Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley are such a naturally charming on-screen couple that it takes quite awhile to realize the movie they're in, "The Spectacular Now," isn't very good.

Directed by James Ponsoldt (who debuted with the far more focused and wrenching "Smashed" last summer) and adapted from a Tim Tharp novel by writers/co-producers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (who also wrote

Should art challenge us? Can we just let ourselves be taken by its emotional implications? These are some of the questions that revolve around "Ain't them bodies saints," a picturesque, if sometimes vexing, new film headed for the cineplex next Friday.

The seventies somewhere in Hill Country Texas; grasslands, the occasional canyon, cities. Casey Affleck Affleck and Rooney Mara play the outlaw Bob Muldoon and his wife, Ruth Guthrie

"The Gardener," coming out today in select cities, is a new documentary about Baha'ism directed by Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf ("The Bicyclist," "Kandahar") which was filmed in Jerusalem, Haifa (where the Baha'i world organization is located) and Saint Jean D'acre in Israel. In it, the director himself and his real-life son Maysam try and come to terms with world religions through the lens

Two inept brothers decide to rob a bank after the nursing home their grandfather lives in is threatened with a shut-down order from developers. Bad luck of the draw, they’ve picked the worse time to carry on their crime: a zombie epidemic just struck through the heart of London.

Having gotten some on-the-job training directing commercials and music videos, in 2008

A Welshman directed a foreign-language cop drama (see our REVIEW of Gareth Evans’s "The Raid: Redemption”) in Jakarta, so why couldn't a Brit direct one in The Philippines? "Metro Manila," half-thriller, half-drama, delivers an elegant and astute finish that will have you cheering and clapping. But the ninety minutes that precede this are so bogged down with politically-correct clichés and mournful impressionism that its storytelling potential is eviscerated.

A druglord who is a part of a wider network gets arrested by the police. He does everything to save his own skin, cooperating with the police and snitching on more powerful individuals in the network, but can he be trusted? Police captain Zhang (Sun Honglei) partners with Timmy Choi (Louis Koo) after the latter is arrested. To avoid the death penalty, Choi agrees to reveal information about his partners' cocaine ring. Zhang grows

Guillermo Del Toro is a kid again and this summer he's invited us into his room. Digging deep within 20th century pop-geek culture while exploring his beasty imagination ("Hellboy 2: the Golden Army"), Del Toro has turned out one of the most unlikely and eery films I've seen in a while. It had to be done, in a way, and he's done just that. And who better than him for the task of convincing us that a crack in the space-time continuum exists

In “The Conjuring” Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga take the roles of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, a Nick and Nora of supernatural troubleshooting. The real-life Warrens are best known in some circles as investigators at Amityville. “The Conjuring” comes from a lesser known incident earlier in their career, a 1971 investigation at a 300-year-old Rhode Island farmhouse. The Perrons--husband, wife, and five daughters

Danish cinema is becoming more and more relevant. After the sublime "A Royal Affair" which came out last year, the Danes are darkening the summer skies with a film of a rare intensity, and one which is doubtlessly proof of their commitment to the medium and their innate talent for it. Yes, the Danes are taking filmmaking seriously and it is a joy to behold.

In this hostage-taking

A film that created news on the festival circuit this year is Ryan Coogler's "Fruitvale Station," due out this Friday. It is based on true events that occurred in the eponymous metro station in Oakland, Calif., namely, a violent tussle that led to an innocent man dying at the hands of the police. The events were captured via mobile phone camera by an eyewitness, the footage of which is shown at the start of the film. "Fruitvale