Kevin Jagernauth

It may not strike the political notes it wants to hit completely, and may fall just short of the impact it would like to achieve, but Medora provides a sweet, small tale of survival, not just of a high school basketball team, but of a town trying not to get eaten up by supposed progress.

Uncompromising and uncommercial, divisive and brave, Killing Them Softly bitterly boils at the state of the nation.

It's not the most complex WWII movie you'll see, but there's no denying the blunt intensity of Fury, and even if it doesn't sustain, Ayer commits to staring straight into hellish eye of war and bringing audiences along to witness every gruesome detail.

It's rare to see any blockbuster in any genre make decisions informed and driven by character, rather than by the more superficial requirements of blockbuster entertainment, but the rewards in that regard are plentiful in Mockingjay.

Formulaic, and at times a bit Sundance-by-numbers, it's still hard to deny that the charms of St. Vincent work even if you clearly can see the narrative machinery moving.

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.

Supermensch is a strong first outing from Myers that plays like that one round of drinks that gets everyone telling stories at the end of a boozy night.

Mr. Nobody is simply a failure.

Haphazard and on the edge of half-hearted, the documentary always feels like a sketch rather than a finished design.

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

Ozon wants to have it both ways with Young & Beautiful, using a young woman's risk-filled sexual awakening as an illustration of coming-of-age, while also demanding a realism from a situation that he keeps far from being rationalized and justified.

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.

I'm Carolyn Parker isn't so much a movie title, as a "Spartacus"-like shout that, if we all embraced, would make us a better people and country.

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.

Just as many sports movies before have done, and many more will after, Borg/McEnroe shines a light on the sacrifices necessary to achieve greatness. It’s just a shame that the movie itself doesn’t have the same ambition

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.

While it's not close to the level of "Stories We Tell" in terms of commenting on the reliability of narrators and the cozy comfort of dishonesty to smooth over thornier life issues, the finale of "Elliot" is murky enough to leave folks guessing as to the true motivations of the entire film.

Since the music doesn't connect like it should, everything else that is underpinned in the story by these songs also doesn't come together with the weight or power Carney surely intended.

Ultimately, Ms. 45 is far more interesting and genuinely enjoyable (versus ironically enjoyable, as many of this vintage grindhouse flicks wind up being) than it has any right to be.

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

On Chesil Beach makes us consider the lives of the Florence and Edward as outside observers, but rarely takes us inside the complicated mix of desire and fear this pair is trying to untangle.

Both a disappointment and a missed opportunity.

There is enough of a simple charm to A Birder's Guide To Everything that there are worse things you could do with your hour and a half. The lead teens in particular give the material a realness that may not have been there on the page, and the filmmakers know enough not push the quaint story beyond the safe parameters it operates in.

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.

Patchy as often as its outright hilarious, fantastically outrageous just as frequently as its forgettable and flatlining, the sequel winds up a bit better than a second tier Ferrell outing.

Red Knot" is insightful in the way few first films are, and marks Cohen as a filmmaker to watch.

With Elysium, Blomkamp has made good on the promise of "District 9" and proven that working on a bigger canvas doesn't mean compromising on smarts or aspirations to deliver tentpole sized stories with a thoughtful backbone.

Though LaGravenese's faithfulness to the songbook is perhaps admirable, the results don't quite work cinematically.