Leslie Felperin

This intoxicatingly stylish work is all over the place, a hot mess at times so ravishing it sends shivers down to the toes. Unfortunately, it’s also at times just plain crass and silly.

With his devastating, finely layered new drama Loveless (Nelyubov), Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev once again demonstrates his remarkable gift for creating perfectly formed dramatic microcosms that illustrate the bred-in-the-bone pathologies of Russian society.

Creature is exceptional in its depiction of the Byzantine bureaucracy that encases gulags, and how the towns adjacent to Russian prisons tend to be seedy snake pits of crime and venality.

[An] affecting and sincere documentary.

Camara and Darin contribute outstanding work here, a beautifully meshed pair of performances that reveals nearly everything you need to know about the characters and their inner lives through exchanged looks, shrugs and the odd arched eyebrow.

Even if you go into this film knowing absolutely nothing about the true story on which it’s based...you’ll sense something dreadful is going to happen because so much of it is crushingly dull.

This is a conversation starter, not especially distinguished as film-making but vital and deeply felt.

It’s a very good iteration of the genre, with moody lighting, razor sharp editing and great fight sequences, but be advised that only the strongest of stomachs need apply: it is excessively gory and amoral, even by the standards of such fare.

It’s a Michelin-triple-starred master class in patisserie skills that transforms the cinematic equivalent of a sugar rush into a kind of crystal meth-like narcotic high that lasts about two hours. Only once viewers have come down and digested it all might they feel like the whole experience was actually a little bland, lacking in depth and so effervescent as to be almost instantly forgettable.

Holmer draws confident, luminous performances from the cast that rise to the occasion but never seem over-coached or phony.

The dialogue is at times embarrassingly bad.... On the other hand, the period details are impressive and must have cost a pretty kopiyka or two, and the film benefits visually from being shot on location.

Even though this feature debut for director Matt Spicer, who co-wrote the script with David Branson Smith, is sort of all over the place, it’s still often sharply amusing, crisply assembled and features game, broad-brushstroke performances from leads Aubrey Plaza and Elizabeth Olsen.

Intriguing formal noodlings can’t disguise the cliches in the script. Even so, it’s clear that Abbasi has talent and ambition.

Kitty Green creates something powerful, provocative and dazzlingly original with her second feature.

A little more subtlety and a more nuanced approach to the dynamics of this culture clash would have made the film that little bit more effective.

This neatly written Heathers-meets-Groundhog Day high-concept package delivers both technical polish and a toothsome yet likeable cast.

The farcical elements in the plot take far too long to gel, and Robespierre and company push too hard at mixing sad, silly and sweet.

The film has its own specific vibe, thanks in part to the writer-directors’ unique, immersive sense of the milieu and the leads’ tender chemistry.

In the hands of director Christopher N Rowley and an assortment of screenwriters (including Byng), the result is a rebarbative mess – mirthless and shoddy like a disposable Christmas stocking novelty.

Even though director Benjamin Ree has accessed the family archive of footage showing young Magnus as a socially awkward prodigy through the years and interviewed him directly many times, the film barely dents his inviolate wall of polite reticence.

Hancock's apparently irrepressible penchant for folksy Midwestern types and perky montages dilutes any cynicism or misanthropy that might have given this material the edginess it deserves.

A film that admirably tries to remain true to the slightly gritty spirit of its source material. Unfortunately, it also occasionally sprays the wall with maudlin touches and misjudged additions to the story.

As a bit of anthropology offering a glimpse into Tibetan life today, it’s perfectly serviceable.

Although some of the film’s many twists are not that surprising, they’re satisfyingly delivered, and with a strong supporting cast ...plus striking dream imagery, this adds up to arguably the best in the franchise so far.

Utterly absorbing all the way through, this showcase for Bercot’s skill with large casts and intellectually rigorous storytelling may be her best yet.

Wrenching to watch, but told with clarity and guts.

At its worst, the film oozes the sickly smugness of a self-help pamphlet, but when it relaxes its didactic grip and lets the actors take control it can be quite charming.

Illumination’s latest plays to the company’s strengths, with inventive character and background design, hyper-rendered animation that pushes the technology envelope, especially in the realm of lighting and cute sight gags. But just as with, for example, The Secret Life of Pets or Minions (and let’s not even go there with Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax), storytelling remains the outfit’s weak spot.

By sticking so slavishly to the original Blair Witch film’s template, the result is a dull retread rather than a full-on reinvention, enlarging the cast numbers this time but sticking to the same basic beats.

There are crisply folded lines, and pleasingly peppery performances from the supporting cast especially, but where its beating heart should be there is a splinter of ice, the sense that no one involved is really doing this for that much love.

At heart, the film's biggest flaw is that it doesn't seem to have any faith in its audience's emotional intelligence. It effectively neuters all the original story's elusive, poetic, melancholy qualities by spelling things out in capital letters.

The most affecting moments in the film are in more intimate settings.

This documentary, by the first-time director Jack Pettibone Riccobono, is a deep drink of bleak. But there are incidental moments of beauty or startling surreality to marvel at.

It’s a proper animation buff’s piece of work, and admittedly a little slow to get its yarn ripping, but mesmerising and moving in the later stretches.

Stuffed to its statement earrings with celebrities, fashion folk and comedian chums making cameos, this breezy blast of bawdy jokes and Bollinger product placement should lift spirits in a post-Brexit Britain.

It's to the script's credit that it doesn't tie up the story in cute little bows and instead leaves a number of questions unanswered by the end.

The main thing consumers will be looking for from Resurgence is bang-for-buck entertainment, and that it delivers reasonably successfully.

If this film were a person, you’d want to give it a big hug, as you would a gawky teenager, and reassure it that it will be tough out there, that not everyone is going to get its idiosyncratic charms, but that’s OK because it’s awesome just the way it is.

Although engaging enough to hold interest, the just slightly off casting of Ewan McGregor and Stellan Skarsgard...dampens plausibility.

A compelling gateway documentary that should absorb both fans and novices alike.

It’s not a problem there’s a hole, as it were, in the common-sense logic of the film’s world; it’s that there’s a big, gaping hole where the illogic should be, a whole lot of nothing where there should be metaphor, playfulness, all that juicy, enigmatic, magical-realism stuff that helps films like Being John Malkovich and its many knockoffs become fodder for film-studies essays.

As with so many of the best mystery-horror films, the optimum way to enjoy a first viewing of this is try to remain as ignorant as possible about what happens. That said, it also brims with tiny, blink-and-you'll-miss-them details that will repay repeat viewings.

The film feels a little too eulogistic, too reliant on hyperbole and too in love with its own gimmicks to make it more than just a serviceable crowd-pleaser.

Unfortunately, the narrative endgame is a mess, and should have been rethought in development, but there’s no denying Ezer has made a bold, audacious debut.

Some viewers may feel a little uneasy watching her being almost "catfished" by the deception, even if it turns out to be a delightful surprise, and a real emotional money shot when it finally lands.

With such an elliptical tease of a plot, which jumps back and forth temporally disdaining explication, some may feel a little of this travelogue goes a long way.

Hands of Stone is far from perfect, but it punches above its weight enough to prevent it from being easily dismissed.

Graduation isn’t one of Mungiu’s finest, but even a restrained, emotionally measured work like this is more interesting and provocative than many another director’s best effort.

Offers both a universally relevant examination of religious zealotry and, at the same time, a damning, satirical look at modern Russia, a country whose major institutions have become increasingly dominated and cowed by medieval-minded reactionaries and bigots.

Director Bose handles the material with a light, elegant touch. It helps that the cast, especially the remarkable Koechlin who gives a bravura performance in both physical and emotional terms, can carry it all off.

According to the most basic laws of cinema, Toni Erdmann, Maren Ade’s third feature as a writer-director (she has five times that many credits as a producer), shouldn’t work. It’s practically one long string of nesting, oxymoronic self-cancelling paradoxes: here is the world’s first genuinely funny, 162-minute German comedy of embarrassment.

The animation punches well above its weight with properly Looney Tunes-standard sight gags, polished, highly expressive character design, and rendering so intensely computed nearly every barbule and rachis on each individual feather is visible.

Some viewers might find that very cognitive dissonance interesting in itself, but many others may struggle to connect with a story that's essentially about an assortment of extremely entitled, self-absorbed people who ultimately have little new to say about addiction, families or the process of recovery.

It ends up playing like a shoddy blend of V for Vendetta and Mr. Robot but without the budget bandwidth or style of either.

What’s particularly admirable here is the way the cast and filmmakers illuminate not just the wit and charm of young men, but also the callow cruelty of youth, driven by a killer combination of naïve idealism, solipsism, poor self-esteem and raging hormones.

An officially sanctioned but pleasingly gush-free cinematic monograph.

There is a decorousness at play here that adds an odd new flavor to the Almodovar repertoire, a politeness that’s quite unlike the lusty vulgarity of the past.

It’s passably entertaining, and like the last one breathtakingly crafted, especially Colleen Atwood’s microscopically detailed costumes.

It's so preoccupied with hammering home the point that Armstrong was a liar and a cheat, it can't risk giving him any credit for having charisma to spare, or at least enough cunning to know how to manipulate our current fantasies about heroic sportsmen.

The director and his regular editor Eyas Salman notch up the tension by beautiful degrees as Mohammed overcomes each obstacle with ingenuity, charm and, hokey but true, sheer singing skill.

Although many of the stories told here are deeply harrowing and the film sometimes seems to be trying to bite off too much, at least there’s a happy ending of sorts.

One of the flaws that keeps the film being as engaging as it might be is the way every shot seems to last about the same amount of time, producing a monotonous visual rhythm that only serves to make the plot seem even more episodic.

Too often the pic feels as if it’s killing time to pad itself out into feature length.

Baron Cohen and Strong are both robustly physical performers, and their finest moments are when they’re grappling with each other, producing a great tangle of limbs and teeth. But the script, credited to Baron Cohen, Phil Johnston and Peter Baynham (based on a story by Baron Cohen and Johnston), is not especially generous to the other members of the cast.

Seductive and repellent by turns, it’s a title that will provoke fierce love-or-hate reactions, but there’s no question it augurs the arrival of a powerful, audacious new directorial talent.

Like the emotional equivalent of a massage with a sandpaper loofah, the film leaves you feeling raw and tender, thanks particularly to the knockout performances from the small cast, especially Collette.

It’s entirely to the directors and the two lead actors’ credit that what sounds like a bunch of overextended body humor gags of the most juvenile variety evolve, by sheer repetitious attrition, into something bizarrely poetic and strangely touching.

There’s so much to root for here it’s painful to concede there’s some hideously on-the-nose, spell-out-the-motivation-in-capital-letters writing that lowers the tone.

The Fundamentals of Caring cleaves so closely to the stereotypes of indie filmmaking, it’s as if it were created by some demonic cinematic algorithm.

Equity is a smart thriller set in the corporate world that disguises its modest budget with an intelligent script and good set of hooks.

Especially refreshing, even radical, is its sympathy for characters who read for pleasure and value rigorous thought. Unfortunately, by the end, it’s gone as mushy and ragged as a homespun hemp blanket.

While there’s no doubt this is the work of a filmmaker entirely in command of her craft, there’s something a trifle academic and dry about the whole exercise, and slightly lacking in narrative cohesion given the nature of its origins.

Bolshoi Babylon explores the bizarre case in more detail, but grows even more interesting when it examines how this storied cultural institution struggles to survive tempestuous politics both inside and outside the theater walls.

Despite it’s entirely predictable, cliché-embracing script, executed with a shrewd mix of forelock-tugging rectitude and cheekiness by director Julian Jarrold (Brideshead Revisited, Kinky Boots), it remains an eminently watchable diversion.

Without stridency but with a clear sense of purpose, director Tonje Hessen Schei compiles a mix of original interviews and footage and archive material and simulations to explore the history of drones.

Director Jill Soloway's comedy-drama isn't perfect – the leitmotif about open eyes feels over-workshopped, and the ending's a bit pat – but it nails with self-lacerating precision the manners and mores of a certain type of hipster parent, the bourgeoisie's muddled attitudes towards sex workers, and the precarious foundations of friendship.

The endgame is disappointingly predictable, but writer-director-cinematographer Jeremy Saulnier has a lovely touch with faces, light and telling details.

The script is smarter than the premise sounds, with writers David Chirchirillo and Trent Haaga dispensing enough information to make victims both sympathetic and despicable, the instigators charismatic and sinister.

Admittedly, there are a lot of documentaries like this, made by citizen journalists recording uprisings in their homelands, but this is one of the best of the recent crop, and a timely reminder of a conflict that's slipped out of the headlines of late.

The result is an amusing, and occasionally touching meditation on fame, sibling rivalry and ambition, with a sweet payoff.

Ultimately, it's mostly a mood piece where not much really happens apart from the inciting incident, but as a study of childhood and adolescence (it makes a great companion piece to Richard Linklater's Boyhood) it's ripe with telling details and atmosphere.

Essential viewing for anyone interested in what freedom of information means in the digital age, this passionate, fascinating, unapologetically partial but fair documentary celebrates Aaron Swartz.

Putting aside the worthiness of its politics, this is also a crackling, tense thriller, graced with beautifully measured performances, that explores with wisdom and sorrow the best and worst in human nature.

Fans of the band will undoubtedly love the package, which puts the group front and centre. Those who are more agnostic about the music but nostalgic for the period will enjoy the peripheral material.

You can’t help feeling you’ve seen variations on this coming-out story too many times (which applies to the gay theme as much as the disability one), and everyone is just a little too nice to be true, even the bullies.

McGregor, who is having a bit of comeback moment right now, is kind of great as the ruthless antihero, and the action set pieces have plenty of fizz.

Byrkit’s parable about choices and how they make us who we are has an eerie potency.

The fight scenes are terrific, but the haphazard plotting, off-the-peg characterisations and drippy music elsewhere lack flavour.

A banal and credulity-stretching finale that feels like a bad Twilight Zone episode, but the first hour or so is terrific.

It’s tremendously reassuring to find out that Spinney is just the sort of kind-hearted sweetheart you’d expect, a man who’s spent a lifetime making children happy. And it’s a kick to see archive footage and interviews with some of the old, non-puppeteer cast members.

It’s an immensely likable movie, impeccably acted and wise about the nature of exile.

Folky music and Studio Ghibli-level flights of eerie fancy are obvious pleasures, but even more subtle and entrancing is the way Moore and his team use echoed shapes to suggest hidden patterns in nature and parallels between the real and the mythical.

The use of video diaries and the expository speeches are painfully on the nose at times, and dramatically spins a bit out of control by the end, while some of the acting is patchy. Still, one can’t but fail to be impressed with the film’s commitment to investigate its issues with subtlety and frankness.

Fashioned out of well-worn, if not hackneyed, horror tropes, Demonic is no meta-level deconstruction of the genre, but it’s a more than competent, fugue-like manipulation that freshens familiar components with a tricky structure.

There’s no doubting Heineman and his crew’s audacity as they venture close to the line of fire, but the commitment to observing dispassionately at all times starts to feel a bit like a cop-out.

There’s no missing the polemical points being made or doubting the film is meant to inspire further action, but even hardened whale-eating oil oligarchs are likely to be charmed by the idealism and smarts of these audacious activists.

Dense thickets of information, told via rostrum-shot photos and documents plus angry mob’s worth of witnesses, become a grind after a while, as does the trite guitar-led mystery music.

Amusingly tacky and offensive though it is, proceedings grow a bit monotonous, because all the tunes have pretty much the same beat and everything is pitched at the same hysterical, OTT level.

It’s tempting to give this more of a pass because the subject is so noble and so few African-made films make it over here, but it has to be admitted that the some of the acting is a bit ropey and the script is a little too on-the-nose at times.

Director Chad Gracia’s The Russian Woodpecker offers a wild ride through Ukrainian and Soviet history.

It’s a good, solid little picture, but it’s not that great, and certainly not noticeably more accomplished or compelling than many of the other music-themed docs that come out each week with less fanfare.

It’s flabby and repetitive, but peppered with moments of exquisite sonic lusciousness – not unlike the album itself.

Sergey Shnyryov is superb as Petrov’s fictional counterpart, and the present and the past are smoothly sutured together by deft editing and an insistently mournful string score, although it’s sometimes a bit repetitive.

The sad truth is that, however engaging they are as performers elsewhere, neither Collette nor Barrymore are at their best here.

Berg’s account of the child abuse cases that led to the imprisonment of Warren Jeffs, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), doesn’t reveal much that hasn’t already been in the news or written up in books, but it does provide a comprehensive, disturbing and utterly fascinating historical overview.

This ungainly portrait strikes a lot of poses, as if inviting the viewer to admire its impressive cast list, fine period detailing, "cheeky" British humor, and insouciant attitude towards violence. But none of it disguises the fact that the film is also tonally incoherent, vacuous and structurally a bleedin' mess.

Garneau with his Smeg fridge and smug affect grows more irksome over the course. Moreover, engagement with issues around poverty, capitalism and public policy kicks in a bit too late.

It’s an instant camp classic, especially because it takes itself so adorably seriously.

What We Did On Our Holiday could be used as a textbook example of how to ruin a movie with a bad third act.

It’s no surprise to learn this was developed from a short film; it has a short’s fragmented, tone-poem quality, but not the sustained coherence of a feature.

Striking an elegantly sustained balance between intimacy and historical scope, director James Kent's WWI-set epic Testament of Youth encompasses nearly all of the virtues of classical British period drama and nearly none of the vices.

Although not as strikingly original as Bujalski’s earlier work, there’s something endearing about the characters, the film’s laconic, stoner rhythms and quirky plotting. In the end, it has something wise and kind to say about loneliness and the cult of personal improvement.

An intensely compelling work.

The director, her co-screenwriter Etienne Comar and the exceptional cast led by Emmanuelle Bercot and Vincent Cassel have an acute enough eye for the manners and mores of these archetypes to make the material feel consistently fresh and alive.

It feels ineffably slight even if it’s a consistent pleasure to spend time in the company of these three likeable women.

A very fine if not exactly groundbreaking film about, as the title hints, perspective and distance.

If the metrics by which you want to measure Love are its brute sexiness and technical panache, then the film is indeed rather extraordinary. Thanks to Noe's regular collaborator Benoit Debie (who also shot such recent visually bravura films as Spring Breakers and Lost River), Love contains some of the prettiest shagging scenes in cinematic history.

As action, it's niftily executed, the suspense neatly built, and the shocks expectedly surprising.

A richly rewarding but often very disturbing, even harrowing work.

Reprising the kind of musical performances, campus hijinks, stinging humor and sassy sisterhood put in place by its eminently likeable predecessor, Pitch Perfect 2 remixes the elements and comes up with something even slicker and sharper.

Whatever the filmmakers' subtextual intentions may be, the film certainly gets stronger and more compelling as it goes on, thanks in part to intense emoting on the part of its cast, with Harris, Keeley and especially Soller standing out particularly.

Director Brett Haley’s second feature has a disarming lightness of touch that keeps the proceedings buoyant, even when they inevitably brush up against mortality.

Amiable if predictable.

Has sturdy production values, a tony cast and middlebrow tastefulness up the wazoo, but barely any soul, bite or genuine passion.

Ripe, borderline hammy turns from Javier Bardem, Ray Winstone, Idris Elba and Mark Rylance add some spice.

A shocking but ultimately galvanizing work of reportage that meets the same high standard of their previous collaboration, The Invisible War.

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is a sluggish also-ran compared to its predecessor.

It’s an altogether strange but astonishing work of craftsmanship.

Just as Brenda lives by a credo never to judge another woman, so too does the film, which creates an uplifting portrait of redemption and acceptance.

This impeccably assembled and argued film represents a brave, timely intervention into debates around the organization that have been simmering for some time.

For all its flaws it’s a rich, thought-provoking film which, while challenging, is not without humor and visual pleasures, particularly in the restrained but bang-on period production design.

Sleeping With Other People is a brittle, bawdy, frequently funny romcom that might be too smart for its own good.

What Happened, Miss Simone does its job well, proving especially treasurable for its wealth of rare archive film footage and audio material that captures Simone’s fierce talent, fiery temperament and fragile mental health. But it is unlikely to be ranked up there with the best music-themed bio-docs.

Co-director Starzack was one of the guiding hands behind the series version of Shaun the Sheep, and that experience in the kind of brisk, skit-based comedy that makes the series so charming shows through here in stand-alone scenes.

Rambling and unfocused but not without its moments.

Pic is a little too pleased with its own evenhanded presentation of liberal moral conundrums, but there’s no gainsaying Ostlund’s remarkable achievement in coaxing entirely naturalistic perfs from his young core cast

Perfs, by a mixture of non-pros and little-known thesps, are impressively naturalistic and spontaneous. Ostlund has a knack for comedy, although his script, co-written with Erik Hemmendorff, is a little opaque about where it stands on the morality of each strand’s situation.

Some parts – the solid cast, a few well-turned one-liners – are really quite good indeed, although viewers have to wade through a moderate fug of reindeer fart jokes to get to them.

Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa’s Maidan harkens back to the heroic, journalistic roots of documentary-making and yet feels ineffably modern and formally daring. It’s a tiny marvel of a movie.

The problem with The Pyramid is that it doesn't have a single new idea in its arsenal. All the shocks are cribbed from the likes of Alien, The Descent and a ghostly host of other horror films, but they're not even very effectively done here.

It’s a relief to report that the final film is actually quite charming, thoughtful and as cuddly as a plush toy, albeit one with a few modern gizmos thrown in.

The film just looks a mess, apart from some of the rather pretty shots of banana slugs and redwoods. It doesn’t help that the characters, even accounting for how little developed they are, come across as entitled, self-absorbed brats, and that the very title is, on a first viewing, a complete enigma. At least it’s only 72 minutes long.

This computer animated work has strikingly designed characters, and some good isolated sequences, but the script’s un bordel (French for shambolic mess).

Facing the physical challenges of depicting Hawking’s disability, Redmayne pulls it off with enormous grace and endurance.

Visually ravishing, emotionally wise, and kinky as a coiled rope, writer-director Peter Strickland’s third feature The Duke of Burgundy is a delight.

Aniston submits an honest, sturdy performance. However, the film, directed by Daniel Barnz (Phoebe in Wonderland, Beastly) and written by Patrick Tobin, is less emotionally potent than it wants to be.

In the end, the film is so guilelessly unabashed about its hokum that it becomes sort of endearing in a way, and one can’t but admire the likes of Cox, McElhone and Toby Stephens as the boo-hiss bad guy for fully committing to the corn.

The Good Lie is a touching, generous-hearted movie, sensitively directed by Philippe Falardeau (Monsieur Lazhar) working with a smart, sly, long-gestated script by Margaret Nagle (Boardwalk Empire).

Writer-director Rowan Joffe’s adaptation of S.J. Watson’s bestseller honors the lurid spirit of the page-turner enough to satisfy fans, but he doesn’t transmute the material into something richer and deeper the way.

It’s a lovely piece of work.

More tightly scripted than Garrel’s usual rambles, the comedy-drama also has an unexpected emotional warmth.

The film manages, impressively, to be both crushingly banal and offensive in its use of cultural stereotypes. Watching it is like being brutally violated by a greeting card.

Sinuous sequences where one object morphs into another are his stock and trade, and that strength is on ample display in Cheatin’.

The use of sign language, deafness and silence itself adds several heady new ingredients to the base material, alchemically creating something rich, strange and very original.

This is a beautifully distilled and literally still work that lingers in the mind long after its conclusion.

With acute sensitivity, Brit writer-helmer Joanna Hogg’s third feature, Exhibition, explores the difficulty of telling inside from outside, intimacy from estrangement, and revelation from concealment.

As a horror film using that now-tired device, "found footage" supposedly shot by the characters themselves, it's quite passable.

Anchored by a masterful performance by Timothy Spall in a role he was born to play, and gilded by career-best effort from DoP Dick Pope, working for the first time on digital for Leigh to bridge the gap between the painting and cinematography, Mr. Turner manages to illuminate that nexus between biography and art with elegant understatement.

Simultaneously a modern essay on suffering, an open-ended thriller, and a black social comedy, it is most importantly of all a thinly-veiled political parable drenched in bitter irony that takes aim against the corrupt, corrosive regime of Vladimir Putin.

Clearly, these films are the work of people who love animals. More importantly though, going beyond the pat eco-conscious message that every kids’ film has to have, HTTYD2 touches on how complex the emotional bond between a person and an animal can be.

The film lucks out by having an intrinsically compelling story, likeable underdog protagonists, and an exotic South Pacific location.

Half of a Yellow Sun is the kind of ambitious literary adaptation that wants it all kinds of ways, not all of them compatible.

The plot gets itself tangled up in multiple villain strands, but in the main this installment is emotionally weightier and more satisfying than its predecessor.

So much better than one would expect for a fifth installment in a franchise, this tribute to female friendship and girl power is a kick.

This outstanding, muscular feature debut for French-born, British-based director Yann Demange almost never puts a foot wrong, from the softly underplayed performances to the splendidly speckled cinematography and fine-grained period detailing.

The film forms a near-perfect storm of misjudged decisions, with its implausible plot, irritating or outright-dislikeable characters, and strained attempts at “wacky” British humor that fall so flat they’re below sea level.

In some ways, the thoughtful, dense script marks an improvement on the original, and the cast is certainly tonier this time around. What’s missing is the original’s evil wit, amoral misanthropy and subversive slipperiness.

A pleasant, polished, but somewhat by-the-numbers effort.

There’s no doubting Brook and the performers’ commitment to their craft, even if the end result is somewhat repetitive.

This debut for German writer-director Jan Ole Gerster seemingly aims to transplant a mumblecore aesthetic into Berlin, with all the requisite aimless hipsters, whimsical touches and rambling narrative dips and dives; but someone forgot to add spontaneity or edge.

The film comprises an impressive directorial debut for Adler who demonstrates a confident grasp of pace, place and thesp handling.

A charming animated feature.

Paradise: Hope has humor and warmth, and shows more genuine affection and kindness toward its characters than Seidl usually allows.

A pleasing walk in the park for all involved, not exactly profound, but appealing to both long term fans of the franchise and accessible to newcomers.

Although director Alan Taylor manages to get things going properly for the final battle in London, the long stretches before that on Asgard and the other branches of Yggdrasil are a drag.

Taken strictly on its own terms, Saving Mr. Banks works exceedingly well as mainstream entertainment.

Spirited, highly amusing and endearingly shambolic.

One of Wiseman’s best, a summation of sorts of a career’s worth of principled filmmaking from a director in his ninth decade.

This ingeniously executed study in cinematic minimalism has depth, beauty and poise.

A sci-fi confection that, at best, momentarily recalls the dystopian whimsy of the director’s best-loved effort, “Brazil,” but ends up dissolving into a muddle of unfunny jokes and half-baked ideas, all served up with that painful, herky-jerky Gilliam rhythm.

A gloriously off-the-charts study in perversity.

The constant juxtaposition of scenes showing the dark and light aspects of the characters endows the pic with a juicy moral complexity that will stimulate post-screening debates.

Curtis ends up making a virtue out of the narrative’s episodic quality, a tendency that’s been criticized in his previous work; the film, like life, is just one damn thing after another, and that’s really the rather lovely point.

A fraction less gut-bustingly goofy than its predecessors.

The semi-improvised dialogue has the juicy tang of authenticity in the hands of this highly competent cast, and the players and Shelton never sneer at the characters' new-agey beliefs.

The film’s thudding shocks and predictability dull its edge.

There’s much to admire in the film’s elegantly classical tempo and the way Omirbayev achieves so much with so little.

A nuanced, emotionally temperate study of a precocious youth.

A sweet but slight love story about world-weary hipster bloodsuckers.

Franco offers up a competently acted, technically adequate Cliff Notes take on Faulkner’s narratively refracted tale of dirt-poor Mississippi folk in mourning.

In the Fog explores the moralities of wartime with restraint and exacting execution.

A spare but stealthily powerful tale.

If the emotional mathematics don’t quite add up, enough diversion is provided by pic’s broader comic setpieces to paper over the cracks.

Anchored by two intense, intertwined perfs by veteran Vincent Lindon and relative newcomer Soko, a musician who also composed the pic’s growling, atmospheric score, this period drama offers a coolly febrile study of madness, Victorian sexual politics and power.

In the end, the material feels a bit attenuated, like a short that’s been stretched to feature length, even if the characters are enjoyable, sympathetic enough company for the pic’s 84-minute running time.

Repulsive and sublimely beautiful, arguably celebratory and damning of its characters, it’s hideous and masterful all at once, “Salo” with sunburn.

The final reel packs a genuine emotional wallop, even as it makes auds laugh with the vicious precision of its dramatic irony.

Picture has some redeeming features, like its glossy, fashion-shoot-inspired black-and-white look, and a clutch of respectable performances among some very poor ones from the toothsome young cast, but the script is a mess, the characters barely sympathetic.

An amiable comedy about young Glaswegian roughnecks discovering the world of whisky, The Angels’ Share finds helmer Ken Loach and long-term screenwriting partner Paul Laverty in better, breezier form than their rebarbative prior effort, “Route Irish.”

Robert Redford’s unabashedly heartfelt but competent tribute to 1960s idealism.

Corny as a vat of polenta, but still rib-sticking enough to satisfy those who like lightly seasoned, easily digestible cinematic starch, Italy-set Love Is All You Need offers a romantic comedy for middle-aged palettes.

The picture draws only slight entertainment value from the spectacle of youngsters warbling 1970s pop tunes, like a retro version of “High School Musical” with less charm.

Along with the moral lesson, Nguyen remembers to give auds some pleasures, including the exquisitely chosen soundtrack of African folk and pop music, Nicolas Bolduc's cinematography and the very artful use of sound throughout.

Saucily thumbing its nose at the insipid teen love of the "Twilight" franchise, Kiss reimagines its bloodsuckers as horny, supercilious Eurotrash with addiction issues, sucking the life blood from naive American thrill-seekers.

After "Tony Manero" and "Post Mortem," his devastating portraits of how the Pinochet regime psychologically brutalized the people of Chile from 1973-90, Chilean helmer Pablo Larrain satisfyingly completes the trilogy with an affirmative victory for democracy in No.

Presented and narrated with warmth and welcome moments of humor by thesp Jeremy Irons, often seen wearing a hat that looks salvaged from a recycling bin, the picture delivers a judicious mix of human interest and useful statistics that will make it accessible to middle-class audiences.

Ultimately, "Renee" feels less like a walk away than a retread.

Setting most of the action in a mocked-up theater emphasizes the performance aspects of the characters' behavior, a strategy enhanced by lead thesp Keira Knightley's willingness to let her neurotic Anna appear less sympathetic than in previous incarnations.

Brugger ensures it's a fairly entertaining excursion, especially when he starts to enjoy getting into character as the nefarious white man in Africa.

Although laid out with such clarity that any layperson could catch the gist of what's being discussed, Side by Side is not afraid to get nitty-gritty about more technical matters.

Mixed-media approach is eye-catching, and the subject is unquestionably powerful, but the sentimental score and stridently drawn imagery detract from picture's impact.

Sacrifice is practically a chamber piece, and duly draws its strength from its performances, especially those of Ge and Wang.

An undeniably powerful record of the Palestinian village of Bil'in's course of civil disobedience from 2005 to the present...the pic is also shamelessly sentimental and manipulative in its construction.

Ups the self-parody so much that it's practically a Wayans Brothers spoof, albeit with fewer jokes.

Picture may not be Scots helmer David Mackenzie's best effort, but it's easily his most lighthearted, a cheery trifle that reps a contrast to his recent pictures, the apocalyptic "Perfect Sense" and U.S.-set comic misfire "Spread."

The powerhouse cast is so capable, the actors just about manage to play the picture as if it were a "Midsummer Night's Dream"-style frothy farce, with marigold garlands and picturesque poverty.

An only fitfully convincing Hudson leads a strong-on-paper cast, but most of the actors look uncomfortable here, particularly Gael Garcia Bernal as her love interest.

Much more amusing in theory than in execution.

Stillman proves he still knows how to write crackling, articulate dialogue for quirky preppie characters whom he loves laughing at as much as with.

Although this family-friendly tale of feckless adventurers pursuing a prize is consistently funnier than "Arthur," in language, humor and attitude it's as endearingly British as Yorkshire pudding, soccer hooliganism and wonky teeth.

Davies is in fine form here, with luminous performances, especially from Rachel Weisz, rounding out a classy package whose only major problem is it may be a bit too true to its period sensibility and legit origins.

The Raven is a squawking, silly picture that never takes flight.

The worst that could be said of helmer David Gelb's feature debut is that it's perhaps a little over-garnished with backstory about Ono's relationship with his two sons, and is slightly repetitive. That said, this intrinsically compelling hymn to craftsmanship and taste in every sense should cleanse palates.

The picture still tells a riveting story about contempo Russia's darkest side.

Although beautifully rendered throughout, with delicate, elegantly drawn watercolor-like illustrations, the picture may seem too plain and simple for the oversophisticated tastes of kids in Europe and North America, while Arrietty herself reps a slightly insipid heroine.

Helmer James Watkins ("Eden Lake") and scripter Jane Goldman judiciously combine moves from the classic scare-'em-ups with new tricks from recent J-horror pictures to retell Susan Hill's oft-adapted Victorian gothic pastiche.

In sartorial terms, the fabric is to die for, but helmer Whitney Sudler-Smith's documentary follows a banal pattern, while the finishing lacks finesse.

Although rich in ideas and always compelling to look at, writer-helmer Patrick Keiller's latest semi-experimental pic Robinson in Ruins reps a minor disappointment after his outstanding, same-veined previous works, "London" and "Robinson in Space."

Offering further proof that the latest 3D technology is good for a lot more than just lunging knives and fantastical storylines, Wim Wenders' dance docu Pina reps multidimensional entertainment that will send culture vultures swooning.

An inventive, meaty distillation of Le Carre's 1974 novel, picture turns hero George Smiley's hunt for a mole within Blighty's MI6 into an incisive examination of Cold War ethics, rich in both contempo resonance and elegiac melancholy.

Burdened with risible dialogue and weak performances, picture doesn't have much going for it apart from lavish production design and terrific, well-researched costumes -- and it's in focus, which is more than can be said for the script.

An exquisitely realized adaptation of Lionel Shriver's bestselling novel. In a rigorously subtle performance as a woman coping with the horrific damage wrought by her psychopathic son, Tilda Swinton anchors the dialogue-light film with an expressiveness that matches her star turn in "I Am Love."

Fuzzy-headed biopic, which glosses over the former British prime minister's politics in favor of a glib, breakneck whirl around her career and marriage.

The result is a superficially handsome crime thriller that doesn't tick, although it's got a pretty, jeweled face, and some clever scripting by William Monahan (scribe of "The Departed"), making his directorial debut here.

Taking liberties with journalist Neil McCormick's memoir to create narrative tension, screenwriters Simon Maxwell and prolific scribe team Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais ("The Commitments") overstuff the story with subplots and trite character arcs.

Although a massive hit at home, taking approximately $16 million at the wickets, this great-looking but tonally uneven pic won't jive with audiences quite so well anywhere else.

Clearly rejuvenated by his collaboration with producer Peter Jackson, and blessed with a smart script and the best craftsmanship money can buy, Spielberg has fashioned a whiz-bang thrill ride that's largely faithful to the wholesome spirit of his source but still appealing to younger, Tintin-challenged audiencs.

Mixing together some of helmer Aki Kaurismaki's favorite Gallic and Finnish thesps with a few newbies, Le Havre feels like a welcoming family reunion.

A chirpy, tween-skewing, snowboarding-themed romantic comedy, Chalet Girl slaloms exuberantly down a predictable path, kicking up regular flurries of fun along the way.

Script by former DEA officer Don Ferrarone isn't that bad in itself, but matters aren't helped by the mumbled performances and poor sound, which make it hard to hear what anyone's saying, while sloppy editing wreaks havoc on the story.

A very 2011 take on Alexandre Dumas' classic that feels weirdly dated already. Although adequately entertaining thanks to lavish production values and game supporting perfs, this anodyne adaptation lacks a killer hook that would help it cross over to a demographic beyond action buffs and fanboys.

Like the lemon meringue pies and shrimp cocktails it features throughout, Brit comedy-drama Toast is tasty, hearty and rather conventional.

As with his previous pics about the brood, Dutch-Indonesian helmer Leonard Retel Helmrich deploys an expressionistic, quasi-soap-opera approach to produce striking results, thanks especially to use of Steadicam. But the protagonists seem to be playing to the cameras more this time round, making "Stars" a less charming effort than earlier installments.

Beautifully assembled, but emotionally inert despite its focus on bereavement and love's endurance, Russian art film Silent Souls reps at the very least a significant step up for its helmer, Aleksei Fedorchenko.

Like most Sono pictures, too long. But its gleeful humor and dare-you-to-watch aesthetic will help it rack up kills at specialty fests.

Picture's tone is far more poetic than polemical.

Ironclad might be the perfect actioner for gorehound fanboys gaga for medieval trappings, but all others may find this British-American-German co-production a bit of a drag.

What's singularly lacking here is any sense of how to use the underage characters, who, apart from one or two, are a barely distinguishable gaggle.

Although there is some insightful observational work, and the dancing itself is aces, pic feels overcrowded with characters.

An overview of African-American gospel sounds whose dazzling talent-display should exhilarate viewers regardless of religious leanings.

Not exactly an unholy mess, but still a rather too pious retread of classic sci-fi/action/horror riffs that lacks originality or pizzazz.

This at first slow-moving and then wildly kinetic actioner possesses a cool classicism that will appeal to offshore audiences as well as those at home.

There's no subtextual allusion really to contempo France or civil wars elsewhere in the world today, just the feeling that this is an interesting story in its own right, fascinating precisely because it's so at odds with modern sensibilities.

If nothing else, Armadillo proves just how well "The Hurt Locker" captured the mixture of boredom, fear, brutality and locker-room machismo that makes up the day-to-day routine of a frontline soldier.

Like its flight-challenged parrot protagonist, Rio takes a while to get off the ground but manages to soar by the end.

Neither scary, funny, nor anywhere near as clever as it seems to think it is, picture offers audiences few reasons to want to see it beyond its one-joke premise.

While managing to deliver enough suspense and bloodletting to appease gore fans, steadily improving helmer Christopher Smith ("Severance") and screenwriter Dario Poloni smuggle in a merciless critique of religious delusion.

Part bromance, part sci-fi spoof and all a bit disappointing.

A Tempest so kitschy, yet curiously drab and banal.