Jordan Mintzer

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.