Mike D'Angelo

For the most part, Pigeon is very much in the same mold as its two predecessors, which is part of the problem.

The characters inhabiting this convoluted, tough-to-follow story feel too much like chess pieces, despite the refreshing multi-ethnic cast.

There’s a sentimental streak to These Final Hours, but in the end (heh), it feels as if it’s been earned.

This is a film that moves too erratically to ever gain momentum, seemingly by design.

Kelly & Cal is worth seeing, if only because it gives Lewis her first truly meaty role in years.

There’s absolutely nothing new or innovative to be found here, but sometimes it can be almost comforting to watch a movie do an unironic tour of the classics.

The film’s biggest drawback is its essentially passive nature, which prevents it from ever building to a crescendo.

Smiling Faces is a strongly promising first effort, introducing a talented filmmaker who’s still in the process of finding his own voice. Still, don’t be too surprised if, three or four features down the road, it retroactively looks much more singular.

There’s a wishy-washiness to the film’s ideological bent that keeps steering things in a more conventional direction, as if Jones (or perhaps Glendon Swarthout, who wrote the source novel) were afraid to take this risky material all the way. It’s a decidedly bumpy ride to an odd destination.

There isn’t much to it, really, but a little truth and loveliness is always welcome.

In the end, a thoroughly needless rehash.

Apparently struggling to please two very different audiences at once, Horovitz seems to have little control over the material, ultimately wrapping things up with a neat little bow that makes a mockery of the preceding ugliness.

Most of the pleasure in Green Dragons comes simply from the opportunity to watch some underused actors dig into meatier parts than they’re usually offered.

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.

By the time Roman and Lucy seek shelter from a storm in an abandoned military bunker, Two Lovers And A Bear has turned into a horror film in which backstory is the monster.

Even if Mandy Lane had been released in a timely fashion, it’s unlikely that it would have found much of an audience. For all its good intentions, it’s ultimately too half-assed and lethargic to work as a conventional horror film, and not nearly thoughtful or incisive enough to subsist on thwarted expectations alone.

Schroeder was reportedly inspired to make Amnesia as a tribute to his mother, who left Germany not long after the Nazis came to power and never wanted to return; he even shot the film in the house where she lived for many years (which was also a major location in his 1969 debut, More). But neither he nor his co-writers managed to prevent their ostensible subtext from swamping the text.

Sunlight Jr. is one no-hope bummer after another, and it’s just not psychologically or sociologically acute enough to make the experience worthwhile. Watching anyone over 30 working for minimum wage would achieve the same goal in about 15 minutes.

Lazer Team is carried along by the sheer enthusiasm of its main quartet....It’s just too bad that there’s less wit in the dialogue than there is in the Barenaked Ladies’ closing-credits song.

All the same, as dramatized here, The Attack skirts perilously close to being an apologia for suicide bombing.

It’s a film of nearly pure sensation: woozy, intoxicating, visually gorgeous… and maddeningly repetitive.

Haushofer’s book may be a classic, but this is the least imaginative way of filming it imaginable, short of simply pointing the camera at a copy and rapidly flipping the pages.

Eventually, Preparations has to stop preparing and deliver some sort of answer to its central mystery, even if that turns out to be one of those maddening or exhilarating (according to taste and/or how skillfully it’s handled) shoulder shrugs. Sadly, the reveal here is quite banal, which retroactively makes the film as a whole play like a prolonged, unsatisfying tease.

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

Viewers who enjoy a big rug-pull will want to keep an eye out for this one, as it essentially combines the surprise endings of several notable films into one all-encompassing “Gotcha!”

Nobody can accuse Downhill Racer of lacking artistic integrity. Trouble is, artistic integrity is all it has to offer.

It does put a human face on the suffering of those who lost jobs and/or loved ones, which has some value, but anyone hoping for a more nuanced take than “corporations are bad and regular folks are good” will be disappointed.

It’s the kind of sprawling, everything’s-connected moral tapestry that reached its nadir with Paul Haggis’ inexplicable Oscar winner Crash—not remotely as dire, thankfully, but with many of the same fundamental flaws.