Eric Kohn

No amount of strong performances and good vibes can hide the sense that we’re just watching a paint-by-numbers routine. Nair puts so much effort into galvanizing the movie’s central figures that the slightest hints of conflict register as little more than an inconvenience.

The Ward succeeds mainly as a checklist that keeps it consistent with Carpenter's nearly forty years of work. It has none of the smart genre appeal that put him on the map, instead resembling a desperate knock-off by someone with far less talent. Carpenter either lost his groove or the will to use it.

With its subject still behind bars and the Russian government on the brink of reelecting Kremlin's United Russia party, the biggest triumph of Khodorkovsky is the case it makes for a sequel.

It’s a remarkable educational experience for anyone eager to go back to the basics. In the process, it arrives at a deeper understanding of the underlying impulse, while delivering an emotionally resonant narrative with plenty of cute animals to spare.

The movie contains an epic scope that feels out of sync with the smallness of its plot; you get the idea by the first act and then Laurence's world simply hangs there for another two hours like a slo-mo shrug.

A Most Wanted Man allows Hoffman to go out with not only one of his best performances, but one that epitomizes his strengths.

The movie makes its points in grand, emotional gestures more than policy nuances, but what it lacks in sophistication it makes up in immediacy. The drama acts as a visceral of ode to the nature of activism under dire circumstances.

While Johnsen competently follows Ai over the course of more than a year of contemplation and anger, "The Fake Case" doesn't introduce anything new to the equation, and mainly succeeds by virtue of its subject's inherent appeal.

American action movies are almost entirely defined by cutaways, blaring music cues and grunts. The Raid: Redemption, a hyper-energetic Indonesian martial arts movie, delivers an effective rebuke to that meek norm. Bones break, blood flows and swift, excessively complicated fight choreography puts virtually everything released in North America since "The Bourne Ultimatum" to instant shame.

Sorry Angel doesn’t strain from too much ambition; it’s a sharp snapshot of two men at pivotal moments in their lives, and ends on a note not too different from the one it starts on. But that cycle is central to its gentle intellectual flow.

There's nothing slick or entertaining about the crumbling existence of Pomes' unsalvageable antiheroes.

It suffers from the greater problem of emphasizing a feel-good plot within the context of mass destruction.

The first half of I'm Glad My Mother's Alive effectively inhabits a child's mind in a manner that recalls Maurice Pialat's marvelous 1968 debut "The Naked Childhood."

The Forgiveness of Blood examines the barriers of ritual and the passage from youth to adulthood in Albanian society with the perceptive detail of a grand literary feat. At the same time, it retains the simplicity of a parable.

The opposing genre extremes never entirely come together.

Intermittently action-packed and lethargic, the movie dances around formula. By delivering an expressionistic character study with bursts of intensity unlike anything else in his oeuvre and yet stylistically representative of its entirety, Wong practically has it both ways.

While the documentary's structure is somewhat uneven, its protagonists remain fascinating subjects whose recollections — along with backstories fleshed out by their wives and parents — include revelations of much greater challenges than the movie itself.

Even as Honey Boy settles into the tropes of a familiar coming-of-age saga, it’s an admirable variation — the earnest attempt by an elusive movie star to bring his mythology down to Earth.

The Ivory Game may be a harsh wakeup call to anyone concerned about the future of the largest land mammal, but it’s also a keen evaluation of the efforts being made to correct the situation.

There and gone with the fleeting nature of its youngest character's attention span, Little Feet ultimately feels more like an insightful sketch than a full-fledged movie, but it nonetheless leaves a major impression.

Appropriate Behavior isn’t a narrative about ethnicity or even LGBT struggles in the traditional sense, but rather a means of exploring the problems that result from reinforcing those very barriers. In the process, it introduces a thoroughly modern voice.

It's one thing to make a minor, accomplished work after focusing on grander statements, but Julieta mainly disappoints because it feels like the kind of straightforward, unadventurous drama that the filmmaker generally excels at reinventing through his own peculiar vision. This time, he plays it too safe.

The director excels at generating a nervous energy around his character’s mounting desperation, and the movie’s intermittently engaging for that reason alone.

Gibney's narrative drags to some extent when the focus widens to explore the Vatican's overall policy for covering up sex scandals, but he successfully demonstrates the systematic failure of a system designed work flawlessly on the basis of spirituality that never existed in the first place.

The extensive two-hour running time only slightly hinders a simultaneously amusing and powerful encapsulation of Brand's journey from outrageous provocateur to enlightened zealot preaching for social change.

As a platform for Bilot’s efforts and why they deserve a national profile, the movie has a sincere sense of purpose. It’s a 20-year-old drama that extends into the present, and as environmental concerns continue to escalate, it couldn’t feel more contemporary.

With its persistent inventiveness and a lack of unearned sentimentality, the movie provides an antidote to a lot of lazily produced dramas about death, American or otherwise.

While Jimmy Carter Rock & Roll President doesn’t always manage to fuse these recollections together, it compensates in a bevy of amusing anecdotes.