Adam Nayman

It’s the sort of film that’s destined to be the answer to a trivia question, and not much more.

The ostensible boldness of Misunderstood is undermined by the sense that it’s also pandering—that its view of childhood as a bourgeois horror-show is at least as salable on the art-house circuit as it is authentic to its creator’s experiences.

This film about the loneliness of the young middle-distance runner drops so many heavy obstacles in his way, with such grueling regularity, that it’s like he’s practicing to be a hurdler instead.

What keeps The Amazing Catfish from greatness despite the evident skill at every level of its production—the editing is sharp, and the actors are all excellent, especially the children—is the sense that Sainte-Luce is luxuriating in quirkiness for its own sake.

Burning Blue expends most of its energies mitigating against potential flaws, with very little left over to push it over the top and into the realm of quality independent cinema.

In the absence of narrative urgency or fresh storytelling devices, Grand Départ lives or dies with Marmaï’s performance, but like everything else around him, he’s merely adequate.

What’s affecting about Hanna Ranch is its suggestion that Kirk Hanna was the real deal in every way possible, a man out of time, simultaneously inspired and fatally trapped by his past.

There’s a difference between elemental melodrama and superficial clichés, and gorgeous cinematography and period production design can only delay this recognizance for so long—and certainly not for two grueling hours.

Bright Days Ahead means to be a casual, charming movie about a woman taking charge of her life, but its lightness gets unbearable; the film is so featherweight that it eventually blows away.

Fatally, for a film about damaged people methodically working through their problems—with themselves and each other—it gets less interesting the more it reveals about its characters.

While Rob The Mob doesn’t ultimately hold together, it isn’t for a lack of trying by the performers or the filmmakers—like Tommy and Rosie, it’s doing its damnedest.

Competently shot and edited, and imbued with a gentle sense of affection for its setting, Angels In Stardust doesn’t ultimately insult its audience’s intelligence. But it doesn’t really engage it, either.

[An] occasionally awkward but finally light-footed movie.