Beatrice Loayza

There’s something smarter between the lines about the way technology warps our (self-) perception, but maybe that’s giving too much credit to a film so giddy about its warping. That’s not totally bad: Some films are like dreams whose meanings never materialize.

True, its hero is a philandering middle-aged novelist; he has an affair with a divine younger woman; and there’s even an imaginary trial where said novelist stands before a jury of women accusing him of misogyny. But, if you can tolerate these passé indulgences, there’s also something slyly compelling about this ethereal, pillow-talk-heavy drama.

Cookie-cutter though it is, The Janes does have something going for it: its interview subjects, the former Janes, who all speak about their beliefs and shared past with striking clarity.

To Akin’s credit, the film isn’t tastelessly sentimental (see “Jojo Rabbit”), and it depicts Nanning’s awakening with the kind of subtlety and restraint that suggests his moral education will continue evolving after the end of the movie.

In the end, Jensen opts for feel-good fantasy over hardened truths, but his dizzyingly chaotic methods amount to a dynamic, unexpectedly touching ode to the difficulties of baring your vulnerabilities to genuinely overcome them.

Here, heroism is presented less as a feat of preternatural bravery than a series of choices made by someone who simply refused to give up his humanity.

Though far from the gold standard of “brief encounter” dramas like Andrew Haigh’s “Weekend,” Sublet nevertheless wins you over with its subtle charm and its mellow depiction of two men forging an unexpected connection.

A simple yet engaging melodrama.

The stately Foïs carries the film as it devolves into a restrained drama about familial loyalty and womanly fortitude, its change of gears not entirely clicking into place.

The film swings back and forth from scenes of pastoral bliss to brutality, generating a narrative that, while unfocused, is nevertheless anchored by the tender and wounded performances by its adolescent cast.

The film’s intriguing symbolism diminishes over time, but remaining is an elegant portrait of solidarity; a vision of workers enmeshed in the land that sustains them.

Peterson’s script is frustratingly single-note and occasionally bends toward unearned sentimentality. Still, The Graduates feels true to its milieu; its emotional clarity impressive given the loaded subject matter and the film’s subdued style.

The takeaway is the difficulty of collaboration in the face of entrenched beliefs and ways of navigating the world that, ultimately, must be questioned — if not entirely dismantled — if any one of us expects to stick around.

As in a David Lean movie, passion mingles elegantly with repression, and Williams emerges as a kind of romantic figure, a man shocked, then delighted, by the thrill of finding himself.

The superior second half, in which Rita’s reality is upended, eases into a realm of fantasy that is admirable — and more effective — because of its uncanny, inventive minimalism.

Lindon stages an intentional anticlimax that feels confusingly abrupt and unconvincing. Yet her point is well taken: that the desires of young people are as fickle and ephemeral as flowers in full bloom.

The film weaves a surprising amount of history into a procedural framework. It’s eye-opening, even though it’s hitting the same old beats.

Maybe it’s low hanging fruit that the white supremacist character is the best comic fodder, but the film’s trolling is stranger and more esoterically inclined than its selection of political punching bags would seem to warrant.

The filmmaker Ha Le Diem shot Children of the Mist over the course of three years, integrating herself into Di’s life in a way that complicates the documentary’s otherwise unobtrusive, observational approach.

The film is at its strongest when it focuses, in its more understated scenes, on a distressing human tendency: to create distance between ourselves and those who know us best.

A psychological thriller with frustratingly little to say about the trenches of the human mind, Run nevertheless satisfies as a taut and titillating get-out movie that lands somewhere between HBO’s "Sharp Objects" and "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?"

In short, it too efficiently glosses over multiple plotlines to have much of an emotional impact. What remains are mostly generic beats. Still, the formula is engrossing enough, and its midcentury vintage appeal — the pillbox hats, headscarves and swanky soirees — is particularly seductive.

With its twists and rug-pulls, The Knife makes for an absorbing drama, but it’s also deeply exasperating in that it feels less like a social commentary grounded in reality than an edgy play on emotions.

This aestheticization of Chinese society doesn’t exactly sit well with this viewer: one wonders if this counts as a kind of tourism.

Hadzihalilovic is an expert conjurer of other worlds, and “Earwig” unearths a startlingly seductive array of visual and sonic textures that don’t quite add up to much more than a powerful mood.

Despite Efira’s efforts, Judith’s inevitable breakdown never hits a satisfyingly deranged register. Her motivations turn out to be less spicy, and more blandly sympathetic than one had hoped from this pressure cooker of a film.

Wahlberg and company manage to hold your attention, and not just because there’s a cute dog in the frame.

The Columnist doesn’t seem to care about making a cogent statement about feminist revenge or online culture. Perhaps it just needed an excuse to carry out its bloody high jinks, which are decent fun in their own right.