Boyd van Hoeij

If this ambitious film never quite coheres into a single whole, something that an artificial division into several chapters only helps to underline, it does provide a lot to chew on along the way.

The few instances of humor offer a welcome reprieve as the film's mood shifts from summery and sultry to increasingly dark and moody.

[An] intimate and dexterous debut feature.

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

Western is a naturalistic, almost documentary-like feature that slowly builds.

Often shown in dark, flat and agitated closeups, Goic and Duran are both compelling performers.

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

Campillo thankfully refrains from offering on-the-nose explications for behavior and decisions, instead letting audiences infer psychology and motivation from on-screen behavior, with the entirely naturalistic performances of Raboudin and Emelyanov beautifully tuned in to each other and the material.

The third feature of Romanian auteur Corneliu Porumboiu that again takes a clichéd-seeming premise and carefully proceeds to turn it on its head through logic, absurd humor and the consumption of vast quantities of cigarettes.

A step up in terms of complexity, with more subplots and a larger cast of protagonists to juggle and less instantly sympathetic characters or an evident cause to rally behind, this drama again offers many quiet, often character-driven rewards but struggles to become larger than the sum of its parts.

Though the story is about a woman looking for new bearings in her life, basically against her wishes, the overall tone is never outright depressing. The family meals verge on the burlesque, while other moments are more charmingly melancholy. This is due to not only the beautifully modulated performances, with Bosse, Hivon and Brochu all perfectly cast in their roles, but also to some nifty technical details.

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.

The sorrowful situations are frequently laced with chuckles,

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

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.

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.

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.

Despite its structural problems and mostly foreseeable storyline, the small, very human moments such as these ensure that Mario feels authentic and is, finally, moving.

Lolo has a solid laughs-per-minute rate and enough twists to overcome the occasional screenplay hiccup.

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

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.