Deborah Young

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.

A tense documentary with multiple layers of meaning.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

An enjoyable absurdist comedy.

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

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.

An unsettling piece of filmmaking whose grimly vivid images are guaranteed to give impressionable viewers nightmares.

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

A lovely film that makes little emotional connection.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There is actually a lot of imagination at work in the film, though frustratingly it rarely comes together in an emotionally meaningful way.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

A dignified second film for Caetano.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

It’s beautiful to look at, but the story of a young man on the run who encounters death at every turn of the winding road doesn’t really make much sense even in metaphorical terms.

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

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.

Likeable if unexciting little tale.

An intellectually rigorous but stylistically staid peep at the 20-something author of Capital and The Communist Manifesto, Raoul Peck’s The Young Karl Marx is at once historically impeccable and a filmic disappointment.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Menacing atmosphere created by Dutch helmer Paula van der Oest ("Zus & Zo") does not make up for the weak script's multiple improbabilities, flat dialogue or the discomfort of watching children, the handicapped and even animals being abused onscreen.

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.

The finale is telegraphed far in advance, yet when it comes the drama is so down-played it doesn’t register in its full horror.

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.

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.

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 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.

Complexly plotted, elegantly shot and orchestrated, this is the kind of long-winded, intermittently involving festival package that will earn the director of Tokyo Sonata more critical appreciation but will struggle to find a theatrical audience. For a film that requires nearly five hours of viewing investment, it feels terribly stingy on the emotional payoff.

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.

Although all the main characters and plot points survive the transition intact, they don’t carry the same weight. Him and Her have an undeniable literary, collegiate feeling, like reading a long novel and getting to know the characters inside out. Them steps on the accelerator in a sort of Cliffs Notes version.

Where Guan excels is in straight dramatization.

The screenplay struggles to rise above the level of a sociological study into the realm of exciting cinema.

A limp-to-wilted film version of Duras' 16-year-long love affair with a young man who became her secretary and literary executor.

The taut pacing of the original is a distant memory here. On a positive note, Peter Kam’s fine, ever-present musical comment effectively pumps up the tension even when the screenplay fails, all the way to its final crescendo.

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.

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.

Majidi is surprisingly comfortable with the Indian setting and with his characters, for whom he exudes empathy. But the screenplay, written by the director with Mehran Kashani, has its ups and downs and longeurs.

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.

Only partially succeeds in interweaving questions of family loyalty with historical memory and the fate of Italian Jews in WW2.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

It doesn’t really add up to much, beyond a timely reminder that it would be better for everyone to stop uploading and downloading and just unplug and be human.

The confused script makes this a tough film for audiences to dig into.

Main body of the movie is weighed down by flat, expository dialogue and a lot of pedestrian filming. However, Zeffirelli's shooting of the "Carmen" sequences, which make up a sizable chunk of the film and are far and away the pic's most exhilarating sections, are graceful and fluid.

Intermittently amusing.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

Described by Werner Herzog as “a daydream that doesn’t follow the rules of cinema,” Salt and Fire may be rule-breaking, but the result is one of the director’s least appealing adventures.

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

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.

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

A heavy-handed reimagining.