Deborah Young

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

Mary Shelley is a luscious-looking spectacle, drenched in the colors and visceral sensations of nature, the sensuality of young lovers, the passionate disappointment of loss and betrayal. But above all it is a film about ideas that breaks out of the well-worn mold of period drama (partly, anyway) by reaching deeply into the mind of the extraordinary woman who wrote the Gothic evergreen Frankenstein.

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 is a strange cross-breed between an old-fashioned WWII epic full of genre cliches and a modern update whose meticulous historical recreation is frighteningly real.

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.

Running the gamut from social comedy to actioner to war movie, Clash is an original, often quite disturbing experience to watch.

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 self-contained master class on cinema.

Fresh and offbeat tale of vendetta.

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.

Constructed like an eerie, metaphorical thriller, this tense, riveting character study offers viewers nearly two hours of emotions with a stunning pay-off no one will be expecting.

A good old-fashioned British spy thriller.

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.

It would be hard to find two more contrasting actresses than Otto and Pires, but Barreto plays off their differences in culture and personality.

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

This film is straight out of the bottle with no metaphoric or psychological pretensions.

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.

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.

A heavy-handed reimagining.

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.

Awkward performances and dialogue undercut interest in the characters so much that none of their raw, fleshy deaths matter a hoot, and by the time the rip-roaring triple ending rolls around, many viewers will have lost count of who’s still standing and who’s food for the birds.

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.

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.

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

Young leads Shota Sometani and Fumi Nikaidou – both experienced film actors – grow in stature as the film progresses to the achingly real final scene, where they are extraordinarily intense and effective.

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.

Cotillard’s performance is luminous throughout, enriching the willful heroine with the depth of a single obsession.

Ali has a deft hand in creating a fantasy world based on the classical Sita-Ravana model, and gives Bhatt free rein to project herself with unabashed teenage appeal.

Despite a few potholes of ennui along the way, pic has enough entertainment value to cross borders and titillate auds with its plentiful nudity and uninhibited sexual mores.

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.

On some level, Fritz’s story is compulsive viewing, only you wish you weren’t there.

The drama and intensity that are [Haggis's] signatures are mostly missing from these vividly dramatized but uninvolving romantic crises, none of which are particularly believable.

In this fast-moving, densely plotted black dramedy, a faux scandal raised by an ambitious web TV editor comes close to destroying a number of lives, offering a masterful panorama on urban, middle class China.

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

In the end the taste of H.K. filmmaking dominates in the film's deliberately chaotic visual style, a circular narrative that heads nowhere, and lyrical song interludes that abruptly interrupt the non-stop action and camera movement.

Though the bold treatment of homoerotic love in Mexican helmer Julian Hernandez's feature bow Broken Sky is sure to grab attention, it doesn't take long before the picture's torturously slow pace turns an earnest effort into a tedious aesthetic exercise.

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.

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.

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.

Intensely present and real even in this sordid role, Ramazzotti shows she is growing into one of Italy's most versatile actresses, particularly in difficult proletarian roles like the one here. She is literally the best thing in this depressing, often shallow film.

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.

Pic stays on the surface, without attempting any exploration of painful depths. Result is at best amusing; at worst, uninvolving, often confusing, and sometimes a little boring.

Slipping from fantasy to soap opera without any authorial control, pic's best hope is to be recognized as some kind of cult movie of badness.

Has a perverse fascination, despite some technical clumsiness and stiff thesping.

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.

A film about ordinary people doing nothing is a tricky thing, quickly numbing the audience to sleep unless the screenplay is electrifying and the actors greatly appealing. Unfortunately, neither of these is true of Rafael Nadjari’s A Strange Course of Events, which is anything but strange and eventful.

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.

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

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

Pleasantly watchable.

Though its subject has curiosity value, its critical view of religious institutions is compromised by an ending that evidently was necessary for the film to be made and released at all.

Gentle, touching tale.

A flashback to the playfully tender East Euro cinema of yore with a forceful if predictable punch in the closing reel, Rajko Grlic's Border Post marks a virile comeback for the Croatian veteran after his weak-kneed "Josephine."

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.

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.

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’s a timely topic shot around picnic tables with friends and tramping through vineyards from Tuscany to Piedmont, as thought-provoking as it is informal.

Guilty (Talvar) is a gripping thriller and police procedural.

It’s an easy watch, though it certainly could have benefited from a little British warmth and humor (totally absent here.) The English dialogue is also much too elaborate and stilted to be anywhere near believable, further undercutting any remnant of realism.

Variety and depth of character are badly lacking on the female front, weakening the whole film.

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

A beautiful example of how a memorable film can be made on a shoestring.

It shows the maverick filmmaker once again at the height of his expressive powers. Its stripped-down narrative and uncompromising repetitions will not be tolerable to everyone, but audiences willing to stick out the punishing but dazzling last half hour will walk away with a lot.

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.

The film itself is not very deep, but for a comedy it has some striking moments, like its canny description of how public opinion can turn.

This thought-provoking drama is long but well-paced, full of incident but at the same time intimate — though shocking violence occurs just offscreen. Illuminated by deeply nuanced performances and characters to care about, it positions itself somewhere between the loving but messed-up families of Edward Yang and Ken Loach.

Tautly shot and edited by a top-flight technical crew and notably scored by Peyman Yazdanian, Just 6.5 is more than a thrilling watch. It is a sobering reflection on the inability of the law to stem the tide of drug addiction through round-ups, arrests and executions. Or perhaps it’s society that needs adjusting?

Dispensing with heavyhanded symbolism, Farhadi tells the tale engrossingly and with a lot of physicality through the two main actors.