Deborah Young

Offering intimate self-exposure, Moretti solders his bond with fortysomethings who have lived through years of political disenchantment.

This is clearly not a tell-all autobiography, but the story of a wildly successful career as seen through the protagonist's own eyes.

A wily mix of genres and spoof-edged amusements keep it playful and intermittently thrilling, even though this South Korean actioner sometimes feels like it’s losing its grip on a very good setup.

This film of delicate emotional nuance recounts an enchanting but sad love story.

Takes the viewer deep into the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the powerful immediacy of raw images, some of them very hard to look at.

Clearly Aïnouz wanted to leave his mark on this alien genre, but Tudor-watchers may part ways with several characterizations, especially that of Katherine herself, updated as a political reformist and arch-feminist by a serious-looking Alicia Vikander.

If the plotting was only more coherent and audience-friendly and the story-telling more disciplined, the film's extraordinarily complex atmosphere would be irresistible.

Audiences hooked on Persian mainstream will devour this irreverent romantic comedy, spiced with saucy dialogue that spoofs traditional gender roles through gritted teeth.

At 74, Chabrol is in full possession of his talent for elegant, understated filmmaking, though he's far from his disturbing films of the '50s and '60s.

Pike creates an admirable if flawed Marie whose graceful womanhood battles with her fears of being exploited or bypassed for her gender.

Many rough edges are smoothed by the strong acting and well-done tech work.

Without sensationalism, Wuhan Wuhan makes its quiet mark through its natural approach to a culture where people appear not to rebel against the strict government lockdown.

Abu-Assad and his cinematographer Ehab Assal have every shot under control and rarely need to go overboard to convey a strong emotion.

The portrait that emerges is intimate — perhaps too intimate for film lovers who might have preferred to hear more about the star’s working methods, and fewer details about her husbands and kids.

Closed Curtain is a moody, intellectually complex film that requires good will and brainwork on the part of the viewer to penetrate and enjoy.

A satisfying shot at bringing a classic of the sci-fi/horror genre to modern audiences. ... Hitting the main plot points with well-designed SFX and some impressive night photography, Stanley's film manages to be frightening indeed, even with star Nicolas Cage’s semi-farcical leavening adding some nutty laughs.

It is a rare director who dares to embrace the slow, meditative rhythms of a classic novel without feeling the need to modernize or accelerate it, but Davies uses the measured pace to unfold his poetic vision of the Scottish peasantry and their attachment to the land.

Kim’s Areum is edgy, multi-layered and far from docile.

Playing dual roles as a rich Irish businessman riding the economic boom and his down-and-out twin, Gleeson animates Boorman's amusing Prince and the Pauper screenplay, which sports a dark social underbelly that puts Ireland's rich-poor divide centerstage

An appealing film thanks to its irresistible teenage heroine, I, Taraneh, Am Fifteen delivers the message that there's a new generation of strong-minded femmes out there who aren't afraid of bucking social norms.

Sensitive, delicate and involving.

What is most endearing is the delicacy with which writer-director Ritesh Batra reveals the hopes, sorrows, regrets and fears of everyday people without any sign of condescension or narrative trickery.

Dukhtar (Daughter) may not be 127 Hours, but Afia Nathaniel’s feature directing debut generates enough tension to fuel a harrowing real-life story while adding another unforgettable heroine to cinema from the region with Samiya Mumtaz’s measured portrayal of a Muslim woman taking charge of her life.

Ava’s rebellion is against more than her parents’ mistrust; it’s about the cage of societal norms in Iran that stifles female creativity and self-expression.

Despite its paucity of action and some unnecessary repetitions that extend the running time, the story rolls on smoothly.

More than in her previous tales of dysfunctional families like "Marriages," she (Comencini) lightens the weight of angst with well-designed subplots, secondary characters and moments of tender humor.

There are multiple levels on which to enjoy Roman Polanski’s Based on a True Story (D’Apres une histoire vraie), none of them very deep or complicated. But together they raise the resonance of a masterfully made psychological thriller in the traditional mode.

Once Pacino is surrounded by other characters, the comedy comes thick and fast and the material begins to come together in an absurd sort of way.

Wong is such a fine, subtle actor that it comes as a surprise to find him a superb martial artist as well, as he convincingly demonstrates the superiority of Ip Man’s technique over competing schools.

Lam’s filmmaking team deliver thrills on schedule with solid effects, crisp shooting and fast cutting.

Splashy, noisy and downright fun.

The film has a hard time shaking a feeling of filmed theater, particularly with the tight restriction of time and place. But the drama is brightly acted by a competent cast, of whom Jadidi and Izadyar, as the married couple, are the most acidic, while Abar and Alvand are given the most range.

Though not very subtle in presenting its thesis, the story is generally suspenseful and well-told by young HK actor and director Tsang (Soul Mate).

The film succeeds at being both exciting and character-driven, but only after a confused first half that will leave international viewers frustrated over who’s who and what’s going on.

Sentimentality and pathos are banned from Hikari’s screenplay, which surprises with its fresh, often humorous realism. This is one of those films that starts slowly and predictably, but when the turning point comes, it lifts the pic into another dimension.

Lensed with great sensitivity and style and superbly acted, it has one drawback for Western audiences in its perplexing plot points based on the local culture and customs.

It is unsettling in its depiction of the dark underbelly of the country, where a culture of hate paved the way for violence and tragedy.

Jeremy Strong’s vicious portrayal of Roy Cohn will long be remembered alongside the finest of Hollywood’s eccentric baddies.

The pièce de résistance of unabashed culinary cinema, Tran Anh Hung’s The Pot au Feu serves up a French country idyll in romantic 19th century sauce for audiences whose tastes run to the fine wines and 12-course meals.

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.

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.

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.