Deborah Young

It’s a smart film with engaging moments. But working overtime to build an involving multi-layered drama with a flurry of hand-held camera movements and dizzying flashbacks, it ultimately turns repetitive and annoying.

Though it takes some time to sort out the large cast, the leads, all fine actors, eventually come into focus. As the good and bad samurai, Yakusho and Ichimura have the gravitas to take their roles seriously and perform a decisive one-on-one sword fight straight.

For those who like head-on, immersive emotional experiences at the movies, The Sky Is Pink may be a direct hit.

One couldn’t wish for a more painstakingly researched or beautifully rendered account of the infamous Dreyfus affair than Roman Polanski’s An Officer and a Spy (J’Accuse).... Yet the result is oddly lacking in heart and soul, almost as though a mask of military discipline held it in check.

The story has a tendency to scatter at times, and it banks a lot on the humanity of the three main actors who have some heart-wrenching moments riding out the joys and sorrows of modern life, complicated by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

It’s a far cry from dreary or depressing, but it also doesn’t offer any easy way to enter its emotional territory. Viewers who have gone through the experience of taking care of an ailing parent or relative may identify more fully with the slow-moving story.

While the stories the film tells are lively and never uninteresting, they fail to ignite an emotional explosion. The reach is also too broad for a film.

A film whose very surreal, disturbing first hour dissolves in disappointing B-movie nonsense at the end. Still it’s hard to remember a film about S&M as funny as this one, or one as beautifully and weirdly imagined.

Though it begs for a little lightening up, a moment of irony, a wink at the audience, this dead-serious fairy tale about a mysterious young woman (and a phantom automaton straight out of Hugo) is worth watching for Geoffrey Rush’s sensitive, never pandering performance.

The attention given to constructing each shot makes for a hypnotic visual experience, while lack of a progressive narrative telescopes film's running time into infinity.

It feels like every script-reader in the Italian-Swiss-German-Albanian-Kosovo coproduction cut out a line of dialogue in each scene, leaving behind an irritating silence and an enigmatic puzzle for the audience to second-guess.

The overwritten script has so many subplots it’s hard to keep the stories straight, especially when the ending throws a truly unexpected twist. But little matter; the exceptional tech work gives the film plenty of energy and excitement.

Only the bravura of the cast, first and foremost Park and Lee (both veterans of Unbowed), generates sufficient interest to see the film through to its surprising conclusion, recounted in a respectful coda many years later.

The film feels empty and intellectualized at the core, where it should feel powerfully emotional.

Despite a warmly interacting cast that includes Jennifer Ehle as Emily’s sister and Keith Carradine as her lion-maned, lionized father, and a valiant effort on the part of Nixon and Davies to externalize the poet’s inner demons in emotional, high-tension scenes, the film can’t escape an underlying static quality that extinguishes the flame before it can get burning.

A low-structure, high-involvement Brazilian free-for-all destined to take its place among hellish prison films, Carandiru plants a fist in the viewer's stomach.

In the end, there is a method in all this madness, suggested by Dafoe’s calm face and reassuring voice as Clint confronts his most emotionally charged memories with courage and curiosity.

Director Vincent Sandoval (Senorita) seems most interested in is using the convent as a metaphor for Filipino society in the Seventies, which buried its head in the sand while president Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law and police tortured and murdered opposition protestors.

Where Guan excels is in straight dramatization.

All of these ingredients should come together in a mouth-watering finale, but such is not the case; in fact, the film becomes more obvious and less psychological as it goes on.

Holding the film together are simple but strong B&W visuals of offbeat types sitting around a table smoking and drinking java while they talk.

Film's pared-down look has a stylish simplicity.

Characters come and go quickly, leaving a feeling that there is too much compression of the multi-episode story.

Despite its careful control of tone and a raging central performance by Ciaran Hinds, which is actually sufficient reason to see the film, this story of a man who plunges into childhood memories in the aftermath of his wife’s death remains admirable but wingless.

There is a darkness in all these “average” characters, underlined by low-key acting and the film’s sinisterly calm, measured pace.

Viewers of this Venice competition title are likely to find the ideological confusion contagious and the romance pretty trite. But the camerawork and music choices are lively and may enable a younger gen to relate and discuss.

It's the kind of cartoonish film where, no matter what the odds and how many bullets are flying at our heroes, they never get seriously injured.

Pleasantly watchable.

Like an Iraq-war mirror image of "Life Is Beautiful," actor-director Roberto Benigni's The Tiger and the Snow re-runs the successful structure and comic persona of the 1998 Oscar-winning film in a trippy fantasia about a poet who follows his love to hell and, in this happier ending, back.

Has the comically grotesque appeal of a Fellini film and could reach out to auds in specialized release. It lacks the originality and invention to go much beyond that.

If the film works at all it is thanks to the exceptional craftsmanship of its camerawork, editing, and acting, under the direction of Asghar Farhadi.

All this is portrayed in such elementary terms it could be the libretto of a 19th century operetta, or maybe a children’s film, were it not so disturbing.

Graf has spent most of his long career as a director of TV series and movies, and much of the staging lacks great originality. But this is made up for, in part, by the striking way the story of Jakob and his friends is told mixing the narrative drama with now old-fashioned “modernist” tech devices borrowed from the past.

A lovely film that makes little emotional connection.

The characters are irritating, the look is cheap and the plot is reheated from other movies, but it has to be admitted that Dachra delivers its unsavory thrills.

Mostly one wishes for a more concise edit that would pull this impressive avalanche of memories and faded photos together a lot sooner.

If it wasn’t for the charming top-liners who can make literary dialogue sound sexy in their sleep, the war in Fred Schepisi’s Words and Pictures would have to be called off after the opening skirmish.

The overall feeling is a lot less special than their ground-breaking work that flew with birds and swam with deep-sea creatures.

Intense and engaging performances from Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy bring the well-written screenplay to life.

A long, leisurely drama directed with self-assurance.

Though the message comes across loud and clear, the four tales suffer from being narratively uneven, making the film’s two-and-a-half-hour running time seem long indeed.

Argento fans lusting for a classy slasher movie of the "Suspiria"/"Opera" variety are headed for a disappointing rendezvous with an old-fashioned police thriller, upgraded by serious actors in the main roles.

The sarcasm of superstar director Feng Xiaogang reduces Chinese bureaucracy, the legal system and government inefficiency to ashes in I Am Not Madame Bovary, but risks doing the same for audiences in a caustic, overlong satire whose coy visual effects overpower the story and characters.

Audiences are likely to be split into love/hate camps over this disturbing film, which is subtle to a fault and features entire third-act scenes whose meaning is not exactly clear.

Though weak in the drama department, the story of a brother and sister who love each other but have different political ideas and personal agendas effectively captures the tension of the time.

The story-telling is a little too pat to deliver the surprise moments that reveal character or sweep audiences up emotionally. The film remains a creepy story with a lot of morbid fascination, set off by the captivating young Florencia Bado in her first screen role.

It’s not very clear if the director-actor-writer-producer has anything vitally important to add to his filmography in this narratively complex, generally downbeat work. What comes through most strongly is a striking sense of loss and disappointment in the character he plays, an aging man whose despair seems very personal and tinges the whole film (which is theoretically a Morettian comedy) with sadness and bitter farewells.

Writer and director Portman's film seems conflicted over whether it is about young Amos or his mother, whom she portrays as a beautiful, cultured woman with a head full of romantic fantasies.

The gritty environment and the non-pro cast are convincingly directed by Marlin, a native of Marseille, particularly in the pic's stronger second half.

While its frank approach is refreshing, there is a sense of too much.

More than a thriller, this adaptation of Jose Saramago’s novel The Double is an absurdist-existential mood piece – and a very dark mood it is.

Bringing good old-fashioned Mediterranean emotion to a screenplay that feels oh so familiar, this modern-day weepie unapologetically plays to the crowd rather than the critics.

The winking, rather perverse sexual chemistry between the two charismatic lead actresses, who play sisters (though not twins), is one of the film’s main attractions. But Trapero’s ambitious attempt to strike a unique tone somewhere between serious drama and humorous daytime TV falls awkwardly flat.

It is saved by its underlying theme of forgiveness and reconciliation between long-estranged family members, for whom the cruel memory of the Japanese invasion and occupation of Singapore during World War 2 is still alive.

Spread over hours of poetic ramblings, the message loses most of its urgency.

Silly, childish fun and as relaxing to watch as good American TV fiction -- and with a very similar world view.

The film has humanity to burn, but its loose structure makes it hard to connect with the multiple characters.

All of these characters are worth knowing and the acting is excellent all around, but somewhere along the line the narrative arc vanishes and tedium sets in.

Night in Paradise contains a lot of good plotting, several amusing characters and a decent array of exciting action scenes and bloodshed. But it is indulgently long.

It’s a meaty role for stage and film actress Mandat, whose very real pain at the thought of animals’ suffering commands sympathy, though eventually a little tedium. A tighter edit could avoid a lot of surplus emotions and possibly clarify a number of obscure plot points.

Treads a delicate line between documentary and fiction to reconstruct the kidnapping and murder of director Albertina Carri's parents during the military dictatorship.

An enjoyable absurdist comedy.

It’s all about metaphor and mood, while the storytelling is so lightweight it might not exist. Without it, this drunken boat sailing on poetry can't hold interest for its entire two hour running time.

This update brings nothing particularly new to the table of the writer-director’s work.

All the actors know how to turn on the charm and director Johnnie To hits the laugh buttons, but the main aim seems to be playing on women’s fantasies about three very hot guys who are dying to drop everything and fall in love.

It has its harrowing moments, but the psychological thriller Jasmine is an impenetrable mystery for most of its running time, and deliberately so.

Like characters out of some Carnival hell, a macho butcher and his born-again wife, a forlorn barmaid, a sinister sadist and the gay manager of a flophouse called the Hotel Texas run in and out of each other's lives in a film as sloppy, sluttish, scruffy and vital as they are.

The awkwardly titled Every Thing Will Be Fine seems more like a showcase for expressive camerawork pushing the limits of cinematography than anything else. Actors the caliber of James Franco and Charlotte Gainsbourg get the short end of the stick in this angst-ridden drama.

The choice to have Valentin narrate the tale and make philosophical observations beyond his years becomes irritating at times; ditto the cartoon humor.

The filmmakers take a heroic, action-packed, high-tech approach that empties out some of the originality of this unique female heroine.

It's a messy, childish scrawl of a film, but it is high on energy.

It's a wonderful idea with good crowd-pleasing potential and, had the story-telling been more credible, this could have been a major coup for all concerned.

A bizarre combo of upscale French erotica studded with good-humored kinky sex scenes.

A road movie short on comedy and drama should at least offer a keen level of observation, but here insight is scarce and emotional resonance is faint.

Like flipping through the pages of a pulpy best-seller, watching Loving Pablo has its moments of guilty pleasure but leaves an empty feeling when you reach the end.

The message tends to melt into a paint-by-numbers screenplay that pushes too many genre buttons to be thoroughly exciting.

A little bit like finding an eyewitness to history and then describing everything he feels but not much about the event itself, it leaves the viewer with a sense that something very important has been left out.

Film has major assets in Walter Carvalho's stunning landscapes and livewire young lead Hermila Guedes, but overall, it's too uninvolving.

Has a terrible fascination that glues viewers to the screen. At the same time, audience patience is tested.

Director Naomi Kawase’s adaptation of Durian Sukegawa’s novel An aims so low that it makes good on its modest ambitions.

One feels the lack of an underlying original idea that makes the director’s work so quirky and identifiable, and that also goes for the missing element of ironic-iconic humor that has been slowly disappearing from his films.

Precious little is revealed and one is left with the feeling that the material needed a different kind of treatment to illuminate its protagonists.

Pic's rediscovery in the capitalist U.S., and its reappraisal as a masterpiece of visual pyrotechnics, gives Brazilian documaker Vicente Ferraz's tale an upbeat final twist -- after some mid-film doldrums.

The idea is original enough to pique curiosity, and the small cast, led by Alba Rohrwacher and the up-and-coming Adam Driver of HBO’s Girls fame, digs gamely into the material, but something is missing.

Though it’s a rare Italian film told from a female p.o.v., “Melissa P.” is pseudo-feminist at best.

Not a cheerful watch: It's a shocking portrayal of rampant racism.

As lovely to look at, relaxing and soporific as the perfect summer day sung by David Bowie at the beginning of the film, Wim Wenders’ The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez scatters some nice ideas amid non-stop French dialogue that only speed readers of subtitles will be able to follow fully.

Highly engaging performances by Dev Patel in the lead role and Jeremy Irons as his curmudgeonly mentor gradually warm up the Cambridge story, but the Indian part feels perfunctory and unconvincing.

In the end, there is just about enough narrative to hold interest, while the lyrical camerawork, constantly in motion, blurred images and all, offers a single emotion that is impossible to stretch over a feature-length film.

Director Andrew Levitas and his co-screenwriters dramatize a riveting story using a mass of groan-worthy genre clichés that ill-serve the truth they are trying to recreate.

Leads Javier Bardem and Elle Fanning are commanding actors who give it all they’ve got to make their characters realistic, but while the film can be intriguing, it is never truly moving.

The story itself avoids the complicated structure of Matteo Garrone’s arty Gomorra, suggesting audiences will have an easier time digesting the tragedy of three brothers. But though it doesn't have Gomorra's comprehension problems, it also lacks that film's iconic cinematic imagery and seems ultimately far less memorable.

Though Turturro turned this small part into a memorable character for the Coens, Quintana is not so reliably funny here, especially headlining a whole film of very intermittent charm.

If telenovelas were convincingly real, they would no doubt look like the tumultuous world of domestic strife and libido deftly limned in Alice's House. Documaker Chico Teixeira gives a light, natural feel to his small but fetching first feature.

Though it’s a series that has seen its day, this swan song should attract genre die-hards with its elegant visuals and some humorously imaginative murders which are the director’s trademark.

The conflict is pretty obvious and the film’s naturalistic shooting style can’t take it to another symbolic level, so as drama, what you see is what you get.

Izzo, who co-starred with Roth-the-actor in Aftershock, is a fine genre actress, standing out from a cast of blonde women with her naturalistic performance and signs of courage and initiative.

A heavy-handed reimagining.