David Fear

Starting with the French revolution and ending with Monsieur Bonaparte’s no-bang-all-whimper exit from this mortal coil, the director’s sweeping, swaggering, occasionally stumbling history lesson is nothing more than an attempt to conjure up the road-show movie magic of yesteryear.

What you won’t be bowled over by, however, is the storytelling, which makes Missing Link the weakest link in Laika’s chain of movies to date.

Circo zeroes in on the interpersonal strife within this collapsing clan - an angle that only occasionally lifts the film above confessional exotica.

The pity is that Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark will mostly be seen by jaded genre completists and nostalgic fortysomethings. Wrong demographic. You owe it to your kids to take them to this. It’s training-wheels horror done right.

When the movie keeps its focus on retribution and Rambo-esque ambushes, however, this slice of Ozploitation doles out grind-house pleasures by the dozens.

Only Dissolution's divine climax feels truly poetic. Having the stamina to not break down on the journey to that moment is half the battle.

What begins as gritty realism ends up as the usual made-for-cable melodramatics—an apple that’s always better left unbitten.

No one would claim that director Lance Daly delivers an Emerald Isle version of "The Spirit of the Beehive," though this scrappy film does have a knack for capturing the elation and confusion of late childhood in their ragged glory.

You don’t have to be a filmmaker or a festival veteran to appreciate Sophie Letourneur’s tale of three women cruising for dudes at Locarno’s annual cinematic shindig, but trust us: It helps immensely.

While Stephenson and Brewster’s big-picture attempt to tackle a sociopolitical issue from the most personal of perspectives lacks the state-of-the-nation impact of that landmark doc, it doesn’t mean you won’t feel the pleasure of these kids’ triumphs, the pain of their tragedies or the pressures of ambition, affecting parents as much as students.

Even those who aren’t well-versed in the-’hood-always-wins dramas can see what’s coming. So it’s to newcomer Sally El Hosaini’s credit that she embeds a tangible, lived-in sense of the region’s diaspora community and urban criminal underbelly (wagwan, near-indecipherable East End patois!) that’s leagues away from anthropological fetishizing.

New World dishes out enough of the genre’s oldest pleasures to make it worthwhile.

Both de Léan and Storoge give you peeks at the genuine anguish lurking underneath the characters' narcissistic bluffing and porno posturing, even if the script drowns their best moments in verbosity.

Robert Greene's documentary captures so many wonderfully delicate, private moments in Kati's life that it seems churlish to wish the film said more about what it's actually like to be a young woman today.

It's one thing to call a film about homophobia and human rights Any Day Now; it's another to actually have your character sing "I Shall Be Released" in full at the end. The intent is righteous. The dramatic overkill is deadly.

Focus, instead, on the perks that Nightfall does offer: You still get the criminally underrated Aldo Ray trading hardboiled barbs with Anne Bancroft (“I’m a painter.” “Soup cans or sunsets?”); Brian Keith and Rudy Bond’s giggly good-thug-bad-thug double act; and the joy of watching beefy guys in boxy suits dangle cigarettes off sweaty lips and talk tough.

For every camp element like Javier Bardem’s rainbow-vomit outfits or Diaz’s onanistic tryst with a car windshield, there are a dozen poetic-pulp moments that channel McCarthy’s pitiless view of the world to a tee.

Redford’s devotion to old-school liberalism and ’70s socially informed dramas has been a directorial-career constant, and at its best, The Company You Keep feels like a movie you’d have seen in 1975 — one informed by political righteousness and made for adults.

The first-person sections, however, couldn’t be more clumsy or grating, and every time Diamond’s tone-deaf narration starts repeating the obvious, you can feel an eye-opening history lesson turning into a quirky, orbs-glazing travelogue.

Delivers Moore’s usual grab bag of ironic kitsch, gotcha clips and infotainment-journalism.

Ambiguities trump answers, and possibly even logic. For those who aren't burdened by such things, the loopy, off-kilter pace and frontal-lobe frying provide their own unconventional pleasures. It's a cult film, in more ways than one.

Whatever cause you pick, the idea of representing or recreating sex as a narrative device now feels like a relic of the distant past. No one seems to have informed French director Jacques Audiard of this demise, however, and there are moments when you watch Paris, 13th District and wonder if he’s singlehandedly trying to resuscitate the concept of old-fashioned screen shtupping.

Ultimately, The End is a cult movie that, until it eventually finds its cult, will be more admired than loved. It isn’t the last word on the pending apocalypse. It simply has the fortitude to go out singing.

As a micro-to-macro tour of Germany's fraught relationship with its Jewish citizens, In Heaven Underground couldn't be more connective; as a straight doc, its aesthetic choices couldn't be more confusing.

A genuine labor of love and fictional self-loathing, Sullivan's animation style is undeniably compelling, whether he's channeling Grant Wood's paintings or Robert Crumb's monochromatic sketches. But the interweaving stories of commercialized religion, rancid Americana and alcoholic wretches start wearing thin around the movie's midpoint; by the end, the whole morose endeavor risks becoming downright threadbare.

Titillation and tentative stabs at gender studies do not a cogent cri de coeur make. It's simply a provocation that's all hopped up with nowhere to go.

Bakri has charisma to burn, but the complexity of Abu-Assad’s previous movies is traded in for weak genre thrills.

If you wanted to get the scoop on the when, where and how the Bishop Sycamore scandal happened, BS High is a good primer.

For better or worse, that detour into proverbial uncharted waters ends up hipchecking a by-the-book hagiography into the realm of compellingly cracked vérité.

The best thing you can say about the movie is that you couldn’t accuse it of being a sellout — nor would you think it was a Joe Swanberg movie.

Whenever the film focuses more on Jarecki's hand-wringing than deconstructing the war itself, you wish someone would have looked the filmmaker in the eye and just said no.

It’s hard to say if Faith works better as part of a whole instead of a triptych’s single panel until the trilogy is complete, but the unconverted may find this too much of a cross to bear.

An overall lack of drive drops the pacing from languorous to a slow, stalled crawl, but the journey itself isn’t the point here. For once, it’s the destination--forgiveness--that really counts.

Go big or go home, they say; World War Z picks the wrong choice for its slow fade-out, and, instead of leaving you in fear of being chomped upon as you exit the theater, makes you feel enraged that you’ve been more than a little cheated.

Even if you can forgive the crude JAP caricatures (et tu Minnie Driver?) and the blatantness of the film's attempts to make you sob, you're still left with lovely actors stuck in a lackluster cover version of the real thing.

Those unfamiliar with Verdi’s tragedy won’t understand why this production was significant, nor see much of the fruits of such hard work; those onstage may become La Traviata’s tragic characters, but it’s tough not to feel that we, the audience, leave only half-transformed.

The problem is that the film also refuses to move beyond a glacial pace, and its choice to go slow-and-low doesn’t scream art-house aesthetic so much as unintentionally sluggish. For such a small character study, that decision ends up being a doozy of a deal breaker.

Taking a page--or rather, several chapters--from the Eastern European art-house playbook, Hungarian filmmaker Kornél Mundruczó works this stock tale into a deliberately paced parable of desire and dread.

This antibullying advocacy group could not be more well-intentioned or needed, but suddenly, the sneaking suspicion that you've merely been watching an extended PSA for the grassroots organization starts to take hold.

You could get whiplash watching this bipolar drama jerk between extremes: For every extraordinary scene - such as an authentically awkward exchange between Bosworth and estranged dad Thomas Haden Church - there's a sequence or three that might be extended collegiate acting exercises.

The result is less an ode to late-'60s California dreamin' than an NYC-hip riff on SoCal somnambulism, one that occasionally Pops with Warhol's mondo minimalism yet never snaps nor crackles. "Lonesome Cowboys" this is not, despite the fact that Surf uses virtually the same cast.

The mixture of the fantastic and the sublime that’s constitutes the Ghibli house tone is very much what Casarosa & co. aiming for, though the many, many bits of business onscreen suggests a homecooked meal of Disney/Pixar leftovers.

It ain’t bad, though all that detritus detracts from a far more interesting history lesson on repression and rebellion that’s left on the periphery.

Like fellow countryman Park Chan-wook's vengeful epics, this man-on-the-run thriller knows how to deliver a rush; unlike those superior tales of lives on the edge, that's the only trick up its sleeve.

Kids will squeal with delight. Adults will smile indulgently at the mildness of it all.

Director Reinaldo Marcus Green (King Richard) does his duty by delivering eureka moments, a few greatest-hits sequences, some personal drama. The result is a perfectly functional look at a legend, one that will definitely make you want to put Exodus back into heavy playlist rotation. It’s still not enough.

You’ll learn that karaoke is an effective rehab tool; that their dad, Richard, the film’s real hero, molded his daughters into fierce competitors; and that Venus and Serena actually do love each other. Anyone looking for deeper insights than that or into what really makes this twosome tick will find themselves at a real disadvantage.

Hard to ding something for wanting to be a cult rom-com so badly, especially when it’s so well-acted.

Old-school intrigue, informants and assassins, life-or-death pursuits in crowded places, characters who are adults and do not wear capes or pilot robots: This is pretty much what any filmgoer over the age of 13 pines for in the dog days of summer, so this courtroom melodrama/surveillance thriller should be manna.

Every time the narrative's underworld schnooks and low-level lowlifes edge their way out of the periphery, a sense of snorting impatience takes over. This is Jacky's story, and when he's grabbing Bullhead by the horns, you don't want him to let go.

If you’re seeking anything chewier about the pitfalls of modern dating, or con artistry in the age of social-media enabling, or what women want — from careers to friends, life, love — look elsewhere, pilgrim. But when Shlesinger opens the passenger door to her star vehicle and turns it to into a full-blown buddy comedy, the movie goes from being merely good on paper to being great onscreen.

Consider the movie a testament to Rahim's screen presence. If nothing else, Free Men proves that the can't-take-your-eyes-off-him charisma the Franco-Algerian actor displayed in Jacques Audiard's "A Prophet" was no fluke.

It’s gratifying to see Eisenberg move past nerdy-cutie parts; his slim shoulders, it seems, are capable of handling more than Michael Cera’s leftovers.

Amigo's penchant for polemics keeps upsetting any semblance of balance; how can anyone hear the grace notes when the soapboxing is so deafening?

The creative workaround does drop you into the middle of the shady-as-hell action in a way that, say, recordings playing over a close-up of a grainy photo does not. But it also starts to become more than a little distracting, and you find yourself tuning into the performances instead of the particulars of the case.

The first-person passion is genuine. The form its being presented in feels slightly secondhand.

Caught Stealing is a decent wild ride through the past, filled with enough memory-bank fodder and hairpin turns to keep anyone engaged.

An attempt to detail the plight of North Koreans in their new homeland, The Journals of Musan doesn't soft-pedal the hardship; Park, however, apparently felt obligated to stack the deck against the film's passive protagonist to a ridiculous degree.

The film's dogged repetitions regarding Nannerl's real-life raw deal dilute the reparative nature of the story after a while, and not even the movie's grainy, retro–art-cinema look can keep viewers from gradually tuning out.

Creepy doesn't begin to describe these masterworks of control freakery, nor does beautiful - they look as if they're glowing from the inside out, even as Crewdson's scenes of furtive common people make viewers feel like voyeurs.

It Lives Inside knows you can use the cover of monsters and things that go bump in your psyche to examine the real-life horrors. But when the message starts to eclipse the medium, it’s time to get out.

Unlike most revisits of previous box-office hits, it doesn’t rely on nostalgia for the original. It does, however, display a serious soft spot for a bygone era of moviegoing, when two photogenic stars, a simple high-concept premise and the promise of digitally rendered chaos was enough to put millions of asses in seats.

Despite its creator’s puckish charm, the movie occasionally sputters and detours down dead ends. Still, the promise on display is impressive; consider the film a calling card from someone to keep a very close eye on.

Yes, The Piano Lesson hits a few bum notes. Its melody nonetheless remains intact.

The First Purge isn’t the beginning of the end of the franchise, just the start of where the narrative’s “civility” starts to erode and where that leads.

Anyone curious about the man behind the lens may find this doc, like its subject, frustratingly opaque and out of reach. Those interested in witnessing a true NYC eccentric document everyday-people city life one outfit at a time, however, will feel like this has been tailor-made.

The movie misses the Hughes sensitive-raunch sweet spot, though a game supporting cast hits bull's-eyes on lesser targets.

If the overall effect of Nebraska’s father-son bonding and attention-must-be-paid pathos doesn’t quite have the zing of the filmmaker’s best work, he’s certainly got an ace in the hole.

The result is neither blind idolatry nor a definitive portrait; just a major missed opportunity content to loiter in the middle of the road.

CODA knows how to work that conventional-to-a-fault indie feeling like a champ. You may exit smiling. Just don’t be surprised if you also experience the sensation of having just been Sundanced to death.

You know the money-over-morality argument will eventually tilt toward righteousness, yet the film's turn toward charcoal-sketch notions of good and evil only fuels a simplistic view of historical tragedy in the worst sort of way.

The plentiful pop-doc touches ensure that this wake-up call won't put you to sleep, even if the ratio of spoonfuls of sugar to medicine occasionally seems skewed.

Here's the thing: We enjoy a good mindf--- lark as much as the next filmgoer, but such fluid tomfoolery eventually has to add up to something, and The Double Hour ultimately doesn't.

It's only during the last third that the film finds its footing, as the PTSD fallout and collective sense of disillusionment suggest a bigger picture regarding why we fight, etc. Otherwise, this decent, if decidedly personal, look at small-town soldiers works better as an erratic scrapbook than a representative statement.

It’s a blockbuster that, with a few whirring movements and a half dozen clicks and beeps, transforms itself into something meant to be watched by actual thinking, feeling human beings. For once, there really is more than meets the eye.

We like our secondhand vengeance as sleazy and bloody as the next grindhouse fiend, but even an intentional throwback shouldn’t feel content to coast on so much déjà vu.

The film, meanwhile, gives Wahlberg and Ferrell beautiful opportunities to turn their anger-mismanagement-meets-milquetoast act into an absurdist version of Abbott and Costello.

Every time things start to get goopy, we get silent-comedy slapstick like Pooh destroying the Robins’ household.

It's obvious from Easy Money why Espinosa would be going places. So long as he takes Kinnaman with him, the gentleman can have our hard-earned cash.

The filmmaker provides intellectual rigor to spare, yet precious little narrative focus (you virtually wander into plot strands) and there's a stiffness to the proceedings that neither Wilson's charisma nor Ulliel and Thierry's screen-ready beauty can remedy.

Though Reeder's attempts to unnerve sometimes veer close to enfant terrible posturing, The Oregonian knows how to work its unpleasantness to primo psychotronic effect.

The Italian-born Covi and her Viennese partner keep things breezy, letting real-life theater actor Hochmair go about his backstage business and watching Saabel chat up various locals in dive bars (you can tell the filmmakers cut their teeth making docs).

Suffering through flatlining romantic and dramatic interludes isn't any less painful now than it was in '84, but when this musical occasionally kicks off its Sunday shoes, the dynamic memory-lane trip actually approaches - Kevin help us! - something resembling genuine fun.

Like the "Scream" series, Hot Tub Time Machine is a cake-and-eat-it-too experience; you get both a vintage Brat Pack comedy, albeit one regrettably drenched in post-Hangover raunch, and an ongoing metacommentary at the same time.

The 24th has its share of unevenness. It also has the blessing, and the curse, of necessity. It’s a story that has to be retold.

What Lilti’s cinematic mural does is remind us that the political is always personal—and in Israel’s case, vise versa.

The tongue is in cheek and the tone is ironic and bleak, at least until the should-we-stay-or-should-we-go climax punctures the mood. Still, welcome back, Danis.

Imagine a male Lifetime movie fueled by Middle Eastern tensions, and you’d have Ziad Doueiri’s torn-from-Tel-Aviv’s-headlines melodrama, one which drops its handsome husband of a hero into a domestic nightmare.

This film isn’t for everyone’s tastes. Then again, neither was Sorry to Bother You‘s mix of critical commentary and absurdist comedy; and, like that film, I Love Boosters takes a wilder, big-picture swerve in its third act. Still, you have to admire the fact that Riley is weaponizing his humor and using it to brusquely jostle your brain by any means necessary.

Brown has such a natural wit and compelling screen presence, such an ability to shift from curious youngster to screwball comic to charismatic action hero on a dime, that it’s hard not to view Enola Holmes as a coming-out party of sorts.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline is a thriller, but it’s not just a thriller. It’s also aiming to be a Gen Z radicalization manifesto in the same spirit as the book, if not with the same rigor.

For some, the chance to hear the divine sound of that voice and see that smiling mug once again will be worth it. For others, it will simply feel like song half sung.

While her focus has drifted away from the upper middle class, Jaoui’s sensibility remains rather middlebrow; there’s the distinct feeling that she’s preaching solely, albeit with impressive subtlety, to the same bourgie choir as before.

The way that Qualley brings her star presence and her chops to Honey O’Donoghue, however, feels unique. You’re used to seeing people in neo-noirs do their variations on Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall’s line readings; no one has managed to fuse those icons’ respective personae into one role and make it feel completely their own. It’s truly a great sync-up of performer and part.

As a tone poem, Tocha's documentary can be mesmerizing. As a memento mori, It's the Earth feels a little lost in space.

Within the first ten minutes, the movie proves the point that exploitation in Africa is rampant, but never goes any deeper than that; it's an undercover endeavor that never feels as if much is actually being uncovered.

Look at it through the lens of a dual star vehicle that isn’t afraid to sacrifice coherence in the name of cheap thrills, and this bird only slightly sings off-key.

The closer we get to a climax (and the more that absurd reversals keep getting piled on), the less effective Dupontel’s brutish charisma is in keeping things interesting and afloat. You pray the next he-man outing makes better use of his presence.