Joseph Jon Lanthier

The lack of a strong expository voice further simplifies the wealth of explicit sex Walter Salles dramatizes, much of it drawn from juicy swathes of Jack Kerouac's only recently published original scroll.

The lack of plausible conflict mars the movie's highly commendable depiction of San Francisco as a the new porn capital.

Can a film be faulted for being too sympathetic toward its characters, for limning a milieu with extraneous humanism?

Director Brian Lilla alternates between talking heads and animated graphics to elucidate first how dams work and, obligatorily, to put a human face on those who would be affected.

The movie is unsurprisingly devoted to peddling up-and-comer Chris Thiele as something daring, something new.

Following the faux-opiate flecked suit of docs like One Fast Move or I'm Gone, The Beat Hotel can't quite rise above its obvious desire to appeal to the former demographic in spite of their apparently limited patience for historical exegesis.

Part of the issue here may be the nature of the talking heads themselves, most of whom are culled from Trungpa's inner circle and lack the objectivity needed to properly judge his philosophy or make it accessible.

Structurally lopsided, the narrative jumps directly into the success of their first molded-plywood chair, and meanders from there into the numerous short films the Eames Studio made for government agencies and IT companies.

The movie is a curious blend of teacher-appreciation mandate and recruitment video, though it's not always clear at whom the narration's gravely spoken factoids are directed.

Despite the fact that Goodall narrates the bulk of the material, there are scant details about her concrete contributions to animal and life science save for her observing of chimp-made tools.

Director Nathan Christ dithers between fashioning the film as a glossing study of metropolitan personality and a virtual advertisement for the groups included.

The testimony we hear from suspects' neighbors and similarly curious media underlings feels muted, like a halfhearted repetition.

Engendering an experience both visually slick and narratively sprawling, the apropos-of-nothing professionalism of Protektor often feels more like branding than filmmaking.

What's most disappointing about Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish is how it fails to deliver on the hybridizing NYC gimmickry of its title.

It would all be laughable if the evil deeds and premature deaths and withered witch doctor hands led us to more than the protagonist’s unnecessarily messy self-discovery. As it is, it’s mostly just gratingly pointless.