Godfrey Cheshire

From Afar, in any case, is built on reticence.

Setting up a political drama in stereotypical black-hat/white-hat fashion results in enjoyably cartoonish villains like flamboyant gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (deliciously played by Helen Mirren) and the usual blacklist martyrs, but it also deprives the story of the nuance and complexity for which it cries out.

An action espionage tale vaguely in the Jason Bourne mold, MI-5 does indeed play like a TV spin-off, but one in which the filmmakers said to their team, “Listen up, all! We’re now doing the cinema version. What can we do to make it cinematic?”

For most of its 80-minute length, The Pearl Button meditates lyrically on water and its effects on humankind. Then it makes a sharp turn into evoking the horrors of the Pinochet regime, a transition that feels awkward and rather forced, diluting the film’s ultimate impact.

Older audiences are likely to find the film less amusing than risible.

Though Sean Penn executive-produced the film and voices its spare narration, the doc has a very generic tone, so much so that it might seem to belong on TV rather than in theaters.

It is a movie for golf enthusiasts, pure and simple.

It’s a fairly familiar critique of patriarchy from a humanist and feminist perspective, but one put across with some very impressive filmmaking skills by a first-time director.

[A] well-intentioned but only partly satisfying film.

While the mix doesn’t always cohere, the film boasts moments and scenes that rank with Duvall’s best work.

The story’s ending, complete with lyrical voice-over, conveys the beauty and emotional attraction of the place and its traditions, virtues also relayed by Joshua James Richard’s sumptuous, sometimes breathtaking cinematography.

Having such a small number of characters, like the limitations caused by budgetary constraints, might sound like a recipe for creative claustrophobia, but Gentry turns these givens to his advantage, almost as if using Synchronicity to articulate a less-is-more filmmaking philosophy.

Curiously, there’s virtually no mention of religion in the film. For that matter, politics creep into the tale only obliquely, and later. It appears we’re meant to understand that the band’s music and Farah’s lyrics have an edge of protest, but this is registered only as a very general sort of frustration and discontent.

As inherently astonishing and powerful as this little-known episode is, it has not been well-served by Ross’ lumpy, ill-conceived script, which ends up wasting Matthew McConaughey’s terrific lead performance and other strong acting contributions.

The Confessions might remind viewers of films ranging from “The Name of the Rose” to Paolo Sorrentino’s “Youth.” But Roberto Andó’s film disappointingly ends up being too flat-footed script-wise to deliver on either its dramatic or thematic promises.

While Salles’ portrait gives a very incomplete account of the man and his art, it pays tribute to a filmmaker who remains among the medium’s foremost and most fascinating creators.

It contains nothing to offend, but nothing to surprise or inspire, either.

A film so obedient to current academic fashions in both politics and cinema aesthetics that it ends up feeling both contrived and a bit dishonest.

A curious, ultimately unsatisfying romantic comedy about two sisters in love with the same man.

With a road movie story that aims toward simplistic and rather formulaic romantic wish-fulfillment, it offers some interesting scenery, but its main attraction is another estimable performance by the talented Garcia.

Ang Lee is a great director whose last film, the Oscar-winning “Life of Pi,” made ingenious and very effective use of 3D technology. But that film had a much better story than Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk.

The result is a work that—like a whole sub-species of French films of the recent decades—fetishizes its own hyper-naturalistic visual style and performances (all but one by non-actors) while offering no original or striking insights into the world it portrays.

Van Dormael’s film was pure torture from first to last, about as mirthless a comedy as I ever hope to see.

Thankfully, the film does get better in its second half. Not a lot better, but enough to justify one’s continuing attention.

What comes across as genuine in the film, and might also help explain its origins, is its air of melancholy and loneliness.

Sworn Virgin is not the first film to give the impression that, in current European art cinema, religion is the one subject that dare not speak its name.

The latest example of what I call an emperor’s-new-clothes film is Neon Bull.

Alexandre Moors’ film is also so lacking in anything new or compelling to say — either emotional or political — about its subject that it ends up a rather dispiriting slog of a movie.