Mike D'Angelo

Van Warmerdam keeps things engrossingly ominous throughout, and Bijvoet has a lot of fun with his passive-aggressive creepazoid, but Borgman is both too self-consciously odd and too bluntly punitive to draw real blood.

All in all, the original 1972 version of Weekend Of A Champion, which ran a fleet 80 minutes,was probably a thorough if minor pleasure. Unfortunately, that’s not the version now being released. Polanski says that he felt the need to re-edit the picture in order to make its rhythm more palatable to a modern audience.

None of the complexity of that initial interaction between teacher and lovestruck little girl carries over into the town’s reaction, which closely resembles that of the villagers in "Frankenstein." It’s like watching a deer run from shotguns for two hours — it evokes some sympathy, but that’s about all.

So give Don Cheadle credit for innovation, at least: His Miles Davis biopic (which he directed, co-wrote, and stars in), Miles Ahead, tackles the problem head-on… by inventing cinematic things for Davis to do when he’s not playing music, including ludicrous car chases and gunfights.

The 100-Year-Old Man surely won’t conquer the U.S. box office, but it’s a nice change of pace to see a foreign film that isn’t deadly serious. We could use more subtitled belly laughs.

The real problem is that Ozon can’t quite decide whether he’s making the crowd-pleasing tale of a cross-dresser’s empowerment or the thornier, more compelling tale of a woman who tries to recreate her dead best friend, "Vertigo"-style (and then sleep with her).

If you seek something that coalesces in a satisfying way, this ain’t the auteur for you. If you long to be caught off guard, take a seat.

Valley Of Love is at its best when it wanders away from its ostensible premise and just lets two old pros connect, riffing lightly on our knowledge of their real-life histories.

Twists and turns shape the narrative, but not always to Ree’s benefit; he responds by scrambling his film’s chronology in ways that threaten to rupture any sense of trust between director and viewer. Questions that one might ordinarily have dismissed instead take hold and fester. Just how real is any of this?

It’s easy to see why Demme admires the man, but amiability doesn’t make for a great documentary subject. If anything, it tends to be something of a drawback, offering only warm fuzzies.

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."

There’s a rah-rah element to The Second Mother that undermines its sociological ambition.

Housebound, a horror comedy from New Zealand, tries another tack: Its protagonist doesn’t leave because she legally can’t. The movie doesn’t get nearly as much mileage from this concept as it might have, getting bogged down in an increasingly silly plot having nothing to do with house arrest, but the premise does at least justify a hilariously antisocial leading lady.

The film’s gradual shift from broad yuk-fest toward something closer to indie drama (while still striving to be funny) isn’t wholly successful; it’s difficult to achieve the catharsis of, say, Kelly Reichardt’s "Old Joy" when you start out like "Napoleon Dynamite." But at least Avedisian tried.

How one responds to Meru will largely depend on whether its three subjects come across as heroically courageous or suicidally reckless.

What it demonstrates most conclusively is that writer-director John Maclean, making his first feature after a career spent mostly as a musician (notably as a member of The Beta Band), knows how to tell a terrific yarn. Why he chose not to do so with the movie as a whole, then, is something of a mystery.

Does a pretty good job at keeping the jokes wry and low-key, with just a few detours into broader, Will Ferrell-ish territory.

The movie looks superb, especially for its minuscule budget. While Adams is clearly a very promising director, however, his screenwriting chops aren’t so advanced. This is one clunky amalgam of mystery and guilt.

It works reasonably well as a film, too, though, provided that one isn’t overly bothered by repetition and a general sense of diminishing returns.

Rush has a lot of fun with Oldman’s gradual thaw, and the questions the movie raises about authenticity and deception, while not remotely in the same heady league as those in "Certified Copy," nonetheless allow it to conclude on a satisfyingly ambiguous note.

Far too much time is spent on McGarry and his colleagues talking to the camera about how little they’re motivated by money or status and how much they just want to help people. That’s laudable, but it’s not compelling.

Rich detail and strong performances do battle with coming-of-age clichés in King Jack, an indie drama that winds up feeling overly beholden to the dictates of various screenwriting manuals.

Rather than aim for uproarious, it constantly settles for amusing.

The ending is intended to be ambiguous, but it’s not too hard to guess what happened in advance, as it’s the only dramatically satisfying option. What’s no longer at all certain is what it means.

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.

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."

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.

Perugorría is such a terrific, soulful actor that he makes Viva’s predictable dramatic trajectory — disapproving dad slowly grows to accept his child’s differences, while the kid gradually learns to forgive his father’s lifelong absence — seem a bit less moldy.

It’s as if a first-rate Roman Polanski movie suddenly metamorphosed (ohhh, frogs, duh) into a third-rate Michael Crichton adaptation.

The film is a little too cute and scattershot to achieve real profundity, with the doll-woman too often coming across like a playfully erotic version of Being There’s Chance the Gardener, defined entirely by her absence of guile.

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.

Hákonarson alternates between crowd-pleasing defiance . . . and a downbeat assessment of how much change is realistically possible, never fully committing to either mode. The result feels less complex than just wishy-washy.

So it feels quite ironic that Ip Man 4: The Finale wraps up the parent series with a movie that’s comparatively weak in the kung fu department but atypically solid at killing time between set pieces. The highs are lower than usual, the lows higher. It all goes down smooth.

Everything onscreen still feels credible, but forbidden-love stories are as predictable as the changing of the seasons. Summertime had briefly seemed to promise something more mercurial.

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

LaBute has always been fond of the last-second rug-pull that re-contextualizes everything, but Some Velvet Morning’s climactic revelation is distinct from those of his previous films in a specific, intriguing way, one that trades brutality for something more poignant. If only the journey to that destination were a bit more flavorful.

The film does the job; it holds your attention. Overall, though, this is a classic “Say, why not read a book instead?” situation.

Tackling another secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, in The Unknown Known, Morris has finally met his match. The film is illuminating only in its utter lack of illumination — for looking deep into the eyes of someone incapable of letting his guard down and finding, predictably, nothing whatsoever.

White Bird In A Blizzard, is another literary adaptation, gunning for respectability. It’s the most mainstream and accessible picture he’s (Araki) ever made, but this time his pendulum swung a bit too far in that direction.

Sporting a blonde dye job and a haughty, impervious manner, Gheorghiu makes Cornelia a consistently compelling figure, at once monstrous and pathetic.

Escobar: Paradise Lost employs this structure in a way that divides the movie neatly in half: one hour of tedious expository flashback followed by one hour of solidly exciting present-tense thriller action.

Small Crimes, as a film, ultimately errs on the side of being overly vague, perhaps because there simply isn’t any plausible way to get much of the history across via dialogue.

Viewers will be torn between admiring its laid-back naturalism and wishing it possessed just a little more oomph.

The screenplay — written by Bellocchio in collaboration with several others — has no particular point of view regarding Buscetta, seeming content merely to take us step by step through his two decades as an informant.

So many truly disturbing revelations pile up in the final half hour or so that processing the relevant information leaves little time for raw emotion. Swank’s nameless character, in particular, remains a pencil sketch. Still, there’s no question that Sputore can direct a movie.

How to Make Money Selling Drugs is breezy fun, even when it eventually turns openly cynical.

Was there a pressing need for yet another rendition of this story? Should it come around again (and it likely will), a unique perspective on the events would be welcome.

For better and for worse—often simultaneously—few movies have been as unflinching about the ugly, heartbreaking ways human beings can mutually exploit one another for fun and/or profit.

If it merits no other superlative, Mommy is unquestionably the most hyperactive movie of the year. It begins at a fever pitch and maintains that degree of in-your-face intensity for well over two hours, to either exhilarating or exhausting effect, depending on one’s tolerance level.

If nothing else, this is the least festive Christmas movie since "Bad Santa," dissecting the absurd belief that the holiday season can somehow magically cure all ills.

From moment to moment, The Silence can feel a bit pokey, as it divides its attention among a host of characters and never builds up much urgency about the fate of the second victim, whose body hasn’t been found.

Being Charlie is Rob Reiner’s best film in at least two decades — admittedly a low bar to clear, given the competition (which includes such forgotten piffle as Alex & Emma and Rumor Has It…), but even a modest Meathead comeback is more than welcome.

Director Sally El Hosaini, who also wrote the screenplay, proves better at introducing dilemmas for her characters than at resolving them.

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.

The title’s parenthetical plural sums up the problem with Some Girl(s): Five slow-cook dialogues that reveal the nice-guy protagonist as a super-tool is four too many.

To the extent that the film has an emotional journey, it’s the story of this man’s very, very slight moral awakening, which achieves nothing whatsoever and doesn’t necessarily look as if it’s going to stick.

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 result is decidedly uneven, but the film’s sheer creative ambition is invigorating.

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.

Steven Soderbergh’s latest film boasts the relaxed, improvisational vibe of a temporary diversion—the sort of thing one might cook up to help pass the time during an extended voyage.

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

Things perk up when Fiennes belatedly appears, and while this isn’t one of the performances he’ll be remembered for, by any means, he delivers a fine moment of utter disgust at the government’s naked corruption in the film’s very last scene. Ending on that note feels right.

Anyone merely hoping for more gravity-defying fight sequences will be reasonably satisfied by Sword Of Destiny, which chugs along amiably enough and never goes very long without a skirmish of some sort.

Frequently charming. Marion-Rivard, who won Canada’s equivalent of the Best Actress Oscar earlier this year (the film itself won Best Picture), gives a strong, sophisticated performance, even as she’s disarmingly open in a way that would be almost impossible for an actor without Williams syndrome to fake.

The movie is plenty affecting when it sticks to credible, low-key difficulties faced with weary decency; there was no need to crank the pathos up to 11 and throw a full-scale pity party.

What’s atypically clumsy here is Petzold’s effort to synthesize big ideas: Not only is the architectural metaphor overstated and the mythological element frustratingly vague, but the two have nothing much to do with each other, making Undine play like a bidding war between high concepts—one of them academic, the other genre-inflected.

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.

In a way, their continued ability to prank government agencies and the media speaks to how little they’ve achieved over the years, which becomes this third film’s subject.

The Little Death never feels remotely of a piece, and is likely to find its proper audience months from now when the individual sketches show up on YouTube.

The result is more of an interesting thesis than a compelling drama, but it’s anchored by Rains’ sturdy performance as a man whose open-minded curiosity about his new home disengages his natural wariness, for both better and worse.

The film is never less than fascinating, but it appears to be so intensely personal as to be all but indecipherable to viewers not personally acquainted with the filmmaker, or at least in possession of the press kit.

What’s both intriguing and frustrating about the screen version, however, is the way that it flirts with a much thornier and potentially richer possibility, only to ultimately back away from that idea in favor of a straightforward plea for justice.

Like a Saturday Night Live sketch that airs in the show’s final 10 minutes, Quentin Dupieux’s Keep An Eye Out tosses around ridiculous comic ideas as if secure in the knowledge that few people will ever see them.

The first Dead Snow included a salute to the classic Sam Raimi gearing-up montage, with its quick cuts and abrupt zooms; it was a cute nod, but nothing more. Red Vs. Dead does the same thing, but concludes the montage with a long, static shot of the Zombie Squad watching as the cash register at the hardware store churns out an endless receipt for all the tools they’ve purchased. That’s an actual joke, which is what the first movie lacked.

This is a much drier, more reserved affair, though it can be quite powerful on the rare occasions when it allows raw emotion to make its way to the surface.

Blackfish’s strongest argument against the existence of parks like SeaWorld is how much more gorgeous orcas look in the open ocean than leaping about an oversized swimming pool. And the audience won’t get soaking wet watching them frolic in movies, either.

Demme barely even makes an effort, shooting mostly in bland close-ups with the occasional zoom for completely random emphasis. Nor does A Master Builder have any meta-element—it’s like "Vanya On 42nd Street" without 42nd Street.

The movie actually does feature a world — the insular voiceover world — and whenever it strays, it falters.

Bad Hair can best be described as expertly depressing—a subcategory of art cinema that seems worth the punishment only when the gloom is counterbalanced by at least a few transcendent moments. No such moments ever surface here, however, apart from a brief fantasy during the closing credits.

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.

The more Electrical Life conforms to what one would expect of a Louis Wain biography, the less idiosyncratically compelling it becomes. An entirely fictional story loosely inspired by the man and his wife, but beholden to nothing, might have been genuinely electrifying.

There’s enough disreputable behavior bookending the righteousness, and enough solid jokes along the way, to make the effort moderately entertaining.

Viewers who cherish ambiguity will have no trouble finding plenty of it here, as Hong never explicitly tips his hand regarding this woman’s disputed identity.

There’s admittedly a certain pleasure in the deft fake-out that Shinkai executes here—most viewers will automatically make an assumption that’s ultimately proven wrong—but it comes at the cost of overall narrative incoherence.

Fans of both non-action Asian cinema and stifling bureaucratic nightmares, your long wait is finally over.

The Imitation Game is at its best when it focuses on the collision between cryptography and proto-programming. (No individual can truly be said to have invented the computer, but Turing comes close.)

Ultimately, despite Kikuchi’s expressively dour performance and David Zellner’s formal invention... Kumiko feels like a collection of amusing and/or depressing riffs stitched together within a context that barely matters.

While The Wind Rises isn’t top-shelf Miyazaki, it features more than enough gorgeous imagery to make his loss feel acute. Studio Ghibli will surely continue without him, but it’ll never be the same.

No matter how much this story has been streamlined for accessibility’s sake, its import remains potent. In spite of numerous missteps, Pride gets that across.

As contemporary romantic comedies go, it’s by no means an embarrassment, ranging from politely bland at its worst to very nearly inspired at its best. It could have been so much more, though, had its makers been prepared to grapple with the genuinely thorny, surprisingly incisive idea at the movie’s center.

For a first-time director, Amini demonstrates considerable skill both with actors and with the camera, giving the film a pungent balance of visual elegance and moral seediness.

Rigor Mortis can’t fully work for a Western audience, but it does at least provide a fascinating glimpse of a strange genre that never quite crossed over.

More and more, the film’s incisive realism seems at war with its ludicrous plot, until both finally just collapse, exhausted.

Ultimately, Digging Up The Marrow is more of an affectionate comedy than a horror movie, despite a third act that features some tense moments and hostile critters.

Screenwriter Hanif Kureishi (My Beautiful Laundrette, Sammy And Rosie Get Laid) sometimes overdoes the emotional-seesaw routine... But director Roger Michell (who’s previously worked with Kureishi on The Mother, Venus, and the miniseries The Buddha Of Suburbia) maintains a slightly jagged rhythm that proves disarming, and he has two magnificent collaborators in Broadbent and Duncan.

For all three hours and change, it’s never less than interesting, but it’s also never much more than interesting.

Marquardt hasn’t thought of a unique take on this predictable scenario, she’s merely done an expert job of disguising it. Still, the first half does function as a impressive showcase for her formal chops, as well as for Bloom’s gorgeously empathetic performance.

While the film is persuasive and detailed in its depiction of financial corruption, it’s also essentially a two-hour lecture, dry and academic.