Boyd van Hoeij

Staying Vertical slowly morphs into something closer to a dark — and darkly funny — myth or fairytale, though this transformation isn’t entirely smooth.

The use of both dialogue and film language is sophisticated; sometimes Ismael’s Ghosts borders on overripe melodrama, while at other times it relies on genre tropes but then gives them an unexpected twist. [Cannes Version]

Rahim has a great face but isn’t given enough opportunity to make it clear to audiences what his character is going through beyond the most basic emotions.

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

This is an intriguing if austere art house item that should please lovers of slow cinema with a more mystical edge.

Though individual scenes feel authentic, the overall structure’s rather loose and there’s not a single narrative throughline. This has several advantages... But it also somewhat diffuses the film’s focus.

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

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 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 the gorgeous widescreen landscapes have a pencil-and-aquarelle quality, the characters themselves are literally rougher-edged, a clever reminder of the hand-drawn, sketchlike quality of traditional animation.

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

Though the final product isn’t quite a home run, it is nonetheless a very intriguing work that again suggests Ben Hania is a talent to watch.

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.

The Eyes of My Mother is both strange and strangely enthralling.

Sagnier and especially Baye try to locate the heart in their cartoonish maternal characters, and newcomer Lasseron is at least a warm and spunky presence in a role that's severely underwritten, though all of them are frequently upstaged by all the bells and whistles newcomer Neel feels he needs to keep throwing at the screen in order to mask the fact there's not much of story in the first place.

What we're looking at is, in essence, an artwork that looks at other art — a concept film about a conceptual art project. It suggests that a one-minute part can be the whole for one viewer or that, conversely, the whole is made up of an infinite amount of smaller parts that can each tell only a small part of the story.

Truth is indeed sometimes stranger than fiction but Ripstein struggles here to turn his odd collection of two-dimensional characters into real people. What does impress is the gorgeously crisp black-and-white cinematography, which deserves to be seen on the big screen.

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.

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.

Another effective, great-looking and well-acted Scandinavian crime film based on a bestselling novel.

There’s an element of light comedy — rather than the more familiar irony — that feels fresh and invigorating, even if Garrel doesn’t quite stick the landing.

This is a picaresque road movie about two mismatched characters, with rookie director A.B. Shawky offering a motley and not entirely smooth cocktail of drama and melodrama, a dash of social critique and insight, some chuckles and a few tugs at the heartstrings, mainly by virtue of its near-virtuoso score.

There’s a decidedly campy side to the proceedings that Koutras effectively juxtaposes with the hard-edged realities of contemporary Greece, a beautiful but hostile nation wrecked by the ongoing economic crisis and a place in which xenophobia, racism and homophobia seem to fester freely.

The film deftly explores the story's complex moral issues from several sides.

In terms of its overall look, Cinderella the Cat blends blocky, videogame-like 3D/CGI animation and voluptuous, watercolor-like 2D animation. It shouldn't work, yet it does create a coherent universe.

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.

Though blessed with a spectacular true story and character to work from, director and co-screenwriter Lars Kraume...fails to breathe much life into the stuffy, overly complex enumeration of the historical facts.

So full of explanatory flashbacks and animated sequences visualizing the characters’ invented yarns that their real dramas are indeed almost obscured.

In terms of its form, the film is rather classically assembled, combining a voice-over narration with archive material (some of it never previously seen) and spectacularly filmed and staged shots of the now 83-year-old Lorius as he witnesses the havoc caused by the climate change he saw coming some 30 years ago in various locales around the world.

Quite powerful despite relying on familiar storytelling tropes.

This is a deliciously entertaining and perceptive take on Cardin’s life and how he shaped both the silhouette of fashion and branding in the fashion world and beyond.

Greenaway’s habitual approach is perfect for this material, constantly externalizing the director’s ideas about Eisenstein’s life and work and the way the two are connected in a way that speaks directly -- often quite literally -- to the audience.

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

Eccentric and occasionally hilarious, this is yet another uniquely Bozonian creation, which this time explores the transmission of ideas between teachers and students and the tricky notion that our good side might not necessarily be our best side after all.

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

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.

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 it is convincingly played and sensually shot, the film has about as much narrative as the characters have parts of their bodies covered on the beach.

Cartoon violence and action, gore and humor, all rolled into one schlocky but enjoyable package.

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.

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.

Clearly Diaz wanted to make a sotto-voce exploration of a difficult and heavy topic — instead of a histrionic melodrama — but in trying to rein in the emotions, he seems to have practically scrubbed them out completely. The screenplay, also by Diaz, is so predictable that most of the characters simply seem to be going through the motions, with audiences remaining at an arm’s length even during the supposedly cathartic final moments.

The narrative’s second layer, which is buried underneath the first, suggests why the characters do what they do, even if they don’t necessarily address it explicitly.

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.

The film’s combination of psychological drama -- cue the childhood trauma -- with blood-splattered limb-cutting, talking heads in the fridge and talking pets on the couch is a risky one that finally works because Perry and Satrapi find the right tonal mixture for the material.

Tellingly, all of the film’s emotional highlights come from scenes involving the animal rather than the human protagonists and there are only very few scenes in which the two interact in a manner that feels entirely synergetic.

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.

Les Coquillettes never comes off as an elaborate in-joke; instead it feels like a sincere attempt to convey what the very particular rush of a film festival, rarely seen onscreen, can feel like from inside the bubble.

Intended as a 90-minute nail-biter, the movie starts off strong but loses steam about halfway through and never quite recovers.

The frequent voice-overs, in which the boys read what they wrote (heard over shots of them writing), add distance rather than insight because it is not the action of writing that's revealing but the events and thought processes that led them to write what they did.

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

The screenplay and the actors ooze charm as well as intelligence early on but the second half is more like a sleek thriller, something that's efficient but less jocular and surprising.

Crucially, though all the characters get a little eccentric at times and some of their antics seem to have been imported from boulevard comedies rather than inspired by real life, in the overall scheme of things, the ensemble remains grounded in a recognizable reality.

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.

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.

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.

Two minor problems in the closing reels hold the film back from instant-classic status.

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.

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

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.

Absent any real sense of who these three women are as individuals, most of their behavior is reduced to what feels like tics that are meant to illuminate character in a rather crude way.

Pinho’s interest in neo-colonial issues is tackled with a lucid gaze and appropriate room for local perspectives.

The story [lacks] a clear narrative or emotional throughline to connect all of the film’s setpieces.

There’s no doubt Mirica can film the hell out of a location or a character’s face, but as for telling a fully gripping and involving story? The jury’s still out on that one.

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.

Sharp performances and direction help make up for a spotty screenplay.

Based on a true story that's perhaps less famous than some others but just as intriguing, this serious-minded — no Helen Keller jokes, please — period film is nonetheless quite entertaining and, finally, moving.

The film frequently privileges art direction over emotion, and a constant sense of wonder based on visuals alone proves impossible to sustain over the lengthy 130-minute runtime.

What keeps the material from feeling too scattershot is the vitality of Cassel’s performance, which is full of life even when he’s not always in the best of health. He’s a much-needed charismatic center that almost manages to keep the entire enterprise together.

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