Martin Tsai

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."

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.

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.

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

Like a typical Hollywood action-thriller, though, the screenplay jeopardizes the film. The twists concocted by writers James Robert Johnston and Bennett Yellin are mostly predictable; and the ones you don't see coming are outlandish.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Above all, its gratuitous graphic gore and exploitative nudity are unmistakably giallo. What "The Strange Color" lacks is the heart that separates a good film from a great one.

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.

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

Given the routineness of the chase itself, what jumps out here is the pervasive desperation shared by just about every character.

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.

This journey into "Martha Marcy May Marlene" territory is never as tense and gripping as it should be, the incidents and most of the performances too tamped-down to spark a much-needed sense of animating friction.

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.

Basir’s script is ambitious and thoughtful, though flawed. The regrettable characterizations of women aside, some of the dots don’t quite connect.

The AIDS scare remains as much window dressing as do other period details such as rotary phones and cassette tapes. Test seems to be about dance above all, with choreographed montages filling the bulk of its running time.

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

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

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.

"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.

The Creeping Garden cultivates more style than substance.

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

Even at a meager 40 minutes, the film feels padded... But so long as the jubilance brought about by lemurs can compel more protection for the near-extinct species, the film will have served its purpose.

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

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

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

Veteran television director Lee Jae-kyoo balances the most engrossing aspects of the South Korean telenovela with grandiloquent Hong Kong-influenced fight scenes.

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.

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

It does have a point of view, but the intended conclusion ripens for the picking in a roundabout way.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

The film blurs lines between documentary, reality television and "Candid Camera," with Vargas instigating the proceedings.

It's far more invested in elaborate historical reenactments, hypothetical dramatizations and special effects than interviews, research and data.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

By allowing Cameron's first-person account to take command of the narrative, though, the film seems to gloss over meaningful logistics of the expedition.

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.

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.

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.

This cautionary tale certainly has a chilling and timely message of how wars make monsters out of innocent people. But using reductive caricatures — complete with phlegmatic performances — to send that message is perhaps not the best way, because it turns something with modern-day implications into distant allegory.

Despite this notable cast, the remake never manages to drum up much excitement for its sleepy hamlet rousing or for its characters, finally filled with purpose.

Sheep in the Box gestures toward grief, artificial consciousness, and emotional dependency without ever probing the psychic or societal consequences of any of them.

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.

Knights of Badassdom actually delivers everything the 2011 Danny McBride-James Franco comedy "Your Highness" purported to be but fell short on. The film is "This Is the End" festooned with Middle Ages accouterments.

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.

The engaging plot gets a bit absurd toward the end.

The film reveals frustratingly little about the sisters themselves.

When it becomes apparent that the seemingly linear narrative is in fact woven with several parallel story lines, one might even be inclined to excuse the plot's too many convenient coincidences.

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

The home-movie vérité style of the early scenes pays dividends when inexplicable occurrences suddenly take us by surprise.

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.

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

The film supplies a succession of hyper-stylized and potent set pieces without ever establishing any sort of internal logic.

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

Miss Lovely does exude an air of authenticity... But much of the film remains underdeveloped.

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.

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

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.

Not unlike most of its Hollywood counterparts, though, this Hong Kong import can't resist the urge to dumb down a fascinating premise for the sake of mass consumption.

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

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

The film is more lifestyle puff piece than journalism.

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

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

The film's colorblindness does not make up for its latent sexism.

Although this horror flick is somewhat absurd and seemingly forgettable when viewed in a vacuum, its coincidentally contemporaneous release with "Blue Is the Warmest Color" urges immediate reconsideration.

Like many found-footage films before it, The Den never entirely suspends disbelief. It doesn't satisfyingly account for how the characters are producing all the footage.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The film is certainly interesting, despite the fact that it's a glorified promotional video for Muniz's installations.

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

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.

While the cast and crew's competence well exceed what anyone would expect from this breed of B movies, they cannot compensate for the flawed internal logic in the screenplay.

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

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.

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.

If "The Bible" was CliffsNotes for the Scriptures, Son of God is the cheat sheet. The two-hour film condenses about four hours of what already was hasty television, and it all winds up a little dramatically static.

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.

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.

The Christmas Candle" seems destined to be a Hallmark movie of the week. But in spite of the hammy histrionics requisite for the genre, it is not at all a turkey.