Andrew Schenker

A safe, laugh-free exercise that gets to have its fun, such as it is, because it's all in the service of the most conservative notions of domestic normality.

Mukunda Michael Dewil's film has the makings of a taut little thriller, but the writer-director has the twin disadvantages of needing to include dialogue and to rely on the services of Paul Walker to embody his protagonist.

The film speeds ahead with almost gleeful disinterest in dealing with the narrative challenges it sets up before resolving them in the most perfunctory ways imaginable.

Writer-director Nika Agiashvili buys into the concept of the American dream with the zeal of a true believer.

The alignment with Herman's perspective, even as it never downplays the gravity of his crimes, leads the film into a set of obvious conclusions.

Mark Steven Johnson's Killing Season is a hard movie to take seriously, which is particularly unfortunate since it deals with such weighty issues as genocide, the ethical compromises that everyone makes in combat, and the lingering effects of wartime decisions on participants years down the line.

Overly expository dialogue abounds throughout Martin Guigui's movie, as do questionable filmmaking choices and plenty of stupidly unconvincing actions taken on the part of the film's characters.

David Guy Levy's movie foregrounds the potential ugliness of modern technology in order to comment on it. But that doesn't make the film's visuals any less hideous.

What most rankles about the film is the way that its insistence on paternal instincts as the principal signifier of male adulthood leads it to sanction the most childlike behavior of all.

Essentially a horror movie in which the source of the horror shifts from capital-M men to crazed lesbianism.

Amardeep Kaleka's documentary often seems like little more than preaching-to-the-converted, New Age drivel.

Unsurprisingly for a film detailing terminal disease, this is a largely solemn affair, often verging on morbidity in its elongated deathwatch.

The movie's understanding of how the group taps into people's deep need to believe ensures that the film remains not only fair-minded, but sensitive to the tortured emotions of its conflicted central characters.

It's all fairly by the numbers, but in Boeken's presentation, the film isn't without its moments of narrative power.

Everado González isn't above capturing some striking landscape shots, seemingly for the shear desolate prettiness of it, but they always double as a reminder of the very real plight facing the subjects.

This decision to avoid treating the dinosaurs as surrogate people for easy identification is both the film's boldest move and the source of much of its problems.