Kenji Fujishima

The deeper Some Freaks wades into what becomes a series of sadistic and masochistic humiliations, the more McDonald’s film begins to feel schematic, with these characters little more than pawns in a screenwriter’s game of toying with our expectations.

Jorge R. Gutierrez subsumes the film's darker themes in a relentlessly busy farrago of predictable kids'-movie tropes and annoying attempts at hipness.

Sion Sono's film is a vision of coming of age as trial by fire, a thunderous encapsulation of that period of transition in which adolescents try to discover themselves: their passions, their purpose, their sense of morality.

Though the filmmakers may not believe in a higher power, they still maintain a faith in raunchiness as an id-blasting form of liberation from rigid norms, spiritual, sexual, or otherwise.

Everyone here, from fellow marines to Iraqis, is merely a supporting player in Megan Leavey's emotional journey.

To some extent, the use of a wide aspect ratio and the doc's emphatic score takes its cues from paleontologist Pete Larson's passion.

Hers is a humane vision that refuses to cast easy judgment on her deeply flawed characters, never excusing them for their unwise decisions, but understanding the inner anguish from which they arise.

The whiplash contrasts between snideness and sincerity is deeply rooted in the main character's psychology.

With its broad performances, rapid-fire pacing, and rampant visual and verbal gags, Bernard Tavernier's first out-and-out comedy doesn't try too hard to hide its graphic-novel origins.

Sean Ellis doesn't so much understand Filipino society as merely sees it as grist for standard genre fare, perhaps hoping that the foreign setting will somehow automatically make the clichés feel fresh.

Hawkins’ performance in Maudie is as indelible a feat of psychological imagination as it is of physical dedication.

The Transfiguration gradually reveals itself to be a coming-of-age tale, one whose central figure reaches a point at which he’s forced to reckon with the evil lurking within himself.

Mark Mori goes a bit overboard in hammering home his appreciation of Bettie Page's significance, allowing the film to occasionally lapse into repetitiveness.

Maya Forbes reveals herself as a sunny optimist, insistent on remembering the ecstatic highs and never dwelling on the despairing lows.

The screenplay's enigmatic nature holds one's interest throughout, even as the film veers into pat moralism.

As informative and passionate as he often is on screen, Michael Moore also always toes the line toward shooting himself in the rhetorical foot with his own thuggish persona.

Instead of finding one consistent tone and sticking to it, Serge Bozon allows the wildly hilarious and the grimly serious to uneasily coexist, exulting in the resultant clash.

The film plays like a human-interest story in which all of the humanity has been gutted in favor of deadening narrative efficiency.

A glorified act of hero worship that leaves one hard-pressed to form any conclusion other than an infinitely positive one about Shep Gordon.

Writer-director Sarah Adina Smith's film confuses narrative gimmickry for the sensitive evocation of an inner life.

As stimulating as it is, the animation ends up being more pictorial than expressive—an initially fancy but eventually rather monotonous way to dress up what is ultimately a mundane drag of a detective procedural.

Any initial gestures toward acknowledging Vinny Paz's macho egotism are eventually downplayed as the film becomes just another formulaic triumph-over-adversity saga.

Wakefield is… well, let’s just say, its insights into human nature are limited, at best.

The effect of the film's animated sequences is to distance the viewer from real-life horrors--another misguided attempt at turning recent history into instant myth.

The film's messy pile-up of comic diversions can be exhilarating in the moment—the chaos of an id given free rein.

For all the heartbreaking depth with which the filmmakers explore the horrors of human trafficking, the film still leaves one with a sense of a larger story just beyond their grasp.

Past Life does add up to more than the sum of its heavy-handed miscalculations.

At times throughout this concert film, Kevin Hart’s brash honesty about himself can feel liberating.