hildegard's modernity and relevancy should be taken with a grain of salt, one readily imagines Vision attracting a cross-section of the curious, not limited to feminist cinephiles and true believers.

Serves as both a sequel and a prequel, and the team Oren Peli has assembled deserves credit for beefing up and rounding out his original narrative without letting it mutate into something unrecognizable.

Kalamity is a real klunker.