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.