Farran Smith Nehme

It’s endearing how this glorified haunted-house movie tries to reclaim all the old tools, and do so with a straight face and a PG-13 level of violence.

Where Zhao excels is in the range of emotions she gets from a mostly nonprofessional cast.

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.

It’s sprightly, funny and at times piercingly sad.

While Campillo does graceful work — the way he draws focus in a scene is a pleasure — the script drags and the pseudo-romance is hard to believe, especially when one plot point concerns Daniel asking for a bulk-purchase sex rate. Eastern Boys never quite fulfills the promise of those first few minutes.

Oddly, though, for a film so dedicated to celebrating what he can still accomplish, his early performing career gets a lot more emphasis than the music still being composed. And that's a pity, because what little we hear is entrancing.

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.

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.

Jealousy has a quiet melancholy that’s very pleasing.

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.

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

If the movie has a star, it may be cinematographer Oleg Mutu, the Romanian who lensed “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” and “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days.” Even when the pace wanes, the images are still gripping.

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

The film has a nice sense of female friendships’ emotional depth. But as a woman, Duris (while amusing) is not much more convincing than Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in “Some Like It Hot.”

He may be saddled with an overly ironic title role, but Bystrov is terrific. His cowboy squint and dogged intelligence are enough to give you hope for Russia, although the movie certainly won’t.

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

The story is something of a trap: Both irresistibly poignant and an invitation to wallow.

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.

With ravishing landscapes, violent political allegory and a glacial narrative that takes an abrupt left turn in the third act: Lisandro Alonso’s Jauja resolutely checks every 2015 art-film box.

At nearly three hours, it’s entirely too long, needlessly padded out with an intrusive interview-framing device.

Brief and timely, this documentary directed by Shosh Shlam and Hilla Medalia is also frustrating.

There’s a simplicity and directness in Chaplin of the Mountains that keeps it aloft; its wholehearted sincerity feels much fresher than any number of slicker, more cynical films.

The plot doesn’t entirely escape formula, and the ending is jagged and forced, unable to commit to either hope or gloom. But for at least part of its length, My Brother the Devil brings refreshing changes to a genre badly in need of them.

Swift, confident, and exceptionally nasty, this Argentine film bears roughly the same relationship to the Martin Scorsese of “Goodfellas” that Brian De Palma does to, well, all of Hitchcock.

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.

It’s an ambitious, often arresting film, but it lacks cohesion, and the seesawing plot and motivations seem more indecisive than mysterious.

Yet while Nemes criticized “Schindler’s List” as “conventional,” all that’s new here is the hyper-realistic technique: Saul’s quest is not very far from the girl in the red dress.

This is, by some distance, the best movie of the three, and it showcases the impeccable symmetry of his compositions, while retaining his compulsion to wag a finger in your face.