Noel Murray

The insights into girlhood in the opening are coming from the viewpoint of adults, while in a story this strange-but-true, it'd be more helpful to see these kids as they see themselves.

The very definition of "breezy." It's a featherweight romantic comedy.

It's hardly a rosy picture of what it's like to be gay and 60 in Paris. But it's an engrossing picture.

The footage in Paul Williams Still Alive - old and new - is highly entertaining, even moving. But it's as though Kessler recorded the DVD commentary track first, then made the movie.

The movie is caught between the poignancy of the everyday and the exaggerations of fiction.

In digging deeper into the stories behind the junk--many of which involve the drug problems, legal problems, custody battles, cycles of abuse, and post-traumatic stress disorders of Mosher’s own family--October Country veers awfully close to exploitation.

The movie captures the way scientists sometimes make breakthroughs simply by attempting the impossible.

Deepens as it plays out, and rewards viewers who stick with it through the clumsier passages. The film is moving and thought-provoking.

Unlike the elliptical, often explanation-free "The Grudge," Marebito is wordy to the extreme. Konaka's near-constant narration underlines every point the movie is trying to make, ruminating bluntly on the meaning of fear, and how we suck on media violence like, yep, vampires.

As fascinating as Glass often is, it's simultaneously too conventional and not conventional enough.

The Last King Of Scotland makes a stronger case when it's demonstrating how opulent power-lunches corrupt absolutely.

The Heart Is Deceitful has a daring that's hard to dismiss, even when it only amounts to Argento shamelessly getting off on human rot.

This “emotionally immature braniac” character is funny and heartbreaking in equal measure. Carrie Pilby is special. “Carrie Pilby” is less so.

There's not much juice to the movie's central romantic triangle between money-minded boss Charlton Heston and his two star attractions, dueling trapeze artists Betty Hutton and Cornel Wilde. Still, Jimmy Stewart does some appealingly subtle work as a clown on the run from the law, and DeMille's narration has a charming, corny, true-life-adventure quality, as he hypes the circus as a life-and-death proposition.

This is a movie about people trying to squeeze maximum recognition and pride out of the one thing they do reasonably well, and much of Blackballed's comedy comes from their attempts to maintain their dignity when they fail.

Live-In Maid's premise would be ideal for a play, or a bravura performance piece like Rainer Werner Fassbinder's "The Bitter Tears Of Petra Von Kant."

When the best part of the movie is when no one's talking and the anguish relents, it says something. It says that Iñárritu is a great director in need of a screenwriter who has more than one card to play.

A tough-minded story about how to define self-worth.

There isn't much to Union Square, but the movie does understand how people want to love their families on their own terms, forgetting that their families may be the only ones who really know who they are.

Trapped is hit-and-miss as a piece of filmmaking but effective as an argument, contending not only that some Americans’ rights are being systematically taken away, but that when only a handful of organizations stand up for those rights, they become a bigger target.

The movie can be affecting at times, and might’ve been even more so if Potter hadn’t made its theme so explicit, via heavy “this is the point” speeches delivered during what’s otherwise a powerful climax.

This is a movie about a “New Earth Army” full of misfit soldiers yearning for a chance to be non-conformists with a cause, which means it’s already two-thirds of the way to being awesome. Had Heslov eased back a bit, Goats might’ve made it the rest of the way.

The Cove's ultimate message gets muddled, especially since Psihoyos limits all counter-arguments to a few inarticulate or thuggish boobs.

Even though Macaulay Culkin's alternately muggy and inexpressive lead performance hasn't worn well, the supporting turns by Catherine O'Hara and John Candy are especially crackerjack, as is John Williams' buoyantly cartoony score.

Viewers will have to decide for themselves whether My Son is a terrible, terrible movie or an uncompromising Herzog experiment in reality-bending. Here’s a suggestion: consider the track record.

We Live In Public doesn’t show that Harris was a genius so much as that he was a mentally and emotionally unstable egotist, trying to force a revolution in self-broadcasting and connectivity that later happened more naturally.

Fitzgibbon and McCarten have succeeded in integrating cancer into a slick teen love story, but in the process, they've robbed it of some of its necessary pain.

The movie is surprisingly smart about the politics of the glass ceiling, which keeps Tomlin in a pink-collar supervisor position while every man she trains gets promoted past her. The way Coleman asserts his masculinity with phrases like "cut the balls off the competition," and the way our heroic trio works together to sculpt a worker's paradise—complete with flex-time and day-care facilities—serves as an effective summary of the era's hot-button issues.

It's also representative of Pina's major flaw: the inability of artists to get out of their own way.

Unassuming and sweet-natured, and Garlin earns a lot of goodwill with his off-the-cuff wisecracks.

This is a fascinating, underreported piece of recent world history, but Patty Kim and Chris Sheridan's documentary Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story doesn't do it full justice.

Hoffman makes impressive use of his low budget, thanks to a talented cast, an atmospheric soundtrack by Yo La Tengo, and the general feeling of confidence that a veteran director can bring to a project. But too much of Game 6 is designed to seem deeper than it really is.

A dry, dour film where the moments of poetic Americana barely cohere.

The main reason to see The Armor Of Light is to spend more time with Schenck, and to get a sense of how deeply he’s thought about all of this.

The first half hour shows a dynamic politician who gets things done; the last hour shows him ground to dust by diplomats.

If he’d pulled back more, Gondry might’ve seen the real story here: how maternal figures often look better to people who don’t actually have them for a mother.

When the two Krays are in the same room, circling each other with a mix of fraternal affection and deep loathing, Legend is as heady and unforgettable as it means to be. The rest of the time, it’s a movie with a lot of good points, but no connecting line.

Thompson's cast is too large for her to make the best use of her ingenious story-structure.

Much like the recent "remember when" documentary "Man On Wire," Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 builds strong momentum in its home stretch, and sends the audience out on a high.

It's a story worth telling, yes--but after 90 minutes, it's hard not to wonder if the storyteller can talk about anything else.

Gregory’s wife, Cindy Kleine, is a skilled filmmaker, but she’s no Louis Malle, and her documentary Andre Gregory: Before And After Dinner is nowhere near as elegant as "My Dinner With Andre" or "Vanya On 42nd Street." Mainly, the movie lacks focus.

What saves the movie is Solondz’s sensibility, which is still one-of-a-kind.

Blind Mountain would be better-served by more touches of universality, as in the scene where a neighbor woman comforts Huang by saying, "All women go through this." That scene flirts with metaphor. The rest of the film too often descends into harangue.

With its soapy earnestness and use of suffering souls as set dressing, After The Wedding could be the cinematic equivalent of a Coldplay song. And while that isn't necessarily a slam, it isn't a recommendation either.

The result is a film that's long and choppy, with little narrative momentum. And yet at times, Mr. Nice is frustratingly close to brilliant.

Pretty to look at, making good use of the scenery in and around Turin; if nothing else, the runaway plot keeps the movie unpredictable.

Payback attempts something impressively difficult, but it succeeds primarily in its individual moments.

Beyond treating this story like a potboiler, Deraspe does her best to make A Gay Girl In Damascus cinematic. She alternates nicely framed and photographed interviews with some fairly expressive dramatic reenactments. Some of these are pretty powerful.

If nothing else, Life In A Day serves as a fine time capsule, recording some of what life was like on Earth in 2010.

While the game Chevalier keeps evolving into something darker, the movie Chevalier is fairly static. The style’s unchanging throughout, holding to a slow pace and a muted sense of humor.

As long as Arnold can avoid giving any reason for Dickie's strange behavior, Red Road remains creepy and hypnotic, but as soon as Arnold explains what's going on, the movie's structure collapses into the rubble of cliché.

The second film seems less purposeful: The shots of squalor and industrialization-run-amok have an almost random feel. At times, however, it's still incredibly powerful.

Anjelica Huston's directorial debut employs an impressive cast, and at times showcases a promising sense of style. But Bastard Out Of Carolina seems hollow at its center, due largely to the fact that Anne Meredith's screenplay doesn't make very good use of its source material.

What's left off the table is a meaningful examination of environmental artists' responsibility to the environment they depict, and the question of whether all truly great art leaves behind a little toxic waste of its own.

Anyone who doesn't already know and care a little about these characters might find the movie a bit thin.

The non-sensationalized "this is what really happens" approach makes Our Daily Bread extra-creepy at times.

While Family Law is well-shot, it's not spectacularly well-shot, or involving in any conventional cinematic way.

The rest of Emelie doesn’t live up to its peaks, through no fault of star Sarah Bolger, who makes a memorable villain.

HappyThankYouMorePlease has a different vibe than "Garden State" or "HIMYM." It's more like a late-'80s/early-'90s Woody Allen film, after Allen stopped separating his comedy and drama.

The differences between Goat and a Very Special Episode of some Disney Channel sitcom are, at times, limited to the amount of on-screen puking. That said, Neel, Roberts, and Green do have a good feel for the vagaries of bro culture’s macho codes.

Unlike “Obvious Child,” Landline plays like a series of semi-successful comic and dramatic scenes, haphazardly arranged into something resembling a story.

The movie does have a charm that develops gradually.

Though Theater Of War is informative--both about Brecht and about the effort it takes to mount a big New York production--Walter overreaches in trying to connect Brecht’s anti-war sentiment with contemporary protest movements, and doesn't do more than dabble with the themes of truth and representation in documentary filmmaking.

Skarsgård brings some redemptive soul to the role of a man who gradually begins to understand the aptness of his favorite Pretenders album: "Learning To Crawl."

Any 15-minute stretch of Double Take proves as enlightening as any other--more like a museum installation than a movie.

The Extra Man is kooky to a fault, and Dano is a major drag, with his soft voice and blank expression. But Kline gives a wild, wonderful performance, reminiscent of his work on "A Fish Called Wanda."

Late in the film, Stone interviews Norman Mailer, a one-time conspiracy-believer who eventually wrote a book that tried to get inside Oswald's head, explaining how Oswald's story is America's story. In less than a minute, Mailer describes the documentary Stone should've made.

Because Paris, Je T'Aime's episodes are so short, the duds don't stick around long enough to grate much. But the good ones also don't get to explore their assigned Parisian spaces as much as they could.

California Solo doesn't have much story. All of the details above are established in the first five minutes, then the movie becomes a character sketch, carried by its wealth of detail and a fantastic Carlyle performance.

Yonkers Joe is largely concerned with the delicate balance between a crook's business life and his personal life--a balance the movie itself has trouble managing effectively.

It’s hard not to feel that there’s something missing from Don’t Stop Believin’, though. The movie doesn’t necessarily need to be dark, but Diaz barely touches on the downside of the Internet age — such as the nasty messages Pineda received from racist Journey fans — or how it feels to sing someone else’s words in someone else’s voice, night after night.

Even when Midnight Kiss is sputtering, viewers can tune the dialogue out and just watch the scenery in one of the most "there"-y L.A. movies ever made.

Rarely has the voyeuristic appeal of sitting on a jury been so cleverly expressed.

The movie doesn't add much to the culture wars, beyond histrionics from a lot of people who take their causes too f*cking seriously.

Enjoyably moody in the early going, and it develops into a decent Hitchcockian thriller at times.

Emily Browning gives a game performance as the unconscious sex object, but Leigh doesn't provide her with a lot to work with in terms of motivation, dimension, or any kind of rich interior life.

Happy Tears is a complete mess of a movie, but Lichtenstein conjures some sweet moments and striking metaphors.

Affleck is the perfect actor for this role, though he’s a little too mush-mouthed to do the voiceover narration required of a noir.

The Ides Of March goes down easily, with a sophisticated bustle and a strong third act twist to test the hero's mettle. But it all feels a bit inconsequential - perhaps by design.

Offers four fairly interesting monologues, undercut by ominous music, stylistic frippery, and a structure that all but guarantees the audience will be able to predict where the stories will go.

Love Songs is definitely daring, but too much of it seems calculated to lead up to a final line about how to guard against grief.

It's almost condescending, as though Soderbergh were challenging himself to make Middle America interesting. And yet the movie IS interesting, almost in spite of itself.

So Spider-Man 3's action is superb and its theme fairly weighty. Then why does it feel a letdown from its predecessor? Nearly all the blame rests with director Sam Raimi, who's taken the success of some light slapstick moments in Spider-Man 2 as a cue to get even sillier.

Opens with a montage of thrilling clips from its predecessor, then hits all the same notes, harder and duller.

The sense of enervation that creeps into the movie's second half is bothersome mainly because The Snowtown Murders is often brilliant in its depiction of the mundanity of evil.

Frankly, All In would be better if it were less expansive. A more straightforward bio-doc about Abrams, with extended digressions about the larger history behind her voting rights activism, might’ve been more powerful.

The problem with Kawasaki's Rose is that the theme is far more compelling than the movie.

Raises the question of whether Krasinski made this movie because he really loves Wallace’s work, or because just he wanted to show Hollywood that the loveable doof from The Office can actually act.

Like a lot of the retro-horror films that have popped up on the art-house and festival circuits over the past several years, Xan Cassavetes’ Kiss Of The Damned is more about mood and texture than plot.

Frequently funny, for those who can stomach it.

Maniac Cop is heavier on the goofery than the relevance.

In that way, Jarvis is a lot like Arnold: an artist who knows the steps, but doesn't yet have all the moves.

There's something a little shallow about contrasting ungrateful German kids with their respectful Japanese counterparts and presuming the cultural differences are so cut-and-dried.

There are very few light, casual moments in The Look; even when Rampling pops into a deli to buy a sandwich, we hear her in voiceover talking about her demons. An hour and a half of this is frankly exhausting.

Jellyfish is the kind of film that will ring true for some viewers, while striking others as too slight and precious.

True Legend's heart is in the right place. It's just the body that's weary.

Conceptually, Lust, Caution has been thoroughly thought-through, down to every lipstick stain Wei leaves on her teacups.

Tiny Furniture offers a 21st-century, East Coast spin on "The Graduate," but with comedy-writer-ish dialogue and a mannered style that never fully gels.

Ayer gets lost in a maze of ironies, and has to bulldoze his way to an exit. For a while, Harsh Times is thrillingly hard to predict. By the end, it becomes all too easy.

More often than not, it’s better when filmmakers have a point-of-view, a sense of style, and something to say—all of which is undeniably true of Oda. But Nine Days resonates at such a distinct frequency that some may find it hauntingly beautiful (and have found it so, ever since the film debuted at Sundance back in 2020) while others may find it much too blaring.

A short running time and an amiable tone kept Uncle Kent from ever becoming a chore, but aside from one hilariously awkward ménage à trois scene and a poignant final shot, the film was so slight that it almost dared the audience to get anything out of watching.

Neither pro- nor anti-war; it’s a somber study of perpetually unsettled lives.

While Arkansas is a promising and often very entertaining first feature, Duke doesn’t combine these borrowed ingredients—excellent though they are—into a fully realized original story, with its own personality.

Gareth Edwards' low-budget science-fiction film Monsters is both a testament to what the latest technologies allow filmmakers to do, and-on the downside-a testament to the enduring importance of a good script.

As is the norm for Ritchie, Rocknrolla is also too long, too coolly violent, and too populated by characters who all talk like they've been reading the same pulp novelist.

Battle In Heaven is like a serious of artful photographs, except that Reygadas also moves the camera in astonishing and unusual ways, swooping around the conventional x- and y-axes while teasing the audience with what he's about to show. He's got an astonishing technique. Here's hoping that someday he'll use it to make a movie.

The Wraith’s plot is predictable and its genre nods skimpy (primarily limited to The Mystery Racer’s ability to resurrect himself after crashes), but Marvin directs with real energy and wit.

Disturbing The Universe doesn’t mix it up enough.

The story of Control's creation is the story of great potential, squandered. Joy Division fans should be able to relate.

Philibert allows even those who’ve never heard a second of Radio France to experience what the network is like, on both sides of the speakers.

The Island runs hot and cold, with clunky comic set-pieces alternating with moments of genuine wonder and surprise. But even at its most misbegotten, the movie’s always thoughtful, examining what we value — and why.

Some of that professional lingo (like calling contracts “shows” and first assignments “debuts”) makes the story function as a sly metaphor for the entertainment business; and Byun’s stylish action sequences juice up the film’s second half.

Though the movie lacks a strong central story, screenwriter Simon Allen and director Toby Meakins have come up with a genuinely clever concept that could be repeatable in multiple sequels — provided that the first wave of Netflix viewers aren’t too put off by the film’s many gross-out moments.

Why Don’t You Just Die! is too cartoonish and glib to have much to say about Russia or about genre films in general. But it is stylish and snazzy — a confident throwback to the knowing exploitation pictures of yesteryear.

"Apocalypse” is equal parts exhausting and impressive — though thanks to the giddy fun the filmmakers appear to be having, it’s mostly the latter.

For the most part Hank’s heartbreak resonates. By the end of After Midnight, he and the audience both may wonder whether the bogeyman and true love are equally mythical.

The Lighthouse builds to a tragic incident and its disturbing aftermath, depicted with the dread and sick irony of an old “Tales From the Crypt” comic. But for the most part, the fears here are social, not supernatural.

The movie is also a strong spotlight for Salazar, a consistently fascinating and magnetic actress whose funny, warmhearted and ultimately inscrutable Maria represents the potential for meaningful human connection always just beyond Harrison’s reach.

Very little about this movie feels fresh or original; but a talented cast, a solid Alex Carl script, and director Andy Palmer’s energetic pace and playful tone do make Camp Cold Brook unusually fun.

Though its milieu is often ugly and its story fairly soft, You'll Get Over It gets by thanks to its cast. The French film industry has a knack for finding attractive, expressive young actors, and this movie is no exception.

Jacobs focuses almost exclusively on Dobson's theories and mission, which he illustrates by contrasting jaw-dropping images of the sun's surface with people ignoring Dobson's entreaties to "Come look at the sun."

Kelly tries a bit too much, favoring shock and absurdity over consistency and coherence. But the attempt alone is exciting; and it offers a refreshing alternative for those who prefer their holiday entertainment to be spooky, not sentimental.

The dialogue is blunt, and the plot overly centers white heroism; but the period detail is well-observed, and the filmmakers show a real understanding of the ingrained attitudes and anxieties that make moments of social progress so difficult.

It began a transition in the series away from horror and toward kid-friendly adventure.

Even at its goofiest, Through The Never brings back the communal appeal of those early concert films, which were often just a way for young fans to bond with other young fans over the music of entertainers who seemed to understand what they really wanted.

It takes time to adjust to the movie’s style; and some may still find the “more talk less violence” approach too inert. But many of the conversational standoffs between Read and the Krays’ gang (including a few tussles with the brothers themselves, played by Ronan Summers in a dual role) are as brutal as any shootout.

Dormant Beauty always comes back to the difficult decisions that family members have to make for each other, contrasted with the huffiness of outsiders who try to project their own beliefs onto someone else’s business.

The Take tells a compelling story of courageous, industrious people, but it begs for a second act.

The sensual sex scenes and raw violence of God's Sandbox make it pretty much an exploitation film, and as an exploitation film, it isn't bad.

A short, sweet fantasy film that works best when it leans into the possibilities of its situation — and less well when it tries to be funny.

From scene to scene, Lopez and Caro do fill these broad outlines with real feeling, bringing a personal touch to old pulp archetypes.

The grubby melodrama should appeal to adventurous moviegoers — and to the director’s small-but-fervent cult — but even that crowd should brace themselves for something slow-paced and opaque.

Caveat is like a gothic horror tone poem, with pungent notes of decay.

Some viewers may find Joe's stressors too negligible; and honestly, Tilt is too shapeless and esoteric to be great. It flags considerably after its first hour, stumbling toward a frustrating ending. Still, there's a frankness to this picture that compensates for the overall slightness. It's the rare thriller that looks to combine "Five Easy Pieces" and "Taxi Driver."

Like the real-life events that inspired it, Broadcast Signal Intrusion is most thrilling when it’s at its vaguest — like a juicy rumor that’s impossible to confirm.

Perlman has a physical presence that makes him look like he stepped off the cover of a paperback. He brings soul to this old hired gun, who’s become a creature of habit, mired in a daily routine of killing other people and waiting to die.

Hospitality is both an exercise in atmosphere and an actors’ showcase, letting its cast settle deep into the skins of these people who just need something in their lives to break their way … even if they’ve done nothing to deserve it.

Somehow, the more McLean explains the song, the more wondrous it seems.

Even when Don’t Kill It veers toward the ordinary, Lundgren is there with his lived-in face and playful eyes, waiting as ever to spring into action. It’s great to see him in a fun movie again.

For all its formulaic faults, The Wheel is unusually astute about the ways some couples avoid the hard truths about each other because they’re afraid of ripping their whole lives apart.

While there's only 25 minutes of good material strewn throughout a movie four times that length, Apartment 212 squeaks by thanks to its cast.

The absence of style can be numbing, but it serves a purpose, positioning the documentary as a public record, not a work of art. As such, the film is eye-opening.

Like most westerns, Surrounded is about people trying to reinvent themselves on the frontier. But this is also one of those westerns with a cynical streak, where the hostility the characters are trying to escape hounds them mercilessly.

Vesper is on the arty side of science-fiction, more focused on character and setting than in plot-driven thrills.

When El Bola isn't drawing cheap sentiment from the sight of a bruised and scarred little boy, Mañas raises vexing questions about how and why parents leave lasting impressions on their children, and whether good intentions really matter.

More than anything, The Perfect Find is a strong showcase for Union, who gets to play a lot of notes as Jenna: funny, sexy, anxious, nostalgic, inspired. Even when the movie is too plain, its star is something special.

The movie’s central idea and bright young cast are so good that some of its shallowness is forgivable.

The movie’s two main aims—to blow the lid off the music business and to exalt some of the unsung heroes of American pop culture—are somewhat contradictory, and haven’t been worked into a polished narrative.

If the people in Chrystal are intended to be authentic, why do none of them look like they've ever seen the inside of a Wal-Mart?

Like the movies covered within, Sharksploitation is undeniably entertaining — especially at its most preposterous.

Carmen relies too much on coincidences to keep its story going; and Buhagiar threads in a few too many impressionistic flashbacks to the heroine’s youth and to the romance her family forced her to abandon. But McElhone strikes a fine balance between humor and pathos.

Predictable and corny, but to their credit, Cary and Rose strive to make the situation real.

The Legacy of a Whitetail Deer Hunter is more of a wistful character sketch than a fully realized wilderness comedy.

Mostly though, The Goebbels Experiment proves that historical figures have the worst perspective on themselves.

Sarah Snook gives a riveting performance as a mother going mad in Run Rabbit Run, a psychological thriller that’s mostly effective, even though its story is familiar and somewhat threadbare.

The documentary is short, vividly shot, and packed with interviews in which desperate young men and women let loose their personal philosophies. In fact, there's so much philosophizing that there's not much time left for rap.

Some of the stylistic fillips feel excessive, and at the end of the day, this is just a tawdry, gory B-picture, with little to say about human behavior. But it’s often funny and generally suspenseful — a fine afternoon on the water, all things considered.

Between its lovely Hawaii setting, its well-chosen indie-pop soundtrack and its earnest belief in the life-changing power of a great song, Press Play is pretty pleasant. It’s soft and breezy — the cinematic equivalent of yacht rock.

Unfortunately, there's not enough footage of Wallace playing; and in an effort to squeeze in as many voices as possible, "Triumph" suffers from some repetition of anecdotes and ideas. But the details of what Wallace went through are astonishing, and important to revisit.

The movie’s most memorable material is also more grounded.

Fans of the first Goodnight Mommy may find it a pale, pointless copy. Newcomers, though? They should be suitably creeped out … but, alas, not wrecked.

This movie’s a reminder that even abstract concepts can have a dark, persuasive power.

There’s scarcely a minute of the amped-up action movie Line of Duty that isn’t absolutely ridiculous … and scarcely a minute that isn’t mindlessly entertaining.

Mendes and Hawke bring a lot of depth and pathos to these characters, who gradually begin to wonder why they and their classmates are so fiercely dedicated to punishing each other.

Birth Of The Living Dead excels in Kuhns’ gathering of critics, academics, and filmmakers to analyze how and why the film works so well.

Souza and his cast explore a familiar milieu, and though they fall short of saying anything startlingly insightful about it, they do a fine job of making it feel real, and even vital.

For the most part, Fall works because it plucks on the same raw nerve, over and over. How many times can Mann freak out the audience by cutting to a vertiginous shot of the unfolding crisis? Every time. Sometimes cinema is simple.

While the material here is thin and largely predictable (aside from one great jump scare), the cast is outstanding and the dialogue is snappy, delivered at a brisk pace.

The battle scenes here are impressively large-scale, but too sparsely deployed. A good two-thirds of this movie consists of miserable-looking people quietly debating their terrible options, which can be exhausting.

Writer-director Frank Sabatella falls back on a few too many high school and monster movie clichés; but a good young cast and a strong sense of purpose compensate for most of the shortcomings.

The story gradually finds its way to a predictable place, but the company’s interesting along the way, and the scenery can’t be beat.

Cutesy and slight, but it's also polished and well-lit, and Muyl makes a weeklong hike roll by pleasantly, reducing it to about 80 minutes of screen time.

The Independents is a wisp of a movie, generally likable but largely insubstantial. But when Price, Naughton and Chartrand start to play? The film becomes a warm and welcoming celebration of music for music’s sake.

The dark twists and bloody mayhem of the film’s final third feel disappointingly abrupt and rote after all the thoughtful set-up, but the picture still mostly works, thanks to an energized cast, Croft’s sharp dialogue and Grant’s punchy style.

Though the acting is inconsistent and the dialogue often laughable (and not in the good way), the film has an appealing can-do quality and a strong dose of craziness that keeps it from ever becoming boring.

On Any Sunday: The Next Chapter is doggedly down the middle, mixing sports action with talking-head interviews, set to an eclectic soundtrack of rock and country music. The movie feels scattered, jumping too quickly from subject to subject, with little of the original’s visual poetry.

There’s a bit of a bait-and-switch involved in Drucker’s approach; and on the whole, the film’s balance between the celebrities and the wannabes doesn’t do full justice to either. But there’s a strong point of view here, as Drucker scrutinizes an era that established a lot of the codes and aspirations of our own influencer-saturated times.

While the movie isn’t a consistently riveting four hours, Hoogendijk does keep finding images and moments that demystify the museum business while making the art seem all the more magical.

For those willing to stretch a little to connect with Ferrara, Padre Pio is often as rewarding as it is challenging.

Red Obsession is informative, and entertainingly so, with its honeyed Russell Crowe narration and sweet tracking shots through sun-dappled vineyards.

It’s fascinating to hear the details of how prolific Blanchard was, before the law caught up with him. If he saw a vulnerability in a store, a museum or a bank, he felt compelled to exploit it. He’s half crook, half Type-A task manager.

Mettler is in no hurry to get to any particular point in The End Of Time. The film leaps from subject to subject—slowly, and somewhat haphazardly.

There’s barely enough plot here to fill a feature, but this energetic throwback’s DIY effects and general looniness should appeal to horror mavens.

A rushed, muddled ending — and a general lack of any cogent point — keeps “The Attachment Diaries” from being an Almodóvar-level success. But for fans of those seamy places where art and smut intersect, this movie is a nasty little treat.

The movie’s aggressive hipness can be a turnoff at times. But once it settles down into a more typical coming-of-age story, Crush becomes disarmingly sweet and relatable.

While Our Last Tango is a little schematic overall, from moment to moment, it's beautifully choreographed.

Brunner does a fine job of conveying how the harsh, forbidding landscape where Johannes and Maria live distorts the way they engage with the secular world.

Director Mélanie Laurent and actors Ben Foster and Elle Fanning bring some seedy poetry to Galveston, a muted crime drama that runs out of plot too soon, but makes up for it with powerhouse performances and a finely shaded sense of place.

Caught hits the usual beats, but with an unusually strong cast and original characters.

From the occasional flashy camera angles to a soundtrack peppered with deep-cut R&B songs, this movie slots right into some well-worn grooves. And yet it mostly works, thanks to an ace cast and a story that springs a few surprises.

The movie’s “and then this happened” structure can feel a little scattered, as Rice bounces among different people’s personal stories without developing any narrative momentum. But those stories are still moving, especially given that nearly everyone watching Broadway Rising will have been through something similar.

Ariel Phenomenon feels pretty repetitive, as it reiterates the details of the encounter and its aftermath over and over. The movie is missing a larger perspective. Still, there is undeniable power in hearing the recollections of people who shared something so remarkable and so inexplicable.

Lee structures the film like a mystery, which gives it a sharp hook in the early going but leads to an inevitable letdown in the final stretch when the answers prove less interesting than the questions.

Unlike some filmmakers tackling hot-button political issues, the Hallivis brothers don’t treat their heroes as rhetorical pawns, deployed strategically to win an argument. They ground the movie’s amped-up sense of outrage in likable characters with eclectic personalities and backstories.

As one man's vacation video, it's outstanding, but as a documentary, it lacks verve, stylistically or journalistically.

Superhero fans exhausted by bloated blockbusters should check out director Victor Vu’s Vietnamese action movie Head Rush, which overcomes its incredibly goofy plot thanks to some dynamic fight scenes and a general unpretentiousness.

Metal Lords traffics way too much in teen movie clichés; but whenever it sticks to the music and the relationships between its core trio of weirdoes, it’s genuinely affecting.

Even though Gondry and Chomsky’s very different sensibilities don’t mesh in such a way that either man’s work gains substantially from the alliance, they’re each such good company individually that Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy? is still entertaining.

While this movie could use more comic snap, it’s quite sharp about the daily challenges a Deaf actor faces in an industry built on winning people over with well-spoken bluster.

The Lair doesn’t finish as spectacularly as it starts; but that just means it’s a good genre picture and not a great one.

As a story, it never develops beyond the routine. Still, the aesthetic philosophizing works as a framework for daring visual experiments.

None of this is as deep as it intends to be, nor will it strike science-fiction devotees as especially novel. But Sackhoff’s Mack is such a vivid, well-rounded character that “2036” still works. It’s like a stage play, crossed with one of the more philosophical old pulp magazine short stories.

Director Tommy Boulding and screenwriters Ray Bogdanovich and Dean Lines do deliver a lean, effective action film, with lots of shooting, stabbing and clever traps. It’s ideal for anyone who enjoys the sound of tortured screams in a bucolic English countryside.

This is a small film about a society of castoffs, and while it’s beautifully acted and often moving, it’s also predictable, because it keeps wresting itself into familiar forms.

Because the tone is so erratic, it’s hard to know whether its anticlimactic quality is a botch on Araki’s part, or a purposeful bit of genre subversion.

It’s hard to keep track of all the old high school comedies that writer-director-producer Sean Nalaboff nods to in his feature film debut, Hard Sell. Eventually, though, the movie finds its own voice and groove, and avoids being a mere retro exercise.

After establishing the AFFA’s complex, corrupt social structure, Stone and Logan wimp out considerably in the second half of Any Given Sunday, piling on the sports-melodrama clichés.

How to Please a Woman is overlong; and it runs out of plot well before it gets to its climax (so to speak). But while its premise is at times iffy, the movie as a whole has a refreshing randiness about it.

Adams is still an absolute dynamo as Giselle, fluctuating between preternatural cheeriness and storybook meanness. As in the first film, the actress strikes a graceful balance between the silly and the sincere, embodying and even humanizing everything people love about fairy tales.

Nothing here is revelatory — at least not to anyone who reads the op-ed pages or has watched “The Good Wife.” But the movie is refreshingly smart about how real feelings can get in the way of callous calculation.

Beyond the Gates is more imaginative than frightening, and Stewart and co-writer Stephen Scarlata take too long to get to the good parts, killing time with long dialogue scenes where the characters pause interminably between lines.

Testin and Berg's work here is definitely promising, suggesting something better from both of them down the road.

A thin plot and a distractingly jaunty score hold The Bastards’ Fig Tree back. But for the most part, this is a thought-provoking historical fairy tale about the values — and grudges — that survive whomever’s in power.

Mostly The Windmill is about watching some morally shaky people die horribly. But they do it with such dramatic gravitas that their inevitable eviscerations seem almost profound.

Beautifully lit, with some inventive but unobtrusive framing, and the moody jazz score unifies the multiple storylines without overwhelming them. Yet while the movie never goes slack, it never really transcends its good intentions either.

The film is visually sharp and quietly absorbing, and Olenius and Vilo sensitively capture the isolation and self-doubt that can make an athlete’s life so lonely.

There are times, though, when Stapleton’s disjointed structure is distracting. Also, by centering so much of the narrative on Jackson’s voice rather than on the people who worked alongside him over the years, the film’s perspective can feel limited.

The story being told lacks depth and insight; but it does have snap and polish, and it features a lot of astonishing art. In a way it’s a true Stan Lee experience.

The movie’s overlong and the humor’s too broad, but given that this would-be cult film is aimed at audiences who want something silly and trashy, it’s hard to fault Skiba for just mindlessly mashing those two buttons, over and over.

An otherwise plain action picture carried by strong performances and a mildly compelling mystery.

We don’t learn much about how the government or politics work in Afghanistan; and there’s very little in the way of historical background. But by giving a voice both to Ghafari and — in a few scattered scenes — her fierce opposition, In Her Hands does capture with direct immediacy how hard it can be to loosen up a culture with a tradition of rigidity.

The Monkey King 3 is more about eye-popping spectacle than narrative sweep, but it's generous with images that make audiences go, "Oooh!"

The overall mood is warm and cheery, and Lohan brings a spontaneous sincerity to even the corniest scenes. The movie’s wrapping is shiny and plastic, but its star quality is genuine.

Shawn’s adaptation mostly follows Ibsen’s original text, which is what keeps A Master Builder on the level of a well-meaning but only intermittently electrifying exercise.

Garcia and Prinze are so likable that it’s satisfying to see them spend an hour or so of screen time figuring out what the audience knows right away.

The acting throughout is excellent; and it helps that Barrial isn’t playing Leonard’s predicament for cheap laughs or amped-up drama. Instead, he’s documenting what it’s like these days, to try and find some meaning in life while scrounging all night long, terrified to miss whatever meager scraps are being tossed.

In the end, it all gets to be too stifling. The film looks amazing, and there may be no better way to adapt Darger's work to the screen. But Yu's decision to limit the comments on Darger's enduring appeal keeps the audience locked in his cramped room too long, without a window of context.

Ravenous is misbegotten in multiple ways. It isn’t scary enough to be an effective horror movie, or funny enough to be much of a comedy... But say this for Ravenous: It isn’t generic.

Too much of Ari Folman’s half-animated science-fiction feature The Congress feels just a bit off—but every now and then, the concept, the performances, and Folman’s visual flair combine to produce something extraordinary.

The film has a striking look, filled with deep shadows, shimmering light, and flashes of color. “So Cold the River” also captures the ethical complications facing a reporter who begins to realize that the nature of her assignment may keep her from telling the public what they really need to know.

Simien is clearly a talented, witty writer, with a fantastic sense of character development and dialogue, but he makes a lot of rookie mistakes as a filmmaker, from trying to cover too much ground in one movie to making stylistic choices that render Dear White People visually incomprehensible.

It’s not the easiest movie to watch; but that’s only because Shaye’s admirably unafraid to tap into the parts of herself that weird people out.

It’s hard not to be impressed by Burleson’s command of how old exploitation movies look and sound.

The Rachel Divide never quite cracks Dolezal's facade (if it even is a facade). But Brownson does move beyond the "think-piece" take on a real person — while also questioning whether she should.

Intimate Stories stays doggedly, purposefully minor, in part because director Carlos Sorin and screenwriter Pablo Solarz want to explore the casual interactions of people doing nothing.

Though Benjamin struggles to fill her running-time, the movie mostly reaffirms that she’s a talented genre director.

Prisoners of the Ghostland is less a movie than an environment — not always hospitable but distinctly bizarre.

Director Roshan Sethi gives the musical interludes some visual pop; and the songs are genuinely hooky.

The Lodgers isn't especially frightening, but as the story of people weighed down by their legacies, it is genuinely haunting.

The changes make this “13” look and feel more like a conventional Netflix teen movie — all about puppy love and jostling for popularity — rather than the one-of-a-kind theatrical experience it once was. But Jason Robert Brown’s songs are still incredibly snappy, turning common adolescent experiences like crushes, first kisses and going to horror movies with friends into up-tempo bops.

Give credit to Spillane for making sure that this movie isn’t just about the heartwarming highs, but about the hard work it took to reach them.

If von Carolsfeld had worked more surprises into her style and presentation, Marion Bridge wouldn't live down to its genre stereotype so readily.

Senior Year is not an ambitious movie, but it’s mostly a sweet one, and frequently funny.

The film is ultimately a thoughtful study of how anyone, no matter how vulnerable or self-assured, can be fooled by someone who projects confidence and expertise.

The movie is breezy to a fault. The interviewees are focused and articulate, but aren’t given time to cover more than the basics. Anyone who’s already been following the ongoing conversations about the future of AI won’t learn much new.

Although Goulet’s film is ultimately better at scene-setting than storytelling, the world she builds is a remarkably detailed, revealing reflection of our own.

Until the thought-provoking, from-left-field twist ending, We Are the Flesh mostly seems like a series of sick tableaux, dredged up from the director’s subconscious and then splattered across the screen. But there’s genuine artistry even to this film’s most exploitative moments.

For the most part this is a captivating mood piece, held together by Ricci’s take on a woman who is chasing an impossible idyll while being trailed by something dark and murky.

Homebound burns too slowly in the early going, but the tension and confusion in the first half eventually explodes into chaos. Throughout, Loftus gives a gripping performance as a woman desperate to make a good impression on a family that may be evil.

The Phenom may be choppy, but it’s saying something sincere about how the pressure to be thought of as a winner can be an athlete’s most formidable opponent.

The more powerful parts of this picture have to do with their realization that people may be too eager to hear tidy stories with clear villains and conclusions — even if they’re not entirely true.

Baskin won't be for everybody, but it's well made and imaginatively upsetting.

there’s something undeniably inspiring about [Groo's] stick-to-it-iveness, as he hustles around the Utah mountains, completing more movies in a year than better filmmakers ever will.

They Will Have to Kill Us First doesn't offer much of a primer on Mali's political or cultural histories — which is the movie's biggest weakness. But Schwartz did capture some remarkable footage of musicians who've spent the last few years taking tentative steps to reclaim what makes their nation special.

hough the first half of the picture is adequately tense and well-made, it's not strikingly cinematic or engagingly mysterious enough to justify the stalling. Or maybe the problem is that 10x10 takes too long to let Evans and Reilly off the leash.

Anyone gripped by “The Good Nurse” won’t be surprised to learn that the film followed what actually happened pretty closely. But whether dramatized or presented as journalism, it remains shocking to hear how the problem of Cullen kept getting passed from one institution to another.

Stray Dolls lacks some narrative momentum, as the characters drift from petty crime to petty crime and party to party. But the film has a remarkable sense of place.

The result is a fairly cerebral genre hybrid that still connects on a gut level.

Smith and Leonard spoof the presumptions and pretensions of people who like to outwardly project as kindly and enlightened; and they unsparingly illustrate how someone’s seemingly rock-solid reputation can be undone in an instant.

The dialogue-heavy scenario robs the film of some tension, but the conversations are often quite exciting.

At its best, Scary Stories explains why these books endure: because they let their young audience know that even in their worst nightmares, they’re not alone.

Whenever the energy starts to flag, Anvari can always come back to Bonneville, who is magnificently oily as Blake: a man who has convinced the world he’s a nice guy, though every now and then the mask slips and we see the anger and bigotry bubbling beneath.

The perverse story of a randy cowboy (played by Shepard himself) and his sister/lover Kim Basinger needs the tension of live performance for its incest-as-metaphor diagram to pop out.

It’s almost as though Combs knows his public image remains fuzzy, caught among such labels as “mogul,” “criminal,” “sellout,” and “under-appreciated genius.” Consider this movie a purposeful step toward cementing a legacy.

Big Game tries a little of everything, but ultimately settles into being a scrappy, lower-budget spin on the Big Dopey Action Movie genre. And as with nearly every stab at the BDAM, the audience’s satisfaction will depend largely on just how dopey they expect it to be.

There’s a matter-of-factness to Israel: A Home Movie that’s disquieting, as it shows the joy and determination of a nation in the making, and the dismayed faces of those elbowed aside.

Even at its most confounding, this is a challenging and entertaining film, delivering suspense and drama even as it's asking if it should.

What saves the picture is McKenna’s knack for finding something real and relatable within quirky comic characters like a hyper-organized overprotective mother and a swaggering cool guy who makes a living telling other people how to succeed.

The writer-director's overthinking on the matter is part of what's wrong with her debut film, which is sensitively shot, deeply felt, and dry as dirt.

Love Object's plot is reminiscent of Guy Colwell's underground comic-book series "Doll," only Colwell dealt more with sex toys as emblematic of the systematic objectification of women, while Parigi just uses the concept for a bunch of weird shocks, dark laughs, and a fairly repellent twist ending.