Abby Garnett

For all its postures of humanism, the film is remarkably cold toward the victim herself, who appears only briefly.

It’s a potent psychodrama, pitting Marianne’s reality against the one Fassaert is documenting

Despite the gravity and breadth of the subject matter, Lopez herself is a frequent subject of the camera.... These awkward inclusions can’t diminish the horror and injustice she catalogs, but they will make Equal Means Equal a difficult sell to anyone outside its intended audience of socially progressive, politically empowered women.

Director Pedro Morelli's neon-and-grime aesthetic and a solid cast of mostly Canadian character actors (including a campy, animated Don McKellar and a creepy Michael Eklund) are the grounding factors.

Much of the humor depends on Redleaf and Farsad coaxing relatable, Apatow-ian comedy out of their relationship; unfortunately, they're so bland that there's little to relate to.

The buildup stretches longer than it should, but the payoff comes with a satisfying bang.

Toby's eventual comeuppance feels as preordained and empty as the preppie/townie dichotomy regurgitated here from so many outdated teen-media artifacts.

Barrett faces the daunting task of trying to contain Collette's tumultuous performance, and he struggles to make Reynor's more restrained turn work in the same space. The film trudges along in Collette's wake, fumbling for something to focus on apart from the bleeding wound just offscreen.

Writer-director Cameron Labine seems to want to prove the obsolescence of the lovable-slacker stereotype even as he flogs it for entertainment value.

Like the ravings of a keyed-up screenwriter, there's conviction, if not logic, in its madness, and that makes it fun and fascinating.

There's not much to be said about Sonny Mallhi's languid psychological drama — moonlighting as a possession-centered horror film — that hasn't already been said by the title.

The film relies heavily on the coltish charms of its young leads, and Powley's effervescent, well-timed performance as the younger princess (she calls herself "P2") is skillful enough to bring out the screwball latencies in an otherwise bland screenplay.

Over the course of the film, Koenig, a sallow, heavy-lidded youth who looks like he could be aged anywhere between 19 and 36, is revealed to be both an unspiring artist and an odious protagonist.

Pulled in too many directions, the film's subtle mood-building starts to feel intentionally oblique, the force of its characters and symbols lessened by a frustrating circuitousness.

Though mildly engaging, this Reversion doesn't delve deep enough to distinguish itself.

There's simply too much going on to establish characters.

A puzzling film that despite being saturated with feeling leaves only a vague impression.

The crime-spree-driven final third feels more like a sordid movie of the week than the sprightly comedy that preceded it.

Reisberg assumes we'll believe that in "real life" (as in, when he's not deceiving anyone about his whereabouts) Craig isn't this selfish, but watching him lie, cheat on his girlfriend, and enthusiastically provide beer to teenagers says otherwise.

New York onscreen is often a fantasy of hustlers, hardened cops, and the spoiled urban yuppies of the Baumbach and Dunham universes. In that sense, writer-director Keith Miller's modest drama Five Star is the kind of depiction the city sorely needs.

It's ultra-serious, confined almost entirely indoors, and, with its Facebook pages and Google Maps walk-throughs, inextricably tied to the way we live right now. It's also well crafted and strikingly intimate.

Lawson's wishy-washiness about tone doesn't prevent the actors from nailing the comic exchanges.

While the polish of good-looking Hollywood types shot in clean, well-lit spaces doesn’t quite connect with Bujalski’s writing style, the film's tone is honestly unorthodox, a quality missing from most mid-budget comedies.

[Depicts] the end of life not as an isolated horror (as in Michael Haneke's Amour) or as the contested site of legal and political factions, but as a complex social phase, its wobbly moral scale hinging on empathy.

However you view the western in American filmmaking — as a moth-eaten relic or an eternal form to be resurrected every few years — there's something stale about Kane Senes's tepid historical drama Echoes of War, which utilizes the genre's symbols without delivering on its potential for moral or narrative satisfaction.

Though its imagery is tame by LaBruce's standards, Gerontophilia follows his fascination with taboo sexual behavior.

Cognet's work is more devoted to thought about aesthetics than aesthetics themselves. His modest film represents a break from the rigorous historical work typically associated with documentaries about the Holocaust, and its open-ended nature is a fitting analogue to ongoing questions about testimony and healing.

This retelling is more concerned with black-and-white morality, which drains it of suspense.

Analeine Cal y Mayor's bland, faux-quirky dramedy's most distinguishing set piece is a kitschy historic house museum dedicated to an erstwhile Mexican crooner named Guillermo Garibai.

The message is more pedestrian than passionate: Life is long, and full of instant messages.

A Dumont film that paints its small-town milieu with as much humor as violence (though there's a fair dose of that, too) and finds some tenderness in life's absurdities.

Despite a few dynamite scenes from Chastain, Miss Julie's cruelty is more potent than its craft.

This is a fascinating and often tumultuous story, which Haupt chronicles through a mixture of interviews with the real Ostertag and Rapp (now married, they appear as a pair) alongside dramatized vignettes that, as the film wears on, feel like annoying interruptions.

Kruger and Clarke do their best to look steadfast with a camera swooping around them like a wounded bird, but there's no rescuing this imprecise family portrait from its own impulses toward obscurity.

Last of the First is effective as a classroom tool for conservationist ideals (Jane Goodall herself gives an interview, as does the director of the African branch of the Nature Conservancy), but it fails to interrogate the forces that make those ideals necessary.

This story is about tenderness and empathy, including Carbee's for his plastic proxies.

Khaou creates a compelling tension between Whishaw's stricken, almost febrile performance and Cheng's stubbornly dignified one.

It sounds like a recipe for comedy (and Kline seems to think so too, waltzing and prat-falling through Mathias's alcoholic foibles), but Horovitz's screenplay guns instead for an emotionally and financially tangled melodrama, and ends up feeling aggravatingly inconsistent.

May in the Summer's biggest obstacle is Dabis, who isn't a strong enough actress to sell the subtle humor.

I Am Happiness on Earth's script is mostly filler between explicit, intensely choreographed sex acts.

Too low-stakes for horror, too lamebrained for satire, and too incoherent to be didactic, The Maid's Room simply uses Drina and then throws her away.

A lightweight Big Chill reworked for today's young professional set, which proves too clumsy and self-conscious to live up to its weighty subject matter.

The film is dragged down by its awkwardly paradoxical story, which tries too hard to care too little.

Archambault is fluent in small, self-contained moments. Even as their guardians are forced into difficult conversations, Gabrielle and Martin's private exchanges ring true.

In an alternate universe, this might be a cult hit; as it is, Albemuth will only be fun for diehards.

Daniel Cohen's Le Chef does little more than illuminate the superficiality of the restaurant business.

Provost's film, like its heroine, is full of active, sparking nerves.

Shapiro seems far more invested than his subject in telling the story, which sometimes makes the film feel a bit underhanded.

Before You Know It is a chronicle of the challenges facing an aging portion of the population, but it doubles as something more universal: a means of cutting through isolation and societal expectation, and finding a stronger self on the other side.

A self-aware psychopath is a tough character to humanize, especially when he's mired in a stylized jumble of comedy and tragedy.