Inkoo Kang

Hoover's stubbornly ground-level perspective renders the documentary's lack of context about HIV in India...rather frustrating. But Blood Brother feels important anyway, not so much as a snapshot of one volunteer but for its passionate portrayal of the curative powers of love.

A love letter to that singular intersection of artistic innovation, cultural legacy, community pride, and family-sustaining (or -straining) commerce known as the restaurant.

The Paw Project is robustly persuasive, with Conrad compellingly framing her crusade as a battle between a right-thinking vet and a deep-pocketed industry group that purportedly represents her.

False gravity weighs down 2 Jacks, a father-son drama less interested in exploring familial relations than in tut-tutting the millennials.

It's frustrating that the filmmakers could only think to enrich the characters of one race by demeaning those of another.

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.

That Rosa never encounters another character with English fluency — nor grasps her Eurocentric limitations — makes director Threes Anna's film less the intended portrait of cultural isolation than an illustration of how a lack of imagination can lead to despair.

For the first hour, the plot is stultifyingly aimless, while the satire of Disney's oppressive optimism is as stale as any theme-park snack. But like a roller coaster, a queasily rollicking and dizzyingly loopy climax... ultimately makes the long wait worthwhile.

It contains more praise than insights, and, chopped into several sections, the documentary could easily become a series of featurettes in the "Extras" section of an American Idiot DVD. Yet Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong still commands the screen.

A masterful blend of black humor and queasy dread.

Its lo-fi charms — the cutesy-scary monster design, earnest family values and Danny Elfman-esque soundtrack — make the film feel like an '80s throwback in a way that justifies the nostalgia.

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

Though the filmmakers undoubtedly had good intentions, their ultimate point—that a long life is the result of moral rectitude—is offensive and imbecilic.

Regrettably, the subtitles fail to capture Sul and Moon's witty wordplay — but their snappy, prickly chemistry is obvious to all.

The film is as heartbreaking as it is heart-stopping.

The genre elements of the romantic comedy Wedding Palace attempt a transpacific transit, but get lost in translation.

In trying to say everything, Plus One reveals it doesn't have much to say at all.

The film strands its archetypal characters in a featureless danger zone and gives them overly familiar dialogue borrowed from a dozen other B-movies.

A winsome mix of funny, harrowing, and smart, it's most commendable for making characters who are addicted to bad behavior—and who refuse to blame themselves for it—somehow exceedingly sympathetic.

Any one-man crusade is likely to fail, but a rom-com character's war against sincerity is doomed from the start.

The film offers disappointingly little insight into the music itself.

Ray Ray's belated journey into manhood never feels sentimental or precious. But it also never strikes an emotional tone that's more than blandly agreeable.

The bloodletting is blandly demure and the identity of the malefactor telegraphed too early.

Flat jokes, uneven performances, and a predictable romance help make Bounty Killer a lot less fun than it should be — a killer shame, given its boldly gonzo premise.

La Maison de la Radio is the kind of film that divides its audience into two camps: those happy to observe and those impatient to be told a story.

Tian-Hao Hua's documentary distinguishes itself not with false suspense but tremendous poignancy and humor, much of which come from the riders' varied histories and motivations for revving up their bikes.

While the narrative spins in place, Kyle Killen's script throws out one uninspired gambit after another to extend the film to feature length, eventually climaxing with dual endings, both contrived.

It's a delicate yet passionate creation, modest in scope but almost overwhelming in its emotional intricacy, ambition, and resonance. Easily one of the best films so far this year, it's a nearly perfect blend of pimple-faced naturalism, righteous moral fury, nuanced social insight, and unsentimental but devastating drama.