Inkoo Kang

Raze is a sweaty, queasy, bruising experience — and a superbly crafted film.

Desiccated by its pretensions, it's freeze-dried melodrama.

Truth is hammier than Easter brunch, but its depictions of rejection transfiguring into violence are always affecting and distressing.

A compelling portrait of Japan's stagnant economy and its disheartening effect on younger workers.

Beyond this general outline, plot and character development are afterthoughts, or maybe never-thoughts.

The film's lack of momentum makes the pace stultifyingly slow, but it's the script's reliance on the musty Wise Indian trope that makes "Dancing" dead on arrival.

Devastating in its simplicity and honesty, The Selfish Giant is a colossus of feeling.

[A] tediously naturalistic and fairly pointless no-budget indie about the compromises of middle-aged femininity.

The French chamber dramedy What's in a Name is frequently delightful, full of ribald humor and compelling, intelligent debate.

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.

Walker never has Pearce explain why he wants to return the lifts, and he never has to. The heights speak for themselves.

The inherent cinematic potential of one of nature's cutest animals rescues the film from being a total waste of time.

Chen's grand opus about the perils of the Internet already feels obsolete.

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.

Spong's documentary isn't a beautiful film... Its value, rather, is archival.

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

The Punk Singer fascinatingly traces the evolution of a woman.

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.

The great achievement in writer-director Jono Oliver's poignant, superb debut, Home, lies in the balance between the film's empathy for those like Jack who seek independence and its compassion for others who may need care indefinitely.

This character study in rom-com's clothes is ambitiously formula-averse, but too shaggy and unfocused to be satisfying.

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.

Bledsoe leads an impressive cast, but there's only so much the actors can do with writer-director Tony Glazer's underdeveloped script.

The grande dame's performance, alternately goofy and grave, is an absolute tour de force.

The lions are majestic yet adorable; too bad the humans are such a sorry sight.

LaBeouf and Wood don't clang, but they don't quite click, either. That's not enough for the film to persuade us of its message, that love is worth any sacrifice.

The film's overall narrative is one of rocky but steady progress.

A Case of You is a disappointing romantic comedy that aspires to social relevance until the third act, when it settles for pat Freudian revelations.

Director Junya Sakino's debut would have been stronger if the comic barbs in Jeff Mizushima's script hadn't been dulled by Mizushima's editing, which bungles the timing of the jokes.