Jay Weissberg

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

[A] solid yet unexceptional documentary.

Issues are overly simplified and scenes are often poorly constructed (not helped by uneven editing), though Nafar is a charismatic performer. Ditto Qupty, and the energetic hip-hop scenes are welcome distractions. Visuals are spirited.

Călin Peter Netzer’s follow-up to his Golden Bear winner “Child’s Pose” lacks that film’s directness and drive, and not only because this time he’s chosen to shuffle the sequence of events.

What 13 Minutes fails to understand is that it’s a moral imperative to remember, but it’s an ethical minefield to remember in a simplified manner.

It’s hard not to appreciate the astute ways the script captures the moment when carefree childhood turns into the loss of innocence.

Don’t Swallow My Heart, Alligator Girl! aims for poetry yet, like its ridiculously clumsy title, manages only an odd mix of magical realism with over-heated Lynchian touches.

Bland even for the armchair traveler, “Lost” is as inoffensive as a picture-souvenir booklet, and equally unmemorable.

There’s something stirringly essential about Paris 05:59, partly thanks to the late-night-inspired sensation that Theo and Hugo have the world to themselves, and can make it into whatever they want.

The Ornithologist is deliciously subversive and genuinely funny.

Katie Holmes makes an undistinguished helming debut with All We Had, a middlebrow drama with no pretensions but also no depth.

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.

A solid, and solidly engaging film that nevertheless feels like an extended promo for the Branson brand.

The doc is stylistically uninspiring, with a tedious threatening sound design, but the powerful subject matter largely overcomes such missteps.

Frantz plays like classic melodrama, and has certain charms.

If anything, the film is most indebted to classic cloak-and-dagger movies, in which sharp, richly succinct dialogue and plenty of atmosphere seem effortlessly carried along by the force of magnetic personalities.

Emanuel’s likeability (more apparent in the film than in Blecher’s novel) unquestionably helps bridge the extended running time, and Solange is a fascinating character, liberated yet still drawn to the scene of her hospitalization. The film also has a sense of humor...but the project never quite comes together.

While Kim Seong-hun’s Tunnel sounds like it resembles any number of creepy tunnel pics or grand catastrophe epics, it’s actually a lean, enjoyable disaster story with enough distinctive elements to make it feel relatively fresh.

Sharply yet subtly capturing the atmosphere of fear fostered by the dictatorship of President Ben Ali, this skillfully made drama is especially attuned to the myriad forms of surveillance, from the prurient to the political.

The prosaic script feels far too derivative, and only the impressive rain-lashed finale succeeds in delivering that tingly thrill one expects from historical action epics.

Director McCarthy does little visually that would generate a sense of fear in any viewer, and there’s nothing that will generate so much as a startled jump.

There’s a confused sci-fi element and a perfunctory nod to society’s benumbed attitude toward violence, but really, the pic is just an excuse for more splatter from a director who, as always, knows his target audience.

Norgaard wants to keep viewers guessing the whys and wherefores, but putting two and two together is so easy here that only the narratively challenged will be surprised by the culprit’s motivations.

An allegorical lesson about dictatorships and the cycle of violence they breed, Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s The President unfortunately offers a simplified and simplistic reduction, akin to an ancient morality tale without the ancients’ brevity – rather than sophistication cloaked in innocence, the pic feels like didacticism submerged in naivete.

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.

As expected from a master like Mungiu, everything is beautifully structured and utterly credible, yet Graduation feels like a retread.

Boasting superb camerawork from d.p. Ahmed Gabr and stellar crowd direction, Clash might strike some as crossing too often into hysteria, yet this is bravura filmmaking with a kick-in-the-gut message about chaos and cruelty (with some humanity).

Surprises always come at the end of Pablo Larraín’s films, when everything suddenly comes together and the audience sits in the cinema feeling both illuminated and floored. Neruda is no different, representing the director at his stunning best with a work of such cleverness and beauty, alongside such power, that it’s hard to know how to parcel out praise.