Martin Tsai

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

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.

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.

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

The film reveals frustratingly little about the sisters themselves.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

"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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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 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.

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.”

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

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.

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.

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

With verbal jabs and sight gags in equal measure, the script proves serviceably funny. As the film progresses, though, the hilarity does not escalate along with the outrageousness.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Ngoc and Faunce certainly make fascinating subjects, and the film persuasively argues to give them the benefit of the doubt. But one can't help but think that in the hands of a shrewder filmmaker like Errol Morris, this stranger-than-fiction account would have been absolutely riveting.

The engaging plot gets a bit absurd toward the end.

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

The screenplay by Lane Shadgett and director Trevor White relies far too much on telling rather than showing.

The Creeping Garden cultivates more style than substance.

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.

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

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

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

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.

One Candle, Two Candles proves worthwhile at least as a cultural curio.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Some instances of impiousness work better than others.

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.

The film is more lifestyle puff piece than journalism.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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."

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.

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.

By performing narrative gymnastics, the film sacrifices any possibility for viewers to identify with the characters. Although the film does answer the myriad questions it raises along the way, it would have benefited from more straightforward storytelling.

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.