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.

Lords Of Chaos is more interested in the spectacle than the substance behind the true story, and that kind of phoniness likely wouldn’t even get the film or Åkerlund invited into The Black Circle.

The drama engages with the ever-present theological question of how the faithful endure the silence of God during times of great suffering. But it also ponders the extremes the devout will go not only to receive an answer from on high, but proselytize in His name.

The Kid Who Would Be King blows the dust off an old tale, and makes it invigorating and inspiring for viewers who will be forming their own round tables of world-changers for generations to come.

A drama crafted with precision, and feeling, West of Sunshine succeeds admirably with its modest ambitions, as the filmmaker puts himself on the horizon as one to watch.

A film with a universal sensitivity that relates the pangs of first love, the desirous ache of adolescent sexuality and the excitement of not just discovering yourself but finding those kindred spirits with whom you can share your life.

The young couple exists in a bubble of love that has an air of reality sucked right out of it.

You might not understand what the hell is happening in Let The Corpses Tan, but you’ll certainly never be bored.

With no unique viewpoint on the story of its own, it’s perplexing why Papillon went in front of cameras at all.

Beast takes a storytelling gamble, presenting itself as a psychological whodunit, before pivoting toward a more genre oriented plot. The risk doesn’t quite pay off, undercutting its thematic potential for thrills that aren’t quite that effective.

It’s the kind of smoothly rounded, edgeless historical drama that’s built for maximum appeal, with a broad perspective and an easy to digest tone. Well-crafted and ably told, this is a film that’s wholly respectable though not particularly memorable, but still manages to connect with its earnest good intentions and desire to please.

Marked with a conveyer belt quality, Kodachrome is every indie dramedy you’ve seen before, just like more of you’ll see after, and unlikely to create a cherished memory that you’ll want to revisit.

Earnestly aiming to land with the weight of an Important Film married with Big Ideas, the more Submergence tries and strains to find connections to contemporary issues, the more those beats ring hollow. “Submergence” not only leaves the talent involved underwater, but the audience also longs for anything of significance to cling to.

Chappaquiddick hardly lands with the power of an exposé, and doesn’t bite hard enough to spur a reconsideration of the Kennedys. The film revives a chapter in Kennedy history, but what it means nearly forty years later is never quite clear.

Outside In is not a story filled with events or even big moments, but, instead, accumulates its momentum through the numerous small decisions that eventually bring our leads to a hard won understanding.

The greatest benefit of the shock release of The Cloverfield Paradox is that going in cold makes the most out of the film’s bonkers turns.

“Star Wars” has always been about destiny, fate, and legacy. However, perhaps like no film in the franchise yet, The Last Jedi seriously considers the hubris that comes with certainty, and how knots from the past that can keep you bound from moving forward.

By time Justice League gets to the finish line and credits — stick around, there is an abysmal mid-credits scene, and a decent enough post-credits scene — exhaustion has long set in.

It’s one of the most refreshing and satisfying Marvel movies in some time, precisely because its willing to do many things that Marvel hasn’t done before.

With some films, you can tell where one or two things went wrong — perhaps a decision in script, or a performance that’s off base — but The Snowman is the rare movie where for every choice, there was a better way to go.

Professor Marston And The Wonder Women tackles one of the most curious chapters of comic book history with an overly classy sheen.

Sorkin’s swordsman-like pen continually keeps the picture engaging; his knack for one-liners and absurd dialogue detail remains finely attuned.

Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down The White House couldn’t be more timely, yet those parallels never quite resonate.

Brad’s Status rarely affords its titular character an opportunity to have a real conversation with anyone else his own age, so the movie becomes a monologue from someone you quickly realize you don’t really want to get to know anyway.

Silveira sets herself up for a balance between realism and aesthetics that she can’t quite navigate.

If nothing else, Reybaud’s debut flaunts his knack for casting, particularly with the lead performance by Pascal Cervo.

For all the strong performances and able filmmaking, My Cousin Rachel never quite coheres.

While the film never reaches the kind of emotional peaks of James’ best work like “Hoop Dreams” or “The Interrupters,” Abacus: Small Enough To Jail is no less compelling. And it serves a very important reminder, particularly at a time when more than ever, it seems banks are putting profit in front of people.

Its multiple charms are so sly, the performances so perfectly unflashy, you’ll likely be surprised at how affecting it becomes in its final stages.

Perhaps the array of characters read better on the page, but it all feels slight in execution, particularly when half of the running time is spent on Tommy’s past and what unfolded between himself and Shelley. Combine all that with a particularly lackluster sense of urgency and pacing, and you have film that offers few reasons for investment.

A movie with the bleakest vision of Wolverine yet, but also hands down the best treatment the character has received on the big screen in the fifteen plus years Jackman has inhabited the role.

A Cure For Wellness is an exercise in watching a film continually stifle itself at its most compelling moments.

John Wick: Chapter 2 doesn’t mess with a good thing, expanding the setting as sequels are obligated to do, while firmly sticking to the foundations of what makes the action series such pure popcorn pleasure.

Directed by Timo Tjahjanto and Kimo Stamboel aka The Mo Brothers, with a script by the former, what they lack in original or even compelling drama in Headshot, they make up for with the film’s multiple action scenes.

While the surface glance of the film does feature a standard array of American indie signifiers, it’s worth emphasizing again that Abbasi’s voice is distinct, and is sure to become more sharply defined as his career evolves.

There is an eventual reckoning, but one wishes that Tan, at least for these moments, had allowed the film a few more inches of dramatic space.

The Bad Kids falters due to a lack of focus.

Mostly this is a thrillingly compassionate, deceptively simple, and wholly invested look at a capable older woman with a lively mind coping with a series of common misfortunes. Where that could be depressing, or at least overridingly melancholy, here it is strangely hopeful.

With The Tree Of Life the director has once again created a cinematic experience that is uniquely his own, often powerful and mesmerizing, at times overreaching and overbearing, but never forgettable.

Benyamina displays an empathetic and insightful view of young women, and the challenges of growing up, even if the screenplay doesn’t always follow through. But what Divines absolutely gets right is the deep longing and hunger young people have to better their circumstances, and the desperate lengths they’ll go to reach those goals.

Magnus is gifted with a tremendous opportunity and mostly squanders it, creating a profile that certainly admires Carlsen, but does little to uncover the methodology or magic behind the dazzling display he demonstrates on the board.

If its somewhat unfocused narrative comes at the cost of a picture that could be more cohesive and concise, it still gifts viewers with characters and an era that’s entertaining to explore.

In Buster’s Mal Heart, many of the intriguing thematic ideas in the first half of the picture, are left adrift in favor of trying to keep the audience on its toes.

Keeping things on the right side of watchable are the performances, none of which are particularly revelatory, but all of them serving the territory their role in the story requires. Blunt and Bennett both rise above the pack, but even so, the screenplay doesn’t give them dimension until almost too late.

Lehmann’s real imprint isn’t found in the visuals, but in the performances evoked from both Duplass and Paulson. While the former may have the showstopper moments, it’s the latter who stands out.

‘Jane Doe’ never aspires beyond the ordinary, and more crucially even fails to meet that modest standard. Lifeless and lackluster, ‘Jane Doe’ never draws blood.

My Blind Brother is mirthless, though Kroll and Slate have a delightfully easy charm that occasionally rises above the tedium.

Didactic yet generic, The Promise endeavors to educate about a period of recent history that is still unacknowledged by the Turkish government, but curiously manages to be anonymous in form nonetheless.

Guest isn’t fixing what isn’t broke, but after so long between movies, and with many more people tackling the style, it does leave Mascots at times feeling a bit overfamiliar.

In substance, it might be Vigalondo’s most ambitious film to date. And while there’s a sense at times of his uncertainty in fully committing to the ideas on the page, in the moments when the conceptual component of “Colossal” is fully embraced, the results are truly chilling.

While Lion isn’t the kind of drama that demands risky storytelling, it is one that has within it a whole world of emotional topography that is disappointingly scrolled over instead of mapped out.

Walter Hill’s legacy of pushing the edges of genre conventions made the prospect of (Re)Assignment, at least on paper, potentially dangerous. But the filmmaker’s touch is completely lost here, and the only danger the film winds up posing is to the time spent by those who choose to watch it.

This beautifully structured fable may be focused on the specific pain, of a specific child, during a specific moment in time, but it blows up every fragment of its premise into heart-stirring universal appeal.

With “Free Fire,” Wheatley wants to push his own limits of onscreen mayhem, taking things right to the line where most directors would pull back, and pushing everything right over. And what the director winds up doing is making a big, magnificent noise, one that will certainly see more than his core fanbase sitting up and paying attention.

It would be too easy to say The Magnificent Seven isn’t magnificent. It’s definitely not, but the film has an even more egregious quality: it’s uninspired. There’s no risk, no real attempts to subvert expectations, and no desire to truly give the audience something, if not entirely new, then at least surprising.

While War Dogs won’t go down as one of the great films about misconduct on a national level, it’s undeniably a decent enough popcorn ride.

Operating for much of its running time with an equal balance between guilty pleasure grittiness and decent father/daughter drama, the film’s conclusion tips toward the latter in an unconvincing shift toward sentimentality and Life Lessons that not only is out of place, but betrays John’s own code of stoic endurance.

The trick the director pulls off is that “Lace Crater” weaves a comedic touch throughout the film, keeps the audience compellingly off balance when it pitches toward horror, and puts together a picture that slyly has much more going on beneath its laid back surface.

It’s a lovely film that resonates all the more so in a summer of louder, more cluttered movies, and knowing that Disney had the confidence to allow Lowery’s vision to flourish is the icing on the cake.

As The Gods Will is a minor film from a major talent, but few middle of the road efforts from directors manage to retain the kind of wholly original sensibility seen here, and have as much fun as Miike is while doing it.

The film is a mostly workmanlike biopic that unfortunately can never match the energy of the subject it’s trying to capture.

The picture’s strength is in its honesty.

Any time the duo build up a significant amount of energy, the messy mechanics of the story come barreling in, shifting the narrative attention to the tedious developments involving encryption keys, which is nothing more than a Macguffin to begin with.

A thriller so turgid that its setting in logging country starts to feel like heavy irony: Lord, does it lumber.

Unlike some mock biopics or music documentaries that rely on a particular kind of specificity to succeed, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is universally, gloriously stupid. And that’s not a slight — it takes a considerable amount of smarts to make something that so winningly observes the ridiculous facade of the pop music sphere, but gives it a wide-ranging reach.

According to Len, rock ‘n roll is "blood, bourbon, and napalm," and it’s exactly those elements that the film needs, but doesn’t provide.

While The Ones Below doesn’t make it over the finish line, Farr shows good instincts, and has an ease for creating tension without overt manipulation, while keeping everything engaging enough that you’re willing to overlook questions that nag after the credits roll.

Falls flat on its face thanks to a severe lack of self-awareness and an air of dramatic self-importance.

Director Anne Fontaine’s film is based on actual events and grapples with thorny questions that plague even the most zealous during times of crisis. It’s a pity, then, that this picture finds Fontaine compelled to find a resolution in a situation that seldom yields easy answers.

A taut thriller that almost doesn't waste a single step.

It’s [Trachtenberg's] measured hand with tone that's really noteworthy, never over-reaching with each twist of the plot, keeping the tension on a simmer, and even when things boil over, “10 Cloverfield Lane” gets feverishly exciting but not hysterical.