Diego Semerene

Writer-director Damon Cardasis follows a rather didactic approach to his 14-year-old's protagonist's plight in Saturday Church.

The unapologetic lack of political correctness never goes beyond a one-dimensional and tentative provocation.

The film is, like its main character, too naïve to understand or, at least, to deploy the reparative powers of camp.

It's difficult to believe in Ryder's gullibility, if not willingness to be caught in his uncle's strange web of provocations.

Zain Al Rafeea's naturalness, however uncanny, only makes the film's maneuverings seem all the more obvious.

Huppert is such a master of her craft that even the silliest sequences give way to tour-de-force moments.

The film exposes the incontestable American art of getting more with blunt obviousness.

Whatever the post-colonial lessons are, I Only Rest in the Storm’s characters articulate them too evidently, as if preemptively justifying the making of a film in or about “Africa” on the condition that the white man’s presence is relentlessly denounced.

Bruno Barreto's insistence that this pass for a product that Hollywood might have spawned smoothens a journey built on sharp edges.

The film is simply too conscious of its form and its global-market ambitions to ever feel honestly interested in the themes it purports to cherish.

Jimpa’s exploration of non-binary identity ultimately proves superficial.

It begins as a clever pseudo-mumblecore provocation with shades of Bruce LaBruce only to quickly turn into indefensible nonsense.

Hood to Coast mostly suffers from an incessant soundtrack that stuffs the film with a peppiness that blocks the tragedy of its characters from view, as well as their overcoming it.

We never spend enough time with the characters to believe the urgency, and lushness, of their cravings.

Heidi Ewing’s tale of immigration and deportation afflicting the lives of a Mexican gay couple flashes its reason for being at every turn.

The Children Act stages the clumsiness of belated domestic confrontations with the very coldness that’s kept its characters from having discussed their emotions for decades and from having had sex for almost a year.

Philippe Garrel illustrates the absurdity behind the myth of the complementary couple with the same cynicism that permeates his previous work but none of the humor or wit.

Sergio Castellitto's film quickly turns out to be more interested in reveling in the secrets of its storyline than in its sentiments.

If the global reunion that the cruise ship presents here is such a panacea, why is there so much moping?

The Stroll is overtly broad, detached, and full of ready-made empowerment rhetoric.

At first, the film’s dark humor is amusing, only for it to wear off once an actual plot kicks into motion.

For a film so proud of its trail-blazing status ("the first 3D erotic movie"), 3d Sex and Zen is certainly driven by the same good old symptoms.

Whatever predictable plot the film tries to unfold never lives up to the excitement of its conceptual gimmick.

In the documentary, the game is a make-believe war of pent-up frustrations linking race, nation, and manhood, one which teenage boys named Mohamed can actually win.

If not for its performances, the film would belong in the category of Hallmark Channel tearjerkers.

The film eventually replaces the captivating smallness of everyday life with an inconsequential drama.

Xavier Giannolli consistently glosses every sequence with a stagey kind of humor, and at the main character's expense.