Farran Smith Nehme

Gould’s lugubrious presence is always welcome, and Rue plays her lovelorn part with verve.

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.

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

The swooping shots and the way the lack of dialogue amplifies ambient sounds are stunning. Story-wise, The Tribe is yet another art-film wallow in cruelty, not nearly as unique as its looks and its world.

Israeli director Nadav Lapid uses a well-worn concept — a lonely little boy is taken under a teacher’s wing — to create a slow, creepy movie.

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

There’s a good cinephile heart beating under this fluffy story. But Lellouche, in making her homage to Allen, left out one of his essential qualities: bite. Paris-Manhattan drifts by and never leaves a single toothmark.

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

The New Black often feels like a polished but uninspired op-ed.

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

Despite a remarkable performance by Suliman, who’s almost never off-camera, events become increasingly pat and implausible, with one explanatory scene played like a shadowy variation on Kevin Spacey’s monologue in “Se7en.”

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.

There’s a nice candor and sweetness about the players, especially Butterfield and Sally Hawkins as his mother.

The two leads spend a lot of their time doing static interviews, in a format familiar from TV shows like “The Office.” This glorified narration gets old, fast.

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

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

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.

It’s a slickly plotted ticking-time-bomb thriller with a crisp look and one standout debut performance, by Hitham Omari as a ruthless leader of a terrorist cell.

Gorgeous surroundings don't make up for sulky, feuding travel companions.

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.

The film keeps its focus small, but the trouble is, the characters' emotions stay that way, too.

Beat by beat, it’s exactly what you’d expect, right down to the camera’s prurient interest in the dewy flesh of Stefanie Scott as the 17-year-old daughter.

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

The results are too predictable.

The seething passions of Flaubert’s characters are absent, except when Rhys Ifans (as a greedy merchant) or the splendidly ruthless Marshall-Green are in the room.

Pretty and pleasing, but no more. A bon-bon, not a meal.

Lifetime movies have their pleasures, and so does this film. Chief among them is the cast, a group of over-45 actresses who really are better than ever; in the cases of Brooke Shields and Daryl Hannah, remarkably better.

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.