Boyd van Hoeij

A film that’s an emotional rollercoaster and socio-political tract rolled into one.

Hong, who again wrote as well as directed, hasn’t suddenly become someone interested in things such as densely plotted narratives and surprise twists, with the few events that happen only excuses to dig a little deeper into the behavior and feelings of his protagonists.

Like the director’s previous feature, Jo for Jonathan, this is a minutely observed story of great modesty that thrives on transformations so tiny, the film deserves to be seen on the big screen.

Mikkelsen impresses here as a warm-hearted man who finds himself caught up in a situation way beyond his control.

The film was shot chronologically and this is clear in the increasing fluidity of Gras’ camerawork, which is less and less searching the closer they get to the city.

Perhaps Qu’s near-passive tone is meant to suggest that women don’t have much of a voice in society. But the story's almost complete lack of emotion also negatively impacts the viewers’ interest in the women’s plight. What does come through loud and clear is that Angels Wear White paints an unflattering portrait of not only how women are treated but also of how men try to protect their turf at all costs.

The film has two powerful, loosely connected stories to tell but not a unifying vision that could package the often-potent material for maximum impact.

A less successful aspect of the film is Cognet’s attempt to tie the concentration camps as contemporary spaces into the narrative, with shots of the now practically empty landscapes -- some tourists here and there notwithstanding -- interspersed throughout.

While Afineevsky generally manages to pack in a lot of detail, analysis, nuance and humanism, this is largely absent in the last chapter, which feels like it was rushed together at the last minute and didn’t receive the same amount of time, care and thought as the film’s previous chapters

Slight but quite amusing ... But despite a few good gags and committed performances, the nagging suspicion that this eccentric concept would’ve worked better as a medium-length work or even a short remains.

While the film as a three-hour whole feels unbalanced, a few heart-to-heart conversations between Daniele and Ze cut directly to the core of the material, exploring the uses of fiction and lies in situations like these.

Sophisticated cutting brings out the story’s complex emotional undercurrents, though “Breakdown’s” less convincingly scripted second half sputters more often than it shines.

The film’s first hour and last reels are now a not completely organic fit, taking things from an intimate and personal level to a global scale while skipping over an awful lot of things in between.

Finally less a two-stories-for-the-price-of-one situation than essentially two films of about an hour each, this is nonetheless a visually impressive Hollywood calling card for Jimenez, who almost manages to overcome the material’s structural weaknesses with impressive directorial verve.

For this critic, the events in the home stretch finally feel too much like concessions to the necessities of the laws of fictional drama, with first an unexpected twist followed by a melodramatic one.

The main point of the film remains its style, which is so constantly and loudly reinforced that it’s often hard to concentrate on the story.

The Theory of Everything works best as a kind of surrealist carrousel of film influences and physics references and as such, it’s mostly enjoyable.

If the pic is ultimately an entertaining ride, it is because Sudeikis takes the audience by the hand through this very unlikely story that was inspired by true events.

The overall result remains quite light, is occasionally funny but finally never manages to probe very deeply.

The work’s considerations of the intimate connection among being, art and life finally feel quite superficial.

Escalante struggles to illuminate how sex and violence are connected and what this, in turn, means for more specialized types of aggressiveness and oppression, such as misogyny and homophobia.

Though complementary, the pic’s images and voiceover never quite fuse into a single whole.

There are some fascinating cracks in his constantly upbeat personality that Rice manages to smuggle in. A little more of this material, or at least a little more carefully edited and juxtaposed with the rest, might have made the film less of a valentine for Oakley fans and more of a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at a relatively new phenomenon in general and this "personality" in particular.

The main problem of Happy as Lazzaro is that it's unclear what Rohrwacher finally wants to say in part two, which combines the near-documentary realism of her first feature with the occasional flights of fancy of her second.

The actors impressively give it their all.

Quite powerful despite relying on familiar storytelling tropes.

Minutely observed and framed with great precision, this finally has a few too many characters and twists to become a fully satisfying drama.

Though an array of family and lovers are interviewed, the most interesting comments come from European critics and directors.

Troy Espiritu’s plot-driven screenplay and Mendoza’s preference for a gritty, documentary-like style mean that the final result is neither as deep nor as resonant as it could have been.

Audience’s tolerance for this kind of heavy-handed, occasionally very mannerist symbolism may vary, though Messina does ensure that the religious parallels never completely eclipse the contemporary characters.

This moody, black-and-white period piece always intrigues, even if it only intermittently catches fire.

There are too many twists, insignificant literary references and drawn-out scenes of sex and violence to sustain either the pic’s running time or its ideas, with Sono’s message obscured in the final reels by an ambiguous treatment of his leading ladies.

The critique of those in power and their need to put down others — preferably foreign or different-looking people — in order to stay on top is as relevant in 2019 as it was in 1980, when the novel was first published. But like its noncommittal production design, which combines various North African, Middle Eastern and Asian influences for the locals and locales, the critique itself remains finally quite dull and dispersed because it's so broad and unspecific.

It feels like a sermon delivered by an extremely cine-literate preacher.

Because Sono tries to set the manga’s storyline, with its stylized violence, in the very real, post-earthquake/tsunami disaster area, Himizu struggles to find a coherent tone.

After taking a couple of left turns following its thriller-like opening, Salvo unfortunately returns to a more conventional register in the closing reels, though the atmospheric picture does continuously fascinate on a visceral level.

A snazzy, fast-paced pic that’s nonetheless somewhat enslaved by the get-rich-quick and crime-doesn’t-pay cliches that finally trip up the lowlife protags.

More convincing in its outrage and inspiring in its show of what the people’s will can do as long as the masses protest and demand to be heard, than as a rigorous historical analysis.

Impressive in parts, but wildly uneven as a whole.

Both an unexciting and by-the-numbers history lesson and an inside-view, you-are-there look at an underreported armed conflict, the documentary This Is Congo is almost as full of contradictions as the nation it is trying to portray.

Taken together, the shorts offer some scraps on Berger the man and the artist and thinker without really supplying a full overview, while also exploring some of his main preoccupations in ways that would benefit from at least some prior knowledge of his work.

Quillevere, co-scribe Mariette Desert and editor Thomas Marchand struggle to keep audiences fully involved in the story... Thankfully, the performances are all first-rate.

A film with some real stunning visual highlights but a narrative throughline that feels patchy and unbalanced.

Directed by French director Anne Fontaine (Two Mothers/Adore, Coco Before Channel), this is another gorgeously appointed but also slightly overly formal film, with a muted emotional payoff that, while appropriate for the story’s convent setting, doesn’t exactly make for must-see cinema.

If the film remains largely watchable it is because Farhadi has cast some of the finest actors in Spain and they know how to breathe life into their characters even when they don’t have all that much to do (though a few of them have quite a lot to say).

The acting from the central four actors is quite soulful, but we don’t get enough access to these characters’ inner conflicts. Too often, the narrative’s configuration feels like an intriguing second draft instead of a ready-to-shoot script, something that someone with an external eye might help finesse into something truly captivating.

[A] handsomely produced if occasionally rather old-fashioned feeling period drama, which plays like a soap opera in which the characters just happen to have better manners and finery.

A high-carat cast...tears into the juicy material with relish for the most part, but by trying to keep the prolonged sit-down affair from becoming excessively stagey, Moverman adds too many distracting flashbacks to maintain the original’s hard-hitting and well-aimed gut punch.

Yeo isn’t experienced enough to convincingly pull off genre acrobatics this complex, delivering a film that often feels derivative in terms of its style and that doesn’t have the storytelling goods to let all these different influences coalesce coherently.

Though a lot of it is well written and directed and, quite often, funny or poignant, the individual scenes rarely become part of a larger whole.

Thankfully, the screenplay doesn’t portray the story in simple terms of good or evil, but that doesn’t mean that there’s quite enough nuance or insight to constantly elevate the material above the level of a well-made-but-TV-ready biopic.

The film’s beauty lies in its carefully observed details and the larger story’s got nowhere particularly surprising to go.

The rock-solid bond between the film’s two drifting 17-year-olds... is the film’s undeniable highlight but the true depth of their friendship crystallizes quite late and is too often obscured by a subplot involving minor characters caught up in a cross-border drug running operation.

This story of sibling camaraderie and familial strife at a Burgundy winery unfolds against the backdrop of reliably picturesque views, with its bouquet of largely familiar elements presented with a modern finish.

Some individual scenes are certainly striking and the couple’s complex relationship and chemistry are believable but the overall narrative retains an erratic and somewhat jerky quality as the various elements don’t always logically build on what has come before.

This bouncy and effervescent film often has the kind of timeless charms that can also be found in the early New Wave films, even if the screenplay, set against the backdrop of the massive 1999 student protests in Mexico City, unsuccessfully tries to smuggle in a slightly more serious and topical undercurrent via the backdoor.

Since from her other features it is clear she's an uncompromising director, it should perhaps come as no surprise that this film is as unapologetically personal and self-absorbed as it is, making no attempt to draw in viewers perhaps unfamiliar with the filmmaker.

Though the film’s European scenes carry too little dramatic weight and might be confusing for those unfamiliar with the novel, the Morocco-set opening 40 minutes are beautifully and quietly observed.

More a film about ideas and theories rather than a story that’s more directly involving emotionally.

The conceit is pure genre fluff, but the underlying economics make less sense upon closer inspection... That said, Maiga projects so much intelligence and integrity it's hard not to warm to her character and she has believable chemistry of the mismatched kind with Boublil, who's up to his usual but quite charming shtick.

Barbosa doesn’t seem very interested in questioning Buchmann’s intentions — the idea of cultural appropriation never comes up, for starters — with the young man depicted as sincere if clearly naive.

The Players is an odd beast that, like all omnibus films, is only as strong as its weakest link.

There is not a lot of risk-taking involved in the visual storytelling or in trying to find a cinematic equivalent of the novel’s style, making In Dubious Battle a rather classical period piece for the most part, though one with at least one very solid performance at its center.

Cotillard, looking like one of the most glamorous white-trash fantasy figures in the history of the movies, has a hypnotic quality that will make you follow her character whatever she says or does.

This is the second feature from Pakistani-Norwegian filmmaker Iram Haq, but unfortunately it lacks the nuance and insight of her impressively poignant yet controlled debut feature, I Am Yours.

Nicloux is unable to instill the material with any tension.

Recognizable human behavior is not this film’s forte -- which wouldn’t be a problem if something else would take its place but Punch never finds the right tone for the heterogeneous material, with sweetly melodramatic scenes alternating with high drama, some light action and farce.

It’s rather odd that Ellis, who co-wrote the screenplay with former Kubrick assistant Anthony Frewin, can’t come up with anything more action-packed or tension-filled in the first hour than a broken teacup. Valkyrie this is not.

The film tries but often struggles to properly fuse the personal and the political.

Though it contains some nice twists, the story is largely predictable and old-fashioned in ways both good (the characters’ unlikely come-what-may camaraderie) and bad (misogyny and machismo abound).