Jay Weissberg

The running time of two hours and 43 minutes is unquestionably self-indulgent; thankfully the clan’s charisma keeps attention from lagging too much despite frequent opportunities for trimming.

As impressive as Homefront is in the way it envisions a distorted world, its fully-realized digital design is all exterior display, whereas Expressionism at its best transforms disturbed psychological states into a nightmarish reality.

While trying to save her from being considered as merely an inspiration to the great men around her, the script inadvertently reinforces this impression.

TV-style and desperately in need of cutting, “Soul Boys” does convincingly position its subjects as key trendsetters, and their most memorable tunes continue to be enjoyable.

"Land” will feel overly familiar to those looking for more than well-intentioned musings on the horrendous treatment of guest workers.

Right from the superbly framed opening scene of Kostis on the ferry, the visuals satisfy with their unerring sense of composition.

Notwithstanding a few genuinely affecting moments, Our Mothers never breaks free from being a standard social-issue movie mostly invested in preaching the cause.

The undeniably talented helmer’s sophomore feature has little of the emotional power of “The Return,” though d.p. Mikhail Krichman does stellar work and thesping is faultless.

Audiences amenable to cold, meticulous shots where people are accorded the same attributes as a landscape will find elements to admire, and certainly on a cerebral level there’s much to appreciate, yet Natural Light sheds no warmth and offers no insight into the horrors of the human condition during wartime.

Director Oualid Mouaness’ enriching use of images and sensitivity to narrative balance outweigh his unexceptional dialogue in 1982. Even with such a caveat, his debut feature succeeds in accessing emotional truths that leave a lingering bittersweet melancholy.

Only a curmudgeon would deny the pic its moments of clean, wholly predictable fun.

Mendoza strengthens his gift for describing space with inquisitive cameras, but as the helmer’s star rises, his subtlety wanes, resulting in obvious statements made banal by heavy-handed ironies.

Even if the general ultra-clean cartoonishness of it all is deliberate, the film’s whisper-thin premise and sitcom-like characters are the cinema equivalent of Sweethearts candy: rather too sugared, and immediately forgotten.

Transitioning his story to the screen, Taia retains the bare bones but strips away warmth and insight, without any fresh perceptions that would compensate.

Die-hard acolytes will argue that the camerawork transcends or even complements the storyline; most everyone else will wonder what happened to an auteur whose work was awaited with such eager anticipation.

The pic is full of nicely observed vignettes that act as signifiers of caste, though at times the script turns overly didactic.

Intermittently interesting but more often pretentious, this sluggish exploration of time as real and conceived concepts rarely does more than regurgitate philosophical platitudes without locating the depth to make them interesting.

Where Haupt succeeds is in conveying the passion felt by everyone who works on the Sagrada, from foremen to sculptors.

Hard Labor teeters uncertainly between horror and social commentary. It feels as if the helmers tried to imagine what Bunuel would have done if he had made a horror film.

There’s value in examining the myth of Mansfield and its impact, but here poor Jayne herself is lost.

It leaves viewers gratified by the filmmaking bravura and the sheer pleasure of watching this superb cast in top form, but also feeling shortchanged.

[A] slight, predictable debut.

The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet is the perfect 3D vehicle and Jeunet takes full advantage, offering a feast of amusing visual flourishes suited to the book’s playfulness.

The intriguing ambiguity suffusing Kôji Fukada’s “Harmonium” returns to a certain degree in A Girl Missing, but this time the writer-director neglects to reinforce onscreen relationships, resulting in a disappointing and unmoving drama.

Boasting complex, sharply drawn characters and top-notch performances, this mature drama plays with ideas of seeing, both the outside world as well as within oneself, as Fluk (“Never Too Late”) masterfully depicts intimacies gone awry.

Even people reasonably familiar with Gnosticism, Manichaeism and its offshoots, early 20th century history and the works of Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov, whose writings Puiu adapted, will find this punishing film, with its theatrical construct and off-putting running time, a challenge with few lasting rewards.

The dialogue is very clear-cut, devoid of all contractions so that people speak in unnatural ways, though perhaps it makes the conversations clearer, especially to audiences whose native language might not be English. More problematic are the never-ending platitudes, all tied to spreading the message of equality.