Instead of an original score that might deepen our connection to the characters, we get a jukebox set list carefully formulated to light up the “nostalgia” sections in the suburban brain.

The early praise that J.J. Abrams’ new Star Trek is receiving is an indication of just how low our expectations have sunk for the summer blockbuster.

The adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is visually rich and sporadically entertaining, but something is lost in the translation from page to screen.

“We’re not survivors. We’re fighters. We fought,” wrote Esther Stermer years later about her family’s struggles during the Second World War. I’d never thought of that distinction before in regards to those who suffered the horrors of the Holocaust, but there’s no doubt that that’s what many of them did. They fought for their lives.

Generations of the Stermers and a few dozen others Jews of a small Ukrainian village spent more than a year during the conflict living in underground caverns to hide from the occupying Germans and avoid being carted off to concentration camps or gas chambers. There was little food and water available, at times almost none. They spent days at a time in complete darkness, only a few of them ever able to risk venturing to the surface to obtain whatever provisions they could beg for or steal.

In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding, Vanity Fair) ties to construct a scenario that would drive even the most successful and promising Muslim-born, American sympathizer to extremism.

The Renoir that Gilles Bourdos lush and sultry historical drama revolves around is the painter, Auguste (Michel Bouquet), whom we meet at the end of a career, as he struggles with physical ailments. The Renoir who holds our attention is Jean (Vincent Rottiers), the future filmmaker who is a young man released from military service. Back at his father’s villa he meets the fetching nude model Andree (Christa Theret), a satyr of sorts, whose precocious sexual sense is an agent of maturity. Bourdos’ film is best as a visual feast, so rich with color and exquisite light, but its romance and familial subplots meander a bit before they diffuse into a sloppy ambiguity.

This stage adaptation is an honest, sometimes weary approach to Steinbeck’s iconic work that results in a play that’s trying at times and immensely rewarding at others.

Weak showings from the two stars severely damaged the opening night performance of Dallas Opera’s current production of Puccini’s Turandot at Winspear Opera House Friday.

I’m tempted to relate everything that doesn’t work about David Riker’s The Girl to the Texas accent of the movie’s lead actress, Abbie Cornish. Cornish, an Australian, wrestles with her twang like a foreign language, thudding out deliberate “ain’ts” and over-mouthing her other “angs” and “ehs.” Her Spanish, interestingly enough, is more convincing, and the long stretches in which she lays aside her Texan help convince of the quality of the performance Cornish ultimately turns in.

Cornish’s Ashley, after all, is a difficult role. Like most of Riker’s movie, it is alternately under-written and melodramatic, capable of long stretches of one-dimensional tedium and splotches of authentic pathos. Ashley is a young single mother whose child, Georgie, has been taken away from her by Child Protective Services, presumably because of an alcohol problem. There’s some clumsy, topical dialogue at the start about living poor in Texas, but the film takes an unexpected twist when Ashely’s father, Tommy (Will Patton) shows up and offers Ashley a quick getaway to Texas. These spur-of-the-moment trips may have something to do with CPS’s concern with Ashley’s mothering, but none of that is very explicit. Instead, during the trip, Ashley discovers that her father is earning extra cash smuggling Mexicans across the border. At first Ashley is outraged by her father’s brazen side-business (and what it could mean for Ashley and Georgie if she was caught with her father), but soon the temptation of money looms too large. If Ashley could make the extra dough, maybe she could get her son back.

This plot proves a little hard to swallow at times. Ashley wanders Nuevo Laredo and drums up Coyote business very fast. She rolls out to the river and makes the immigrants swim. When it all goes bad Ashley is left caring for a young Mexican girl. When Riker is trying to be subtle it feels under-explicated, and when he tries to drive home his topical points – from Walmart underclass to a rose colored look at Mexican poverty – it feels a little earth pounding. The whole point seems to be to take this dazed character and force her to grow as a mother, and then, just as we’re getting there, Riker rolls credits, leaving the film feeling unfinished. Ultimately, the entirety of The Girl’s success rests on how much we are drawn into the inner development of Cornish’s character. The Girl isn’t successful, but neither is it a failure. Despite the script’s mood swings between didacticism and minimalism, Cornish finds the heart of her character. It is enough to hope that Cornish will also find a more quality roll that she will really be able to take to heights. Hopefully it will be set in Australia.

Harmony Korine’s garish, drunken dream, Spring Breakers, is part plodding psychedelic video-scape, part anarchic vision of American despair.

The revelation in Sally Potter’s coming of age melodrama Ginger and Rosa is Elle Fanning, the film’s 15-year-old lead actress who manages to take a weepy teenage character and turn her into a knot of pathos.

Nifty directing and an über-talented cast’s boffo acting are wasted on a script of a new play that still needs quite a bit of work.

A  subject like this one deserves a better film. But since Emperor is all we’ve got, let’s make the most of it.

Let’s set aside the question of how accurate Emperor is as a history of the first few weeks of the United States’ occupation of Japan at the end of World War II. Let’s grant that much of what’s depicted is made-up entirely, some of it even an utter distortion of Hirohito’s role in his country’s militaristic expansionism.

Bryan Singer (Usual Suspects, X-Men) directs a lively update of the Jack and the Beanstalk fable, reimagined as a slap-stick quest.

Take a step back to reflect and you’ll be surprised at how many of the observations in this two-actor bio-drama resonate after the play is finished.

If my life doesn’t turn out quite the way I’d have liked, I might blame it on my relatively content, uneventful childhood. I didn’t get adopted by a pair of aging siblings on Prince Edward Island, didn’t get to play around bombed-out sections of London during the Blitz, never swam with the whales in New Zealand. Growing up sure looks like it’s a lot more exciting, and more meaningful, in the movies.

Bless Me, Ultima is just the sort of coming-of-age tale that makes me realize my own Generic-American upbringing — devoid of any particular ethnic flavor — was colorless. Which reminds me, yet again, how grateful I am to live in a world and an era overflowing with stories that allow us to peer into lives that we’ll never ourselves lead. That’s true even when I wish a story were told more effectively than is this film.

A romantic triptych provides some memorable zingers and an intriguing opportunity to sample forgotten Chekhov, but there’s a reason we remember the playwright’s other works.

Sparks works by taking slivers of reality—the easier, warmer, happier bits—and magnifying them to signify reality itself.

The setting of Julia Dyer’s The Playroom smacks of a nostalgia for a decidedly more adult era, before parents’ lives were excessively oriented towards their kids.

The keys to a successful con, according to Frank Abagnale, Jr., are to dazzle your subject, misdirect if possible, and always keep talking. This stage musical takes this advice too much to heart.

Laughter is often a mysterious thing. Why is it, I asked myself during the preview screening of Warm Bodies, that the row of people sitting to my right are roaring with laughter at a moment when I’m not doing much more than merely smiling in response to the onscreen antics?

I understood the movie’s humor. I even thought its premise was clever enough, and yet this zombie romantic comedy (or should it be “romantic zombie comedy?”) left me mostly silent, despite the plentiful giggles and guffaws in the theater around me.

Michael Rainey Jr. is astonishing as a young boy living in the hard streets of Baltimore.

“Creation is really criticism,” T.S. Elliot wrote. Gregory Crewdson is a photographer who no longer hits the exposure button on the camera. Rather, he is an artist whose craft is a function of his gifted critical eye.

While it’s highly entertaining to watch grumpy old men lewdly insult each other, and the vaudeville-esque hallucinations add an extra layer of interest, after a while Old begins to feel like you’re trapped in a never-ending argument.

Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut, Quartet, is an ensemble piece set in a retirement home for musicians.