Farran Smith Nehme

The film is hard on the eyes, having been shot in a low-budget style with the ubiquitous digital palette of gray-beige-taupe. Fortunately, it’s also hilarious, full of humor that is understated, wry and dependent on familiarity with interests as wide as Houellebecq’s own.

Much time is spent on inter-museum wrangling, and the personalities aren’t vivid enough (as they were in “The New Rijksmuseum”) to build tension. The interest lies in the close look at the strange vision of this great artist.

Though the filmmaking is not terribly exciting, Fela’s life and music are.

The film is impeccably shot and paced, but the radical real-world implications of Wise’s agenda are never fully explored.

As reactions to budding sexuality go, it’s a little extreme. And it’s also contrived; Isabelle’s decision never makes any emotional, let alone logical, sense.

The movie sneers at the journalists covering the trial, but for those of us who followed it at the time, the newspaper accounts were a lot more engrossing than this film.

The Other Son is played with warmth and conviction by its cast. But it's also a little pat and toothless, set in an Israel where not even the notorious border crossings seem that difficult.

The biographical bits soon feel like a distraction from the music, performed by Gavilán. It’s heard often, but not often enough. Judging by the movie, Parra’s songs are fiery and haunting, sometimes sensuous, sometimes bleak. When Parra sings, the movie becomes worthwhile.

The last topic is the hook for audience members not related to Gregory or Kleine, but just as insight appears, back we go to Kleine's tediously selfreferential narration.

As lovely as Jimmy’s Hall is, Paul Laverty’s script is not so much talky as speech-y. Some conversations play like bullet points about Irish politics and the iron grip of the Catholic Church.

It’s not a documentary, it isn’t entertainment, and aside from Chung’s intelligent, dignified performance, this sure as heck isn’t art.

Ultimately, this film reveals the Israeli self-image, but not much more. The people with the cameras pass by Arab neighbors, and what the Palestinians’ home movies might look like remains unexplored.

The crime and aftermath (based on a real story) are the best parts by far, but these come well after many overextended scenes of selfish, squalid people treating one another like dirt.

Tilda Swinton narrates this oddball, meandering essay film.

Directors Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly overload their too-long film with subplots. Yet the actors — including a terrific Aiden Gillen (“Game of Thrones”) as Casper’s no-good father — perform as though unaware that any of this is a cliché.

Directors Matthew Pond and Kirk Marcolina wisely keep this unrepentant charmer, in her 80s during filming, on-camera, save for when they’re interviewing fascinated writers and fed-up prosecutors.

Labyrinth of Lies hits every genre cliché, from the mawkish score to the no-dialogue-montage-of-tragedy. Perhaps inevitably, it’s Germany’s submission for the best foreign film Oscar.

It's never dull though, and the familiar characters and stock motivations are convincingly put across. And there's always Xu, who's turned to acupuncture to suppress his empathy, as you wait for the inevitable moment when suppressing it won't be enough.

Gibran’s book was huge in the 1960s, and it feels fresher here than it has in ages, although the visuals are stronger than the music.

Now, here’s the trilogy’s second installment, in which the jolly Austrian makes it clear that women of a certain age do not have his permission to overdo it with religion, either.

The filmmaking style is practically nonexistent: interviews and static shots of the performers onstage. They are thoughtful and often funny, especially Mat Fraser, a British man whose arms were damaged by Thalidomide, and Julia Atlas Muz, the off-stage partner with whom he often performs.

There are a handful of moments to entrance a non-fan. When the musicians and singers assemble to sing “Proserpina,” the last song McGarrigle ever wrote, with its haunting refrain (“Come home to Mama”), the effect is transcendent.

When The Last Gladiators treats brawls like greatest-hits clips for more than half the movie, then suggests fighting is behind Nilan's decline, it feels like trying to have it both ways.

Somehow, mostly through the impassioned performances of its young actors, the film finds its footing in the third act, as the narration goes quiet and tragedy unfolds with precision, even elegance.

The final scenes, when Mancini meets Kim’s son, have the awkward feel of an “Oprah” episode, with the editing and music suggesting a catharsis that isn’t always backed up by what’s on-screen.

The film has all the incessant showiness that can make Greenaway irksome: split screens, CGI, deliberately alienating performances. But the man loves a beautiful shot and a witty line; those are the things that carry the film.

Things go awry in the last act, as the movie stops dead for more songs and a tragic coda that seems forced and trite, rather than the three-hankie finale we've all earned. Still, Cumming is wonderful.

The movie was always going to be a record of another unique New York institution, making way for another glass box.

There are so many echoes of “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” that it starts to feel like a barely disguised sequel. But those reminders, and the rather trite journey-of-self plot, are just decoration. This tender film works to remind us of how much we still love Deneuve, and succeeds in scene after scene.

This is a handsome movie, rich in period detail, but the stately pace slows to a crawl in the second half.

The first half has erratic pacing, but past the midpoint the film roars into action. Dornan is monotonous, but Murphy is intense enough for them both; side romances for the men feel phony but apparently are based in fact.

The real unflinching truth is that an average newspaper reporter can do a more artful, compassionate job with a drug-war story than this movie does.

The tone teeters between delicate and affected, and there’s only so much flitting around and soulful stares a movie can sustain before an audience starts wanting something more earthbound.

By the movie’s end, the party guests may be ready to dance the hora — or they may find themselves sitting this one out. “Hava” will have its revenge, however: It’s still stuck in my head.

More a tribute to youth and its discontents than a fresh exploration.

This morbid, cruel movie seems leached of all things that might inadvertently give viewers pleasure.

Toward the end, despite the wintry script and chilly acting, some emotion begins to break through. But it’s never a good sign when the art direction offers more fascination than the sex.

The sincerity and simplicity of the film, however, lift it somewhat above the ordinary run.

The film is built from moving, frank interviews with survivors from two families who hid, speaking over and around extensive re-enactments. Passages from the memoir of one family matriarch, Esther Stermer, in many ways the heroine of the tale, also are used as narration.

Europe’s immigration dilemma was also the focus of Aki Kaurismaki’s winsome “Le Havre,” and the Africans themselves were front and center in Moussa Touré’s “La Pirogue.” This film is somewhat less effective; Crialese’s message seems to take priority over a deeper sense of individuals.

The way the tightrope works is vague, but what the exercise shows is straightforward and marvelous.

In the last half-hour, themes start to gel. The final scenes are so good, even moving, that they make the earlier stuff look better. But a film concerned with the nature of emotion needs human engagement throughout.

The Nees lean toward the rat-a-tat comedy of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” presumably knowing they can’t match the profundity of “Huckleberry Finn.” (Who could?)

The densely plotted Generation War sweeps past implausibilities and offers the can’t-put-it-down qualities of a superior airport novel; its last third is affecting. But a bold confrontation with the past? Not so much.

The film can be rough going for those who know little of Berger’s work. That’s especially true of the second part, a stupefying collage about Berger’s home in rural Quincy, France.

Time has robbed Blume’s subjects of shock value, but her perceptiveness hasn’t dimmed. The movie’s sincerity carries it along, and makes this story endearing despite its filmmaking clichés.

The result is no masterpiece, but neither is it a disaster. In its steady great-books way, the film is often truthful and moving.

In addition to the magnificent music, the movie takes its rumpled charm from Fry's unfeigned fanboy manner.

Winter hits his stride detailing how the music bigwigs hung Napster out to dry, but couldn’t do a thing about their industry’s permanently altered business model. This exercise in recent nostalgia (the original Napster went bust in 2002) might have been better if the tart cynicism of that section had shown up earlier.

Beck expressed dismay that “Pimp” was taken as a glamorization of his life, and not a warning. By omitting the experiences of the women who worked for him, the filmmakers risk the same thing.

It’s a swift, vivid movie, but 10 years past the scandal, not much is new.

The movie’s strength is, surprisingly, the narration, spoken with gentle gravity by Moni Moshonov.

The debut film of Brandon Cronenberg deals out shivers and flinches in little hypodermic jabs.

Detour does a fine job of giving drivers yet another reason to stress out, but that anxiety doesn’t extend to its hero’s fate.

If anyone in the store’s history ever had a bad experience there, you won’t find it in this movie.

Eerie and utterly riveting.

Full of appealing actors mugging like crazy, it’s got amusing moments, but the overstuffed visuals suffocate real emotion.

Intrigue doesn’t begin until the last third of the movie, which is by far the best part. The Victorian melodrama in Effie Gray works better than the Victorian suffering.

Clip hurts your eyes, but if it’s supposed to hurt your heart, it misses the mark.

The single theme is “Isn’t this cool?” And if your response is, “Well, it’s certainly loud,” then On Any Sunday probably isn’t for you.

It’s a brief movie, and perhaps all that preamble is meant to justify the ticket price. The best advice is to walk in about 25 minutes after the lights go down. You’ll still get all the laughs, and you won’t have to hear about Hart’s YouTube hits.

Cardinale’s few brief scenes are the ones with the most depth; her facial lines really did come along with some wisdom.

The second half is therefore much more interesting than the first; even so, the whole movie suffers from a lack of narrative momentum and a surfeit of wordless shots of men exchanging deep, meaningful glances.

Candis gets some wonderful performances from his impressive cast.

Most of the humor, though, is wan, exemplified by letters like “Dear General Lee: Sounds great! Please proceed with your plan.”

What you get instead of soccer is almost two hours of late-stage syphilis.

It’s a compelling story, and Minac has told it before, notably in 2002’s “The Power of Good: Nicholas Winton.” This new documentary seems aimed at a classroom audience.

An explosion of images, mixing seedy, hand-held reality with groovy grindhouse imitations. Most of the shots are vivid, some are even thrilling.

There are no surprises, but for once there’s a set of artsy millennial characters who feel like real humans, and Berlin looks great.

Saint Laurent was known for an almost monk-like focus on his work. And so this film springs to life — the actors, the camera, the editing — when we see his creations the way they were meant to be seen: in motion, and worn by beautiful women.

As pure comedy, it’s a hoot.

There are some bright one-liners in the beginning, but the comedy/drama mix is an uneasy one, especially considering the shabby way the film treats McKenna, as a tart who’s just there to improve some yuppie sex lives.

Seeing this great actress, age 84, draw real feeling and laughs from such mediocre material is worth the watch.

Breakup at a Wedding works, because Quinaz has come up with a concept that lets him skewer directorial pretension alongside wedding hysteria.

The performances are so uniformly good that it's a shame the characters are stuck with such a listless plot.

Showing the personal toll that produces a star in any field could be a soggy, predictable drag, but the documentary A Man's Story never slides into easy sentiment or bromides.

A movie about bisexuals sounds fresh and fun on paper, but a sensitive acoustic song under the opening credits shows exactly where The Happy Sad is going. Deadly earnestness and sex don’t mix well at the movies.

The sex is the main thing that makes Kiss of the Damned worthwhile.