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.

While slight, the film’s genuine feeling and overall comedic consistency has enough breezy charm to make it go down easy and pleasurably.

With Only Yesterday, Takahata not only succeeds in transmitting how years can flash by, but also the way that passage of time makes clearer the moments that define our character, and go on to influence how we choose to live later.

Diamond Tongues is refreshing because it isn't an indictment of a demographic, or even of Edith, but is a portrait of a young woman whose ambition has curdled into something more nasty along the way.

It’s a film that desperately wants to upend the tropes of the comic book movie, but perhaps more shocking than anything that comes out of the mouth of its often obnoxious titular hero, is how blandly the picture sticks to the origin story playbook.

Tedious and painfully miscalculated, Dirty Grandpa is never as filthy or funny as it thinks it is.

Working at cross-purposes, Colonia tries to have it both ways, wanting to be a shocking true story drama and a riveting piece of moviemaking. But it’s not intelligent enough to accumulate any emotional payoff, and it’s too generic and unsophisticated in its execution to work purely as popcorn entertainment.

The entire film seems cloaked with a general vibe of “good enough.” Embarrassingly cheap CGI effects, poor ADR, and slipshod, jarring editing are the technical failures that compound with the creative ones to indicate a movie that’s not just miscalculated, but seemingly committed to putting together, at its best, a deliverable product and nothing more.

Fitfully entertaining, and even more rarely actually funny, Daddy's Home, tellingly, only really comes alive in the very last portion of the third act.

Body is very much an exercise, but by a couple of guys who are already showing a confident handle of coaxing solid performances out of their cast, sustaining a mood, and not reaching beyond their means.

For those who are coming to Codegirl looking for a fiery rebuke and exposé on the gender imbalance rampant in Silicon Valley, they've come to the wrong place.

The film’s haphazard construction is made all the more frustrating because somewhere in this material is a much more resonant picture.

Hanks' insightful tribute to the retailer, and chronicle of their history, is the story of the music industry, who had it all, and believed the good times would last forever, only to see it all slip away.

While the material might be the substance of a handful of reality shows you could easily watch on television, there is only one Jake "The Snake" Roberts, and his story matches the epic highs and lows of his life.

While aesthetically it doesn’t do much to break the form, it more than succeeds in presenting Joplin as a flawed, insecure, deeply brilliant woman who, unfortunately, couldn’t shake her demons.

Witty, observational, and hilarious, Maggie’s Plan is the kind of richly complex dramedy that proves to be the rare picture that serves both halves of that genre description fully, equally, and satisfyingly.

Vanderbilt chooses to present the tale with a lighter comic touch in the early stages, and it’s a tone the picture can’t overcome in its final third.

screenwriter Amy Jump and director Ben Wheatley are less concerned with the message than with the madness, and their resulting picture is heavier on style than substance.

While certainly imperfect, there is something to admire about the film’s attempt to present the tangled logistics of a single military operation, where it seems everyone wants success but none of the responsibility of the tough decision making involved.

That The Dressmaker remains watchable in any sense is thanks in large part to a cast who give the material that’s way beneath them far better treatment than it deserves.

Ultimately, Dellal’s film is never as brave or courageous as Ray, and in spending more time on Maggie than her son, misses the opportunity to jump from informational to insightful.

The Martian is the most purely enjoyable picture Scott has made in years. The streamlined narrative and the film’s consistent pacing, aided by a cast who don’t make a wrongfooted move, makes for easy popcorn entertainment.

The film’s attempted cathartic payoff is inauthentic and unearned, and it’s a shame considering that Gyllenhaal once again gives a committed turn.

Portman wants to articulate something beyond the ordinary, and while she hasn’t found it in this picture, perhaps there are lessons here to be learned before she mounts her next effort.

When the script isn't working, Evans turns towards the soundtrack and leans on indie rock when he can (and when the low-budget picture can afford it) to attempt to do some of the emotional lifting.

In turning his back on the familiar tropes of blockbuster comic book movies, Trank doesn't have a clear new identity for Fantastic Four to distinguish itself with, and the result is a movie rich with possibilities, but trapped in the basic structure of a superhero movie, with no idea of how to wholly circumvent traditional expectations.

Carelessly crass, and yet enthusiastically performed, the film does at least offer the curious spectacle of witnessing strings of jokes energetically thud in a movie that's not worth the commute to your nearest multiplex.

Manufactured and manicured to appeal to the teenage fans of Green's book, Paper Towns is so polished and edgeless, that even Margo herself would look at the finished product, and question its authenticity.

The engaging opening third of Cooties is enough to make the rest of the 96-minute film a mildly amusing diversion, but as the minutes roll by, you'll wish the brains of the film had remained intact.

Self/less is brain/less entertainment, but if there’s any consolation, the impression it leaves is so fleeting that you can soon replace it with better movie memories.

The Strongest Man isn't flashy, moves to it's own unique rhythms, and glides along with a very specific sense of humor. But to the observant eye, and patient viewer who decides to hop along with the film's welcoming tone, they'll witness the voice of a filmmaker bursting with ideas and a number of ways to share them, even if he hasn't quite found his storytelling footing just yet.

Both a disappointment and a missed opportunity.

Earning the opposite of its intended effect, United Passions makes you believe we have yet to witness the true depths of FIFA's ego and arrogance.

The filmmaker should perhaps thank his actors for putting in more effort than this movie is worth.

Handsomely mounted, this is a period drama in which both unspoken demands and stated appetites drive the emotions that simmer below the surface from the first frame. And though this doesn’t transcend what you might expect from the genre, few movies are delivered with this much craft and care.

Gemma Bovery attempts to bring new heat to an old story, but mostly winds up cooling on the sill.

Maggie is not your standard zombie movie, and while it tantalizingly puts action hero Arnold Schwarzenegger into the lead role, the film is actually low on setpieces, and instead is a ponderous, sombre take on the genre that may leave those looking for a traditional horror flick disappointed.

Throughout, in an approach that gets close to the workers, activists, and more who help the staff at Hot And Crusty, Blotnick and Lears excellently merge the personal and political, but in a manner that never feels like it's proselytizing.

For a movie that rides on a well-executed, modest and at times playful B-movie engine, the film stumbles in its final third, with goofy plotting... and a turn from the subdued to the hysterical.

Can't Stand Losing You lacks that sense of the three dimensional when it comes to documenting the band, presenting a sanitized, bird's eye view of their history

There are a thousand stories to be told in the studios where these session players cut some of the greatest records of all time, which makes it disappointing that there isn't more to be found in the documentary The Wrecking Crew.

For those willing to invest in the lives of these characters, even if the framework around them directly and without apology guides them toward inevitable tragedy, they will experience a drama of deep, genuine feeling.

Big Game comes away with the distinction of being watchably terrible. There is a certain ridiculousness that is engaging, but this shouldn't be confused for merit.

The idea of turning a true crime story into a intellectual cinematic exercise is novel, and could be witty and sharp, but 'Angel' never comes across that way.

Kidnapping Mr. Heineken never conveys how a bunch of working stiffs transformed themselves into a coiled — if scrappy and ragtag — criminal operation.

Focus only works if the balance of ingredients is right, and from the cast, Ficarra and Requa get everything they need.

If Playing It Cool is meant to be an ironic interpretation of what happens to these characters, the film isn't sharp, smart or insightful enough about how actual humans interact to pull it off.

Tracking the rise of each fighter, Champs underscores the incredible skill, talent and fortitude each had on their way to the top, however it never shies away from pointing out the systemic failures that let them down.

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.

All The Wilderness may ultimately be hindered by a narrow scope, but within that view, Johnson gets pretty much every detail right.

Director Ari Sandel, working with a script by Josh A. Cagan, doesn't have the deftness to really convey how Bianca's personality turns conventional wisdom into her own unique, attractive qualities.

So you have The Rewrite, which feels like it had a rewrite at some point, perhaps muddying the waters of the film's larger intentions. But there's enough from both halves — the more original dramedic vehicle and the less imaginative, predictable, mainstream-aimed entertainment — to make for one wobbly, yet enjoyable movie, if you just put your guard down enough to let it in.

There is an emptiness that lingers around Jupiter Ascending. From the lack of original thought in its conception to the expensive excess in its execution, the directors' usual bag of tricks can't manage to fill the void.

Love, Rosie doesn't aspire to be anything more than a digestible rom-com trifle. It's a sweet movie about sweet people who are always sweet to each other and it's enough to make one sick on the saccharine.

Trying to find a middle ground between an action packed Statham vehicle, a '70s style mood piece, and a '90s era, character-actor packed crime tale, Wild Card is not surprisingly an unsuccessful marriage of those ill-fitting genres.

As Night Will Fall shows, even in the darkest hour, sometimes the greatest heroes are those willing to stare bravely into humanity's worst depths and tell the world what happened.

This film requires so many leaps of faith and suspensions of disbelief that you might develop acrophobia.

Sadly, the sequel isn't even so bad as to be memorable. Instead, it's vaporous, not even possessing the qualities indicating that anyone involved cared about any detail of the film.

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

For filmmakers Angus Macqueen and Guillermo Galdos, they've undoubtedly chosen a great subject for a compelling documentary. Unfortunately, they squander the opportunity with Drug Lord: The Legend of Shorty, and it's due to the common problem of contemporary documentaries, where the directors get so far in the way of their own story, that any context or objectivity is lost.

Time Out Of Mind is a film of tremendous patience and pace, as it wants you to inhabit every minute, day, hour and year of homelessness. But it's through that considered approach that the reveal of George's deep self-hatred and low self-esteem carries an extraordinary power; time has worn his sense of self to the point of despair that's deeply moving.

The Dying Of The Light is forgettable, anonymous and at times almost amateur, and the product of a director searching for a new method of storytelling.

Not only a searing look at Europe's painful involvement in participating, encouraging and backing regimes of oppression, Concerning Violence makes it clear that not much has changed in the fifty years since Fanon's powerful words were first printed.

Mahony and Sampson certainly know how to lay out a crime/thriller/comedy structurally, but unfortunately, they mishandle the tone and momentum this sort of movie needs to work.

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.

A fascinating story told with deep insight, Little Hope Was Arson finds that both fire and forgiveness burn in different ways.

There is a better, more contemplative movie to be made with this material, but with Brand and the filmmakers opting for cheap thrills, it leaves the movie, like the passengers on the plane, stuck on the tarmac.

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.

While Gone Girl is certainly his slightest film to date, it's nonetheless undeniably gripping. Fincher clearly enjoys turning the screws and rounding the wild corners of the plot from the first frame.

While a truly original comedy, While We're Young is the rare one that also laces rich thematic elements with wonderfully drawn characters to create a picture that's as genuinely hilarious as it is thoughtful about how hopes, ambitions, dreams and ideals of personal and creative accomplishments that ebb and flow across decades.

It avoids the trap of simply being a celebrity vehicle about celebrity, by displaying a surprising heart beneath its very funny surface.

Competently directed, and delivered with the expected emotional beats, Still Alice achieves its modest goals, but one wishes it had a grander vision.

Pawn Sacrifice certainly whips up a dervish of energy, and as a piece of dramatic entertainment, it's mostly engaging, and features character actors doing very good work.

The mileage will vary depending on how you've felt about the progression of the series so far, but if you're even mildly curious to find out what awaits the outrageous and exasperating Henry Fool, Ned Rifle is worth making some time for.

It's a shame Reitman goes down such a dull and tired road with his movie, because the cast give some really nice turns.

Love & Mercy isn't a standard celebration nor a traditional music biopic. Instead, it's a survival story.

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

The Keeping Room attempts a blend of sexual curiosity, home invasion horror and elegiac drama, that doesn't quite work, but whose ambitions are nonetheless compelling.

While the idea is original, it's also ridiculous, and the story is not close to clever enough to put it into any kind of context that is compelling, interesting or believable.

Woefully misguided, Black And White is at times painfully quaint and obtuse about contemporary issues surrounding race and class.

Felony isn't a federal case of a bad film, but it's certainly a serious misdemeanor, one whose crime is running away from the challenge the story sets up, to settle on something cheap and conventional.

The Good Lie is so manufactured around a particular dramatic blueprint that any sense of spontaneity, surprise and engagement are sucked right out of the picture.

Though Horovitz's directing is workmanlike solid, and while the movie has a certain charm that makes it easy to walk in the door, it gives you little reason to stay.

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.

The Judge has the curious ability of straining too hard while managing to say nothing dramatically.

Overstuffed yet trite and empty, Fort McCoy attempts to mix heavy drama, slapstick comedy and romance all in the wrappings of a coming of age tale set in the summer of 1944, but flounders on all fronts, resulting in a picture that offers a rather naive and simplistic view of the murky territory between good and evil.

Let's Be Cops is a fine example of what happens when filmmakers rely too heavily on the potential chemistry of the cast, rather than giving actors something decent on the page to work with.

Even within the spinning cylinder of mediocrity that is Into The Storm, there are some minor pleasures to be had. Those are mostly found in Walsh, who is probably best known for comedic supporting turns, but makes the most with what is nearly a leading man part here.

Always thoroughly pleasant, and that's entirely due to the cast, who all turn in breezy performances.

[A] fascinating depiction of another kind of wolf of Wall Street, one whose endless hunger is only matched by his vile soullessness. [Unrated Version]

A minor effort at best, and disappointingly lacking a sense of energy or intent, Me And You is Bertolucci exercising his filmmaking muscles, but not flexing them.

In Bana and Ramirez, who share a palpable bro-mantic, odd-couple quality, the film finds its most charismatic element... but shoves it aside to deliver a movie that will dully meet the barest of expectations instead of trying to exceed them.

If you've seen the previous "Transformers" you know what you're getting into, only this time, the director feels uninspired, more like he's punching a clock at the blockbuster factory, with even his flair for inventive setpieces mostly muted.

The film is an almost overly thorough look at every single step along the way in the battle to bring Prop 8 down. And while that's admirable, and gay rights is certainly a fight that needs to be documented, the minutely detailed The Case Against 8 has the curious effect of dampening the drama through its approach.

For those who didn't know how flawed and manipulated the act of casting a ballot has become, Citizen Koch is a decent enough primer, but for everyone else long past the tipping point, this is just more evidence for a problem that currently has no solution.

The film is not only one dimensional when it comes to its subject, but also of the time and place where Hendrix arrived.

Inert from the start, and presented with little emotional depth or weight, Small Time gets the car started but doesn't go anywhere interesting.

Third Person is an audacious failure, one that even its starry cast can't save. With a trite script, and an even more glib thematic undercurrent, Third Person is nothing short of an outright embarrassment.

What should be a gripping, true crime/mystery story gets often bogged down by a lack of focus from filmmakers Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller, who don't always realize the central saga can stand well enough on its own.

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.

A clever assemblage of archival and historical material that unfortunately doesn't quite go far enough.

Boynton's film is refreshingly complex.

Working off what appears to be a pretty decent script by Mark Poirier, who does a good job of juggling quite a few story threads and giving each enough attention and depth, Johnson's rigorous and formal approach doesn't allow for any sparks, let alone fireworks.

For all its minor faults of under-developed characters and disjointed scenes, “Honey” is worth seeing not only for the compelling performances from the two leads but for the incredibly effective use of light, reminding us just how much other films take it for granted.

The sincerity and honesty of the stories within, as odd as they are, make The Final Member worth seeking out.

When you plunk down your $12, you will get the destruction you were promised. But it's too bad it's such a repetitive, unengaging, glaringly digital experience and worse than that, you'll have to sit through the disaster that is the rest of movie.

There is something potentially special in the elements of The Returned, with its allusions to class and social structures, and stigmas held around people with certain afflictions. But it merely nods toward them with no commentary or depth.

Someone Marry Barry is a reasonably entertaining argument that good performers can enliven weak material.

The narrative may hit all the markers, but its transparent attempts to wring emotion fail to move.

There is something of a manufactured air to the proceedings, one that is acutely aware of the techniques and traits of other similar better film, but without the strength in writing to back it up.

Batra's film is ultimately less about love than about the vulnerability relationships place us in emotionally, and courage required to move past pain, and experience life again after we've been hurt.

Eventually settles into a dull routine much like the dissatisfied characters of the film, which will make for an easily dissatisfied audience.

Less a polemic than a portrait, If You Build It celebrates the flinty spirit that spurs problem solving and creativity (sometimes at the same time) with people not dedicated to a cause, but to people.

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.

The Punk Singer brings dimension and real shape to a band, era and scene that is often compartmentalized into one or two categories. That it'll get you wanting to start your own musical rebellion is a bonus.

For the most part, the most shocking thing about Swerve is how utterly straightforward it is.

By time the third act arrives, the film turns harshly toward cliché, convenience and melodrama to disastrous effect.

The 90-minute documentary doesn't pretend to be anything more than it is: a love letter to a great comic, providing a digestible version of its history with an eye to its legacy.

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.

The Book Thief covers a large span of time, but the film's episodic nature, often moving from one incident to the next with little time to pause or reflect, often obscures that fact and hinders an evocation of the cumulative effect the war has on the psyche of not just the Hubermanns, but their neighbors, too.

Big Sur rises and fades, shifts and moves, through movements and melodies, singing a beautifully sad song for an era and a man who lost his way.

A thoroughly dull, conventional tale of two people who can't find a compromise on their individual priorities to be together.

Yes, it's uneven, more jokes miss than hit, and it winds up taking easy dramatic shortcuts from the more interesting avenues that the script presents, but it's thanks to the lead quartet that the comedy is as engaging at it is.

Yet despite recent solid entries like "Margin Call" and "Too Big Too Fail," we're yet to see the first great contemporary movie about the country, and world's, economic woes, and unfortunately Costa-Gavras' Le Capital doesn't remedy that situation.

Spinning Plates navigates an industry that is more diverse and challenging than ever, but with this simple, fulfilling sampling, we learn that those behind the stove aim for the same kinds of rewards, accomplishments and satisfaction as their predecessors did.

Running a tight 80-odd minutes, Williams' documentary is as concise as it is affecting and powerful, but he leaves just enough room for some indirect hits at some of the more loathsome subjects of the documentary.

The insider look at the industry is appealing, and Seduced And Abandoned is enjoyable but lightweight, and if anything, reaffirms that art doesn't come easy.

When the end comes, and the suggestion of a sequel is left faintly lingering (though not in the way you’re expecting), weariness descends on just how unimaginative Carrie is and how easily it settles for the expected, rather than striving to be excitingly refreshing.

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

The documentary is often fascinating, even as it eschews any kind of traditional narrative.

Runner Runner is content to stay high gloss, with no filler.

Therese is almost voyeuristically distant from what's happening on screen, asking the audience to observe, but leaving just enough a gap of being completely engaged, that while everything is very well articulated, the impact is more academic than sensual.

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.

A lack of courage on behalf of the filmmakers to take any position renders the film narratively limp.

Fading Gigolo is mostly an inoffensive trifle, slightly undone by its lack of focus and mishmash of genres that don't quite come together. But it's breezily told and acted, with some decent laughs and unlike many comedies these days, it actually cares and respects the characters and the consequences of what they go through.

Totally bonkers, hilarious and wickedly clever, The Double is special and singular filmmaking at its best.

While there's no doubt that Shepard's film is frequently laugh-out-loud funny and impressively, wittily written, with a finely tuned ear for the perfect bit of foul language, it stumbles slightly on the story side.

Devil's Knot lacks potency or a compelling narrative reason why anyone remotely familiar with the case needs to be watching it.

Despite the fine performances from McConaughey and Leto, tightly coiled editing that keeps the story moving and a nicely measured balance between drama and comedy (McConaughey is often a hoot), Dallas Buyers Club still sometimes feels like it's missing one more grace note.

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.

Bad Words wants so desperately to be funny that there isn't much time left to make any logic out of the story.

Enough Said is another tremendously well crafted, intelligent dramedy about people, with complicated lives, who make bad decisions trying to do the right thing.

Mr. Nobody is simply a failure.

August: Osage County is a film of big, wild gestures, plate smashing, screaming and tears, but not nuance, and it all has the effect of leaving one deadened, not moved.

For all the assuredness behind the camera and in front of it, there's very little in way of edge or even, surprisingly, emotion.

Rush is a pretty thrilling piece of pop entertainment. It's excitingly assembled and moves like a bullet, highly engaging and nerve-wracking when it needs to be and light on its feet elsewhere.

With a blitz of talking heads and graphs and technical jargon, Money For Nothing can be exhausting viewing at times, and it's certainly not the most cinematic experience... But it's never unclear.

A wholly illuminating look at Muhammad Ali in all his complexity, providing a surprisingly fresh and vivid portrait of a man who played rope-a-dope with history, religion and sport and emerged from the ring as an inspiring, and flawed icon.

Savannah does attempt to tell the story of the friendship of those two accomplished men, but does so in a manner that is so astonishingly tone deaf, confused and narrowly focused that it leaves you almost amazed at the lack of vision behind the entire enterprise.

We're The Millers isn't really a bad movie, so much as its inoffensively and instantly forgettable.

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.

Lethargic and not particularly invigorating or fresh, you can skip Wasteland and wait for the next Brit crime flick that will be following before long.

Broken simply can't get it together on any level, delivering a tedious drama, that for all the characters and over-emoting, doesn't have much to say.

Winter's detail oriented approach does at least give the best recounting of Napster you're going to get, even if it's a biased one. And while some contrasting opinions would've been appreciated, Downloaded is still worth a click.

Porter's film is not just a stirring testament to those taking on a Herculean task of bringing some sense of fairness and balance to an out of whack structure, but a reminder that there is still a far distance to go before everyone is equally represented in front of lady justice.

By the time the origin movie stuff is wrapped up and the audience finally gets to see The Lone Ranger and Tonto on their first of their legendary deeds, it's far too late in the movie, particularly if your patience has already been drained by the simple yet over-elaborately staged plot, that struggles to be compelling.

Never quite as deep or probing as it thinks it is, Thanks For Sharing is an unsatisfying tease.

White House Down wants to riff on the stirring action crowd-pleasers of old. But instead of playing on those motifs, White House Down becomes a slave to them, turning into the very kind of rote, brainless, poorly choreographed and leaden action movie it wants to lighten up.

Comparatively simplistic and somewhat lazy, Unfinished Song presents one-dimensional characters in a thoroughly predictable story that aspires to be little more than easily digestible.

Although the documentary excels at giving us a better picture of the women who are inspiring folks around the world to voice support for them, Lerner and Pozdorovkin leave many other details unexplored.

Your mileage with the movie will depend on how much you like these guys to begin with, because even if you're a fan, the one joke premise has a hard time sustaining a full length movie.

Leterrier's film is a reminder that sometimes a good yarn can do enough heavy lifting on its own to provide thrills. Whether or not the illusion pays off will be up to you, but the trick itself may be intriguing enough.

Grigris is the unusual movie that takes a lead's obvious talents, and curiously backgrounds them, hoping for their charisma to carry over to more traditional cinematic purposes.

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.

This is a tremendously well written piece of work, with impressively developed characters, with scene after scene that further enriches and deepens our comprehension of their actions, yet never judges any of them. It certainly helps that Farhadi gets quartet of excellent, pitch perfect performances.

La Grande Bellezza washes over you in series of scenes, visages, sensations and impressions, and although in this case it doesn't quite gel into a cohesive whole, it's nonetheless a journey worth taking; a travelogue through memory and dreams, in which life is greatest fiction we could ever create.

The problem is that the movie becomes more focused on diagnosis than character, and so what eventually unfolds is a meandering picture that only too late in the game leans toward highlighting any kind of thematic undercurrent while introducing romantic interests for the leads that do little but pad out an already too long running time.

As I Lay Dying is another Franco lark that is more of an experiment with form than a fully realized movie. One almost gets the sense that Franco is working out ideas with As I Lay Dying, with the goal of creating a cohesive film as a secondary ambition to simply capturing the feel of Faulkner's prose.

A b-movie potboiler at best, and indebted to countless other and much better films, this tedious, dumb, so-bad-it's-almost-funny procedural is an overstuffed thriller that offers one single idea, and proceeds to beat it to death, without much of anything to say.

Hirokazu has crafted a warm and lovely film that suggests the easiest thing about raising a child is embracing how complicated it can be.

Heli is a despairing, bleak watch. It's a slow, but unrelenting look at one young man's punishing loss of innocence amongst a society that has already decayed beyond understanding.