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August 10, 2011 German artist Anselm Kiefer has a fascinating history, but Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, a new documentary about his latest installation, dispenses with any such context. Instead, director Sophie Fiennes focuses on atmosphere and observation, creating a film more perplexing than illuminating.

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July 29, 2011 Director Kevin Macdonald and his team sifted through more than 4,500 hours of amateur video to produce his globe-spanning documentary Life in a Day. Critic Scott Tobias says the film's poignant moments get lost in a sea of disconnected and decontextualized footage.

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July 14, 2011 A colossal fig stands in for a young girl's dead father in an Australian melodrama. Director Julie Bertuccelli attempts a bold metaphor, but once the tree's symbolism takes root, it dominates the entire story to an uncomfortable degree.

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July 7, 2011 For his first movie in nearly a decade, John Carpenter has churned out a generic, halfhearted shocker concerning a mentally questionable young woman who sees ghosts. The lack of style and energy from a onetime master of the horror genre is more alarming than anything dished out onscreen.

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June 30, 2011 A pajama-clad, disaffected high school student learns how to engage the world with the help of his assistant principal. What could have been yet another Sundance trifle about a gawky, eccentric teenager takes on surprising heart thanks to director Azazel Jacobs. (Recommended)

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June 28, 2011 For his third cars 'n' bots noisemaker, Michael Bay hews to the same formula: shiny, industrial-grade space junk thrown at the screen in no discernible order. As expensive explosions blot the sky, the film plods along mirthlessly, the gas guzzler of the multiplex.

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June 23, 2011 In yet another comedy about a kid-hating misanthrope in a youth-oriented profession, Cameron Diaz plays the bully with too much comic zeal. Under Jake Kasdan, the film is cheerfully vulgar, but it gets higher marks when it's not going for shock value.

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June 2, 2011 For the fourth X-Men outing, director Matthew Vaughn and the Marvel machine relaunch the series with style, with a Cold War-era high-wire act that's nimbler and cleaner than any origin story has a right to be. (Recommended)

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May 25, 2011 The latest Romanian New Wave gem, Tuesday, After Christmas, chronicles the collision of a marriage and an affair with unflinching simplicity. Taking no sides, the film lays bare the turbulent emotions in play, infusing an ordinary story with gripping suspense. (Recommended)

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May 5, 2011 A Grindhouse spinoff starring schlock veteran Rutger Hauer, Jason Eisener's gorefest is as uncomplicated as it is gleefully disreputable — and it's decidedly disreputable.

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April 28, 2011 Cultures clash when the creator of Everybody Loves Raymond sets out to adapt his show for Russian audiences. But a lack of focus distracts from what could have been a smart look at "universal" comedy.

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April 21, 2011 Jim Mickle's horror movie ditches the schlock, channeling Terrence Malick to create a vampire apocalypse that's compellingly deranged — and decidedly devoid of teen romance.

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April 14, 2011 The studio behind Ice Age and Robots stuck to formula with its latest kids' flick, a mild and predictable adventure about a pair of endangered macaws on the run in Brazil.

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April 7, 2011 With Russell Brand playing the Dudley Moore role and Helen Mirren in the part that won John Gielgud an Academy Award, a big-ticket remake might make Oscar Wilde think again about whether anything succeeds like excess.

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March 31, 2011 A soldier must relive the last minutes of another man's life — repeatedly — to stop the terrorist who killed him, and who looks likely to strike again.

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