Ben Croll

The self-contained “Treasure” ambles along on the strength of a fine, self-contained script and two winning performers, without ever reflecting or commenting on the historical weight it sets out to explore.

An autobiographical portrait that somehow leaves you knowing less about the subject at hand, and a study of actors, warts and all, that offers little insight into the artistic process.

Though he finds little room for subtlety and even less interest in complex moral shadings, director Edoardo De Angelis can still ably wring tension from this brave, if foolhardy, mission, spinning his camera around ever-cramped quarters as the two crews, enemies-turned-shipmates, navigate uncharted terrain.

If this bloody entr’acte, whose title addition works as both noun and verb, has little to offer but a jacked up body count on a bed of fan service, it serves both with panache, charging forward as an almost elemental slasher outing unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.

Deception, as a novel and as a film, offers a curio for obsessives, a postcard for archivists, and a not-too-interesting bump in the road for everyone else.

An undeniably entertaining watch, Suburbicon stumbles when it tries to recycle effective old ingredients into something new.

Taking a sturdy, mainstream premise — a big-city careerist reflecting on her life path during a trip back to the holler, in a setup that faintly echoes “Sweet Home Alabama,” among a hundred other rom-coms — and shading it with moral grays, natural light, and a more unvarnished turn from a well-known star, Leave One Day plays uncannily like a Gallic cover of a Sundance movie, gussied up and vaunted onto the international stage.

Like pouring yourself a warm glass of milk or slipping into a hot bath, the languid and visually sumptuous romance lulls you into a sleepy sense of calm, never asking for more than gentle aesthetic appreciation for its impeccable craft.

For all its stodgy touches, the film itself is like a cast-in-amber relic of the not-so-distant past.

Unable to neatly reconcile its two narrative premises, the film loses momentum, pushing well past the brisk runtime and zippy pace this kind of material usually depends on. That overextension also affects tone, as Salvadori never quite settles on how sharp the film should be.

Wim Wenders’ 3D snoozefest The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez is not a good movie. It’s not a good movie, and at the same time, it doesn’t fail so spectacularly so to provide a compelling secondary reading.

A spectacularly misjudged mix of humanitarian intentions and gonzo-terrible execution.