Farran Smith Nehme

The filmmaker doesn't speculate about why these men are talking, but he leaves you with an excellent guess.

Some of the film's flourishes are ill-judged.

The Law in These Parts more than accomplishes its goal of provoking a discussion about imposing laws on people who have no say in making them.

A groundbreaking, highly influential film, A Man Vanishes is a fiercely brilliant piece of work, but it's more intellectual challenge than pleasure.

Coming Up Roses swerves into a third-act twist that's both an indie cliché and dramatically unnecessary.

A Royal Affair is basically a good-looking set of historical Cliffs Notes. There, is however, one excellent reason to see it: Folsgaard, who by the end has made his betrayed and bereft Christian into a figure of genuine tragedy.

The conceit is slight, but Hong's playful structure conceals sharp observations about fantasies, communication, and how foreigners and natives interact.

These elisions give an odd feeling to a film so long in the making. Crewdson's work ultimately begins to seem less enigmatic than he is himself.

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.

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.

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

The plot, however, comes with twists you can spot as far off as a Himalayan peak. The dialogue is heavily expository, and the actors are not up to the task of breathing life into characters meant to symbolize the Spirit of the Afghan People or the Nature of Evil.

It's deeply frustrating to discover that this 2012 movie has precisely the same concerns as the ["The Women"] - appearance and men - with raunchy frankness about sex added and every trace of real wit siphoned out.

Brooklyn Castle is an engaging tale, and the principal is wrong: These kids are much more lovable than the Yankees.

The results are too predictable.

Director Ava DuVernay, in showing Ruby's life in waiting, occasionally lets the pace slip into tedium.

Much of the plot stretches credulity, but the way it's constructed keeps tension high.

The evidence Jarecki amasses against the drug wars in The House I Live In is more than strong enough to withstand any excess rhetorical zeal.

Meier's tight focus on her primary characters pays off: Seydoux brings a strong array of emotions to a highly unsympathetic part. And Klein, whether plugging his ears with cigarette filters or suddenly embracing a woman he barely knows, is heartbreaking.

Aside from an additional 30 minutes or so of plot, Trade of Innocents offers no more than a middling episode of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit."

These characters, especially the uninteresting primary couple, can't sustain almost two hours of movie. Overall, BearCity 2 deals in mild amusement, not wit.

More likely to play well with older children, due to its split-up story line, Ocelot's creation is like nothing else they are likely to see animating the multiplex.