Deborah Young

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.

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.

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.

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.

A heavy-handed reimagining.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

The single location and emphasis on dialogue gives the film the feeling of filmed theater. Pacing can be slow and it is only at the end that an exciting use of music helps the film reach an artificial climax of sorts.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

A long, leisurely drama directed with self-assurance.

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

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