Jordan Mintzer

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.

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.

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.

This violent first feature is carried more by leads Christopher Abbott and Barry Keoghan than by its dour storytelling.

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.

The film is both gripping in its execution — although a two-hours-plus running time feels a bit stretched — and totally bland in what it’s trying to say, with characters who don’t really stand out onscreen.

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.

The result is a drama whose emotional charge is a tad more subdued than usual, even if there are several grace notes throughout.

For those who have never heard of these cases, this short and very to-the-point exposé can be an eye-opening experience, especially as it is set in country we tend to idealize for its wholesomeness.

As much as Pelé inspired love and awe among his fans, this polished and well-intentioned biography doesn’t quite do the same.

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 result is more admirable than captivating, losing its way in old school hijinks (wacky professors, evil spies, a femme fatale) that grow outlandishly phantasmagorical as the plot thickens.

Viewers looking for explanations should probably stay away, but those willing to be carried by the film’s casual pace and haunting aesthetic will find there are few places like it in contemporary cinema.

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.

Part gritty public service dystopia, part modern-day farce about the yellow vests movement that ripped through the country in late 2018, the film can be both entertaining and surprisingly funny, especially if you’re familiar with France’s politics and current economic woes. But it’s also too on-the-nose about what it wants to say, or rather, shout as loud as it can, regarding the country’s accumulated social wreckage.

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.

For a story primarily about the dregs of modern life, what’s most admirable about At Work is how it never succumbs to pure miserablism, leaving us with the feeling that if Paul somehow managed to adapt to this brand new, horrible world, perhaps so can we.

If the film teeters unsteadily between sci-fi and psychology, it nonetheless confirms Clapin’s visual talents, which are backed by a dreamy score from Dan Levy, who also scored I Lost My Body. In its best moments, Meanwhile on Earth takes us beyond our desolate everyday lives to a place we can indeed dream of — and also witness on screen.

It’s a little too treacly and childish in places, with a storyline that goes exactly where you expect. But those drawbacks are somewhat compensated for by a series of arresting set-pieces, each one taking us to a spectacular Far East location not yet visited by this kind of high-powered Hollywood cartoon.

Beyond a few scattered insights, Quest mostly remains on the surface of someone it portrays as a kind of culinary Prometheus, all the while failing to justify why that should be the case. It's like a tasting menu that never really turns into a full meal.

If his new movie feels 25 years too late, it’s also a reminder of what made the original so special in its day. Those who manage to discover The Killer through this serviceable remake would be better off revisiting the one that started it all.

Both fun and thin at the same time, it’s not about much in the end except the idea of reuniting Pitt and Clooney to see if they still have their magic, which they mostly do.

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.

The problem with Meier’s latest, despite the strong cast and solid direction, is that it explores the tense and thorny nature of blood ties without ever delving into the psychology of it all, often leaving us in the dark as to why the characters behave the way they do.

Greer, Gathegi and Maadi are all on-point as regular people facing spatial-temporal realities the impact of which they fail to fully grasp until it may be too late. Sure, they’ve changed the world, but be careful what you wish for.

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.

What Demoustier has done here, and done quite successfully, is taken a basic mystery plot, like something out of a TV movie, and used it to ponder how each one of us could react to a ghastly crime, and how we expect others to react in turn.

As Jaws and all the best predecessors have shown (John Carpenter’s The Thing also seems like a major reference), you really need to care about the crew before they’re eaten, and Hardiman doesn’t draw strong enough characters for us to latch onto.

The circus theme already feels played out from the start, while the story heads in mostly predictable directions despite the limited pleasure of seeing those mighty morphin power crackers in action.

It’s definitely an over-the-top finale, and not everything ultimately seems real in King Ivory. But what makes Swab’s latest rise above your average drug thriller is how he tries to make each moment feel like it’s been drawn from a certain reality.

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.

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.

What makes his story particularly compelling is that most of it is true.

It’s about as French as you can get, to a point that feels borderline absurd in places, and yet Triet handles the material gracefully and altogether skillfully, directing star Virginie Efira to one of her most impressive all-encompassing performances to date.

Vartolomei is a compelling actress and the camera truly loves her, but there’s only so much she can do with a script that doesn’t have much of a second or third act.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

Many cinephiles are nostalgics at heart, and the story of how Kim’s Video was founded, lost and eventually found again seems to reflect a greater story about how the cinema, whether consisting of Palme d’Or winners or Z-grade slashers, has been pushed to the margins of popular culture — to be fondly remembered in documentaries like this.

It’s not quite enough to prevent this B-grade rendition from feeling rather familiar and unsuspenseful, even if stars Sydney Sweeney (Euphoria) and Madison Iseman (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle) provide a decent level of tension throughout.

Neither Baranov nor Putin — nor the many oligarchs, whether dead or alive — are the protagonists of The Wizard of the Kremlin, whose main character is ultimately Russia itself. In that sense, Assayas has crafted an ambitious chronicle that serves up plenty of compelling facts, but never turns them into the stuff of legend.

Triet tempers her style a bit while upgrading her production values (especially the vivid and colorful cinematography of Simon Beaufils), resulting in a movie that can feel both original and somewhat conventional — a classic working girl rom-com with just enough kookiness to set itself apart from the pack.

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.

There are moments when the film uneasily skirts the line between genre conventions and documentary realism, but the portrait it paints of Casablanca’s underbelly remains credible and bleak.

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.

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

Had Pixar perhaps taken more risks with that plotline, they might have pleased a smaller demographic than such a project requires to be profitable, but they might also have delivered a movie on par with some of their best work. Instead, the elements all fit perfectly into place — so much so that water eventually puts out fire, and we’re left without much of an impression.

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.

The Second Act is probably his strongest film yet, and certainly the first that could stir up any controversy. Not only is the script cleverly written, but the cinematography, including four epically long tracking shots, and the editing, which times all the jokes perfectly, are well-mastered.

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

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.

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.

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.”

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

It can impress with its utter originality and technical know-how, but there’s so much going on for so long that many viewers will be exhausted by the midway point, if not earlier.

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.

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.

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.

The canvas may be strewn with glitter and glory, but beneath the surface Syversen provides a chilling look at how religion can be used to ignore deeper personal traumas, convincing youngsters to turn to god when they should perhaps be turning to therapy or something more probing.

The difference here is how explicitly that tragedy appears, whereas the director built much of her best work on nuance and suggestion — on the viewer experiencing events rather than fully grasping them. The Fence features some of that moody allusiveness as well, but ultimately plays like the minor work of a still major filmmaker.

Journey mostly works thanks to Dhanush's radiant charm, with the actor adding humor and sincerity to a project that can feel too overstuffed and wacky for its own good — mixing magical realism, deadpan comedy, musical numbers and moments of tear-jerking drama.

Here the burn can be too slow to handle at times, as if the gas had been forever left at medium-low heat. You're ultimately left wanting more from a movie that tries to drift away from the usual policier template, even though shots are fired and bodies drop.

The film is so refined and filled with good taste, not to mention poetry citations and dialogue rendered with quotations marks, that it often feels inert.

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.

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

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.

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

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 got a nervously eerie feel to it that’s grounded in Canet’s gripping turn as a dad out to do good for his estranged family.

Becky tends to work best when it revels in the blood-splattered set pieces of its script (written by Ruckus Skye, Lane Skye and Nick Morris), going that extra mile and a half in the gore department (special effects makeup was by Karlee Morse) to create some truly disgusting moments, albeit ones that are laced with a grim sense of humor.

Cage chews up every scene he’s in and seems to be having a blast — he’s always over-the-top and never boring to watch, in a film that delivers the goods for those who like him best when he’s just about lost his mind.

Like his other recent films, this one isn’t easy to sit through, though it’s definitely original and, per custom, impeccably made. You can accuse Dumont of many things, including testing the viewer’s patience, but at least he hasn’t sold out yet and gone over to the dark side.

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.

As anachronistic as A Paris Education may seem (a running time of 136 minutes doesn’t always help matters, either), there’s a conviction to the storytelling that can’t be denied, and no matter what your tastes are, it’s hard not to be moved by Etienne’s struggle to find his voice amid so much doubt and disillusion.

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

Instead of taking us in, Black Tea gently pushes us away, even if the world depicted is certainly one worth exploring.

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.

Silence is both the film’s main asset and its principal limitation, creating moments of suspense but also leaving us in the dark, to the point that it feels more like a gimmick than anything substantial.

The result feels more like a B-grade thriller that’s been elevated by a good cast and a script with some clever moves.

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.

Clever and giddily entertaining ... Hazanavicius is smart enough to apply an if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it approach, keeping nearly everything intact except for the language and cast.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Overlong and overdramatic, the two-hour-plus biopic does feature some exquisite filmmaking, in scenes where the romanticism of Tchaikovsky’s music is met with flowing camera movements that capture the action in artfully staged tableaux.

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

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

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.

A hodgepodge of movie clichés and overwrought scenes, directed with zero tact and plenty of pounding needle drops, actor-turned-director Lellouche’s third stab at the helm after his rather likeable ensemble comedy, Sink or Swim, is less a disappointment than a serious assault on the viewer’s intelligence.

This is the pure case of a filmmaker doing whatever the hell (sorry, Joan) they want and leaving us to contend with the results. Enthusiasts of the prolific Dumont ... will surely get something out of this latest effort — as perhaps will Joan of Arc movie adaptation completists. But beyond that niche, many will find watching the 137-minute movie akin to being burnt at the stake.

The problem is that The Night Eats the World steers so far into the quotidian of its hero that it can become quite frustrating, and even rather dull, to sit through. The threat of death doesn't become as tangible as it should, and the suspense wears itself too thin.

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

The result is a somewhat uneasy mix of social critique and bizarre sex drama in which Guiraudie seems to be spitballing different ideas without making all of them stick.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

While the other Predator films tried to remain dark and tense, tossing in a decent one-liner here or there, Black’s movie is so cleverly over-the-top that it’s easy and pleasurable enough to watch, though never exactly scary or suspenseful.

With all the recent controversy surrounding Depp, not to mention Maïwenn herself, the result of their collaboration is a handsome period piece that feels both flat and shallow, and certainly far from any scandale.

Going way, way back, at least to The Great Train Robbery in 1903, the western remains one of cinema’s oldest genres — and certainly the one where it feels like everything’s already been done. It’s therefore all-the-more disappointing when a brand new western, like Richard Gray’s gunslinging geezer flick The Unholy Trinity, brings nothing original to the table, rehashing movies we’ve seen before and doing it in a way that feels altogether generic.

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.

If Penn’s point in visiting Ukraine, meeting Zelensky and co-directing Superpower was to make himself heard, then it’s mission accomplished.

It’s not really a movie at all, but more like a cross between a movie, a video game and a flow of hallucinatory images that could play in the background of a live show by rapper Travis Scott — who co-stars here as a gun-toting, philosophizing killer surrounded by a swarm of twerking booties.

By the end, Black Flies leaves the viewer battered, bruised and bleeding out on the sidewalk, but never fully captivated

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.

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.

It’s a thought-provoking subject that probably plays better on paper than on screen, urging us to seek out the writer’s books once the movie is over.

Imagine the rise of the machines prophesy made popular by the Terminator franchise, but done as a freaky sitcom that’s part Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, part French sex farce, and you’ll get an idea of the bizarro concoction that is Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s new film, Big Bug.

What Loach adds to this scenario, as he’s done in most of his films, is a natural intimacy that goes beyond the issues to bring something human and emotional to the table. In its best moments, The Old Oak hits those powerful notes without pulling too hard on your heartstrings, with lived-in performances from a nonprofessional cast, including a few actors who were in the director’s most recent movies.

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.

In some ways, Marcello Mio is the ultimate arthouse nepo baby flick, in which the child of cinema royalty embodies her legendary patriarch in order both to get closer to him and to purge herself of some of the demons that have haunted her own life and career — mainly, the fact that people have a tendency to compare her to her famous parents.

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.

Dark Glasses is never all that scary, and some of it is just plain silly, but if you take it at face value it can be enjoyable enough to sit through — more of a reminder of what Argento used to do best than an example in its own right.

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

It’s a lot to handle and also a bit silly, but Besson often pulls it off — thanks in no small part to a commanding performance by the chameleon-like Caleb Landry Jones (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), who manages to be touching and slightly terrifying at the same time.

The structure feels fairly novel for such a B-grade fright-fest — call it Last Year at Amityville — but it’s soon outdone by the litany of torturous scenes that the director piles on one after the other.

Cheese and kitsch, with smatterings of blood and decapitated heads, are all on the menu in Dracula, which is a watchable if totally ludicrous version of the Stoker story. At best, the movie is another showcase for the always-interesting-to-watch Caleb Landry Jones.

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

There’s definitely some gas in its tank in the opening sections, which are somewhat promising, but then the story takes a predictable route that fails to deliver enough suspense or interest to go the full distance.

An airy, lazy, though rather likable overseas rom-com served with a dose of melancholia and several large portions of cinematic nostalgia.

The first rule of a good werewolf flick, or any horror flick for that matter, is to keep the audience on the edge of their seats, whereas Farrell mostly keeps us guessing.

While De Angelis knows how to create visceral action and moments of intensity, he’s incapable of the slightest hint of subtlety.

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

Generic and, at its best, straining to be heartfelt.

This well-intentioned if somewhat heavy-handed historical affair is anchored by Coogan’s solid lead turn, with support from Andrea Riseborough as a hard-hitting state prosecutor and promising newcomer Garion Dowds as an executioner who could wind up facing the gallows.

It’s perhaps less flamboyantly enjoyable than Finley’s first feature, but it also digs deeper into the souls of its characters, asking how a few people meant to ensure the pedagogy of hundreds of children could flunk out so badly.

Like a beltway surrounding its hero’s bloviating ego trips and massive libido, the film keeps turning in circles around a subject that’s only truly interesting if you’re Philip himself.

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.

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.

Bonnin, who adapted the script with Dimitri Lucas from her César award-winning short, offers up a boilperlate coming-home scenario bolstered by a few keen observations and a fair amount of charm.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Taking the inspirational sports movie template, then infusing it with so much weed and foul language that it deserves its own MPAA rating, The Underdoggs is a good example of what happens when Snoop Dogg steps into an otherwise familiar tween-age comedy to wreak havoc.

Jacquot has a hard time turning all of this into palpable drama, and Eva slides off the rails during a denouement that goes full on B-movie without much credibility.

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.

Merely a watchable rehashing of his preferential themes and plot points, set in a present-day Manhattan so nostalgic and unreal it might as well be a period piece.

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.

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

There’s a good story at the heart of The Out-Laws about Parker coming to terms with her family’s long criminal history. But that’s more or less tossed aside in favor of all the nonstop gags, in a film that starts off like Meet the Parents and ends like a goofier The Expendables, some excessive violence included.

Is it all poetry or just a put-on? Again, Baby Invasion is a bit of both, and viewers are likely to either vibe out or tune out.

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.

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.

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

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

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

This treacly and overwrought piece of mishegoss from French novelist turned director Amanda Sthers is pretty much a chore from start to finish.

Equal parts solemn and sappy, Euphoria marks a well-performed if extremely heavy-handed foray into English-language filmmaking for Swedish director Lisa Langseth.

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.

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.

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.

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.

To the director’s credit, the animated sequences are richly rendered, making the most of the rather stiff and plain-looking originals (though, if you want to get nitpicky, an early gag poking fun at the fact that Playmobil legs are unbendable is soon forgotten) and offering up a plethora of settings that help compensate for the lack of good writing.

Well-shot (by Luc Besson regular Thierry Arbogast) but otherwise entirely forgettable.

Travolta is a lively presence in some scenes, talking in a rowdy New Yawka accent and tossing off a few good lines early on. (The highlight being: "If I robbed a church and had the steeple sticking out of my ass, I would deny it.") But he can do little to bring this tedious and episodic chronicle to life.

To their credit, the directors aren’t afraid to take things way too far — which could be considered a quality in and of itself, but not one that’s sustainable for nearly 90 minutes of action.

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.

Generic and too self-indulgent, if energetic and occasionally funny, the film’s greatest attribute is by far co-star Crispin Glover, who steals the show as a deranged French-speaking assassin named Luc Chaltier.

Not only does the film offer a superficial reading of all the famous movies that inspired it, but there’s also an incredibly bro-ish sentiment to the whole thing, as if Franco and Boone binge-watched half the Criterion Collection while slamming down brewskies on the couch.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Good luck trying to make heads or tails of it, but as an eye-popping exercise in cinematic strangeness, 9 Fingers is a rare breed.

Vogler creates an intoxicating mood at times, especially through slick visuals and a trippy score by French electro maven Laurent Garnier, but her movie is like something you distractedly watch out of the corner of your eye in a café or train station or on someone else’s iPhone on the subway. In other words, it belongs on the small screen.

Game Girls doesn’t really go beyond its fly-on-the-wall approach to its heroines, offering us lots of intimacy but nothing that really sets its story within a greater social or political context.

Intelligently observed and backed by a strong cast, this well-performed ensemble piece oscillates between documentary-style study of the French social care system and Lifetime-style tearjerker that tends to overdose on the saccharine.

The pacing is a bit flat in parts, with a little too much dead air, but the drama builds its way to an emotional finale where Sidi’s long and difficult life in exile comes full circle.

The result is a film that sometimes feels as frenzied as the world it’s depicting, but one that benefits from being such a full-blown nosedive into a unique moment of collective creation.

There’s no denying the power inherent in Shimu’s grueling pursuit: one which, in many other countries, would simply be a matter of filling out some forms, but here takes on nearly Melvillian proportions of impossibility.

Ameur-Zaïmeche remains vague, perhaps frustratingly so, about his movie's identity — per the closing credits it was mostly shot in the South of France — but what he says about fear and isolation in a totalitarian society has a universal tinge.

They’re two out of millions of New Yorkers, but the more we get to know them, the more we see how these opposites — who exist on opposite sides of the law — are bound together by their mutual struggle to make it in the big city.

The movie itself doesn’t always live up to its ambitions, playing like a loose assembly of sketches that are by turns hilarious and tedious, with a third act that fizzles out and an ending that doesn’t land smoothly.

Like the previous Kirikou movies, the combination of classic animation and straightforward storytelling provides a welcome antidote to the kind of overcaffeinated cartoons gracing today’s screens.

The Last Out is a moving reminder of how hard it is to make it to the big leagues.

It feels closer to Taxi Driver or the films of Gaspar Noé than to Kiarostami’s work, and yet Ahmadzadeh’s portrait of his country’s disaffected youth, especially during the current period of revolt, is just as socially vital.

It’s a solid ending that helps compensate for the film’s somewhat opaque plotting and languid drama, despite sturdy performances from Feng and the rest of the cast.

This is still earnest, compassionate filmmaking that tries to cut past clichés and show how even the worst criminals have a heart — and, because this is Italy, how they can also cook up a solid batch of meatballs and marinara sauce.

By giving the patients considerable time and space to bare themselves before the camera, Philibert grants us access to the the darker sides of the human psyche, portraying mental illness with an innate sense of compassion and understanding.

Working without much in terms of visuals but talking heads and screens, Klose manages to make his film feel both suspenseful and informative.

If anything, Diaz succeeds in conveying how fatal the conflict in his homeland truly was, making its way into foreign lands and tearing loving families apart.