Mike D'Angelo

Enabling and mocking paranoid obsession at the same time might sound incoherent. In this hilariously demented spin on L.A. noir, it’s simply honest.

Once Mary makes the difficult decision to leave her family (rejecting the arranged marriage they’d planned for her) and follow Jesus (or “the rabbi,” as everyone mostly calls him, in a nicely accurate touch), she’s unfailingly loyal, understanding, compassionate, and wise. In a word, she’s boring. At least Jesus gets to be plagued by fear and doubt.

Peterloo does get progressively more compelling as it goes. Leigh hasn’t lost his knack for finding first-rate but relatively little-known actors.

The inherent risk of this vérité approach is that your subject won’t prove to be all that fascinating, and The Brink, while far more openly critical of Bannon than "American Dharma," ultimately offers little justification for spending an hour and a half in his company.

If the thought of seeing a lot of people get murdered with automatic weapons at close range makes you queasy right now, Hotel Mumbai is not a film you want to go anywhere near. Few slasher movies have such a high, graphic body count.

Sunset, Nemes’ second feature, not only confirms his talent but demonstrates that his style works beautifully even when transferred to perhaps the least horrifying milieu imaginable.

Much of the book’s emotional context appears to have been lost in translation.

Triple Frontier becomes a fascinating sustained exercise in absurdist triage, as one mishap after another forces the men to decide whether they’re prepared to throw away obscene amounts of money in order to save their skins.

Still, the respectful thing to do, it seems, is to treat An Elephant Sitting Still like any other film, imagining how it would look were Hu already hard at work on his next project. A lot depends on just how much sustained misery one likes to endure.

Parental anxiety has long been fertile ground for horror, going back to "The Bad Seed" and "The Exorcist," and The Hole In The Ground finds a somewhat fresh angle on the possessed-kid subgenre.

Paddleton takes its emotional cue from "Terms Of Endearment," expanding that film’s final stretch into an entire feature and replacing mother-daughter bonds with the deep but usually unspoken love shared by two male buddies.

Here, Sutton is working with actual characters, played by professional actors, and his instinct is to flatten them as much as possible.

Unique background elements provide flavor, but apart from the drug of choice here being marijuana rather than cocaine, what unfolds could hardly be less rote.

The gambit doesn’t really work — fans of "The Notebook" and people who own "Sorority Babes In The Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama" will both come away disappointed — but it’s hard not to respect Krzykowski’s attempt to do something different.

Re-conceiving the tone was a smart move on Pesce’s part—a faithful, ultra-grim adaptation would likely have been unbearable. Trouble is, he loses his nerve. Or maybe he just ran out of ideas.

Brun, who had never acted onscreen before (like almost the entire cast), won Berlin’s Best Actress prize, and her guarded yet tremulous performance is the film’s primary virtue. But she can’t singlehandedly bring depth to the superficial scenario that Martinessi has engineered for this intriguing character.

An opportunity to see John C. Reilly and Steve Coogan mimic two of early cinema’s most iconic figures, which is this film’s true raison d’être.

Capernaum brims with compassion for the downtrodden, and that will likely be enough for many viewers (as it clearly was for the Cannes jury). But the film amounts to a series of easy emotional lay-ups, devoid of any psychological nuance or challenging inflection.

Unfortunately, like most home movies, it’s of precious little interest to non-relatives.

Everybody Knows never quite makes the leap from engrossing to exciting. Even the story’s one big plot twist is obvious enough that many will guess it well in advance, and it doesn’t reverberate backward the way that long-buried secrets usually do in Farhadi’s work.

What these people have in common beyond a shared surname really pounds the film’s theme home with a sledgehammer, but there are numerous tender, affecting moments en route to the finale’s tearjerker overdrive, many of them productively tangential to the overarching idea of choosing one’s own family.

Does At Eternity’s Gate have anything new or innovative to share about perhaps the most comprehensively documented painter who’s ever lived? Does the world need another van Gogh biopic? Not really.

It’s reasonably good, creepy fun, provided you’re not troubled by fleeting, uncomfortable thoughts like “Hey, that screaming bloodthirsty mutant monster could theoretically be a reanimated Anne Frank.”

It’s a feature-length whine of frustrated entitlement. A movie less suited to its cultural moment would be hard to imagine.

Ultimately, the search here isn’t so much for Bergman as it is for a thesis and conclusion. Those who know nothing about the subject will learn a little. Those who know a lot will learn very little.

Much of what Wiseman captures here is so resolutely ordinary that it threatens to cross the line into outright dull.

This latest film isn’t entirely successful — Pizzolatto’s book stubbornly resists first-time screenwriter Jim Hammett’s efforts to reshape its narrative for the screen — but it confirms Laurent as a significant talent behind the lens, particularly adept at building queasy tension.

Despite its undercurrent of anger at Wilde’s mistreatment by fashionable English society, the film feels like a vanity production—and Everett clearly fears that it may be perceived that way, as he opts to bill himself fifth (non-alphabetically) in the cast, despite appearing in almost every shot. Such false modesty ill suits a flamboyant legend like Oscar Wilde, even in a perverse account of his slow fade to black.

Cruz gets little to do in general apart from wear a succession of gaudy ’80s outfits, while Bardem, who gained weight for the role (reportedly aided by prostheses), acts primarily with his massive, frequently exposed gut. Both actors speak throughout in heavily accented English rather than Spanish, a choice that exemplifies Loving Pablo’s indifference to authenticity.

The result feels like an experiment to determine whether sheer creativity can transform the mundane into the magical, and qualifies as a partial success. If nothing else, you have to concede that they tried.

Assassination Nation tells you right up front what to be appalled by, then simply delivers what it promised. Unlike the best examples of either horror or satire, it ultimately comforts and confirms rather than challenges.

Best of all is Merritt, a remarkable find who makes an indelible impression in his very first onscreen role. Giving Rick just the right mix of bravado and awkwardness, he’s like an improbable gene splice of a young Matt Dillon with a young Seth Rogen. Don’t expect him to disappear for 30 years.

This one transforms practically the whole of Bisbee into a memorably uneasy amateur theatrical production.

Operation Finale means to embody the banality of evil, but it’s mostly mired in plain old banality.

Set in a tacky Hooters-style sports bar called Double Whammies, Andrew Bujalski’s delightful new comedy, Support The Girls, more than lives up to its winking/earnest double entendre of a title.

Epistolary courtship can be achingly romantic—but only on paper, where it belongs.

Director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire (Johnny Mad Dog) makes some audacious, impressionistic choices, focusing on the nexus of sensual and brutal, but this is the rare true story that really could have used some creative embellishment.

There’s nothing especially wrong with the arty horror movie that Good Manners becomes, mind you, and the metamorphosis (unexpected, for those who haven’t read a review or seen the poster image, anyway) offers pleasures of its own.

The film’s fourth murder involves the slow asphyxiation of the viewer’s patience.

Ultimately, this is a movie to appreciate in isolated bits and pieces.

Mozhdah, appearing in her first film, can’t match the astonishing, bone-deep understanding of psychic masochism and involuntary complicity that Nicole Kidman brought to her similarly fraught therapy sessions in "Big Little Lies" — this film isn’t operating on that rarefied level in any respect, frankly — but she does manage, in this quietly harrowing scene, to make Nisha more than just a helpless victim.

Throw in expert use of a picturesque yet oppressive location and Dark River almost manages to overcome narrative inertia via sheer force of will. It’s a beautifully crafted, moodily evocative film that’s missing just one spark of true inspiration.

So bizarre is this story that its most mundane aspects take on a certain profundity. Even when Three Identical Strangers falters, it fascinates, and that’s a claim very few documentaries can make.

Scorsese goes to the trouble of making his antiheroes charismatic and exciting. Gotti, by contrast, inadvertently argues that John Gotti and his namesake son are too dull to be evil. It’s DrabFellas.

Hearts Beat Loud is smart, sincere, expertly performed (though Ted Danson, in a small role as Frank’s favorite bartender, gets little to do apart from echo Sam Malone), quietly progressive (Sam’s ethnicity and sexuality elicit no onscreen comment whatsoever), and just thoroughly… nice.

Ultimately, you’re looking at four men struggling to explain an act of post-adolescent stupidity, accompanied by elaborate moving illustrations. It’s moderately entertaining, but the calories feel empty.

Newton’s screenplays still suffer from third-act problems — both "From Nowhere" and Who We Are Now conclude with an ironic twist that feels slightly cheap — but his dedication to fine-grained real-world complexity sets him apart from most indie filmmakers these days.

With Summer 1993, her accomplished debut feature, Carla Simón succeeds in creating a rich, vivid world from her own turbulent pre-adolescence, though the film does meander in a way that makes its deeply personal nature unmistakable.

The film’s appeal, predicated on its rare close-up look at a working Bishop Of Rome, will be limited primarily to the faithful; those hoping for a candid portrait of the man beneath the cassock will be sorely disappointed.

There’s such a thing as being too damn ambiguous.

A lazy shoulder shrug of a movie that never bothers to work out who its characters are, what they want, or why their ostensible problems should be of interest to anyone else.

He’s (Mayer) assembled a terrific cast and mostly stayed out of their way, but the result still feels frustratingly arm’s-length, lacking the odd electricity of Louis Malle’s semi-staged "Vanya On 42nd Street."

This comparatively low-budget effort represents a marked improvement from Devlin’s debut theatrical feature, Geostorm, which was among last year’s very worst films. He’s graduated from painful tedium to an acceptable means of killing two hours. One step at a time.

What starts out as a testament to female fortitude, reminding us that sacrifices were also made on the home front, gradually turns into high-toned soap opera.

Like Bozon’s other films, Mrs. Hyde just comes across as randomly odd, throwing together a bunch of disparate, individually intriguing elements and hoping they’ll add up to something cohesive and satisfying. As usual, they don’t.

Belvaux has made a gutsy, discomfiting movie about going along to get along, and just how dangerous that impulse can ultimately be.

Ghost Stories works best as an exercise in nostalgia. Those seeking hardcore, modern-day scares will be disappointed.

More retroactive documentary than docudrama, it’s remarkably effective at creating a sense of verisimilitude, and these non-actors seem far more comfortable in their own skin.

Unlike Oren Moverman’s superficially similar "Time Out Of Mind," in which Richard Gere plays a homeless man, Where Is Kyra? doesn’t constantly feel like what it necessarily is: the work of wealthy people simulating poverty. In part, that’s thanks to Pfeiffer’s vanity-free, internalized performance, which could hardly be more different from her deliciously abrasive turn in last year’s "Mother!" (It’s great to have her back.)

While this is probably Shelton’s best fully scripted dramatic feature — a big improvement on the incoherent "Touchy Feely" (2013) — it’s the sort of earnest, conventional movie that many indie directors could make (and many do).

As movies expressly courting the faith-based audience go, Paul, Apostle Of Christ acquits itself reasonably well from moment to moment, avoiding the howlers that plague such Pure Flix titles as "Samson" and "God’s Not Dead."

Cantet remains a gifted filmmaker — The Workshop’s semi-improvisational aspects are no less impressive than those in "The Class," and he’s at least superficially engaged with the current state of the world — but this isn’t the return to form that his fans have awaited over the past decade.

Is there any artistically compelling reason for the existence of the latest adaptation, which is clearly meant to take advantage of the centennial? Not really, but it’s a good play, once again providing juicy roles to fresh and established talent. That’ll suffice.

Asano and the rest of the Japanese cast provide baseline credibility, but they can’t generate excitement from this morass of clichés.

Serves as a thoroughly engaging divertissement. That it comes across as more than a little half-assed is part of its unruly charm.

Werewolf unmistakably announces McKenzie as a potentially significant new voice, gifted enough to make well-trod ground seem newly landscaped.

Although thoughtful and probing, this portrait of good intentions gone awry has been so thoroughly intellectualized that there’s not much juice to it. It’s a movie that’s busy analyzing itself while you watch.

Horror fans who’ve wondered what Bruckner might do with an entire movie of his own will be disappointed by his solo feature-length debut, The Ritual, which attempts to put a twist on the Blair Witch formula but demonstrates surprisingly little imagination.

It’s at once inspiring and heartbreaking to see a master with nothing left to prove still pushing the envelope in the final years of his life. He had plenty left to give us.

It’s hard to be persuasive, though, when your protagonist comes across as a collection of quirky tics rather than a credible human being.

It’s a movie with no greater ambition than to charm and occasionally delight. Mission accomplished.

If Garrel’s recent films (which also include In The Shadow Of Women and Frontier Of Dawn) play like variations on a theme, this one at least varies more than usual.

In Between suffers when cross-cutting among its three similar yet disparate storylines, and is strongest during moments that see righteous anger get complicated by human nature.

The film’s third act plays like a nihilistic Liam Neeson thriller, with Kruger struggling in vain to make Katja’s actions remotely believable.

The same fundamental strengths and weaknesses — the former usually outweighing the latter, happily — are evident in all of his movies, no matter who’s in charge. A master like Fincher can add some visual zing, but the song remains the same.

"Leviathan" (2014) pushed pitiless corruption into something like black comedy; Loveless is anything but funny, but does at least acknowledge fleeting moments of joy and understanding, even as it insists that they’re not nearly enough.

There’s something bracing about the difficulty of reconciling this earnest middle-aged hippie with his maniacally impish younger self.

It’s also somehow simultaneously one of his (Hong Sang-soo) most straightforward, emotionally direct movies and the weirdest damn thing he’s ever made.

So many movies are all sizzle and no steak; it’s kind of refreshing, in a way, to be frustrated by all steak and no sizzle.

Betts appears to have started out with a rather mundane idea and then stumbled, over the course of her research, onto something much more fruitful. The result is as intriguing and frustrating as that suggests.

The film’s tonal range is formidable enough to suggest that this director may be a major talent who’s now emerging from relative obscurity, thanks to the Berlin prize and subsequent attention at festivals in Toronto and New York. It’s always exciting to discover someone who’s eager to toss the manuals aside.

Butler sleepwalks through his thinly written role, and the ostensible tension between the two brothers, flaring up whenever the energy starts to sag, never feels like anything but a bald contrivance.

Jane boasts one thing that its predecessors did not: a treasure trove of truly stunning 16mm footage shot in the early 1960s by famed nature photographer Hugo Van Lawick (who would become Goodall’s first husband).

78/52 is at its best in cinema studies mode, examining specific compositional and editing choices made by Hitchcock and his collaborators.

Equally remarkable and counterintuitive is Vaughn’s performance. He pulls a Bruce Willis here, shaving his head and substituting intimidating stillness for his trademark motormouthed hyperactivity. The transformation suits him surprisingly well.

Flatliners 2017 is the same dumb movie as Flatliners 1990, minus most of the surface charisma.

Unfortunately, Felt’s actions, while historically important, don’t exactly make for riveting drama, especially compared to a classic about two dogged reporters. Nor does the film succeed in making Felt himself particularly interesting, except perhaps as a proxy—purely by coincidence, one assumes, given any movie’s lengthy gestation period—for another, recently terminated FBI honcho.

It’s a remarkable gift to fans and cinephiles that Lucky serves as a first-rate showcase for its star as well as an ideal swan song. The man couldn’t have gone out any better.

To his credit, director Peter Nicks (The Waiting Room) accepts the dispiriting trajectory that this initially hopeful film ultimately takes—there’s no dissembling here. Trouble is, most of the ugly stuff happens off-camera, necessitating a secondhand second half that amounts to an embarrassed “Oops.”

The effect is stark, expressionistic, and powerful. It creates the sense that what’s being said is important.

With Brad’s Status, Mike White (best known for writing School Of Rock and creating Enlightened) has chosen an alternate route: Make the movie you want to, but sheepishly apologize for its existence — not via interviews or post-screening Q&As, but within the context of the film itself.

It’s also slightly unfortunate — though admittedly no fault of director Shaul Schwarz (assisted by Christina Clusiau) — that Trophy covers a lot of the same ground as did recent Netflix documentary "The Ivory Game."

Most great-author biopics are just faintly dull and unnecessary. Rebel In The Rye, true to its ridiculous title, is proudly, even aggressively hackneyed.

Unlocked starts off sturdily and then wobbles more and more as the plot twists multiply.

Bushwick imagines nothing less than the collapse of the United States Of America, with half the country in armed revolt. At a time when that possibility can feel all too frighteningly real, it’s dispiriting to see it employed as little more than an excuse to engineer a live-action Grand Theft Auto.

The Wound excels so long as it hangs back a bit, watching Xolani struggle to project the authority that his role demands, despite being acutely aware of his own vulnerability.

Let’s place the blame where it squarely belongs: on the moronic premise. Groundhog Day but he’s naked? Why?