Abby Garnett

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

[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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The Love Punch is too sunny and self-effacing to be truly toxic.

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

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

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.

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