Kimber Myers

The Best of Me features actors who are playing well above their material, but Monaghan and Marsden aren’t enough to save this film.

Wetlands is more than just a film that shares far more about anal fissures than you ever wanted to know; it’s a surprisingly sweet coming-of-age comedy brimming with punk-rock energy and an impressive performance from Swiss actress Carla Juri.

While it features characters making unrelatable decisions, this 77-minute film is nonetheless compelling and beautifully constructed.

Moretz is great here, able to rise above the voiceover and dialogue she’s given. And thank goodness, because she's in almost every frame.

It’s a crowd pleaser of a film, whose powerful musical moments can overshadow any smaller issues within the film.

Ivory Tower is compelling viewing, particularly if you feel close to the crisis.

The Fault in Our Stars wins points for being more complex and stylish than most similar films feel they need to be. Most movies with this target audience are maudlin and manipulative, but Boone's film never feels like it's trying too hard to win our tears—or our laughter.

Amma Asante’s Belle has every element that costume drama fans love, but it elevates a standard love story by adding larger historical implications and giving us a new perspective on the era.

What’s impressive is that despite the sometimes heavy subject matter—divorce, creative crisis and trying to find an affordable 2BR in New York City—Klapisch’s film is light and fizzy, set to a soundtrack of funk and salsa.

It’s a movie-length cliché about the type of love that explains why drugstores are stocked with cheap, forgettable Valentine’s Day gifts bought by teenagers and the immature at heart.

12 O’Clock Boys is an exciting, beautifully shot look at a subculture through the eyes of one of its most devoted admirers.

While it’s an occasionally funny film with good performances from its stars, it’s poorly and cheaply made.

The Crash Reel can never be accused of being dry or boring, but Walker brings an energetic style that also complements its subject.

All around, the performances are fine, but they can’t move past the script from first-time director Jessie McCormack. She’s created a group of people that you’d avoid at a party, and being stuck with them for an hour and a half makes you feel like you’re being punished for doing something really awful.

Comedy can succeed based on either its relatability or sheer absurdity, and A.C.O.D. favors the former approach, while not entirely forgoing the latter.

Unfortunately, the film itself is so determinedly middle-brow with little to dislike other than how eager it is to please and how wary it is of offending. Unlike Hortense’s flavorful cooking, Haute Cuisine is aggressively bland.

The bland, boring Paranoia does little to distinguish itself and isn’t good (or even enjoyably bad enough) to be passable even as Saturday afternoon cable fodder.

Lee Daniels’ The Butler could be an important film that comes at a time where race is still a challenging topic for America, but it succeeds less as a film than as a history lesson.

Venus and Serena wins points for sharing an intimate, not-always-flattering view of the sisters that isn’t PR-friendly.

The script finishes up exactly where you think it will, but along the way, there are enough surprises and perfectly delivered lines to make it a blast.

By sex line standards, For a Good Time, Call... clearly succeeds –- it starts off slow, includes plenty of dirty talk, then gives us the happy ending we came for –- but our needs are a little bit greater when it comes to good films.

As in “The Wolfpack,” Moselle doesn’t just capture the rebellions of her characters, she expresses their triumphs and joys with intimacy and detail.

There’s no shortage of areas to explore in philosophy, science and religion, but The Man From Earth: Holocene would rather spend its time with unlikable characters than deal with complex concepts.

“To a More Perfect Union” could be more focused, particularly given its brief running time. However, the larger history behind the gay rights movement may be a helpful primer for those unfamiliar with it. But this doesn’t cloud the documentary’s emotional impact and effectiveness.

There’s little that’s memorable here and less to latch onto, beyond the foregrounding of an Asian woman in American history and Chau’s performance.

Möller keeps a sense of immediacy and tension throughout, despite never actually showing the cause of Asger’s worry and dread – and our own.