Jordan Hoffman

Unfortunately both Eisenberg and Stewart, both frequently brilliant, are on unsure footing here. The movie simply doesn't know if it wants to be Jason Bourne or Cheech and Chong.

[A] touching, insightful and, at the end of the day, extremely well-meaning film.

Ricki and the Flash’s emotional intensity creeps up on you, and it’s all due to the performances. Everyone’s sympathetic, everyone’s got depth.

The first half of Straight Outta Compton, F Gary Gray’s two-and-a-half hour opus about the birth of west coast gangsta rap, is bursting with energy, exuberance and inspiration. The second half is immobilised by bloat and sanctification.

One of the most fascinating, if inscrutable films of the year.

Helms, a funny performer, is just the face of a mining expedition for easy yuks out of a recognised title. What that says about our regurgitative culture is rather depressing. There’s so much nostalgia on our screens right now. I could really use a vacation.

What’s ultimately frustrating about Zipper is that it seems like it has something important to say about infidelity and the sex industry, but can’t decide what that should be.

The best parts of Paper Towns are also the best part of being young – just hanging out doing nothing with friends who know you too well to allow for any lies.

Bagaria’s personal journey has none of the gravitas on screen that the director wants it to have, especially when set against the backdrop of actual human rights crises in Damascus.

Howe’s film is drenched in empathy, where violent actions aren’t exactly excused, but at least framed with understanding.

Tangerine offers a warts-and-all depiction of a subculture seldom treated with respect by straight society. The movie handles it in a sincere way that’s entertaining, too.

Ryan Reynolds does the best he can with the material.... But any intelligence is tossed once we get mired in a series of dull chase scenes.

The Ted franchise is perhaps unstoppable if MacFarlane sets his sights a bit lower, finds a way to streamline the plot mechanics and just give moviegoers what they never knew they wanted: time hanging out with a foul-mouthed anthropomorphised soft toy.

Even without the current headlines, United Passions is a disgrace. It’s less a movie than preposterous self-hagiography, more appropriate for Scientology or the Rev Sun Myung Moon. As cinema it is excrement. As proof of corporate insanity it is a valuable case study.

This is detached, flat film-making at its most bare. You figure out which lines of dialogue deserve to be underlined.

Hunting Elephants has its requisite scenes of planning and setbacks, but it mostly settles for old-people jokes (now I know the Hebrew for Viagra: it’s Viagra) and making Patrick Stewart look like an imbecile.

I can’t believe just how dumb Hot Pursuit is. Moreover I can’t believe just how much I laughed.

More frightening (yet strangely entertaining) than most of today’s narrative horror films.

I give the odd, small film Maggie all the points in the world for experimenting with genre-blending and subverting audience expectations, but there’s just too much about it that fails to connect.

It’s a play shoehorned into a film. Sometimes that can work – LaBute’s managed it before – but it’s a steep hill to climb, and this one doesn’t quite make it.

Age of Adaline, which starts off looking like a frothy series of excuses to put Blake Lively in some fabulously timeless gowns, ends up an emotional and even bold chamber drama. Its ending is ludicrous, but also perfect, and I’d be lying if I didn’t get a little choked up.

There’s really not much going on with Roar storywise. But then you take a step back and think about what it is that you’re watching. My viewing of Roar was set to a soundtrack of “Oh my God!” and “Holy crap!”, all of my own making.

The three leads draw you in. The pace gives these actors time to breathe, show nuance and make their characters human.

About Elly is remarkable for both its universal observations about human nature and its specifics.

This is the film’s grossest crime. It’s dumb, it’s long, it’s dull, but it isn’t quite bad enough to be camp.

Ultimately, Experimenter finds a glimmer of hope by simply revealing itself. Maybe if more people are educated about the dangers of obedience, they’ll put up more resistance. It can’t hurt to hope.

You’ve seen this movie before with peppier actors, and not tethered to a visually uninteresting set that looks like a remainder from a 10-year-old episode of CSI.

Bluebird is undoubtedly a remarkable achievement, especially for a first-time filmmaker.

If there was just one extended sequence that crackled with originality you could at least say it has its moments, but, truly, there’s nothing besides repeated use of swear words in lieu of wit.

What’s terrific about The Duff is that Casey and Jessica may not have intentionally befriended the less attractive Bianca as a way to make themselves look better, but they don’t exactly deny that she serves that purpose.

There’s more to this movie than sweeping music and celebrating in slow motion. It all stems from Costner’s remarkable, taciturn performance as Coach White.

Johnson’s Ana squeezes believability out of one of the more silly romantic entanglements in recent popular culture. It’s all there in her face, which Taylor-Johnson frames in close-up. She’s fully aware this scenario is ridiculous, but can’t seem to turn away from its lunacy.

It isn’t just the sheer density of jokes that is impressive, but the diversity.

The on-stage moments of Entertainment are revelatory but, unfortunately, some of the in-between meat of the film doesn’t quite connect.

A smart and beautiful meditation of fathers and sons (and the Father and Son) that is slow but never boring.

Director Kyle Patrick Alvarez deserves all the praise in the world for the way he cranks up this pressure cooker script. The Stanford Prison Experiment begins with giggles but ends in full psychological break.

Mistress America eventually travels down roads of broken trust and acceptance of reality, but please don’t let those heavy themes suggest this movie is anything other than pure delight. The primacy of the joke rules the day.

No one in the film is particularly likeable, and while the global implications about epistemology are interesting, the specifics of this particular case, at least rendered here, are quite dull.

Clearly there is entertainment value in this documentary, but it’s very much of a “behind the music” calibre.

Not since Grey Gardens has a film invited us into such a strange, barely-functioning home and allowed us to gawk without reservation. This is a nosy movie, but it is altogether fascinating.

Writer-director team Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (It’s Kind of A Funny Story, Half Nelson) must be applauded for refusing to let their shaggy dog tale line up with any predictable storyline.

Despite the uncomfortable sexism and altogether predictable nature of the film, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t modestly entertaining.

Think about that one insufferable guy you knew in school who comments on everything you put on Facebook. Now try and imagine spending an entire movie’s run time with him.

This movie may be too slow and verbose to be the next breakout horror hit, but its focus on themes over plot is what elevates it to something near greatness.

What The End of the Tour tries to sell, and sells well, is that Wallace’s big heart was just not made for these times.

Blackhat can’t decide if it is a grim, realistic story from the trenches or cyberwarfare or a giddy, “who cares if that makes sense?” Bond film.

Despite the presence of grandfatherly Michael Caine, Kingsman’s tone is about as far from the Christopher Nolan-style superhero film as you can get. Verisimilitude is frequently traded in for a rich laugh. The action scenes delight with shock humour.

Certainly we care for Margaret and the way Walter has her trapped, but her character comes across as a cypher representing a great number of issues without being a real individual. This movie wants to be an oil painting, but ends up being more of a mass-produced, though good-quality print.

Both Rogen and Franco, who have marvellous chemistry and exude good cheer, continue to tweak their personas in this very amusing, very imbecilic film.

Despite the desultory nature of the film, it is sure to hammer home some key points.

Zero Motivation is a shot of honesty, in which short-term goals are far more important than larger geo-political ones. Perhaps because they are the only ones over which we have any control.

This spiral of self-imposed despair feels like part three of a trilogy of American financial darkness after Killing Them Softly and The Counsellor. The Gambler isn’t quite so audience-unfriendly, but those looking for a typical Wahlberg thriller might come away disappointed. Others looking for a less sure bet might reap the rewards.

I’d be lying if I said this movie didn’t crack me up on more than a few occasions.

There’s slow cinema and there is boring cinema, and this is an unfortunate example of the latter.

For family entertainment, you could do a lot worse.

It’s a great story that lends itself to some striking scenes. Yet the film in total – if I may paraphrase Webb’s critics – has a number of holes.

It is a rather sly affair, slipping in some genuine food for thought amongst its snickering.

The Maze Runner is not a good movie, but it wins points for omitting much of what makes typical teen films excruciating.

The Duke of Burgundy will have its detractors. But this is not just a filthy movie. It's a considerable work of art, and one that touches on a rarely discussed side of human sexuality completely free of judgement.

“Expendables 3” has fewer nauseating clichés than The Judge.

A fantastic, sleek and fun satire.

Tina Fey is in the film, for heaven’s sake, and I love her to pieces, but by now we know to expect something humdrum when she’s on a movie screen.

Put bluntly, Tim Story's film wears you down until you relent and say, yes, I like these people and it's fun to watch them all have such a good time.

Embarrassing for everyone involved not because of any squeamish subject matter – quite the contrary, seeing retirement-age characters are refreshing – but because the story structure is so fake and so plodding.

Finding Fela does an exemplary job of explaining, in musical terms, what made Fela standout, a simple enough step that most music documentaries ignore.

Young kids will find the second, more action-heavy half of the film entertaining, but everyone else will want to crawl into their shell.

Life After Beth, a frustrating affair due to its waste of resources, feels rushed and under-rehearsed. It is a style of film-making that hopes it can glide its way into your good graces on ad-hoc performance flourishes, a wall-to-wall audio mix and editing patches. One soon recognizes this all a cover for one key issue: a lack of original ideas.

By the end of the movie few won’t be rolling their eyes or checking their watch, but there’s enough that’s fundamentally good in the meat of film not to wholly reject what The Giver is giving us.

There’s no way around this: The November Man is asinine. It is not without its pleasures – if you like seeing people get hit in the face with shovels, that is – but it might be the most irresponsibly dumb spy thriller I’ve seen in some time.

The corn in The Identical is as tall as an elephant’s eye – but there’s nothing that says the story of a man torn between his religious upbringing and his desire to be a musician can’t make for a good movie. In fact, considering a little movie called "The Jazz Singer," there’s ample proof that it can be groundbreaking.

One of the world's top disturbing tourist attractions is now finally getting the spooky film it deserves

It has a nose for what's cool, but is completely inept at execution.

In this 75-minute straight shot of Discovery Channel cinema, no emotional crests are peaked, but viewers will come away informed.

Cripplingly lifeless.

[A] blend of classic sci-fi fare and current pop-culture irony is what rockets “Guardians” into the stratosphere.

The end of the movie goes completely off the rails, but in a way that is charming in its stupidity.

This picture isn’t as showy or obvious as one of his (many) masterpieces, but it is quite good and deserves your time and respect.

Despite being clever and crafty it can’t break out of the curiosity shop. It’s the finest diorama in there, but something to admire, linger over then move past.

Serkis’ Caesar gets more than his fair share of rip-snortin’ badass moments. He’s arguably the finest leader of men we’ve seen on screen since “Lincoln.”

This is television-level moviemaking top to bottom, from its preposterous premise, scenery-chomping performances, idiotic sound cues and force-fed jump-scares. Deliver Us From Evil delivers formula, and in a formulaic fashion.

Basically a drama-in-disguise. Unfortunately, it’s a formulaic and extremely uneven one, albeit with a number of sympathetic performances.

Either I’m getting dumber or the “Transformers” sequels are getting more coherent.

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus isn't entirely successful – and certainly offers few new insights into the nature of addiction – but it remains a welcome change of pace.

his bleak and somewhat sadistic picture is the type of movie that unfolds like a slow car wreck. You know something bad is going to happen, you just aren’t sure what, or how, and when it eventually happens it is repulsive and yet you still can’t turn away.

Eastwood, who once upon a time was a flavorful director, is working in movie-of-the-week mode here. Cheesy, direct, bland.

Burning Bush is a rare accomplishment. It’s a political film with clear heroes and villains, and true to its HBO roots, it works as a fleet-of-foot juicy plot-delivery system.

22 Jump Street is a success, as there is a little good ol’ fashioned “heart” beneath its post-modern veneer.

A dark, dreary and dull “Mad Max in Neutral” from director David Michôd (“Animal Kingdom”) that tries to pass off its blunt narrative and repetitiveness as some sort of style.

Bonello's decision to show rather than tell keeps the audience on its toes.

The Homesman certainly wins a few points for trying a different type of Western. There are no greedy land barons and no gunslingers drawin’ at high noon. But being unique isn’t enough if the story remains uneven and the characters don’t feel real.

Cronenberg’s map doesn’t lead to a satisfying destination in a typical story sense, but it is a remarkable quest. For a movie that has so many problems, it is one of the more watchable ones.

Nothing short of fascinating.

Ryan Gosling wanted to make an art film and, despite some dull patches, pretty much succeeded.

What's unfortunate is that Toothless is starring in a toothless story.

The specifics of the journey get all the attention, while the fundamental conflicts remain not just unoriginal, but alarmingly nonexistent.

You’ll laugh if you’re young, you’ll laugh if you’re old.

Teerink’s reserved, spare form mirrors LeWitt’s work, which gives it tremendous impact.

Far-fetched, absurd and hopelessly schticky, but if you can get past its boring initial set-up, it’s actually quite funny.

It’s a wafer-thin, poorly plotted, insufferable comedy about a jerky guy who’s swapped actual human interaction for Facebook likes. People like this exist, and their stories should be told, but it would be wise to scroll past this version.

In the spaces between the hackneyed dialogue, ham-handed score, and poor acting, Walking With The Enemy eventually wins its sole victory: a desire to look the story up on Wikipedia later that day. That may be a small triumph, but it’s hardly the mark of fine cinema.

Small Time is impressive, just slightly, because it’s the one thing used-car salesmen are rarely accused of being: honest.

While Draft Day is a very agreeable and predictable movie, it is also very timely.

It's darker, stranger and pushes more buttons.

Does this mean that Sabotage is a rich, morally complex story about the gray zone between good and evil? Hell, no. It just means it is a bungle.

The landscape is a definitive presence throughout the film, which has almost no music and very little dialogue. The film is short (approximately 80 minutes) and maintains a good sense of dread throughout.

This isn’t a movie so much as a fetishist’s fever dream—a fantasia of New York crime movies from the 1970s that places the specificity of its time and place at center stage more than any actual New York crime movie from the era.

The connection that these two are allegedly making must be taken on faith. Little is shown or spoken to sell it.

With Muppets Most Wanted, the vaudevillian pandaemonium is alive and well.

For a tone poem on loneliness, fluid identity, and photogenic apartments, Enemy is the best entry in the genre since Roman Polanski’s The Tenant. And the last five minutes are just as unpredictable.

Nymphomaniac Vol. 1 is the worst thing Lars Von Trier has ever associated himself with.

Perfect Sisters may stand accused of being rife with tone-deaf stylistic choices, but the more positive spin is to call it a marginal film elevated, however inadvertently, by the strange specificity of its scenes.

Lengthy passages are unrelated to any discernible narrative, and seem to exist in that interzone your mind travels through just before it goes to sleep.

All the pieces are in place for a gripping indie horror flick, but this pointless, motivation-free film just goes around in circles.

For a movie with the ostensible mission of spreading the Gospel, it does a poor job of speaking to anyone except the faithful.

The first sixty minutes of Pompeii are awful, bordering on unwatchable... The final forty-five minutes of the movie however are, by sheer force of will, irrefutably entertaining. At least there’s raining death in the form of fireballs smashing up the place.

There’s just too much good stuff to dismiss White Bird in a Blizzard out of hand, even if it does have a somewhat dull and desultory plot.

Listen Up Philip is big, sprawling and tortured, if a little lacking in focus – while funny in parts, it isn’t really a comedy.

Throughout the picture you understand the miracle and good fortune of finding love, and recognize the great changes in tolerance American society is currently (albeit slowly) undergoing.

The movie on its own is great, but with this music it's sublime.

A gripping, fascinating and visually arresting memoir.

It never quite elevates itself above something like a really well produced behind-the-scenes featurette on a high end Blu-ray. But if you’ve got that Jodorowsky T-shirt aping the Judas Priest logo, you may as well start lining up now.

The kid performances are impressive and the subtext of a region still shaking off the effects of a long-ended war gives seed to some much needed discussion.

Ti West’s pointless new film The Sacrament, an exercise in talking loud and saying nothing, isn’t just bad, it’s infuriating.

This melancholy documentary shows how championship dreams can turn into a nightmare.

Out of the Furnace is no disaster, but it doesn’t achieve what it hopes to achieve, and it has no one to blame but itself.

He spent 28 years in prison and this is what he gets?

Only completists need check in with Homefront. The rest of us can just stay home.

Go For Sisters is something of a frustration. It’s the least interesting crime caper ever, and there are fascinating characters forced to go through the motions as if any of us could possibly care.

An embarrassing gut-punch of unfiltered schmaltz, but its sympathy for the devil-style humanism is well-meaning.

Some Velvet Morning is a horror film with no blood, with words the only weapon for 98% of the picture.

Then Bill Nighy shows up and is awesome and punches you in the heart. It ultimately feels like a cheat, and while there won’t be a dry eye in the house, it won’t be earned.

Despite being very much a “filmed play” it doesn’t come across as too theatrical. Polanski uses plenty of close-ups and keeps the action moving.

Gambardella’s world-weary look back at his sweet life, eclipsed by his turning sixty-five, is a dizzying fantasia of flash and filigree, and what it lacks in direct narrative is well patched-over with frenetic and emotion-rich sequences. This movie is a sight and sound workout.

It’s just boring – and boring in a way that apparently has no endgame.

Borgman‘s crafty, trickster-ish screenplay, always two steps ahead of you, keeps you rooting for clues, enough to put your ethics on temporary hold.

A pastiche of bad film cliches and scenes devoid of any real conflict or character development.

Its final scenes and sublimely framed last, lingering shot are extraordinary.

Not many side-splitting jokes, but a goofy glee is smeared across it all.

While ultimately gory — and a little dopey — this is no rowdy, exploitation-y, gross-out picture. This is a film where ambience, glossy imagery and performance are more effective than the splatter.

Directors Katie Graham and Andrew Matthews create a great framework for the epic nemesis battle, but also know when to pull back to keep the movie grounded in reality.

Schreiber saves it to an extent with some unusual performance choices, but when you compare this ending to the emotional supernova of Danny Boyle’s “Sunshine” it comes way short.

For every poignant moment there’s a gaudy dream sequence, wretched internal monologue, ham-fisted zoom or an exchange of dialogue sorely lacking nuance.

Fading Gigolo wants to be some sort of sunny tapestry about New York’s social groups, but it’s impossible to see past its absurd premise.

Cage, not one known for subtlety of late, is truly great in this sad, funny and tender role.

For a film that reminds use over and over that this is a whole new world, this movie feels awfully familiar.

There are countless clever dialogue parries as well as some quite outstanding rants. It definitely takes the movie outside of the world of pure realism, but the theatricality is well worth it.

It’s all about the performances. McConaughey and Leto don’t just give voice to the disenfranchised of the 1980s, but all people suddenly faced with impossible challenges.

While Bad Words is a little too dopey to take seriously, this is compensated for with a handful of truly amusing sequences.

While there are some okay side stories (stuff with the daughters and daughters’ friends) it kinda feels like attending a dinner party and checking in on the first world problems of a friend you kinda like, but don’t like enough to ask any follow up questions.

There are tones of 1970s shaggy realism that are interrupted by moments of character-driven shtick. The wistful scenes aren’t rich enough to engross you and the comedy isn’t clever enough to make a difference.

It transcends the usual biopic limitations to tell a specific story about some well-known people with larger, universal implications.

Co-writers and stars June Diane Raphael (“Whitney,” “New Girl”) and Casey Wilson (“Happy Endings”) are genuine and true comic performers. Even though the story stunk, the set pieces were uninspired and the direction was downright wretched, when these two are “on” and doing schtick, they are absolutely fresh and hilarious.

There are some laughs – and a few moments worthy of tears – but there’s a breaking point of believability in here somewhere that keeps Nebraska merely good as opposed to great.

The whole picture is lifeless and without consequence.

The Walt Disney World-set Escape From Tomorrow is both a great gimmick-dependent story and a remarkable piece of filmmaking. It is a radical, transgressive departure that exploits new technology in heretofore unseen ways.

The point of this film is the spell it weaves and, by and large, it is successful. It’s the music, it’s the cinematography, it’s the score, it’s Casey Affleck’s hollow speaking voice — they all add up to something that resembles a fever dream facsimile of an eventful movie.

From a distance The Spectacular Now is mere soap opera, but it is one of those films that grow more fascinating upon inspection.

Drug War is by no means a bad film, but it doesn’t do much to push the needle of originality, and doesn’t glide enough to represent perfection of the genre.

It’s unlikely anyone who sees Blackfish will be trekking to Shamu Stadium this summer.

Hollow, uninteresting and false.

The Lifeguard is a painfully dull (alleged) drama utterly lacking in originality or self-awareness.

It is one of the better dumbass sci-fi action movies to come down the pike in quite some time.

First and foremost I’m So Excited! is late night cabaret – funny, filthy and more than a little bit sloshed.

A Hijacking isn’t boring, but it is not an adventure film – it is a frustratingly realistic take on the unfortunate modern threat of piracy, and a bit of an emotional workout.

This is design work of the highest caliber and it is impossible to not enjoy simply watching these little buggers run around. It is unfortunate, however, that the creativity, originality and propulsive storytelling found in the original “Monsters Inc.” just didn’t matriculate with them.

Pussy Riot: A Punk’s Prayer is about an interesting topic, but the film itself is not quite up to snuff.

Fill the Void is, in the worst sense of the word, a “women’s picture,” in which people wring their hands and worry, wail and weep over marriage and maintaining the status quo.

A damn near perfect film.

The Past is just about as good as a relationship drama is ever going to get. The plot is teased out with deliberate grace, the performances are sublime and the revelations, even the most melodramatic, feel right and true. It’s big canvas stuff painted by a new master.

Only Lovers Left Alive is an exhibit A example of how to use style to enhance substance, not overwhelm it.

Chandor delivers pure cinema. Thrilling and adventuresome, this is a career highlight from the uniquely sympathetic Robert Redford.

The first half of “The Congress,” while still fascinating, does suffer a bit from keeping its focus on the gripes and accusations between Hollywood actors and producers...Once the Philip K. Dick-meets-”Inception” second half kicks in, the implications grow more universal.

There’s no way to overstate the gorgeous look of this film, but the mannered dialogue and deliberateness of pace becomes less of an homage to Asian revenge films than a parody.

It’s a character piece, and one of the best and most understated movies I’ve ever seen about the grieving process.

The film is so engaging because it's so damn funny.

S-VHS isn’t as pants-pooping scary as the first, but it is funnier, tighter and slicker.

Despite a lead performance by the always welcome Julianne Moore it is rudderless in its presentation and outright stupid in its central conceits.

This is a movie that proposes a genuine, intelligent solution, both for the main character and for us. It comes at you kinda quickly (and economically, in about three wordless shots), but it hit me like a bag of dumpster-dived apples to the gut.

I spent the bulk of Paradise Love mimicking Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” It’s been a long time since I’ve seen such a disturbing film.

As a movie, quite frankly, it stinks. As an “entertainment object,” it will no doubt find its boosters.

The emotions the Shinoharas’ story inspire are all over the road. It is at times triumphant and warm, then sad and even enraging.

In the House is crafty and juicy and ought to delight anyone whose ever thumped their chest about being a storyteller. I must confess, however, that somewhere in the third act the air started to leak from the balloon.

The prolific 76-year-old British creator of character-rich, social dramas steeped in natural realism (usually) has whiffed it and whiffed it hard with this one. It’s not that it’s just “lesser Loach.” It is, in my opinion at least, humiliating.

It is a shaggy dog road movie, and a drug-hazy one at that, but beneath the silliness and character-based gags, Crystal Fairy is, I feel, an unusually insightful look at self-imposed false identities and group dynamics.

Despite the numerous patchy moments The Brass Teapot by and large squeaks by as an enjoyable entertainment.

The action is the real star here, and it’s all good enough. It isn’t great – the aerial special effects are distractingly cheap – but at least there’s lots of it on display.

The remarkable storytelling that eventually emerges in Eden is something you should see, providing you feel that you can stomach it.

It isn’t just the bright colors and the costumes but every visual aspect of Byzantium that sings. Neil Jordan knows where to put the camera. It’s just a shame he wasn’t able to inject a little life inside that frame.

This tiny friends-and-family production has the vibe of a project done on weekends and after school. That’s no knock. It is vibrant and bubbly and just clever enough to engage people who wouldn’t normally watch a black-and-white micro-budget Shakespeare adaptation without any big movie stars.

Raimi manages to keep things engaging, which is a very real act of wizardry in and of itself.

It’s shallow, it’s boring, it’s poignant, it’s clever, it’s poorly acted, it’s intentionally poorly acted, it has no story, it has marvelous scenes, it is artful, it is hallucinatory, it is shoddily put together. All response is valid.

To the Wonder is distinctly lacking in oomph and, without an emotional connection, without anything interesting happening on the screen, the beauty can only take you so far before the endeavor falls like a house of cards.

It is highly likely you’ll forget the movie by the time you go to bed.

It does a marvelous job at giving us an impressionistic taste of horrific circumstances without using them to beat us into submission.

A Haunted House, its despicable bigotry aside, is also a not-very-good comedy.

Unfortunately the bulk of the picture is cut together like a beer commercial on poorly lit cheap video without much panache. Unless primary colors with a gauzy halo is panache.

At 76 minutes, Caesar Must Die is more of an art piece than a thick steak of a feature film, but it maintains a fascinating hum from start to finish.

Lore is a rare, wonderful film that works not just as surface entertainment, but has deeper historical meaning, as well as an even grander, more universal statement.

He’s taken what, on paper, boils down to an extra ridiculous episode of “Law and Order: Criminal Intent” and passes it off as high cinematic art.

As the anticipated follow-up to Roman Coppola’s marvelous 2001 film “CQ,” this is something of a letdown, but as a breezy romp it could be far, far worse.

This movie is about as subtle as a sledgehammer, with no shortage of cringeworthy moments and an uninteresting lead performance.

The film isn’t a home run, but with Rudd in the lead in something so out of the ordinary for him, it’s fair to call a ground rule double.

[A] gripping, well-acted and sharply-written low-budget drama.

Private Property’s vicious form of prurience may make some queasy, and is hardly the type of movie that could get made today without great backlash, but there’s definitely more going on here than mere time-capsule curiosity.

This extremely homemade film, written and directed by Bridey Elliott and starring her own mostly-famous family, is extremely funny at times and nerve-wracking at others, but also pitch black to the point that many will find it unbearable. I say stick with it; if nothing else, the film is a work of great daring.

It’s unfortunate that Byrne’s offering such a tremendous performance in a film that is, to put it as bluntly as possible, so very dumb.

I want more people to see The Tale because it’s such an innovative, honest and important film. It is a landmark, and Laura Dern is absolutely extraordinary. But I know for certain I’ll never watch it again.

It is a quiet, subtle story and, as is so often the case when an actor takes their first trip behind the camera, a showcase for terrific performances.

The Kindergarten Teacher is probably the only movie about poetry with an ending as tense as any thriller.

The scenes of artistic, scientific and communal triumph were significant. The isolated, solipsistic anger of each character, lost in their own identity loop, seemed like a perfect analogy for the conflicts in eastern Europe in the mid-1990s.

Wash Westmoreland’s Colette is exhilarating, funny, inspiring and (remember: corsets!) gorgeous, too.

This is a gripping and sad drama that puts a tremendous amount of faith in its performers and audience, and for all the emotion and tenderness in the rest of this year’s Sundance crop, this is the first film that left me a complete broken-down mess by the end.

This film looks absolutely gorgeous, but apart from its production design it is basically a disaster.