Nicolas Rapold

Often as thorny as its subject but also oddly fascinated by his near-magical abilities, “Charlatan” is a temporary cure for the common biopic.

The Cold Lands feels as if it were just taking hold when it reaches the end of the road.

The escapades are tossed off and fall flat, all products of the business-as-usual template created by the film’s producers, Adam McKay and Will Ferrell.

In the end, Dandelion feels like one artist’s emotional prequel, leaving us wishing for even more.

Any mind-bending conceit or special effect pales before Ali’s incredibly fine-tuned talents.

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.

Mr. Kim does show an abiding concern here for the unsubtle realities of human libido and cruelty, but he’s alarmingly tone-deaf as he makes his points, and shows disregard for his female characters as he uses them up.

Like most primates, Nénette is both fascinatingly familiar and strange, capable of almost human expressions yet totally unknowable (as well as massive and hairy).

The landscape can go only so far in expressing Toichi’s mind-set, and the movie turns hokey when it dramatizes Toichi’s inner thoughts.

Mr. Abu-Assad’s pop filmmaking is resolutely simple in its approach and efficiently sentimental.

It’s boosterish and jam-packed, like many pop-culture documentaries (not just ones produced by Disney about Disney).

Eventually runs out of gas--or rather, pedal-power--as the filmmakers grope for how to cap the Beavans’ story.

This dully structured film makes its points early and often, treading water before a purposely delayed big finish.

Too many scenes feel routine or clichéd, sometimes even those depicting extreme experiences.

Pritzker directs genuine performances and has an ear for conversations with the ring of everyday emotion.

Mr. Fleifel helps walk us through the history with an ingratiating voice-over that lightens the seemingly permanent clouds of a dire history.

Mr. Sobel’s film skates past any persuasive sense of motivation.

The story ends with an ambitiously staged sequence that reaches for another level of feeling, but it’s hard for anything to match the bruising depiction of Albee and Walker’s rough road to that point.

The film does strike one long, nerve-jangling note, but the style leaves Molly with nowhere to run.

Colman's performance comes as a revelation.

The film’s biggest trick might be casting Moore, Stan and the positively glowing Middleton and still never quite catching fire.

The shifting story, written by Paltrow and Tom Shoval, complicates the act of commemoration and dwells on the moral quandaries and uncomfortable resonances that result from the events.

The real pleasure of this film lies in its recognition of session artists and in the oddities and mysteries within the evolution of any given item of pop culture.

Zarafa may not be the most groundbreaking feat of storytelling, but it does have a giraffe in a balloon.

The ticktock horror plotting muffles the romantic spark that brought Maja and Leah together in the first place — the thrill replaced by a lukewarm chill.

The Shine of Day pulls itself together with an ending that feels a bit ready-made for drawing out the parallels between its kindred performers. But the movie gratifyingly observes the openness that seems the base line for Philipp and Walter, and the glimmer of realization in a stage actor about the void that may lurk among his many liberating roles.

William Goldenberg’s feature directing debut comes to life more often as a conventional family drama than as a conventional sports movie.

Getting peeved at Mottola and Hamm’s easygoing efforts would be like getting mad at a cat for sleeping too much.