Mike D'Angelo

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.

All of this letdown occurs only in the last 15 or so minutes, however. Until then, it’s good grotesque fun watching the hand make its way across town, scuttling Thing-like on its fingers. (Make it a double feature with the Addams Family reboot, if you like.)

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).

Servillo—who previously embodied another former Italian prime minister, Giulio Andreotti, in Sorrentino’s Il Divo—never fails to deliver a memorably offbeat take on an outsize figure. Loro loses a bit of momentum once Berlusconi finally becomes its central figure, but it also gains some much-needed complexity.

A musical with numbers written by The National was a terrific idea, and so was Dinklage as Cyrano. Just not at the same time.

Consequently, it’s primarily of interest to longtime fans, or to those who think they might become fans and want to take this opportunity to start at the beginning. If nothing else, this is a rare case in which a director’s feature debut doubles as his greatest-hits album. To watch it is to simultaneously see where Tsai Ming-liang came from and precisely where he was headed.

Gabriel, the first feature written and directed by Lou Howe, gives Culkin an opportunity to demonstrate serious range, and he takes full advantage; if this film doesn’t ignite his career, it’ll only be because too few people see it.

The film springs to life in its second half, when the members’ grown kids, who are also working musicians, discover that their dads/uncles were in a forgotten, innovative band that the family had never once mentioned.

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.)

The biggest problem with Seymour, though, is that Hawke can’t quite find a structure or rhythm for the movie as a whole. It’s only 81 minutes long, and never remotely boring, but the feeling that it’s due to end at any moment kicks in around the midpoint and persists right up until it actually does end, like the documentary equivalent of "The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King."

Brizé doesn’t have the Dardennes’ gift for narrative complexity, and he stacks the deck against his hero more than is really necessary.... But The Measure Of A Man’s beating heart is Lindon’s performance.

He’s (Riley Stearns) fashioned a movie that undergoes a slow, captivating metamorphosis, scene by scene, though who’s the caterpillar and who’s the cocoon remains unclear until the very end.

This is a decidedly small-scale tragedy, but it still packs a cumulative wallop.

As an autobiography told in pictures rather than words (including occasional glimpses of Johnson’s parents and her children), Cameraperson makes a strong case for the merits of the observational life. As a bonus, it also demonstrates what it looks like when the person who’s holding the camera sneezes.

Dom Hemingway is often ghoulishly funny, with Law, who put on weight for the role and plays up his receding hairline, turning in a larger-than-life performance unlike any he’s given before.

At times, Porumboiu’s mix of repetition and resignation recalls Samuel Beckett, and if the overall result is more of a clever exercise than a proper movie, it’ll still have some dryly amusing appeal for those who appreciate intellectual absurdism.

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

Duplass and Paulson counteract the deliberately banal dialogue (Duplass also wrote the screenplay) with superbly anxious body language; Jim and Amanda’s “casual,” “amiable” chitchat is so painfully forced that it’s a wonder nothing ruptures.

Writer-director Eran Creevy demonstrates little facility for kineticism — one of the movie’s best scenes gets flat-out ruined when he abruptly shifts to hackneyed slo-mo — and his cynical plot gets so convoluted that one of the bad guys has to break it down for the audience in a climactic monologue-at-gunpoint.

That Mazer succeeds in playing this for laughs — however sporadic — rather than as a kitchen-sink downer is an achievement in itself.

There’s a fascinating therapeutic undercurrent to the interviews with human beings.

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

Chasing Coral has a cogent, timely argument to make — and, crucially, it’s an argument that demands visual presentation. For once, reading a book or in-depth article on the subject wouldn’t be remotely as persuasive (except perhaps regarding the question of whether human activity is primarily responsible). If your eyes work, your heart will sink.

This is one tortured soul, and a rare case in which a farmer’s struggles seem to be entirely of his own making.

Solid, creative melodrama is nothing to sneeze at, but it can’t compete with enduring genius.

For better and worse, Maysles and his team don’t impose any sort of grand philosophical thesis on these random encounters. The notion of wanting to pick up stakes and restart your life in a new location recurs throughout, but the film (which runs a brisk 76 minutes) is mostly content just to sample the populace, trusting in humanity itself to hold the viewer’s interest.

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.

When this film is over, viewers with voice-activated smart TVs are liable to look around for the long-dormant physical remote.