Kevin Jagernauth

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.