Boyd van Hoeij

This is the kind of indie doodle of a movie in which several potentially interesting ideas co-exist but never quite come together and where supporters will call the narrative "freewheeling" while naysayers will insist on "rambling."

The main problem is that the directors often struggle to assign meaning to their images that helps advance either the narrative or illuminate the emotional state of their main character.

There’s a sense that the goings-on are more quirky than comical.

Chastain is utterly convincing in another tough-as-nails role. If audiences stick with the movie, it's largely thanks to her movie-star charisma, which almost compensates for the increasingly ridiculous plot. Malkovich and Farrell seem to understand they are A-list talent in B-movie roles, and relish the opportunity.

Despite a slightly grating tendency to resist any kind of subtlety, the honest and convincingly played central romance does finally linger.

There’s certainly an overall sense of a formerly rich family’s fortunes dwindling, both economically and emotionally, but the three sections don’t add up to something more than the sum of their parts.

Part of the problem of Jacqueline (Argentine) is that it wants to be a film of many layers but Britto doesn’t have the know-how to keep each layer legible separately, with the final result feeling messy and impenetrable rather than admirably complex and, well, layered

Dante again smoothly combines moments of romantic and screwball comedy, schlocky genre elements and an overarching retro feel for this cute and pretty efficient zom com.

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.

The main problem of Mr. Morgan’s Last Love is a structural one, as it is really two films in one.

Ambitiously mounted but wildly uneven.

Tonally surprisingly coherent, Franco’s apostles seem to have directed, as Pauline Kael would’ve said, on their knees.

The film contains numerous stylistic flourishes... But none of these elements advance the story, prompt a deeper emotional response or suggest something new about the characters, reducing them to meaningless window-dressing for what little story their is.

With jokes that fall flat so often, the film’s cardiograph flatlines before the first five minutes are over.

The comedy here feels secondhand and becomes grating when no cliche is left unused, whether about nationality, race, gays or the female gender.

While the precociously talented Sidney, played by Logan Lerman, is not an uninteresting character, the artificially constructed nature of the narrative gives the supposedly shocking revelations way too much importance, essentially subjugating any sense of character development and flaws to its mystery-type structure.

It is not just a tough sit; it is nearly impossible to get through.

Beautifully played and impeccably lit and composed, this high-quality family drama takes its time to introduce its flawed but human protagonists and then steadily builds toward a payoff that’s at once cathartic and artfully restrained.

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.

There is a clear sense here that Coixet is completely out of her depth in this genre exercise, which is all excessive surfaces and no tension, however hard the music and sound effects try to tell audiences otherwise.

The screenplay, written by French arthouse writer-director Antoine Barraud (Les gouffres) with an assist from U.S. scribe Edwards, too often seems to be under the mistaken impression that making a movie for kids means everything needs to be overly spelled out, especially by using as many short-hand clichés as possible.

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.

Caissy and his editor, Mathieu Bouchard-Malo, manage to construct something that acquires a cumulative force that speaks compellingly and much more generally about the intersection of youth, education and personal morality than the specific cases of these often nameless, zit-sprinkled pieces of work.

A pretty straightforward coming-of-age story that’s well-observed and manages to be intimate and explicit without becoming exploitative.

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.

Without a strong point of view, it becomes hard to care about either the people or the issues with which they are grappling.

The actors impressively give it their all.

German Concentration Camps Factual Survey is a time capsule as much as a direct historical document, showing not only what the Allied Forces found when they first arrived at the Nazi concentration camps but also how the British government of the time thought it was appropriate to communicate about the Nazi atrocities.