Nicolas Rapold

Despite the urgent subject matter and lyrical touches, it’s a film that needs further layers of complication and texture.

Despite eccentric touches, like a handheld street-shot overture and Grand Guignol Omen references, there's little difference between this story and soap-opera intrigue.

But viewers looking to learn more about Mr. Watterson and his creation than what’s contained in his Wikipedia entry may come away as hopped-up with impatience as Calvin when confronted by parental indifference.

There’s a go-for-broke vigor to the way Mr. Amata cuts to the conflict in most scenes, but the heavy-handedness across the board imposes some significant limitations. Mr. Amata, though, pulls no punches with his ending.

Richet proves maddeningly loath to edit his material, and his charismatic star, Vincent Cassel, does not delve deep into the character.

Soko gets credit for not softening Mwangi’s landing, and the outcome of the election is dropped as nearly an afterthought to his valiant efforts. But the on-the-ground campaigning and complex history could use a better shape than the film’s fits and starts.

This vision of free self-expression bubbling forth under authoritarian pressure echoes sentiments in Zhao's previous work. But the rest of the movie lacks the thrilling organic open-endedness of Zhao's nonfiction depictions; real life (or 2006's Street Life) trumps this Life.

The film’s skimping on economic and social issues echoes one description of Biden’s own messaging by some pundits: low-key to the point of obscuring the full picture of his efforts.

Shot in sleek tones by Christopher Doyle, the film melds class-conscious melodrama with malleable mood piece, but keeps threatening to fade from understatement into stasis.

Ms. Ambo communicates the notion of compassion and calm as something teachable, but perhaps feeling already convinced, she’s less ambitious as a filmmaker about taking her subject and her portraits to another level.

Mining deeper emotions from the fanciful premise doesn’t work out for the film, which gets tied down to a generic musical-contest subplot. It’s a workable comedy that’s sunk by its attempts to impersonate something else too.

Lifted by the sepulchral Stephen McHattie as Lisa’s nemesis, the film’s frazzled thought experiment becomes an adequate yarn.

A serviceable slab of possession horror.

Most often Mortem just lacks bite, and the dedicated leads seem at times a little slight for the staging of a struggle at eternity’s edge.

By the time Beauvais dismisses some chestnut trees as “bland,” the movie screams nothing so much as the pained self-absorption of depression — an anguished revelation, but dead-on.

Mr. Lespert and his screenwriters tend to telegraph what’s happening next with on-the-nose dialogue, leaving behind an orderly but not vividly realized biography (or necessarily a complete one).

The highlight is the crop-cut woman of the group, Wei Caixia, resoundingly vivid in her mix of ambivalence and confidence and worth her own film. Why not this one?

Mr. Barber can work up a fair sense of menace, but he seems to have directed most of the talented cast to speak their lines in a mannered fashion learned from other movies.

Despite some flourishes (such as a mirror-like crystal cave), “Transformania” feels locked into the routine rhythms of its plotting and makes one-note jokes out of its human incarnations.

King works to portray a tight mesh of relationships around Cole, directing Elizabeth Palmore’s valiant adaptation of the sensitively rendered Carter Sickels novel. But lacking a strong central performance from Ettinger — who gets stuck on a half-pained, half-exasperated setting — much of the movie feels like a series of comings and goings, entrances and exits.

Mr. Chapman administers some of his (amplified) thwacks and drop kicks with a likable, you-should-know-better air of amusement, recalling a Reagan-era TV cop show.

As heartening as it is to see a slum child tutored about vicious cycles of adversity and using the buzzword “partnership” with aplomb, the film comes to feel cut and dried.

Based upon a 1999 young-adult novel by Walter Dean Myers, Monster conveys the ache for all that its protagonist could lose, but it can’t escape the dramatic ruts of its own creation.

The strategy and strategizing of Beyond Outrage still feel like overkill (if you’ll pardon the expression).

It’s a proud film but average.

What initially feels like brash energy peters out until what’s left mainly evokes pretty ordinary gangster movies.

It’s a literally colorful and playful attempt to portray battlefields of artistic ambition and political struggle. But its dialogue and characters are also written as subtly as a radical manifesto.

Suri Krishnamma’s Dark Tourist takes an effectively unpleasant trip down the lost highway of a morbid mind before its bad choices start catching up with it.