Martin Tsai

Even during the fantasy musical numbers, which give cover to stray from the overall aesthetics of the film, Phillips is just incapable of delivering the genre’s requisite razzle dazzle that would surely complement Joker’s persona.

Given Almodóvar’s established penchant for melodrama and that the subject is euthanasia, the film is strangely aloof. It never reduces the proceedings to Lifetime territory or patronizes moviegoers in the process. It does, however, leave you to wonder a bit about the indifference you might ultimately come away with yourself.

Pablo Larraín's Maria is a one-note exploration of another public figure that just makes the same points over and over again.

Even if you agree with the film’s political lean, it’s hard to overlook the unorthodoxy. Common Ground smacks of propaganda masquerading as documentary. If such can qualify as documentary, then so should reality TV.

The film never fully commits itself to neo-noir beyond the plot.

The Quiet Girl has a meaningful message on nurturing. But with so little of consequence going on, it’s crucial to get the emotions precisely right. Without voiceover narration tying everything together, some scenes feel out of place, random, or offer little beyond aesthetics.

Other than the pair of outstanding lead performances, there really isn’t much cause to watch it.

An occasionally seductive but muddled examination of a complex physical and emotional relationship.

Experimentalism isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, but the form, content, visuals, and motifs of There There aren’t inspired or interesting enough to warrant serious mental engagement.

Even for a movie obsessed from the outset with its destination, Don’t Make Me Go mostly takes a road to nowhere.

Leave No Trace tackles an urgent topic and relays essential truths.

On The Count Of Three is not didactic, and thank goodness the filmmakers at least have the good sense to recognize that preachiness helps no one and solves nothing. But the film dumbs down a complex and taboo topic by placing blame squarely on bogeymen like bullies and abusers.

Until we’re a bit further removed from the current wave of anti-Asian hate crimes, Shim’s film underplays the potential nuance that might come from a proper exploration of that idea, instead reinforcing the idea that nonwhite language, imagery, and faces are to be feared—worst of all, to the people bearing them.

"Massive Talent” goes full fan service–y, tapping into the cult of personality shrouding its lead actor. But the actual finished product feels too inside-baseball; it takes a true Cage aficionado to be in on all the jokes.

It feels like Dunham hasn’t progressed much after all this time.

Earnest and well-meaning, The Congressman devolves into predictable schmaltz.

The temporal puzzle is enough to distract from the artless direction, visibly cheap set designs and tacky special effects. But if the expository scenes are any indication, his writing could benefit from some refinement.

Directors Jonathan Yi and Michael Haertlein put the focus on the standard reality-TV repertoire like "Making the Band." Their repeated disregard for Hioki's pleas to go off the record smacks of opportunism and exploitation rather than revelation.

Pandemic proves serviceably frightening, if sporadically gory, maximizing tension derived from unknown dangers lurking in dark corridors and behind closed doors.

It's little more than an artsy but hollow Lifetime cable movie.

"Black” foregoes too much scene-setting, chronology and logic to stand completely on its own. As a piece of cultural criticism, however, it painstakingly eviscerates nearly every scene in “Grey” and skewers latent sexism, classism and ludicrous sexual innuendoes, as well as the original’s numerous plot holes.

Foley's family members, colleagues and prison cell mates vividly recount his 2011 imprisonment in Libya, his difficulty reacclimating to home life in sleepy New England after his release, before leaving again for Syria and enduring imprisonment by ISIS.

Writer-director Ken Kwek means for the proceedings to be farcical, but seldom are they actually funny. A former journalist, he's quite observant of the clashes among the classes and cultures in this diverse society.

Demski and director Chris Kasick wrap up the story neatly — in both senses of that word — by suggesting that we can all feel better at somebody else's expense.

Through a first-person narration, Bialis makes much of the film about herself. Her account certainly turns the daily travails of living in Sderot into something tangible for viewers. But at the same time, her life-experience narrative proves a distraction and a disservice to the promise of the film's title.

With the mixing of the sprawling family tree with geopolitical imbroglios already proving daunting for viewers, the filmmaker exacerbates the confusion by eschewing a linear chronology.

Director Bernardo Ruiz never manages to weave the multiple narratives into a complex but cohesive big picture.

Writer-director Jonas Carpignano glosses over much of the sociopolitical context in his depictions of the chain of events.

Writer-director Claudia Sparrow prefers to pay more mind to the abstract.

Sands' scripted narration sounds detached and dissociated from the grief, frustration and anger he sporadically displays.

Koutras admirably resists easy wish fulfillment by making the brothers' journey more important than their destination, but the scenario he presents inexplicably turns out to be fantasy.

His runners' successes speak volumes, but the film never ventures outside of his inner circle to gain more perspective.

The Creeping Garden cultivates more style than substance.

While the gangsta lyrics and posturing are laden with cliché, there's still some novelty in sustaining a rap narration for nearly two hours. But whenever the music stops, the film can never stay in the game by landing on a figurative chair.

Because of the faulty memory of its unreliable protagonist, Reversion prompts viewers to second-guess its narrative. Director and co-writer Jose Nestor Marquez eschews most establishing shots, exacerbating the sense of disorientation and mystery.

It's hard to tell if director and co-writer Ariel Kleiman is being serious or sarcastic with a story this preposterous.

Director Timothy Wheeler manages to wrangle for interviews some active and reformed egg offenders along with authorities, conservationists and volunteers. Some are quite the characters, indeed.

Though not as thrilling as the original, this third installment is an improvement over the paint-by-number 2013 direct-to-video “12 Rounds 2: Reloaded.”

It's too bad that Bühler and Mariani take Kirk's tall tale at face value instead of doing their own investigative work and tracking down other characters for interviews.

Ribière and Le Bourdonnec get almost hypertechnical with all the cattle breeds, feeds, grades, cuts, marbling, dry-aging and preparation. Nevertheless, most any carnivore would find this absolute torture on an empty stomach.

Searching for Home: Coming Back From War touches on wide-ranging veterans' issues, but goes no deeper than that.

Filmmaker J.P. Sniadecki withholds judgment and resists editorializing, but the result is frustratingly nebulous and devoid of context.

The film is most effective when Bauer and Cartwright are battling the surroundings instead of each other.

The movie can't do much to address the inherent flaws in the premise.

The film is more lifestyle puff piece than journalism.

Northmen: A Viking Saga uses a relatively smaller scale to its advantage.

More filmmakers should treat the zombie subgenre as allegorical, the way George A. Romero intended. But Extinction and "Maggie" both arrive at the same conclusion about fatherhood, thereby confirming it as a cliché rather than a coincidence.

Fans will be thrilled that the auteur hasn't missed a beat with Wild City, although he appears to be making the same concessions to the Chinese market as his contemporaries.

Writers Christopher Borrelli and Michael C. Martin commit quite a handful of sins of contrivance that are difficult to absolve.

The film's apparent faithfulness is admirable, but interviews with actual survivors shown during the end credits provide more impact and resonance than the rest of the film can muster.

Although Michael J. Kospiah's script isn't exactly predictable or didactic, it does feel contrived and improbable on occasion.

Unfortunately, the human relationships depicted here are less credible than the solid special effects.

The film reveals frustratingly little about the sisters themselves.

Imaginatively interspersing testimonials with reenactments, comic panels and Claymation, the film plays out like an entertaining absurdist satire.

Fascinating as it may be, the film could have used outside perspectives to provide more context.

The engaging plot gets a bit absurd toward the end.

One would almost be inclined to give Morgan a pass for interviewing some of his executive producers as expert sources. A bigger disappointment is the missed opportunity to address the significant retailer markups that could have gone toward improving sweatshop conditions instead of profit margins.

The make-it-rain clichés are abundant and Jean-Claude La Marre's direction is pedestrian, but at least a few of the choreographed numbers here prove more magical than what Soderbergh mustered.

Dark Star might have been more fascinating had Sallin delved deeper into his place as an artist.

Director Bradley King and his co-writer, B.P. Cooper, manage to overcome their shoddy premise as the plot progresses assuredly and persuasively.

If bare-knuckle fights are what you seek, director Ekachai Uekrongtham certainly delivers. But the film scarcely scratches the surface of the horrors of human trafficking.

If director-co-writer Karim Aïnouz has set out to depict soulless gay lives, he has more than succeeded.

The only aspects of the tale that seem uniquely Maori are the action sequences featuring the martial art of mau rakau. Aside from intermittent dream sequences in which Hongi communicates with his late grandmother (Rena Owen), the storytelling is Westernized.

Co-directors Dana Nachman and Don Hardy haven't attributed all of their facts and figures, hence the proverbial grain of salt.

While Chopra attempts to crack the American market with a slice of cinematic apple pie, he holds up a mirror to how Hollywood's tried-and-true narrative of vigilantism connotes who we are, at home and overseas.

With "Whiplash" setting the new bar for depicting the rigorous discipline and competitiveness in a music academy, the stale, one-note narrative seen in Boychoir sounds even more out of tune.

It's excusable for a sheltered novice filmmaker to be out of touch like this, but not for a veteran.

By ambitiously aiming to encompass the full scope and complexity of the social pandemic, Lost and Love winds up being all over the map.

Despite the deliberately schlocky effects and puppetry, other aspects of the filmmaking are surprisingly satisfactory. It needs to be only one notch more bonkers to help its chances for cult status.

There are tangible improvements in the techniques of writer-director Terron R. Parsons. But some of the nagging plot holes remain unresolved.

Otherwise fairly routine, the film draws fear from ancient mythology and historical grudges in a way more reminiscent of Japanese horror than its American contemporaries. Had Ojeda delved into that a bit more, he could have really set the film apart.

Unfortunately, each main character serves as an avatar emblematic of a societal symptom instead of a real person in whose shoes we can stand. As a result, their trajectories are didactic and predictable.

If you are a cinephile or an aspiring filmmaker looking for some behind-the-scenes edification, there's little.

There's a lot of truth in writer-director Sai Varadan's observant depictions of the battle of the sexes, the East Coast-West Coast cultural clash and struggling artists in soul-crushing showbiz. Too bad he isn't particularly sympathetic or fair toward his female characters, because there's much to commend otherwise.

With "Looper" and the fantastic recent release "Predestination" using the same plot device to explore existentialism, the potboiler Project Almanac feels like a leap backward.

The film's stark juxtaposition of domestic melodrama and gonzo exploitation is very much reminiscent of "Audition." Whereas the Miike film turned into a feverish anxiety dream about feminist revolt, R100 suggests that extreme and perverse films allow the everyman to seek thrills in his otherwise-monotonous life.

The messy relationships and sexual predilections make for an equally messy plot, which distracts from the film's strength — depicting the truths of a romantic relationship that's past the initial excitement and the selective memories of love lost.

Tsui will try anything once in 3-D. Splatters of blood travel in bullet-time, and the requisite ridiculousness — like action scenes with skis and zip-lines — characterize Tsui's work. But bookending the story with the 2015-set prologue and epilogue turns out to be his most inspired touch.

[Minn] runs around with a microphone in hand like an if-it-bleeds-it-leads ambulance chaser, playing out that local news reporter stereotype often spoofed in mockumentaries.

The documentary A Small Section of the World is straight-up corporate propaganda. But its uplifting, powerful, well-meaning message might be enough to win over even some skeptics.

With a 21/2 -hour running time, Work Weather Wife does not lack ambition. But for a film deliberately channeling Bollywood, its scope seems rather Lilliputian.

Director Sanjay Rawal also allows the likes of Eva Longoria (an executive producer of the film, as is "Fast Food Nation" author Eric Schlosser) and members of the Kennedy dynasty to hijack the farmworkers' story. It's a reductive strategy that ultimately insults viewers' intelligence.

Filmmaker Jesse Quinones challenges certain racial and ethnic stereotypes while reinforcing others. When the script falls short, though, Royo and Haggard act up a storm.

The film proves most valuable when Hadza subjects candidly discuss their clashes with modernity.

The mood is somber, as cued by the contemplative voice-over narration. Sights of rubble, tent cities and an orphanage are devastating. But these seem to be mere backdrop for a very different movie.

Fredric Dannen's reportage, which appeared in a 1992 issue of the New Yorker and serves as the film's basis, contains lurid details that leap off the page in a cinematic way. The "Dragons" script by Michael Di Jiacomo and co-director Andrew Loo preserves many, but few register on-screen.

Director Brett Harvey has gotten the documentary look and format down pat, complete with generic and gratuitous nature and cityscape shots. Where he shows an amateurish hand is in the term-paper-like voice-over narration and the inclusion of underqualified talking heads.

The will-he-or-won't-he question becomes the focus of director Mark Raso's film, and how William responds under the mercy of Effy's whims ultimately determines whether he can emerge from his self-absorption at long last.

Although director and co-writer Cutter Hodierne tells the story from the pirates' viewpoint, he adds no more dimension to them than the one we saw in "Phillips."

The narrative of Strachwitz as preserver of obscure music just repeats like a broken record with the introduction of each region, genre and musician.

The film seems to have an entire deck of cards up its sleeve, and they're dealt out with more tedium than fun.

Landis has acknowledged mental issues in interviews, and it registers so much more on film. The constant scrutiny of a camera seems exploitative and cruel, even if you are at all suspicious when he rationalizes his behavior as childlike mischief.

Hector may indeed learn that narcissism stands in the way of happiness, but he also walks away with his privileges intact and unchallenged.

Despite a few contrivances like the impending romance between Nina and Tennessee, The Frontier remains for the most part refreshing and astute.

As far as documentaries go, the film is exhaustively researched, interviewed and documented.

It's a derivative trove of swashbuckling action, romance, comedy, special effects and revisionist history — the kind of film that would be pitched to studio execs as "Pirates of the Caribbean" meets "Free Willy."

More objectivity would have made this case study a lot more persuasive.

The film feels like a sketch rather than a portrait, beautifully rendered but incomplete in the details.