Glenn Kenny

This is a high-minded and carefully composed film about, among other things, the inability of words in any language to satisfactorily communicate states of being. There are pleasures and intellectual provocations to be had here. But its attempted effects fall flat a little too often.

The movie is relentlessly fluffy.

As much a joy as this movie . . . is to behold, its scenario is more than a little overbaked and overdrawn.

The movie the directors have made doesn’t have the passion that its subjects do.

Lo wants to make a point, obviously, but I came out of this picture with some questions. And I also thought of an observation made by the music critic Robert Christgau, a metaphorical point addressing a type of artistic preciousness: “If I found a cat trapped in a washing machine, I wouldn't set up a recording studio there—I'd just open the door.”

Even if you can sense the fun Crowe is having with the camera setups in certain scenes, Poker Face is simultaneously a lot and not all that much.

The moviemakers are accomplished enough to make something coherent out of this tonal mishmash, but I was left with a "was this trip really necessary" feeling for all that.

It’s all so anodyne that the also-obligatory girl-gets-mad-at-hunk plot turn before the love-conquers-all finale feels like being shaken awake during a dream of drowning in butterscotch sunsets.

The story is not without interest, and it touches on a couple of worthwhile themes: cultural erasure and the way religious and provincial prejudices can suppress love. But its treatment of these subjects is perhaps undercut by its conventionality.

Despite Brosnan's best efforts, this is a movie with its heart in the right place and its head somewhere substantially other.

A Man Called Otto is not only more bloated than the Swedish film, it’s more outré, in a way that’s hard to pin down.

Because Eklof’s approach is formally very clean, showing some genuine, intriguing detachment, I’m apt to prefer it to Seidl’s work. But not by much.

This picture is well acted (one of the cast members, Manuel García-Rulfo, has a growing profile in Hollywood; he was seen last year in “Widows” and “Sicario: Day of the Soldado”) and maintains narrative interest without ever grabbing the viewer by the lapels.

This is, among other things, something of a fatty movie. It goes out of its way to hit “beats” that it presumes will be satisfying to a mainstream audience.

Over all, this movie is less “you are there” than “you had to be there.”

There’s subtlety, and then there’s deliberate evasion. In pursuing the former, “Chile ‘76” only achieves the latter.

It’s frustrating to see such a sophisticated cinematic apparatus used in the service of such muddled half-ideas.

The interactions between these real-life characters are here recalled with fondness and rue by the surviving participants. Taublieb’s approach is straightforward, but also a little pedestrian.

The scenes of Dracula befuddled by a mobile phone were familiar; those in which the vampire’s garlic “intolerance” preludes a flatulence joke predictable. Returning a third time as director, Genndy Tartakovsky lends his usual graphic savvy, providing a not-quite-saving grace.

Filmmakers have arguably lost the plot, turning “War is hell” into a “Can you top this?” competition.

As it happens, this movie is an expansion of Ms. Pourriat’s 2010 short film, “Oppressed Majority,” which was a punchier, and not particularly comedic, allegory of sexual assault. That picture can be found on YouTube; I don’t think it’s good either, but it’s more genuinely thought-provoking than its expansion.

Directed by Silas Howard from a screenplay by Daniel Pearle, who adapted his own stage play, A Kid Like Jake is humane, compassionate and strangely detached, almost to the point of inconsequentiality.

This consistently ridiculous movie, written and directed by Leo Zhang, does offer Jackie Chan mixing it up at a magician’s rehearsal (he pulls a rabbit from a hat) and Jackie Chan kickboxing at the top of the Sydney Opera House.

By the jaw-dropping climax (an argument over a family portrait), and the film’s not-entirely unpredictable denouement, you aren’t sure whether you are witnessing an investigative family chronicle or an act of revenge.

The filmmakers might have cleared up suspicions about their motivations and ethics had they worked them into the narrative.

Despite its best efforts, Tanna drifts into a mode of exoticism that renders it an ultimately frustrating experience.

The talented Morano, whose work on the TV series “The Handmaid’s Tale” shows a knack for shuddery grim realism, sometimes seems to want to subvert the espionage-action genre by bludgeoning the pleasure out of it.

Grant and Kurzel’s conceptions of the characters are so one-dimensional they seem to defeat the movie’s talented cast.

An energetic, visually attractive but ultimately irritating comedy-drama.

The performances are excellent, and Ingelsby’s dialogue largely rings true. But while the movie is indeed considered and conscientious, it’s also careful. It doesn’t risk going over any edges itself. And it shows more than a few instances of fussy and telegraphing Conspicuous Direction.

The Surrogate feels like the vexed progeny of an elevator pitch and an ethics advice column.

While Mr. Reybaud has exemplary artistic confidence and an interesting vision, this is a movie that in many ways defines or justifies the “not for everybody” critical hedge.

Okeniyi has a strong presence that conveys a genuine moral authority.

What Mr. Gibney uncovers is grave and shocking and could make a viewer concerned for the safety of the filmmaker. But its presentation is flawed.

The movie is well put together, enough so that if you’re not entirely tired of its clichés, it might constitute a tolerable entertainment. I’d rather watch “Double Indemnity” for the 15th time.

Ms. Wells is appealing onscreen and is a smart writer. She gives Emily some good zingers.

Ramshackle one minute, pointlessly deliberate the next.

De Palma can’t realize all the elaborate effects he clearly wanted (the film’s climax occurs at a bullfight that’s conspicuously not crowded). But his direction often compensates with B-movie energy, particularly when he’s able to concentrate on his perverse vision.

The Death of Dick Long, until it meanders into a semisincere dramatic dimension, manages to pack in a good number of laughs for a significant amount of time.

The narrative conceits of Nine Days, while exquisitely constructed, are intricate to the point of laborious. At times the movie almost sinks under their weight.

The documentary’s raw material arguably could have yielded a more powerful fit with a tighter edit. Nevertheless, this is a mostly engaging portrait.

I have to give Morgenthaler credit for what we used to call “moxie” — whatever the hell he’s doing, or thinks he’s doing, he’s fully committed to it, and while he doesn’t really pull off the unhinged apocalyptic fireworks he’s reaching for at the end (and I don’t think any director save Andrzej Zulawski, who’s clearly an influence, could pull them off), I give him credit for trying.

This sentimental, nearly genteel movie demonstrates there’s a world of difference between invoking magic and conjuring it.

The issues presented in When Two Worlds Collide are so crucial that it feels churlish to characterize it as a dutiful, and ultimately pedestrian, documentary. There is something evasive about it as well.

The movie’s generic quality is spruced up by eccentric plots points (go-go dancers who also serve as undercover eco-activists, a nice Andy Sidaris-like touch) and kooky dialogue.

For a while Pearce does a very clever balancing act, taking everyday unpleasantries and grotesqueries of life and exaggerating them just so.

Although the milieu of “Coup!” speaks allegorically to the pandemic of our own century, it does so softly; the movie is ultimately more a tale of class warfare than public health.

A more finely focused treatment would have made a much better summation of, or introduction to, Mr. Naharin’s work.

For the first half-hour or so of Eternal Beauty, Roberts and Hawkins take an unusual and intermittently illuminating approach to depicting mental illness. . . . But the movie doesn’t keep up its good work.

If Billie gives short shrift to its subject’s artistry while underscoring her life’s squalor, it still offers pockets of valuable insight.

I wonder if there was a point in the making of this film at which Hickenlooper might have realized he picked the wrong subject. [May 2004, p. 18]

These songs have the power to move, inspire, make you dance. For the first time in my experience of Springsteen, they made me want to hide under my seat.

There’s much historical material here that’s of high interest, and Ms. Swinton’s performance of Bell’s letters convey Bell’s skills as a writer, but the movie is ultimately too conceptually labored for its own good — or that of its subject.

Only intermittently stimulating.

Good-hearted stuff, to be sure, but mainly of interest to lovers of cinematic comfort food.

Too-laborious meditation on life and death.

The documentary elicits some viewer indignation on her behalf, but overall, it’s not a very inspired piece of work. While it depicts M.I.A.’s bristling at being called a terrorist advocate, it never wholly clarifies her specific political aims.

Ultimately the movie is as scattershot as it is enthusiastic. . . . But the narrative about the theaters’ present-day fight for survival is undeniably compelling.

Her insistent imagery and sometimes oblique narrative approach don’t always deliver the dividends sought. But the movie identifies Ms. Shortland as a talent to watch.

This is a straightforward story that Mr. de Los Santos Arias, making his fictional feature debut, tells in an ever-changing style, shooting in color and black and white. He also alternates the shape of the frame, mostly toggling between a boxy frame and the wider one most mainstream movies are shown in. Whatever effect was hoped for, this viewer just saw affectation.

The moments of charm and fun are few.

The cast perform with conviction, and the whole movie is attractively, solidly put together. But its dramatic components, fraught as they are, are tepidly delivered.

The star of the movie is a compelling figure, and Mr. D’Ambrosio presents quite a few people from Mr. Serpico’s past who have a similar draw. But the director’s filmmaking instincts are not always salutary.

It’s an earnest account of a religious movement that still resonates — Whitefield’s practice was instrumental in the growth of the Methodist church, and his sermons and lectures are still in print today.

The keen affinity the actor David Oyelowo has for his fellow performers is the best thing about The Water Man.

The movie’s energy doesn’t pay off in dividends of real pleasure. Anarchy has never been so mere as it is ultimately rendered here.

One feels the filmmaker trying hard to work out the inner struggles of his sad but largely unsympathetic characters. But his movie is as miserable and ultimately confounding as it is earnest.

The movie becomes less fizzy once DeCillo decides to make A Statement (a rather incoherent one at that).

The filmmakers, who made “Leviathan,” the striking 2012 immersion into commercial fishing, seem to be arguing that Sagawa needs to be understood beyond moralistic preconceptions. Caniba did not make the case for me. I consider Sagawa repellent, and the movie an exercise in intellectualized scab-picking.

If the movie doesn’t go more than skin deep in interrogating questions about interventions both military and journalistic into the Middle East, it does succeed in opening up Mr. Hondros’s contradiction-filled world.

The information here is compelling and frightening, but the movie is ham-handed.

Outlandish as its action often is, The Captain is based on a true story. Schwentke’s film, though, has an allegorical/satirical axe to grind, and it more often than not frames the narrative in dark archetypal terms.

The reason I’m rating this movie higher than I would otherwise, is Christopher Walken. His commitment to making Caleb as thoroughly unlikable as humanly possible yields a character who’s kind of terrifyingly off-putting even when his words and actions are ineffectual. A piece of acting alchemy of which only few are capable. I can’t imagine how powerful it might have been in a better movie.

Much of the movie, from its attempts to capture the confusing exhilaration of youthful experience to its predictable progressive character dynamics, is labored.

The movie also falls back on a lot of boogity-boogity docu-clichés. Skittery editing, ironic music cues, that sort of thing.

The most interesting thing about Ibiza, not to get too highfalutin, is its positive treatment of female desire.

If this movie leaves Cage adrift, he doesn’t seem at all uncomfortable about it.

When the movie isn’t straining, the go-for-broke performances of Dyrholm and Lindh give it a specific, unusual tension — like the feeling you get when you’ve over-tightened a corkscrew and know the matter around it is about to crumble.

This is a movie that is too frenetic and basic to make a substantial impression. I appreciated a kernel of observation here and there, but not enough for me to give it a whole-hearted embrace.

In the final half-hour, things start picking up, not just because of the impending surprise victory of Donald J. Trump and the way these players react to it.

The movie’s approach is gratuitously grandiose.

A twist whipsaws the movie into a darker place, one in the vicinity of Patricia Highsmith. But no murder takes place, and the movie’s resolution confirms what one may have suspected all along: Its dominant room tone is kinda-sorta that of “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.”

The movie has some pleasures, but can be heartily recommended only to those who like their entertainments equally inoffensive and inconsequential.

Watching it with a demonstrative crowd in a Times Square theater proved to this former grindhouse devotee that sometimes you can go home again, at least momentarily.

There are certain varieties of whimsy that either click with you or don’t. I point this out because what didn’t click for me in “Brian and Charles,” a new comedy directed by Jim Archer, might do something for you.

The movie’s prime mover, Rogen, is a doge of stoner humor, and he shows incredible discipline in this film by saving the first weed joke for twenty minutes in. I commend him for that.

The film is worth seeing because it’s a moving and remarkable story and it represents a great cause. Mr. Carlson often puts a directorial foot wrong.

Instead of maintaining an effervescent fizzle, Phantom Boy too frequently sputters piffle.

Given the aesthetically confrontational nature of the piece, one can understand why Mr. Rossi did not attempt an undiluted cinematic translation of the complete Bronx Gothic. But something about his approach (which I assume was approved by Ms. Okpokwasili, as she is one of the movie’s executive producers) feels, finally, like an evasion.

Unfortunately, for this viewer, the formal constraint foisted upon him by writer/director Jeremy Rush in Wheelman went right up his nose and stayed there, resulting in a little less than 90 minutes of annoyance.

A documentary that wants to appear inventive but too often comes off as affected, directed by Jeffrey McHale.

Not unlike an expensively tattooed panhandler, the couple elicit only a skeptical kind of sympathy.

Because it is a French film, or rather the kind of French film that wants to serve its sentimentality with a dollop of prestige, The Midwife doesn’t offer an entirely shameless version of the “dying free spirit imbues uptight caretaker with a new lust for life” scenario.

It's too bad that the movie induces eyeball-rolling almost as much as it does armrest-clutching.

The movie is a pointed reminder that Ms. McAdams is one of cinema’s most accomplished and appealing comic actresses. It’s almost heartbreaking to contemplate how amazing she would be in a new comedy that was more than intermittently O.K.

The Integrity of Joseph Chambers is a reasonably well-constructed non-hero’s journey that may resonate with you if you’re not already sick of movies set on anatomizing the Crisis of White Masculinity in These United States. This reviewer finds the topic tiresome, tiring, aesthetically unappealing, and banal.

A repetitious feel begins to take over. For some viewers, quietude may yield to boredom.

I cannot lie, though. As cranky as much of the movie made me, Pastoll, Blaney, and especially Bolger all contrive to deliver as satisfying a climax and dénouement to this saga as one could hope for. So there is that.