Kevin Jagernauth

Martin sets himself up with an ambitious endeavor for a first time feature, but unfortunately, it’s just out of his reach. Utilizing abstraction to achieve universal sensations is almost like pulling off a magic trick — it looks easy when done well, but the seams split and show when it doesn’t come off just right.

Mumenthaler’s screenplay works best when it lives and breathes in the ambiguities of Lina’s malaise and dissatisfaction, and how she balances it with her responsibilities as an entrepreneur, wife, and devoted mother. Splitting the difference between its more lyrical touches with more straightforward storytelling saps some of the power out of the film.

An audience’s mileage for Hedda will depend on how much they enjoy watching what is little more than a parlour game between the pampered upper classes.

It seems doubtful that Ballad of Small Player will serve as a third straight return to the Academy Awards for Berger. However, it does firmly establish the filmmaker as perhaps the finest purveyor of reliably high gloss pulp. But even as far as low stakes bets go, the film only offers a very modest payout.

This sly and clever reverse reworking of romantic drama tropes warmly suggests that there can be as much hope and connection to be found in splitting up as there is in coming together.

There’s not a single moment in the film that is palpably authentic or genuinely romantic, but the ensemble nonetheless puts their pluckiest foot forward.

Gorgeously realized and crafted with homespun care, this delicate and heartbreaking drama is one of the year’s best films.

The performances solidly do the job of moving things along, but as game, as they are, Belgau’s screenplay offers the actors few options to work around its creaky dialogue.

The filmmaker’s tart and scabrously funny (both literally and figuratively) sophomore feature is a pointed portrait of a toxic relationship and a razor-sharp evisceration of those warped by a victim mentality.

A seemingly straightforward drama that details a complex portrait of a nation, through the journey of a single, determined man.

A thriller of divided ambitions, that earnestly wants to Say Something Important about the mistreatment of combat veterans by the very government that sends them to war, while also flirting with the opportunity for franchise potential, resulting in a film distinctly cleaved in two, unsatisfying halves.

Utilizing non-professional actors, and blurring the lines between documentary and fiction, Stop-Zemlia is a sympathetic portrait of the tidal forces of teenagehood. Yet, despite the film’s quiet sprawl and yearning ambition, Gornostai’s painstakingly observant eye never uncovers fresh insight into the thrumming heart of that transformative moment.

Boiling Point is a temperature-raising restaurant drama whose heightening series of personal and professional stakes will immediately plunge you into a flop sweat.

[A] raw and tender character study.

Negoescu’s charmer plays out as a gentle, ambling, misadventure with three guys who work really hard to make their luck run out. On second thought, maybe this isn’t so different than the rest of the Romanian New Wave after all.

There’s a more rewarding film in here had The Boys From County Hell pushed the humor a bit further, and pitched the scares a touch higher.

No one wants to be the sober person at a party where everybody is high, but that’s often what “The Marijuana Conspiracy” feels like.

The most Crisis will give you is the empty gift of occupying two, completely uneventful hours of your life.

For those yearning for the dimly lit, stale smelling room, crammed in that weird corner of the mall, where blurps and bloops rang in your ears and faces were filled with a phosphorescent CRT glow, “Insert Coin” will tickle the wistful longing for that unique and exciting atmosphere. And for those who couldn’t experience it for themselves, this scrappy documentary earnestly tries to convey the giddy and anarchic spirit of the golden age of video games.

Though blessed with a strong lead performance by Pettersen, “Disco” is quick to knock the empty spectacle that undoubtedly accounts for significant portions of contemporary Christianity without entertaining the notion that, for some, faith does hold real value in their lives. It’s not particularly challenging to make a punching bag out of any organized religion, but it takes a far more clever piece of filmmaking to acknowledge its shortcomings and benefits while still maintaining a critical tone. Unfortunately, Disco isn’t that picture.

The filmmakers’ inability or unwillingness to actually engage with the discourse it builds Echo Boomers around leaves the film feeling both artificial and hysterical.

While the stakes are high, the spirit of Days Of The Whale is endearingly loose-limbed, in many ways recalling the similarly sun-kissed energy of Adam Leon’s “Gimme The Loot.”

Yes, God, Yes is too comfortable with itself, too certain in its moral message, while leading Alice through a narrative that is never less than sure. It’s sex comedy as gospel, preaching a placid Sunday afternoon sermon to a congregation of the converted.

The Audition is a harsh, and often cheap, picture that offers a fragmented view of a family diseased by the pursuit of perfection, who yet enable the behavior to continue at the ongoing cost of their happiness.

Holland’s focused effort doesn’t let us forget the respect we owe to the writers behind the headlines and stories we idly click through that often come to us through great personal and spiritual risk.

For all of the delightfully deranged places Primal could’ve gone, it stays drearily buttoned up.

For a film that literally isolates its characters from the rest of the world to confront each other head-on, the drama plays more conventional than challenging.

The film’s half-hearted politics — which do make a statement, regardless of intent — are perhaps less egregious than a movie that’s simply going through the motions for the bulk of its running time.