Michael Nordine

[Sparrow] zigs where you expect her to zag (not always in the best of ways), and though I Remember You ends up exactly where you expect it to, the windy, circuitous path it takes doesn't feel like time misspent.

The final result of all this, if a mixed bag, is still a more accurate rendering of the books' spirit than Oz the Great and Powerful.

The filmmakers take great pains not to stack the deck or overstate the couple's self-evident trauma, but watching the movie is ultimately like being one of their friends: You understand their pain on a conceptual level but can't feel it the way they do.

Xenia has a winning streak of oddness.

The best villains are those whose motivations prove uncomfortably persuasive, and Knock Knock's drop-dead-gorgeous home invaders predicate their cruel game on too shaky a foundation to truly unsettle.

Both Aria and the film as a whole are very much in their own head, which is a nice place to visit but probably not the healthiest environment to grow up in.

Roth amplifies that exploitation flick's least interesting components (gore, cruelty) at the expense of all others.

Worse than the latent silliness of such a premise is how little the filmmakers ultimately do with the world of narrative possibilities it presents; in attempting to show the universality of love, The Beauty Inside succeeds in showing the opposite.

[Palermo] demonstrates an affinity for all things ethereal, even as he occasionally struggles to make space for himself in the long shadow of his estimable influences and reference points.

Only You is mostly engaging for the ways in which it shows that prophecies reveal more about the receiver's interpretive biases than they do about the secrets of the universe.

Though quite silly, none of this feels self-reflexive or -satisfied. It delights in its own stupidity the way a dog rolls in dirt, but is nearly as difficult to get mad at after it muddies up the rug.

Sensuous and arresting, Alleluia constantly feels as though a séance or ritual murder is about to be performed; the actual deaths, when they arrive, turn out to be rather unceremonious affairs.

No one in the movie rises above the level of a stock character, so over-the-top in their familiar jokes as to barely even register as satire.

Less is often more when it comes to depicting such rituals onscreen, and Smith is highly attuned to the simple power of, say, characters cryptically chanting under their breath.

The writer-director's ideas about our connection to the land and the many other animals roaming it may well be profound, but they're buried under layers of superfluous storytelling devices. A better title would have been Adrift.

Writer-director Chris Dowling handles that worrisome premise with a more even hand than this genre's ill-advised predecessors.

Skin Trade's action is all blood and sinew, but its camerawork and choreography are nothing if not graceful.

The 100-Year-Old Man's equal-opportunity irreverence doesn't often translate to cleverness.

Wa-shoku isn't as contemplative as Kanai and his acolytes, though it might still make you feel like a dilettante if your Japanese palate begins and ends with California rolls.

The problem with The Human Experiment as an actual film and not just an anti-chemical treatise is that, though these people and the troubling statistics they cite are on the level, we're too rarely afforded the opportunity to reach our own conclusions based on them.

The film deftly marries the essence of the music to a moving coming-of-age framework.

There's nothing especially new or vital to these familiar scenes; ditto a late excursion into the realm of concussions — undoubtedly an epidemic for athletes of all stripes, but one that further muddles an already unfocused film.

At times there's no way to be sure whether what's on screen is scripted or candid, a formal tension that keeps the film on its toes while also underscoring that it's more effective as an experiential mood piece than it is as a drama.

A film about individuals who refuse to be silenced could stand to take a few more chances itself.

LeBlanc and Larter carry the day with a spectrum of charm missing from too many entries in this shaky, persistent genre.

It's easy to get lost in the natural beauty of Vermont, and Mosher (who worked on the film with several students as part of a Marlboro College program) clearly takes joy in doing so. The liveliest counterpart to that striking landscape isn't Dern, but rather Jessica Hecht as his wayward daughter, who hits all the grace notes the rest of the film tends to miss.

On-the-nose monologues on the cyclical nature of centuries-old blood feuds ultimately feel more like stuffy lectures than living history; ditto the film as a whole.

Initially engrossing as it is, the maximalism loses power sometime in the second act.