Inkoo Kang

The script relies too often on Sasha’s bestie or Marcus’ father pushing the destined couple toward each other, but its smaller moments of naturalistic riffing make up for the rigid plotting.

The depiction isn’t remotely believable, but with Ronan endowing her character with both a steel spine and a fresh-faced naïveté (in a performance that makes her the film’s sole great asset), it’s fun, even inspiring.

Because The Institute is largely framed as if the viewer were a co-player in Jejune's game, the film is an experience that's fun and frustrating in equal measure.

Dolemite Is My Name delivers on titties, funnies, and kung fu, all mixed up in a syrupy nostalgia that makes the picture’s feel-good populism go down easy. It’s only when the credits roll that you might notice there was little there but froth.

As a whole, the film's characters touchingly illustrate the tolls of living with unresolved trauma and chronic uncertainty, as well as the solidarity and relative freedom this community of outcasts enjoys.

Pilgrimage travels quite far on the momentum provided by a series of reveals. Each shifts the film’s stakes significantly enough that we look forward to the next divulgence as much as the succeeding battle scene. It ultimately stumbles when it reaches for depth, arriving at a hollow conclusion that mistakes cynicism for profundity.

The film is meant to be a negotiation of what that long-ago relationship was, and it is that. But considered in our reality of pervasive sexual iniquity, Una also feels, whatever its creators’ intentions, an awful lot like a litany of self-serving excuses for pedophilic behavior, which may or may not be sincere.

Mo’s story feels rare, relevant and real. But we’re stuck on the outside looking in.

Although Kaveh and Raul never transcend their archetypes as heartbroken single guy and too-comfortable married man, and Hamedani and Isao aren't naturals in front of the camera, their rapport ultimately makes Junk a worthwhile lark.

Late Night suggests that Kaling is as fascinated as ever not by the girl next door but by powerful, unruly women — and the unconventional love stories befitting their willful, idiosyncratic selves. But the film may be most notable for its summation of the thinking and rethinking that Kaling has done about her 15 years in Hollywood — and how to fight to change it.

Chappaquiddick may or may not be what actually happened, but it gets at enough piercing truths.

If you like postmodern gimmickry and modern dance, and are OK with sitting through nearly 10 minutes of staged talking-head interviews, glum stoner talk about abortion, nausea-inducing filmmaking, characters whose motivations don’t make sense, horror, exploitative child death, and a quasi-coercive lesbian make-out—but just don’t care to be reminded “Drugs! Are! Bad!”: Leave 89 minutes in. Or don’t come at all, because Climax really isn’t about anything more than that.

Director Lone Scherfig’s stagings of these suspenseful set pieces are masterful, but the rest of the thriller is a fairly predictable manifesto against Britain’s de facto oligarchy.

For most of its run, the film is a tribute to unimaginative competence, confidently venturing where so many movies have ventured before. But in the last few scenes, the script offers a solid twist and a cynical social critique, the latter coming out of nowhere but still somehow managing to work.

If there isn't enough to feel, at least there's a lot to look at. Thanks to the superb 3-D direction by DeBlois, we swoop through the air, whoosh down dragons’ tails, and juuust baaaarely squeeze into small crevices, but still, those experiences are only like being on a really great rollercoaster — they don't mean anything.

As with so much of Brazilian cinema, the framing of the plot as a social allegory instead of a psychological portrait doesn't yield the most emotionally satisfying experience. But Wolf serves as an important feminist correction -- and a compelling reminder that predators can come from anywhere.

Part incomplete rom com, part squishy lampoon, La Boda de Valentina ultimately falls short in both modes, but accomplishes just enough to warrant a RSVP.

Portman’s voiceover performance is full of conviction, but I wish that Eating Animals gave us different models of vegetarianism than she and Foer, a diminutive actress and a bookish Brooklynite, respectively.

The happenstance plotting and over-reliance on violence as a plot motor dissipate the film's energy by the end.

At 75 minutes, the resulting feature is the definition of slight, but just winsome and optimistic enough to justify itself.

[A] perfectly serviceable thriller.

It’s not that One Child Nation needs to cater to both sides of the argument, but it would have helped contextualize how often the acts of violence the film chronicles actually happened.

Walker's life is so eventful — and her contributions so important — that the hagiography is worth forgiving.

Borrowing a few biographical details from Stanton’s life, the virtually plotless drama exudes admiration for its nonagenarian muse, but it’s built so sparely that it doesn’t have much to offer anyone who doesn’t already share its reverence for the “Paris, Texas” actor.

The mustiness of many of the script's ideas hardly detracts from what feels like a radical premise, at least in film — that a woman can get off with a stranger and leave it at that. Erica Jong would be proud.

S#x Acts works as a crash course in sexual ethics, but it also fails to transcend its genre trappings as a morality tale about the dangers of low self-esteem.

Regrettably, Men at Lunch obsesses over disappearing ghosts instead of the records we already have and the history we should know.

The romance of patriotism and pain, depicted here in lush greens and velvety blues, makes “The Imitation Game” enjoyable enough to render it a vindication of the formula. It disappoints as biography, but makes for a great yarn, even if you've heard it before.