Martin Tsai

Gelb’s documentary gives viewers an overview of who Lee was and what made him tick, but mostly within the context of comics.

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.

So instructional is the film, directed by Brook's son, Simon, that it feels like one of those P90X or Insanity home fitness programs: Try this at home. You too can perform on stage.

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

Perhaps the vapid existence of millennials is precisely the point that co-writers Erik Crary and Steven Piet (who also directs) are driving at, but the film itself proves inarticulate and unsubstantial.

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.

Writer-director Gerard Johnson resists all impulses to please the crowd. The graphic sex and violence never feel gratuitous, and there's something interesting in the way he deliberately denies his characters and the viewers any reprieve.

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.

Lee stars in, directs, co-writes, and co-produces this taut, extravagant, and technically proficient effort, which comes off more as an auspicious filmmaking debut than a vanity project, one that stacks up favorably with most American spy thrillers.

The engaging plot gets a bit absurd toward the end.

The film is a disingenuous, thoroughly dramatized reenactment at best and a reality show at worst.

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.

Advocacy documentaries simply don't get better or more compelling than this.

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.

Alone Together frequently hints at Holmes’ gifts as a storyteller, so it’s disappointing that she has a proclivity for romance-novel fodder. If she could have workshopped the script somewhere and honed in on authentic feelings outside conventional narratives, she has the potential to be taken more seriously as a filmmaker.

Barker just hammers home the human-interest angle with a stirring score that serves to instruct the appropriate emotional response to each scene. The tacked-on uplift in the end is beyond comprehension, given that some of its subjects remain in peril.

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

The method to Von Trier's madness is that he provokes thought alongside outrage in his parables. Here, Gebbe musters only outrage, as her antagonists are without nuance, mercy or any redeeming quality.