Ignatiy Vishnevetsky

His muse Ventura is there, too, cast as a meta character; he plays a clerygman who has lost his flock and now ministers to an abandoned church that looks suspiciously like a small movie theater. Which is about as close as Vitalina Varela comes to bluntly stating its themes: presence, absence, rekindled faith.

The filmmakers that Schanelec draws on for inspiration are all masters of one kind of economy or another. The problem is that Schanelec herself is not. Despite its austere, theory-heavy minimalism, I Was At Home, But… is lopsided and lumpy, filled with longueurs in which the brain begins to check out.

The dancing is mostly depicted in practice and rehearsal in a featureless room, captured in raggedly cut handheld sequences that betray the movie’s modest means. If Akin knows how to direct better than this, he rarely shows it. But if he never displays a knack for visualizing the physicality of dance (more impressive rehearsal footage can be found in about five seconds on YouTube), he does a decent job of conveying the frustration and passion it inspires in Merab (Levan Gelbakhiani, a professional dancer).

An always welcome presence, Law is the only cast member in The Rhythm Section to give the impression that he had any fun making the movie, playing B as a survivalist sourpuss with impossible reflexes. Nonetheless, he is consistently dressed and lit as though he were posing for a watch ad.

The trappings of the boarding school, with its grand staircases, centuries-old cloisters, and self-serious teenage secrecy, are gothic. But Bonello nods just as much to American teen-anxiety horror. There is even an homage to Brian De Palma’s "Carrie."

Bantering back and forth, Lawrence and Smith manage to recreate some of their screen chemistry — though not enough to make anyone want to go on another bumpy ride.

Unlike the best programmers, it never transcends its derivative origins and basic thrills. It’s another movie about thin characters and bland monsters—albeit one that’s better than the norm.

Of course, Cats has always been ridiculous, just as it has always been ridiculed. (“Cats is a dog,” declared a notorious review of the musical’s Broadway debut.) But Hooper can’t even get camp right.

Too often, The Next Level passes off callbacks to gags from its predecessor as jokes, all while presuming that viewers have an unhealthy familiarity with the Jumanji canon.

Like so many of the works of Eastwood’s long late period, Jewell offers a story without much of an endpoint, with an uplifting coda that feels almost as jarring as the ending of "American Sniper." But somewhere within its surprisingly pacey two-plus hours is a compelling group portrait of ordinary oddballs in cruel circumstances; it relays Eastwood’s appreciation for individuals over masses better than any speech ever could.

Maybe it’s inevitable that the film ends up feeling like an extremely diluted combination of Matsoukas’ two most famous music videos, crossing the political imagery of Beyoncé’s “Formation” with the outlaw imagery of Rihanna’s “We Found Love”—though it’s nowhere as stylish as the former or as sexy as the latter.

While it never feels completely defeatist, her film offers scattered snapshots of an uncertain society in its dog days.

A stolid film that largely rests on its director’s competence at helming extravagant aerial views of pyrotechnic destruction.

The truth is that a movie about deeply personal obsessions can’t work if it doesn’t have some of its own, and the prevailing mood of The Current War is indifference.

It seems as though the artist, all too aware of his reputation for both pageantry and shock value, has decided to offer nothing of the kind.

A generically competent but unsuspenseful chase film that never lives up to its potential for either social commentary or thrills.

Above all, it’s about the impossible desire, shared by both expats and artists, to forge an identity of one’s own. But whereas the films it quotes sought to create cryptic and contrapuntal meanings, Lapid errs on the side of the loudly obvious, building to a final shot that might as well be a thesis statement for the rest of the film.

Awkward and unfunny in exceptionally long stretches, Reboot probably won’t turn his diehard fans against him. But it’s unlikely to win him any new converts either. For that, there’s "Clerks," "Mallrats," or "Chasing Amy."

One can smirk at the movie’s fuzzy philosophies and primordial clichés and still appreciate the delivery of Lee’s action scenes.

Running only a little shorter than the average season of On Cinema At The Cinema, it’s never as cringe-inducingly funny or inventive as the webseries that spawned it.

The result often feels superficial; it is neither a definitive account of the creation of Scott’s touchstone of horror and sci-fi, nor a cogent analysis of its aestheticized subtexts, those gritty and unnerving surfaces and the things lurking underneath.

Billy Chew’s screenplay takes at least one important lesson from the best of both crime movies and small-town portraits: The characters, however minor or ridiculous, seem to lead lives that started well before the movie and will continue long after. Well, except for Dick himself. He’s gone.

The sequence is Last Blood’s pièce de résistance, and perhaps the only compelling reason the movie has to exist. But it’s also pure, relentless, grimacing punishment at the end of a joyless film, choreographed like a ritual sacrifice. Rambo has always been a monster, but in his old age, he has become something even worse: no fun.

A mesmerizing sci-fi drama.

Spurlock’s documentary turns out to be the exact thing it is meant to expose: an unfulfilling product passed off as something that’s good for you.

What keeps Don’t Let Go watchable is, ironically, its predictability: the cop-movie clichés, the shootouts, the mishandled evidence, the bargain-bin twists.

Given the awfulness of its predecessor, which was this publication’s pick for the worst film of 2016, a sequel that’s merely pedestrian represents a dramatic improvement.

If Brügger shares the doubts of Williams and other Hammarskjöld conspiracy theorists about Operation Celeste (in all likelihood a hoax, though not a Soviet one), he doesn’t let them get in the way of a good story. As for the latest official U.N. inquiry, its report is due sometime this year. But then, can you really trust it?