Jordan Mintzer

There’s no real voice in the storytelling, nothing distinctive about the imagery, if it’s not a doubling up on the violence and gore, and the result doesn’t remotely resonate in the same way.

Knife hits you from its very first frame — and this is really a frame of celluloid and not a file of gigabytes — as a work engulfed in the pleasures of filmmaking's past.

Director Marie Monge makes their rollercoaster love affair both seductive and irritating — the former because of the heated lead performances, the latter because you spend at least half the movie wondering why Ella doesn’t get the hell out of there.

There are a few standout scenes in War's closing reels, as well as a few cleverly executed twists, yet Erlingsson doesn't let them undercut the movie's emotional sway.

Bi’s film is ultimately akin to the early image we see of Wildcat’s body being wheeled on a mine cart and pushed gently into the abyss, taking us on a slow and steady rollercoaster ride through memory, melancholy and movie magic.

Girls of the Sun (Les Filles du soleil) is at once mildly harrowing and completely over-the-top, intermittently intense yet so unsubtle it winds up doing damage to its own worthy discourse.

DP Eric Dumont captures the action as if he were shooting events as they unfold in real time. Along with the supporting nonpro cast and all the news footage, this makes At War feel much closer to documentary than fiction — and the movie itself less like a workplace drama than the chronicle of a soldier in the heat of battle.

The drama feels a bit leisurely and distant at times, and the film runs a little long, yet it intelligently and assuredly explores how longstanding traditions can be gradually upended by drugs, money and outside influences.

Moussaoui captures the drama with a simple style that can seem a bit lackluster at times, although he makes good use of the Algerian locations and coaxes compelling performances from his cast. In the end, his narrative's three-pronged structure is perhaps the film's strongest asset.

Animation work is never exactly jaw-dropping but fits the bill, with plenty of colorful set pieces in both the great outdoors and the high-tech headquarters of HairCo. Snarky dialogue is minimal compared to most tongue-in-cheek cartoons, while a few pop culture nods (to Star Wars and Better Call Saul) will give older viewers something to look out for.

It proves that Beauvois still masters his uniquely classical brand of filmmaking, coaxing strong performances out of veteran Nathalie Baye and newbie Iris Bry, who makes an impressive screen debut.

The fact that the director once again displays a true mastery of his craft, from Deffontaines’ exquisite framing to the decision to record all the songs live rather than having them lip-synched (apparently one of the only times this has been done since Straub-Huillet’s 1975 movie Moses and Aron), makes for a transfixing, if sometimes excruciating, cinematic experience.

Stubby hardly shies away from the tough realities of what was known as the War to End All Wars, and it feels both proficiently documented and generally credible, even if it’s hard to believe that a dog did everything you see happening on screen.

Featuring sharp performances from Marina Fois (Polisse) and promising newcomer Matthieu Lucci, the film shows Cantet returning to form...with a story that pursues the themes of his best work while underscoring some of the issues currently facing his homeland.

By keeping the camera focused on the faces of patients and judges alike, Depardon — working again with sound recordist and producer Claudine Nougaret — reveals shreds of humanity, and even moments of hilarity, in these closed-door sessions.

It’s a decent concept for any sort of movie – a thriller, a horror flick, a comedy – but the problem here is that writer-director Joe Martin never quite decides which one he wants to make.

England steers his talented young cast in the right direction despite some snafus in his story, and the fine acting is what ultimately brings 1:54 to the finish line.

Dialogue tends toward the eye-rolling variety and performances feel uneven across the board, with the actors using a menagerie of accents, including some dubious Deep South ones, as they shout above all the pounding rain and thunder.

McKenzie deserves credit for revealing such a troubling facet of her homeland, and even if the shallow focus — both literal and figurative — of her movie can be frustrating at times, she bravely never turns away.

Everyone is extremely serious, which can be a bit of a drag at times, but as a study in trauma The Cured has its moments and the film plays best when it remains intimate.

In terms of drama, or melodrama, or just bad drama, Freed rarely delivers the goods while trying hard to give fans what they came for.

It's a certified B-movie without superheroes or interplanetary travel, drawing its power from a whodunit, race-against-the-clock scenario that plays as if The Lady Vanishes and Strangers on a Train were chopped up and tossed into the blender along with a slab of CGI and a full bottle of Dexedrine.

As much as the helmer’s aesthetic is impressive, the laconic pacing and somewhat flat performances can be a bit of a drag, as is a script that heads to familiar places and takes a while to do so.

This stylish chamber piece plays like a cross between Ex Machina and The Tree of Life, mixing a cleverly conceived biotechnical fable with sun-dappled sentimentalism that doesn’t always resonate like it should.

By focusing his camera on those “half-men, completely broken” by Habre’s reign and allowing them to tell their stories, Haroun is helping his country to finally mourn its own tragedy, while his warm and understanding approach offers up what feels like a path toward appeasement.

The pairing of Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart in the lead roles pays off big time, with more laugh-out-loud moments than the original and some particularly hilarious work from Hart, who steps up his game after his fun if broad-minded performances in Get Hard and the Ride Along movies.

What really helps Mountain overcome its far-fetched scenario is the pairing of Winslet and Elba, who know how to turn up the charm tenfold yet make Alex and Ben seem (mostly) like real people.

The sadistic horror comedy Safe Neighborhood is the kind of film that’s tough to categorize but easy to enjoy, especially if you like watching teenagers do some very twisted things for the holiday season.

The painstaking work done by Kobiela and Welchman to turn some of the artist’s most prized canvases into animated scenes can be impressive to behold.

Even if the air fizzles out a bit during the denouement, the film still accomplishes what it set out to do, with both Kahn and Bejo aptly shouldering all the narrative weight until the final scene.

Composed of broad, colorful brushstrokes and minimalist figuration, this seldom-told story can be a bit slow on the plot side but makes up for it with exquisite artistry and a welcome sense of gloom.

Barbet Schroeder offers up a touching look at unrequited love and neglected memory with the simpatico two-hander, Amnesia.

Sussman ultimately portrays Hayes as a man with a good heart who did not necessarily realize how his own story would wreak collateral damage upon an entire people, while the filmmakers — especially Parker — are shown to be less remorseful about the whole experience.

Where director Yamada excels is in depicting the interior worlds of the two main characters, paying particular attention to details, whether visual or sonic, that seem to place a constant divide between Shoya and Shoko.

This impressionistic chronicle of the war is, at first, more concerned with household chores and family matters than it is with soldiers on the battlefield, but its harrowing third act reveals what can happen when civilians become targets as well.

Tavernier focuses on a dozen or so major and minor auteurs, showcasing their artistry in hundreds of film clips that he comments on with historical insight and aesthetic precision.

It’s an if-it-ain’t-broke-then-don’t-fix-it approach that works just fine if you’re simply looking to take another ride on the rollercoaster.

The film slowly but surely works its charms, painting a rich, emotionally complex portrait of a woman who, like Denis herself, will not let herself be boxed in.

For a film meant to champion the powers of three-dimensional art, Rodin winds up being awfully flat.

It’s definitely treacly in places and not exactly reinventing the wheel, but the two fine performances at its heart are more than worth it.

This playfully made exposé should be required viewing for anyone wondering what they could do to pitch in and save the planet.

Directed with wit and structural precision — there is not a single moment in the film that feels wasted or doesn’t pay off later on — Glory uses two vastly opposing characters (a communications specialist vs. someone who can barely communicate at all) to depict a society riddled with fraud and cruelty.

If the "ghost" of anime classic Ghost in the Shell refers to the soul looming inside of its killer female cyborg, then this live-action reboot from director Rupert Sanders really only leaves us the shell: a heavily computer-generated enterprise with more body than brains, more visuals than ideas, as if the original movie’s hard drive had been wiped clean of all that was dark, poetic and mystifying.

Thompson’s heavy-handed storytelling, along with a nonstop score of pure mush, brings this closer to telenovela territory than to the Louvre.

Building her narrative around a pair of deadpan performances that yield dashes of humor amid a deep sentiment of human longing, Enyedi can sometimes revel too much in her depictions of modern solitude...without taking the theme much further. But she manages to introduce a few welcome surprises.

It’s intense if somewhat choppy filmmaking, although the passion of the amateur cast and vividness of the Kinshasa locations help make up for the narrative shortcomings.

This semi-fictionalized account rings false whenever it eschews reality for a WWII cloak-and-dagger intrigue, trying too hard to dazzle us with plot instead of letting the music speak for itself.

The film is more of a character study than a full-fledged family drama, though one that benefits from strong, naturalistic performances by castmembers that seem to know one another all too well.

It’s hard not to be both moved and slightly blown away by the plight of these birds.

Canet manages to deliver a fresh celeb satire here that doesn’t shy away from the uglier side of star power, with “uglier” taking on various meanings as the script (co-written with Philippe Lefebvre and Rodolphe Lauga) heads to some outré places in the last act.

It’s a simple, somewhat mundane scenario that, in the hands of a terrific cast and two talented filmmakers, is transformed into a minor Greek comic-tragedy, with one fearless woman trying to stave off loved ones who smother her with guilt and affection.

On the plus side, Mifti does at times become an endearing person despite her big mouth and bad behavior, with credit due to Bauer for her rather subdued depiction of a girl searching for emotional attachment in a world where everyone seems blinded by their own pleasures or problems.

Working with a terrific cast — first-timer Nero is a real discovery — Muylaert makes all the traumatic twists in the story feel both natural and almost casual at times, as if we’re watching everyday people whose lives have suddenly been transformed into a telenovela plot.

National Bird hardly offers any counterpoint to the arguments presented, nor does it attempt to show how drones could possibly save the lives of U.S. soldiers either on the ground or in the air. But it does reveal a program whose international reach and seemingly limitless surveillance powers are extraordinarily difficult to keep in check.

Writer-director Rachel Lang and star Salome Richard manage to craft an intriguing feature debut filled with keen observations and slices of dark humor.

The filmmaking is often splendid to behold, though not necessarily for two full hours, and Tran’s Gallic tone poem winds up suffering under the weight of its own aestheticism. It’s a beautiful flower arrangement in need of an adequate vase.

As a portrait of French youth ridden by angst and anger toward the powers that be...Nocturama makes an intriguingly cinematic case for showing over telling. But as a depiction of how, and why, terrorists (or anarchists or whatever they are) can take down a city, it falls apart in the face of what happens in the real world.

It’s all rather trite if easygoing entertainment aimed at the 6-and-under set, with A Turtle’s Tale creator Ben Stassen (credited as producer) and director Vincent Kesteloot delivering a colorful 3D adventure that lacks the sophistication of a Zootopia or Kung Fu Panda, but thankfully avoids some of their snark as well.

Combining the mystical and the military in ways that can seem fresh compared to other recent war flicks, this feature debut from writer-director Clement Cogitore could nonetheless use some more adrenaline to make its premise work.

Similar in form to the director’s previous nonfiction studies (Our Daily Bread, Over the Years), this wordless assemblage of fixed shots is as much a museum piece as it is a strictly art-house item, inviting viewers to sit back and let the imagery consume them.

Unfortunately, [Miike] never quite tops the hijinks of this film’s opening reel, and at nearly two hours, As the Gods Will grows gradually tiresome until it seriously drags during a lengthy and entirely kitschy closing battle.

Like other recent French cartoons — ranging from Persopolis to the Kirikou series — this one manages to maintain something personal within a broadly appealing framework: it doesn’t shy away from the dark side of life, and in the end, even allows us to enjoy it.

There’s a carefree spirit about everything that happens, including all the talk about girls and masturbation, that makes the story as breezy as the summer air,

Like the professional dogwalker who can’t exactly keep count of Max and his cohorts, it feels like the filmmakers are juggling too many chatty creatures at once, while trying to maintain a plot that tends to grow more outlandish as the story progresses.

It’s rare to see such confidence in a first feature, yet Ducournau seems to know where she’s going at all times, keeping the narrative lean and mean while utilizing an array of stylistic techniques – slow-motion, sequence shots and tons of on-screen prosthetics – that never let up until the witty, and inevitably grisly, final scene.

Benyamina has a hard time maintaining her film's pace and plausibility, especially during a third act that slides too far into genre territory and its accompanying clichés.

It’s all quite perverse for sure, which of course is no surprise coming from either the actress or the director, though what’s welcome about Elle is the way they combine their talents to make a film that hardly skimps on the sex, violence and sadism, yet ultimately tells a story about how one woman uses them all to set herself free.

While the plot can sometimes feel too lightweight for feature length, with a score by composer Laurent Perez del Mar (Now or Never) that tends to overdo it on the gushy side, The Red Turtle benefits from the beautiful animation work of Dudok de Wit and his team.

This endearing old-age drama works best as an earnest and colorful character study, even if it doesn't really break any new cinematic ground.

There are moments when The Other Side seems to traverse into arts-ploitation territory, and it’s ultimately hard to tell if the movie is trying to render its subjects with some humanity or otherwise if it's taking advantage of all these poor, beautiful losers.

Best when it reveals the painstaking details of investigative work, worst when it plunges into improbable emotional depths, SK1 is an above-average policier.

It’s a must-see for anyone interested in the mind of a major auteur, even if Thomsen tends to favor psychology over cinema.

The film feels at once incredulous and strangely inept, with the director resorting to facile plot twists or heavy-handed pathos whereas a little subtlety and sense would have went a long way

Colonia marks a truly misguided attempt to fabricate a Hollywood-style thriller out of the darkest quarters of Latin American history.

Cedric Anger’s stylish thriller Next Time I’ll Aim for the Heart (La prochaine fois je viserai le coeur) offers up a strong central turn from Guillaume Canet while dishing out a number of crafty and suspenseful set-pieces. But it can also be too self-serious at times and winds up dragging a bit in its latter stages.

This offbeat indie chiller benefits from colorful cinematography and bits of satisfying butchery, even if a less than airtight scenario fails to make it run efficiently.

The powerful turns don’t necessarily build towards a satisfying conclusion, in a film that starts off strong but can’t always decide whether it wants to keep it real or give viewers the sort of movie moments found in less-inventive dramas.

It’s only when the story heads to pure sci-fi territory later on that April stretches itself a bit thin, though a smart epilogue manages to put things in perspective for both the characters and viewer.

For a film that takes great pride in its heroine's nonconformism, pretty much everything in Allegiant feels conventional.

Writer-director Xavier Giannoli offers up an amusingly entertaining portrait of fortune, infamy and severe melodic dysfunction in the polished French period dramedy, Marguerite.

The film’s shrewd sense of humor, its way of underlining the absurdity of life’s foibles, is fully carried by Huppert’s disarming performance, which never panders to easy sentiments but doesn’t shy away from showcasing raw emotion.

An explosive family drama whose intense performances can't always compensate for such a heavy-handed scenario, Bad Hurt nonetheless marks a promising directorial debut from playwright Mark Kemble.

A handful of plot twists are not enough to compensate for an overtly heavy, often dreary affair that rides straight into the final standoff with little elegance and a wagon train of pathos.

Eric Hannezo’s debut feature showcases some skill in the craft department, but remains a strictly B-level enterprise in terms of content.

If the film runs a tad too long, especially in its second half, Embrace of the Serpent is still an absorbing account of indigenous tribes facing up to colonial incursions, revealing how Westerners are in many ways far behind the native peoples they conquer.

French splatterfest Martyrs offers a few genuine scares early on, but they're quickly washed away by all the blood tossed around by writer-director Pascal Laugier.

It’s a surprising and often thought-provoking effort from a filmmaker who has never chosen to take the simple path, confirming Larrain as one of the more genuine talents working in cinema today.

Victoria is definitely what you would call a passive protagonist, and although the film subtly explores questions of ethnic identity, it doesn't necessarily keep one engaged until the end.

Director Laurent Becue-Renard’s engrossing study of soldiers coping with trauma through intensive group therapy offers a rare look at real men shaken by real experiences, underlining the monumental courage it takes for them to get their lives back on track.

In Porumboiu’s movies, what you see is never what you get, and there are riches to be had if you just keep looking.

Despite its late shortcomings, Going Away demonstrates Garcia’s ability to coax strong performances out of a relatively young cast.

Like many science-fiction films, Star slowly but surely reveals itself as a parable of our self-destructive times – an artsy Interstellar with a threadbare narrative rather than one that’s forever running on hyperdrive.

With her sophomore effort, Evolution, the writer-director delivers another disturbing mélange of experimental genre filmmaking and adorable, tortured French kids, offering up a trippy visual feast that satisfies on an aesthetic level, if not always on a narrative one.

What makes the movie work are the lively performances, both from the supporting cast and from Cranston, who sheds the mimicry and pontificating of earlier scenes to turn Trumbo into a wry, self-deprecating and somewhat cheeky older man, even if he continued to stand up for what was right.

It’s unfortunate that Light feels both too traditional and too concerned with showcasing life behind the music, instead of trying to explain why Williams was one of the greatest American musicians of the last century.

It’s a unique take on what could otherwise be a morbidly depressing tale of loss and grief, dishing out tons of energy and spats of devilish humor, though not always fitting its numerous parts into a succinct whole.

Filled with strong performances and numerous twists that keep the tension high, even if the plot gets tied up a tad too neatly.

With an acute style marked by lengthy tracking shots and crisp natural cinematography from Laurent Desmet (Shall We Kiss?), Leonor manages to convey emotions through purely visual terms.

Lapid’s approach is so cautious yet so ambitious, he manages to weave an engrossing narrative that -- despite some longueurs after the one-hour mark -- grows progressively intense.

A run-of-the-mill crime drama that toes the risibility line on several occasions, even if it’s better made than your typical straight-to-video movie.

Neither funny enough as an outright comedy nor solid enough as a drama, and certainly not believable as an affaire de coeur.

There are definitely more worthy endeavors than circling the globe in search of the perfect cut of meat, but French producer-director Franck Ribiere nonetheless delivers an absorbing, and often enlightening, quest for the world’s greatest sirloin in his exhaustive food documentary, Steak (R)evolution.

It’s Kateb -- a rising star with three films in Cannes this year -- who steals the show, portraying a man whose professionalism and humanity are constantly thwarted by the other staff members, especially the Gallic natives that don't have to jump through the same hoops he does.

Using a wide-ranging color palette that shifts from the warmer hues of the Sahara desert to the colder, sadder blues and grays of old-time Paris, Lie and his team provide a pared-down animation technique that recalls classic Disney, albeit with a rougher, at times abstract touch.

As pure entertainment it certainly does the job, although much of the text's existential weight is lost in the process.

Acevedo deserves credit for crafting something so audacious – along with the photography, the sound design by Felipe Rayo is also boldly conceived – though there are moments when the style really dominates the subject matter, in a film that’s a pleasure to watch but not always one to follow.

Highlighted by an all-consuming lead performance from Lindon – surrounded here by an excellent cast of non-pros – this third collaboration strays further into Dardennes Bros. territory than previous efforts, although its depiction of an Average Joe scraping by in contemporary France features its own unique voice.

Past lives and ancient ancestors are evoked through conversations that are both cryptic and oddly matter-of-fact, in a work that has the realistic vibe of a documentary but the unearthly qualities of a sustained reverie.

The film is not always subtle in its portrayal of a family ripped apart by tragedy, but remains captivating as a pure procedural that raises questions about the Paris police's handling of such situations, as well as about the state of race relations in contemporary France.

This $50 million Ridley Scott production does benefit from strong performances and a few worthy scenes that director Daniel Espinosa (Safe House) pulls off with an effective amount of grit. Yet the movie doesn’t really captivate the way it should, and as the manhunt stretches on it actually diminishes in suspense, ultimately overstaying its two-plus-hour running time.

This plot-heavy suspense flick loses some of the book’s originality in translation while failing to channel its sense of Midwestern malaise. But it keeps the guessing game going long enough to compensate for some otherwise shallow characterizations, while Theron offers up an earnest and downbeat turn that says a lot with little dialogue

If Chambermaid lacks the dramatic push to carry it through to the end, Seydoux’s performance remains robust and engaging throughout.

Even if the film does manage to reveal the splendor of each voyage, it tends to lose its characters in the landscape.

A schmaltzy, mildly satisfying Anglo take on the BFFs-to-bedfellows subgenre that’s been seen recently in romantic comedies.

By doubling down on a movie that yearns to be both introspective and bone-crunchingly cool, Wild Card overplays its hand.

If anything, the movie offers up the guilty pleasure of seeing Bridges and Moore duel it out in front of countless green screens and a few stunning Canadian backdrops – two great actors clawing at each other with magic staffs and fake fire, trying to survive in the netherworld of heroic kitsch.

Doyle overstuffs some of the content, jumping through dozens of interviews without allowing us enough time to process them. Still, the director and editor John Murphy manage to give all the material a solid through-line, making the many voices echo into one underlying argument: Showrunning sucks, but it may be the greatest job in entertainment today.

At best, Trash works as a vibrant, occasionally suspenseful postcard-portrait of a place that’s always great to see on the big screen.

This terrifically performed piece of filmed theater is filled with twists, turns and underhanded schemes that show how history sometimes lies in the hands of a selected few, not to mention a good glass of Chardonnay.

It’s perhaps too focused on the Reichsfuhrer’s personal life... while the director’s decision to add sound effects to silent images sometimes feels uncalled for.

Though it drags in spots and doesn’t convince on all fronts, Bliss is nonetheless a worthy minor addition to a canon of homefront films.

It’s like watching a first-rate standup routine transformed into fiction, or in this case auto-fiction, as Rock has more on his mind than just making us laugh, offering up a witty celebrity satire that doubles as a love story set during one long and eventful New York City day.

Both a powerful allegory for post-war regeneration and a rich Hitchcockian tale of mistaken identity, Phoenix once again proves that German filmmaker Christian Petzold and his favorite star, Nina Hoss, are clearly one of the best director-actor duos working in movies today.

A classically helmed biopic that brings nothing new to the genre, but benefits from handsome craftmanship and solid performances by Tobey Maguire as the Brooklyn boy wonder, and Liev Schreiber as his longtime Russian nemesis, Boris Spassky.

Like his erratic protagonist, Gilroy doesn’t always know when to settle down or call it quits, and the film’s constant shifts of tone can grow tiring, even if the action as a whole never gets boring.

[Aubrey Plaza] adds something different to Hartley’s usual hijinks, making for a crime dramedy that’s ostensibly quirky, but also short, sweet and quite moving.

Black and White never panders too easily to sentiments, creating characters who are riddled with flaws but likeable all the same.

An aesthetically arresting hit man story that gets by more on its craftsmanship than on its minimalist, borderline ham-fisted narrative, Salvo nonetheless marks an impressive feature debut from Italian writing-directing duo Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza.

This low budget effort from director John Erick Dowdle and writer-producer-brother Drew Dowdle provides a few late scares after plenty of eye-rolling setup, with said scares due more to the heavy sound design than the action itself.

With such well-tuned performances and scattered intensity, it's unfortunate that the technical aspects of the film are not always up to par.

Has some clever ideas up its sleeve, but otherwise fails to provoke much interest in the travails of its 40-something central character.

Despite what sounds, and sometimes plays out, like a working-class soap opera, Pagnol’s genius is evident in the way emotions are often distilled through the characters’ winsome Southern attitudes, creating an atmosphere infused with playful humor, innate wit and an endless flow of alcohol.

Fanny is definitely a worthy companion to Marius, although it’s also more claustrophobic in terms of staging, confining the action to a handful of interior sequences that feel less like a movie than like filmed theater, albeit of a rather high order.

2 Autumns often lets its cute and eccentric stylings get in the way of the story itself, which, once you strip away all the accouterments, feels rather underdeveloped.

National Gallery feels closer to a pure aesthetic investigation than an organizational exposé, and in that respect is reminiscent of recent Paris-set films like Crazy Horse or La Danse, mostly allowing the art to speak for itself.

The material doesn’t always feel fresh enough, despite the unique setting and cast of true-to-life characters.

While this may be the actor-director’s most polished feature yet, it’s far from a traditional suspense movie.

It’s a tricky proposition that will surely ruffle the feathers of many viewers, but one that also makes a curious, if lasting, impression, thanks in part to strong turns from actors Anais Demoustier and Josh Charles.

It’s a rather fascinating bit of artistic self-indulgence that’s both made by, and about, self-indulgent men, although one that can certainly grow taxing. [Unrated Version]

A slick, occasionally hilarious but ultimately uneven appraisal of France’s favorite extramarital pastime.

Although the film’s dark humor and colorful, thriller aesthetics provide some juicy material at the beginning, its overindulgence in chatter, fornication and occasional gore feels too blatant to make Sono’s social commentary run anywhere but skin-deep.

An episodic coming-of-age story whose plot holes are paved over by strong performances and a few emotional highlights.

Whenever the camera settles down to record a simple conversation between two characters, things suddenly feel stilted, as if the filmmakers cannot build the drama without flinging a hundred different things in front of the lens at the same time.

While Anderson excels in the film’s many moments of digital doom-and-gloom, he can’t deliver a single authentic emotion between the two star-crossed leads, leaving us with a sooty aftertaste of having sat through one very loud rendition of Titanic in togas.

Adapting their highly successful stage version to the screen with keen comic-timing but much less cinematic panache, Mathieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patelliere offer up a lively take on love, friendship and baby-naming.

A delightfully old-fashioned kid’s flick with a meaningful message.

Gimmicks aside, this decently acted and paced effort shows that the 74-year-old auteur can still be marginally transgressive, if not entirely original.

While the portrait of domestic malaise is occasionally intriguing (and owes much to the original comics), things wind up all-too easily working themselves out in the long run.

While nothing in The Nun feels inspiring or truly groundbreaking, it’s certainly a well-handled package, and the strong performances are abetted by superb technical contributions.

Toback does a great job introducing the non-initiated to the sticky job of getting a film funded outside the studio system.

Once it’s evident that there’s hardly a point to all the random mischief — or that the point is precisely that there isn’t one — the idea of watching a pair of grown men inflect violence upon innocent bystanders feels awfully tedious

Juliette Binoche’s portrayal of the ill-fated artist is a study of restraint peppered with brief outbursts of emotion -- a riveting performance in an imposing, at times off-putting micro-biopic.

Stranger by the Lake invites you into its alluring and peaceful world, only to gradually uncover the darkness beneath it.

The film is a textured portrait of human beings and the jobs they do, offering scant commentary but much to chew on, not to mention plenty of laughs -- no small feat in a movie dedicated to something as dry sounding as “public radio.”

A riveting and often hilarious demonstration of the Slovenian philosopher’s uncanny ability to turn movies inside out and accepted notions on their head.

Reteaming to play a duo similar to the one in A Prophet, Rahim and Arestrup maintain the film’s tense and sinister tone – the former providing a convincing mix of fragility and machismo, and the latter looking and acting more and more like Brando in the latter half of his career.

While things get a tad buckled town in mayhem and special effects throughout the film’s busy final reels, Wright spends enough time sketching out his mischievous middle-aged men so that their journey...feels worthwhile and even meaningful for a few of them.

An exhausting pièce d’indulgence from the veteran video/feature director, who can never quite shape all the bric-a-brac, not to mention an all-star Gallic cast, into a workable whole.

Less concerned with classic storytelling than with creating virtual performance pieces on screen, the film features dozens of extended sequences of Adele and Emma both in and out of bed—scenes that are virtuously acted and directed, even if they run on for longer than most filmmakers would allow.

An old-fashioned, Robin Hood-style revenge tale that favors self-serious storytelling over action and suspense, Arnaud des Pallieres’ Michael Kohlhaas provides a few quick thrills and some beautifully photographed landscapes, but never really convinces as an intellectual’s swords-and-horses period piece.

Turning one of the darkest moments in modern French history into syrupy historical drama, writer-director Rose Bosch's The Round Up is a polished, pathos-driven re-creation of the Vichy regime's mass imprisonment and disposal of 13,000 Parisian Jews in summer 1942.

With its bloated running time and tonal shifts, the story tends to steer off course, though strong performances help keep it in tow.

While the two leads deliver the goods and manage to combine a frisky sense of first love with the movie's gloomier arc, they are well-served by a terrific supporting cast.

Delightfully old-school on the animation side, but too old-fashioned on the story side, French 2D toon A Cat in Paris is easy enough on the eyes yet never quite justifies feature-length status.

Euro-financed production throws large chunks of change at a corporate espionage saga spanning several continents, yet most of the money seems to have landed in locations, with too little allocated to the script and stunt departments.

Picture initially suggests a sort of Gallic "Damages," with Kristin Scott Thomas and Ludivine Sagnier in the Glenn Close and Rose Byrne roles, but the corporate catfight soon gives way to a cleverly designed whodunit.

The remake ups the adrenaline factor, and features strong performances across the board, yet feels bogged down by a weighty love triangle and a subject that merits more than the old-school good vs. evil approach.

Both evocative and faithful in its depiction of the famed French singer's lascivious life, "Gainsbourg (vie heroique)" offers up a feast of memorable chansons and an almost endless parade of drop-dead-gorgeous muses.

Unlike John Boorman's trippy 1967 L.A. noir of the same title, frenetic Gallic suspenser Point Blank provides few existential thrills but plenty of heart-racing action as it follows one man's marathon dash to save his kidnapped wife from execution.

The issues come clashing together in an explosive package that, despite some snafus, remains fairly riveting to the end.

French feel-good filmmaking to the max. Yet a heaping pile of cliches doesn't prevent this touchingly simplistic tale -- from exuding a strong and universal emotional appeal.

Starts off promisingly but peters out as the story, told practically sans dialogue, heads nowhere consistent.

Tightly wound and crafted, with robust performances by Kristin Scott Thomas and recurrent Spanish Don Juan Sergi Lopez, the picture offers a rough, no-frills take on a story as old as France itself.

If the movie runs long in places, the vibrant performances from Worthy and the rest of the cast help push things ahead to the grand finale, and there are enough dynamo battles from start to finish to keep hungry rap fans satisfied.

This ludicrous outing from helmer Christian Alvart ("Pandorum") and scribe Ray Wright ("The Crazies") takes its psycho-satanic babble much too seriously, and should elicit more laughs than frights.

More than ever, Trier reveals how well he can keep shifting tones and emotional arcs without losing any narrative momentum.

Despite an initial forecast of smart laughs and witty tete-a-tetes, the French dramedy Let It Rain winds up being a partly cloudy affair that lacks the cohesiveness of Agnes Jaoui’s two previous features, "The Taste of Others" and "Look at Me."

Guediguian's lengthy period yarn features a wide array of characters filmed with his habitual simpatico eye, but loses the dramatic thread in too many plots, too little action and not enough originality.

Kahn never offers an easy way out for Thomas, even if the finale tends to wrap things up in ways that seem a little too conclusive. But his film mostly explores, with steadfastness and moments of raw emotion, the crude uphill battle faced by junkies on the path to recovery.

It’s all a little zany and overcooked and childish, which is perhaps why the series has been so popular with French tykes and is probably better fitted for 22-minute episodes than feature-length treatment.

Two's company, three's a crowd and eight is definitely way more than enough in writer-director Daniele Thompson's mismanaged comic ensembler, Change of Plans. Less a crowdpleaser and more a headscratcher than her previous hit, "Avenue Montaigne."

Combining the glamour of "To Catch a Thief" with the ruckus of a Ben Stiller movie, TV vet Pascal Chaumeil's French Riviera-set intrigue stars Romain Duris.

The picture is marked by superb performances and a dazzling technical display by the helmer and praiseworthy cinematographer Eric Gautier.

On a dramatic level, Dutch-born helmer Jan Kounen's hyper-stylized, emotionally vacuous film is like a pair of designer pants that look great but don't fit, or a rare vinyl recording that keeps skipping at the best parts.