Godfrey Cheshire

Ultimately, Futuro Beach is a film about displacement and identity, love and its costs. Its considerable satisfactions, though, come mainly from the way the story is told, which spells nothing out, and in fact is so reticent that the viewer is constantly drawn into the creation of meaning.

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

The film will surely have its own role to play in the arena that perhaps counts most: the court of public opinion.

There is a real seed of dramatic possibility in Hannah, but Pallaoro smothers it beneath the lacquer of the film’s fastidiously mannered minimalism.

Documentary films often find their value in taking us to places that are challenging, even painful. Farewell to Hollywood offers the rewarding difficulties of that type of filmmaking, along with additional challenges that stem from questions about its own ethics.

The film does a good job conveying the excitement generated by that band as a live act, especially in San Francisco and Los Angeles. But though it produced some remarkable music, Cream’s success was short-lived.

This Louis Theroux-starring film belongs to the Michael Moore school of docu-making, in which much hinges on the personal viewpoint and observational wit of the on-camera investigator.

Kraume’s mounting of this tale, while capable enough, is also rather staid and conventional.

Features some of the worst post-synching seen in any recent movie. If Eisenstein, the consummate craftsman, would have regretted Greenaway’s penchant for pointless and overdone circular tracking shots, he surely would have groaned at how the actors’ lips here and the words they speak are so often on different timetables.

A documentary that offers some fascinating if glancing insights into a rich and timely subject but ends up being more frustrating than enlightening.

One of those paint-by-numbers romcoms that feels like you might have seen it a dozen times before.

Handsomely mounted and well-acted by a stellar cast, but it’s one of those theatrical adaptations that has no reason to exist for any viewer who can recall a superior stage version of the same work.

Tomas Weinreb and Petr Kazda’s film, on the other hand, narrates a true-life crime but fails to provide an element that might’ve lifted it above tasteful art-house ordinariness—an engaging point of view.

It’s interesting to witness the encounter and hear the thoughts of young people from such a bitterly divided land.

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

A rather terrible comedy-satire, bears the DNA of at least two strains of terrible films.

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

With The Duelist, Rodnyansky is taking a more commercial turn, one that depends less on art-house refinements than on plush production values, action-movie tropes and a couple of stellar lead performances.

LBJ captures a tumultuous political era and one of its most profanely colorful leaders with a good deal of insight and emotional torque.

Won’t add much to the debased discourse of this miserable season.

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.

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.

One thing that’s notable about Front Cover — and that sets it apart from Ang Lee’s nominally similar “The Wedding Banquet” — is that, though set in New York, its perspective and espoused values are finally more Chinese than American.

Though many bad movies are simply depressing, Adam Smith’s Trespass Against Us is so exceptionally bad that it at least has this bright sidelight: Unless 2017 turns into a truly disastrous time for movies, it may be the worst of the year is already here.

A very suspenseful, atmospheric mounting and sharp acting by its small but expert cast.

The kind of lush historical drama that Hollywood might have made in the 1930s but these days unsurprisingly owes its existence to foreign producers and, most especially, a renowned literary source.

“A good movie is never too long, and a bad movie can never be too short.” That famous quote from Roger Ebert helps me explain why the Canadian indie comedy Sundowners, though it runs only 97 minutes, felt to me like it lasted 14 hours. Longer than “Lawrence of Arabia.” Longer than “Shoah.”

Is it a real film, or a feature that uses the porn milieu to turn out a piece of softcore titillation that’s halfway between porn and actual drama? No doubt some of the film’s makers and defenders would argue for the former.