Noel Murray

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.

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.

Genre fans may be disappointed that Spell is more of an artful character sketch than a supernatural thriller. But by focusing on despair and regret, the movie is still pretty haunting.

Doesn't rise to the level of Bujalski's breakthrough feature "Mutual Appreciation," mainly because Swanberg doesn't have Bujalski's eye.

It’s always welcome to see a chiller that builds suspense from ideas and characters — and where the beasts from beyond are almost beside the point.

As Laggies piles up one scene after another of Megan’s boyfriend and all her old high-school chums acting exaggeratedly square, the movie’s comic point of view becomes overpoweringly sour and predictable.

Keyhole's flashes of actual B-movie coherence are enough to make longtime Maddin-watchers wonder if he could've played this material straighter, with more of a plot and fewer reveries.

Every time Peaches Does Herself seems to be falling into an inescapable rut of sneering and shock, Peaches comes up with with an image that deepens the whole endeavor.

There's nothing all that original about Still/Born. But it's sharp and shocking, and parents especially should appreciate how it turns caring for a screeching newborn into an inescapable nightmare.

A well-crafted and idiosyncratic supernatural thriller, the film plays like a mix of “Frankenstein,” “The Witch,” and some of the Coen brothers’ more explicitly Jewish movies.

As with “The Better Angels,” Edwards’ new movie is magnificently impressionistic, with Colin Stetson’s rhythmic score and Jeff Bierman’s sun-dappled cinematography making Richie’s life seem as wondrous as it is hard.

This is a tricky topic, and Hillinger sometimes strays too far away from it, indulging in sexually explicit digressions that are more titillating than germane. For the most part, though, this is a thoughtful look at a controversy unlikely to fade away, so long as modern technology and prurient interests continue to exist.

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.

This movie is about creating the hazy feel of early ‘70s American cinema, filled with kooky and paranoid characters who talk nonstop.

While it’s well-acted and slickly made, the movie’s derivative qualities — coupled with its inadvertent reminders of how crummy everything is outside our doors right now — make it less fun than intended. The light-hearted tone is often grating, working against the inherent drama of a world dominated by giant critters.

While Lynch has experience delivering breezy action, “breezy” can shade into “frivolous” — or even “forgettable.” As good as Yeun and Weaving are, there’s not a lot here that hasn’t been done

In tone and plot, Julia often resembles an extended episode of the AMC series "Breaking Bad"--except that Swinton's character is never NOT bad.

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.

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.

Twins Of Evil, like the best of Hammer, is about entering a world of castles, creatures, and torch-wielding mobs, all a little darker and more colorful than expected.

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

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.

Compared to other, similar offbeat monster movies, Grabbers is under-realized. It isn’t as smartly plotted or funny as Tremors, nor as politically charged as The Host.

While the plot here is thin (and slow-paced, and oppressively grim), Owen has a remarkable facility for generating atmosphere. He’s made a film where one man’s internal strife has been effectively externalized as an inescapable, picturesque purgatory.

Widely reviled a decade ago, Bitter Moon now plays as a visionary bridging of Brian De Palma's cinematic perversity and Takashi Miike's literal perversity, in addition to being another uncompromising Polanski study of the ways people torture each other.

The gold standard for the modern monster movie remains "Tremors," which combines genuine thrills with clever plot twists and distinctive characters. By contrast, Black Sheep has a bunch of one-note living jokes running around willy-nilly while being chased by killer sheep.

Medicine For Melancholy offers a personal spin on the "walking around a city" genre.

The movie becomes noticeably clunky whenever anyone stops to explain what’s going on. But Exposure 36 has stretches that work remarkably well — and feel incredibly relevant — as a moody portrait of a city emptied out by a crisis, left to people unwilling to accept that their round-the-clock party may be over.

Thoroughly populist and middlebrow, full of all the high wigs, thick powder, perfect diction, and straightforward dialogue that define bodice-ripping prestige pictures about silently suffering souls.

There’s a sketchbook quality to La Última Película; it’s like notes for a movie that never really got made. Because the film is stubbornly unpolished, it all but dares viewers to scratch their heads and say they don’t get it.

Troll has a blockbuster polish without the Hollywood heaviness. The story’s nothing special; but the action is spry, the characters are likable and the emphasis on Scandinavian folklore keeps Troll from becoming just another generic “Godzilla”/“Jurassic Park” riff.

The idea behind this film is to celebrate James’ first and best teammates. In the real world, what they achieved as a basketball team was remarkable. But dramatized? On the screen? It’s stubbornly undramatic.

Whenever Klown hits, it's hysterical.

Although longer and more complex than Gimli, thanks to a fine script by Maddin and George Toles, Careful is equally claustrophobic. The director's continued use of minimal lighting, deliberately phony-looking studio sets, and sterile overdubs perpetuates a feeling of blatant manufacture which undercuts any disturbing themes.

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

The Fly is a study in how the boldness of new discoveries is compromised by science’s need for precision, but it’s also a nightmarish tale of a comfortable little family, and a nagging little buzz.

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

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.

If Seraphim Falls' audience appreciates its good points and ignores an ending that tries too hard, they'll just be following a grand genre-buff tradition.

After a strong start, Shelley becomes frustratingly vague in the middle, before rebounding with a finale that makes the implicit menace more explicit.

Unlike most rock docs, “Life in 12 Bars” isn’t a look back from a distance. It’s like living through one man’s pain.

The Conquest offers that familiar thrill of being allowed to peek behind the curtain and see what our leaders are really like, and while it's more rote than revelatory, that may be because the American way of wielding power - and telling stories about it - has gone global.

Nolte almost makes it work.

The leads have a wonderful chemistry, with Bell hitting the right notes of anger and confusion and Morales maintaining the alien’s comic deadpan. Everyone involved has clearly thought through how such a wild fantasy situation might play out — and more importantly, how it would feel.

For the most part, Willmott succeeds thrillingly.

This movie is less about the myth of Biggie than it is about the everyday experiences of a man described by his friends as much funnier and more big-hearted than his public image sometimes suggested. Despite the title, “I Got a Story to Tell” is primarily concerned with all the tales that went untold.

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.

Few horror fans will complain about a movie that’s so generous with well-constructed, energetically staged set pieces featuring elaborate makeup effects and plenty of nondigital goo. The Void is derivative, but delightful.

It’s a fascinating story, mostly told by Crow herself, who is disarmingly honest about the capriciousness and cruelty of the music business — and about how the best way to survive for decades is to learn how to connect with people.

Buffalo Girls' main problem is that Kellstein can't seem to settle on whether he's making an inspirational sports movie (complete with triumphant music on the soundtrack during the fights), or an exposé of child exploitation among the Thai underclass.

The film is a poetic and lulling mediation on humanity as some kind of ancient alien race, which Reggio means to isolate and examine, as though he’s never encountered them before.

Not Okay hits its marks more often than not, and at its best it illustrates, step by inexorable step, how a carefully sculpted social media persona can encourage people to fake their way into a real crisis.

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

MacLachlan hasn’t given his main character anything revelatory to do or say. Goodbye To All That is mostly just a series of vignettes, detailing Otto’s sexual misadventures. And even those don’t amount to much.

As he uses Rathbun’s old tactics against his observers, Theroux raises troubling questions about psychological warfare and how devoutness shades into fanaticism.

For those fans who don't mind enduring some tedium and confusion, Yakuza Apocalypse at least offers something memorably bizarre.

The film is bracingly frank about the younger generation’s pursuit of sensual pleasure (and pain). And it’s graced by Weil’s superb performance as Avishag, a multilayered character who swings from maudlin sentimentality to the extremes of human desire.

For all the hubbub, the film succeeds in relating Shakespeare to modern times, thanks mainly to the use of energetic pop music and the gameness of the performers.

The problem is that Hughes fails to imbue this homage with anything personal. Aside from splicing together a policier and a Western, there's no spin here, just a checklist of clichés.

The movie goes out on a high, but until then, it plays almost like the pilot for a TV series. But it would be a GOOD TV series.

Williams and Sudano don’t try to sell their audience on Summer as a musician, because the music itself still does that. This is more a portrait of a passionate artist who kept pushing herself and reinventing herself — sometimes at the expense of those who loved her, at home and on the radio.

Those looking to learn more about Wong are in the wrong place. Those looking for a slick slugfest with memorable characters will be well satisfied.

Disturbing The Universe doesn’t mix it up enough.

Girls Rock! is cutesy and quick-cut, emphasizing the absurd while trying to keep the audience's interest with animated interludes and footage from corny old industrial films.

Still, after an hour and a half of exquisite photography and mushy action, audiences may well ask the unspoken question that plays across the faces of the Rolling Family clan right before the closing credits. Was it worth it?

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.

This period piece is slow-paced yet peppered with enough gory attacks and smartly staged scare sequences to appeal to horror connoisseurs.

While the doc may be overlong, it’s consistently fascinating because of its implications.

For the most part, Sick is just a slickly formulaic mid-budget horror movie, well-crafted by the screenwriters and directed with style and energy by the skilled John Hyams. But the real-world wrinkles aren’t just a cynical way to make the routine more relevant. They give all the bloody murder a meaning.

At two and a half hours, Warriors Of The Rainbow has the shape of something weightier than the simplified good-vs.-evil movie it actually is.

Had the orphanage years been the first chapter in a longer story, The Great Water might've stretched toward a finish as unforgettable as its start.

Too much of the film prioritizes the DJ’s problematic personal life over what made him famous. AM’s fans should get a lot out of the doc, but casual music-lovers may wish Kerslake would just get back to the party.

Throughout Lamb, Laurence makes sure that every one of the character’s bad choices makes sense. That’s what makes the movie so sad.

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.

The disconnect between Rafelson’s low-key style and Cain’s hard-boiled storytelling is jarring at times.

The trolls are the best part of Troll Hunter; they're funny and creepy.

The notion of a love story that's really about two women becoming friends is gimmicky, I'll grant, but Graynor and Miller are so charming together, and the movie is so focused and funny.

Kopple and her team have combed through the hours and hours of those dispatches that Gigi has sent into the world, and from them they’ve pieced together a story very much worth telling.

The movie has enough of Woods’ flavor to put a memorable spin on a familiar genre — so much so that it’s almost a crime it isn’t better.

There’s a boldness in Eggleston and De Roche’s choice to let almost the entire last half-hour of Long Weekend play out without dialogue, and in the clever ways they illustrate Peter and Marcia’s dangerous callousness.

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.

Even with the Gen Z-friendly touches — and Dever delivering a winning performance — Rosaline still feels frustratingly stale.

It’s a grim vision, sure. But it’s a compelling one too, using the flash of a space opera to remind viewers that — whether on the ground or in the stars — we’re stuck with each other.

For all its documentary-style urgency, Private often feels forced.

Ultimately as fascinating as it is frustrating.

A big reason why The Kentucky Fried Movie worked so well (and became a substantial cult hit) is that in the 1970s, subversion thrived after prime time, on late-night TV and at midnight movies.

While Memphis is similar in style and in assurance to the lower-ambition Pavilion, it reaches toward something it can’t fully grasp.

Conviction is like "Erin Brockovich" meets "Rudy."

At a certain point, Hammett gets unreasonably convoluted, but since its hero seems just as hopelessly confused by what develops, it's easy to just soak in the rich atmosphere, courtesy of Coppola's ace production designer Dean Tavoularis and a terrific John Barry score.

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.

Feste handles the action and horror in Run Sweetheart Run well; and for those who can handle its more preposterous twists there are trashy pulp kicks to be had here. But given that this movie is also trying to say something honest and angry about how the powers that be protect abusive men, its silliness is a setback.

Given the gift of Posey at the peak of her powers, Cassavetes squanders her star in low-key, go-nowhere conversations, shot without flair and drained of any improvisatory energy.

This is an unapologetic advocacy doc; and as such it’s likely to rub some viewers the wrong way. But even those who want to watch it just to argue should find that “The American Dream” is a worthy opponent.

The movie is entertaining and has a professional polish; but it’s also very safe. It feels like it was made more for the Darling children’s parents, not the Lost Boys.

A tedious exploitation picture not even sleazy enough to find offensive.

Though The Informers is by no means great--nor wholly true to the vision of Ellis, who co-wrote the screenplay with Nicholas Jarecki--moments sprinkled throughout the film capture Ellis' particular mix of flip yuppie satire and lived-in paranoia better than any big-screen version of his work to date.

Aside from some sections that deal with the studio’s financial ups and downs, there’s not really a narrative through-line. But the individual segments are often remarkably vivid, recreating Abbey Road’s unique vibe through vintage images and sounds, bringing the musicians’ memories to life.

The two leads are so strong in these parts that it’s too bad they rarely get the chance to do more with them.

Make no mistake: This film is a tear-jerker, taking an intimate look at one family's heartbreak and how their art moves people.

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.

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.

Reece’s ideas don’t always fit together neatly, but by gosh he has a lot of them. It’s a treat to watch him play.

Taking Sides is really no less simplistic than "Sunshine," but its predecessor succeeded because of its length and scope. Taking Sides stays rooted in one place and one discussion, and never gets anywhere.

Where Disappearance at Clifton Hill really excels is in exploring the visual and sonic textures of a decaying resort, and in hailing the plucky resourcefulness of a broken woman, trying to piece her memories — and maybe herself — back together.

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.

This is not an epic; nor is it meant to be. It’s a snappy story about a bunch of violent men — and one particular woman, anxious to get clear of them.

Remarkable for the intensity of the interviewees, who show a new kind of all-American gumption in the way they filter the mannerisms of low-rung celebrities through their own geeked-out, violent imaginations.

The tone is so smart-ass that it’s bound to put a lot of viewers into a default defensive posture.

Loktev's efforts to universalize this story by avoiding specifics ends up making Day Night Day Night broad and blank, reducing the lead character to one more generic nutcase for us to fear and pity.

With thoughtfulness and passion, von Trier strives to give his audience a high, accompanied by the meaning of the high.

While Bitton engages in some penetrating conversations, and shoots some artful video footage, Wall never really tops its first scene.

The filmmakers are incredibly resourceful. While they shot “The Passenger” mostly in and around one beat-up old camper in the middle of nowhere, their movie is nevertheless suspenseful and funny, with a few good jolts and gore effects to satisfy fright fans.

Throughout the film, Maclean and Perkins toy with the ever-shifting layers of truth and fiction in a theater rehearsal. But they’re also using Catton’s book to comment on how school can sometimes be a poor preparation for life itself.

The movie’s final act takes too grim a turn, leading up to an ending that’s overly dark and disgusting. But even as it goes way over the top, “Hunter Hunter” stays focused on the fragility of the Mersaults, who want to live by their own rules but discover that nature has its own agenda.

Red's dialogue is a bit blunt, its characters are too broadly outlined, and the situation verges on the ludicrous at times, especially in the way these dumb kids keep committing terrible crimes without leaving any evidence. But the movie isn't meant to be an exercise in realism.

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.

Writer-director Derek Nguyen's supernatural thriller settles confidently in a place between classy and trashy.

From the exotic ports of call to the occasional musical numbers, Yucatán is a mostly enjoyable ride. It’s meant to be a throwback to glamorous old Hollywood movies. Like a typical American pleasure cruise, it’s a serviceable facsimile of something fancy.

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.

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

Whatever its pretensions of social relevance, Sérgio Machado's Lower City is essentially an exploitation movie, and not a half-bad one at that.

This is a movie at which some will shrug and some will love. It’s a spiritually probing, deeply personal, stubbornly idiosyncratic work of art. It’s an Abel Ferrara film.

While the art world caricatures are hardly fresh, there’s a lot about Velvet Buzzsaw that’s pretty savvy and even inspired.

Still appeals to the lingering adolescent taste for daydreams.

For all the flayed flesh and impaled skin in the picture, this Hellraiser isn’t sharp enough.

This time out, Bahrani’s push to make a point wins out over the strong sense of character he’s cultivated in his earlier films.

Universe deals extensively with Haring's personal life--his open homosexuality, his regular visits with his family, etc.--but it doesn't penetrate too far below the surface.

The film’s dialectic qualities can feel a little forced and wooden, though Ritch mitigates this somewhat by directing his cast to deliver their lines at such a snappy clip that viewers don’t have time to dwell on the clunkers

Only one episode falls flat, while two cruise by on style and attitude, and two are genuinely brilliant.

The Legend of Molly Johnson is too ploddingly paced and too visually bland to stand with the great movie westerns — American or Australian. But Purcell does give a heartrending lead performance, playing a woman whose iron will may not be able to withstand the mob’s prejudices.

If a team of clever screenwriters tried to script a cautionary tale about the politics of fame (and the fame of politics), they likely couldn’t come up with anything odder or more apt than Erik Gandini’s documentary Videocracy.

Together, Ebert and Meyer produced an unhinged spoof of soapy melodramas and hippie iconography, so over-the-top in its violence and libertine sexuality that no one in 1970 quite knew what to make of it.

Fans of blood and guts won’t find what they’re looking for here (until the final 10 minutes, that is); but serious-minded genre fans should feel satisfied.

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

The faux-documentary aspect of Radiant City is a huge gamble that doesn't pay off. If anything, the movie's observations about the corrupting social influence of cluttered mall spaces get undercut by the fact that Burns and Brown feel the need to INVENT characters to prove their truth.

The third film has way too many moments that push too far toward the absurd.

Argo's job should only be a minor piece of this Gotham mosaic, but Jones makes the racketeering scenes so familiar that they grate against the rest of the movie.

Even when it’s considering a great man’s flaws, it does so with understanding, taking its cues from Q’s own philosophy: “You only live 26,000 days. I’m going to wear them all out.”

But without taking anything away from Frederick Wiseman, who remains a master, Sheriff is almost as good any documentary he's made.

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.

The movie has a lumpy shape, and its jokes are often obvious and crude, but it’s a lot sweeter than the other raunchy comedies of the era.

Reconstruction doesn't evoke much emotion beyond cool ennui. At that, the film excels.

A series of non-answers isn't enough to build a documentary on, especially when they're strung together by insufferably self-congratulatory voiceover narration (de Ponfilly plays up his agony over whether documentary filmmaking helps or hurts its subjects) and corny stylistic effects.

Trocker’s insights into a family crumbling due to a lack of trust aren’t all that fresh or keen, but his movie is tense and absorbing regardless, because he and his cast excel at dramatizing the lingering resentments and passive-aggression that foul the air between loved ones.

It’s a polished, entertaining film, but a lot of its meaning derives from how much the audience cares about a handful of TV characters they may or may not already know.

Cumming and Dillahunt are so terrific - as is Isaac Leyva as their ward - that they pull Any Day Now up from its more maudlin and melodramatic elements.

In many ways, Fugitive Pieces is a beautiful film. But it's a bit TOO beautiful.

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."

Pachachi doesn't integrate her interviews into any kind of comprehensive portrait of recent Iraq history. They're bunched together randomly, like a collection of vignettes.

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.

Crawl is action-packed, with impressive special effects and some jaw-dropping images of mayhem and destruction. But a movie like this demands more storytelling discipline and logistical control than these filmmakers can manage.

Gloomy Sunday's success in transcending its own clichés and conventionality -- at least until the morose finale -- is due in part to the story's primal romantic pull, aided by attractive actors who either stare longingly into each other's eyes or cavort in states of undress.

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.

Besides the restless style, Dans Paris is remarkable for being more about familial bonds than French cinema tends to be.

It'd be great if Rooms For Tourists had a clearer point, or something significant to say about the human condition, but even in spite of its low budget, cruddy look, and modest aspirations, the movie is art of a kind.

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.

Body Of War purposefully depicts an America in turmoil. But it also depicts an America far more capable of living with contradictions than the "Red State/Blue State"-obsessed cable-news pundits would have us believe.

It's neither conceptually bold nor slyly satirical when Billy dresses up as a Southern evangelical and sings made-up hymns about "the shopacalypse."

The film is striking and often charming, and any movie that places three tall, lanky types aboard a miniature boat named "Titanique" can't be slammed too much. But in the end, it's easier to admire than to love.

The plot is pretty routine, but its finer points about religious faith and rituals give the creep-outs and jump-scares real nuance. What makes this such a satisfying horror film is its cultural specificity.

Writer-director Neasa Hardiman mostly keeps her debut feature at the level of a claustrophobic psychological thriller, saving her special effects budget for a few breathtaking undersea views of the glowing, multi-tentacled beastie. But after a fairly sedate start, the movie gets increasingly grim and violent.

This is a well-crafted chase picture that doubles as a fiery warning about the dangers of an authoritarian government that can create its own reality, with no accountability for mistakes or malevolence.

Citadel is plenty scary: a bare-bones man-against-his-worst-fears white knuckler, shot through deep, menacing shadows.

The characters remain governed by what they've been told about themselves for years - that they're ugly, devious, mean, low-class, or silly - until a fresh set of eyes changes what they see in the mirror. Knowing this mutual moment of stark self-awareness is coming doesn't make its arrival any less powerful.

A sobering story kept at street level.

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

At its best, Rolling Papers is like a paean to old-fashioned journalism, with its curious, intrepid writers — backed by well-heeled publishers — diligently finding and piecing-together important stories in the public interest. If Dickman had really wanted to be clever, he could’ve called this movie "Potlight."

While Williams and Faith do a fine job of capturing the frustrating powerlessness of a low-wage-earning woman in a sexist and classist society, The Power never generates much in the way of shocks or excitement.

George Hencken’s Spandau Ballet documentary Soul Boys Of The Western World effectively serves two audiences: hardcore fans hoping for rare footage and in-depth interviews, and those who really only know the song “True,” and would be surprised to learn just how popular Spandau Ballet used to be.

The simplicity of Lone Survivor eventually becomes a handicap, because after a certain point, the film becomes just one long battle sequence, lacking narrative ebb and flow.

The movie takes some dark, violent turns once Crudup enters the picture, and loses some of its initial soft, regional charm. But Kinnear and Crudup are funny, and the plot does fold together with the kind of cruel logic that these sorts of twist-a-thons often lack.

The Tony Scott version of Tarantino comes out vulgar; the graphic violence and profanity-laced posturing represent everything that the wannabes soon used to exhaust audiences. Nevertheless, True Romance contains so many unforgettable moments.

Hateship Loveship is unimpressive as a whole, but it’s stitched together with small, memorable touches.

While the movie becomes a little repetitious in the middle, it ends strongly with a succession of unforgettable scenes of gruesome body horror. Clock leans too heavily on too-obvious visual metaphors, but it’s still a vivid and visceral explication of one woman’s fears.

Too many scenes run longer than they need to, padded out with overly folksy and reflective dialogue. But McGowan makes good use of autumnal Appalachia, staging a lot of scenes outdoors in the barren, brown hills.

If nothing else, the shaggy romantic comedy Celeste And Jesse Forever establishes that Parks And Recreation's Rashida Jones is a movie star.

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.

Corbijn’s reserved, removed approach gives his stars the space to develop a real chemistry, which makes their characters pleasant company, once they get past their early clumsiness around each other.

Aside from the quirky and exciting gaming angle, See for Me is a pretty straightforward suspense film — but a well-crafted one.

The bluntness keeps the film from approaching greatness, although history buffs and genre fans might appreciate a World War II story told from a unique, non-Western perspective.

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.

There’s a context to Struzan—not just biographically, but culturally—and while Sharkey seems to understand that, his movie, ironically, doesn’t illustrate it particularly well.

The comic incongruity of doting parents stalking children becomes less funny over time; and often it feels like Taylor hasn’t thought through the particulars of his premise, or the places he could’ve taken it.

The symbolism remains heavy, but it’s all in service of a powerful prisoner’s story, about the small ways people find freedom.

In their attempt to make rural life look magical, Scott and Pouliot dehumanize their characters, substituting quirks for true individuality.

Skiles keeps the film’s pacing slow, which at times builds tension, at times makes everything feel more off-kilter, and at times is … well, just slow. Mostly the director and his superb cast use the extra time to explore the nuances of Ford’s tale of sick compulsions and social pressures.

The heightened luridness of Obsession does succeed in making Vertigo’s twisty plot seem all the more inessential to that film’s power. What both movies do is cut a tale of murder and madness down to its essence, exploring characters who’ve been damaged by social expectations and their own desires.

To some extent, if you've seen one Swanberg film, you've seen them all; Nights And Weekends contains the usual mix of frank, awkward sex scenes and couples talking passive-aggressively around each other.

Writer-director Brian A. Metcalf avoids the usual found-footage looseness, instead relying on scripted dialogue and professional actors (including former child star Thomas Ian Nicholas, who also produced). The cast is strong but their lines are painfully stilted.

Battle Beyond The Stars has a charm that belies its low budget and opportunistic origins.

For the most part, The Djinn is effectively taut and tense, helped along by a spooky, synth-heavy score, some nifty special effects and a genuinely disturbing twist ending.

John Sayles’ Go For Sisters is his best film in more than a decade, and feels like one he could’ve made in the 1980s. It’s a small picture, simply presented, and exists outside of current trends—which isn’t always to its benefit.

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.

It isn't a biography of the legendary photographer, and it's not exactly an essay. Mostly, Bütler fills the screen with Cartier-Bresson's photographs while people explain their greatness.

Though clumsy, Particles Of Truth isn't hopeless. Before turning to filmmaking, Elster made her living as a celebrity fashion stylist, so she has a good eye for color, motion, and the feel of New York in summer. And, because she worked primarily on music videos, she uses music well.

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.

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

Ultimately, Cocaine Cowboys' lesson isn't that crime doesn't pay, but that it maybe pays too well.

More than anything, The Playroom feels like an excuse to explore this retro house from a child’s point of view—which is perfectly okay, provided no one breaks the spell by talking.

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.

No Restraint misses a lot of opportunities, like the chance to contrast Barney's work with artists working on a lower budget, or to examine his positive and negative influence on modern art, or to break down an economic model based on selling off the pieces Barney discards along the way.

The action in The Front Line is bloody and tense, but the movie also reduces war to its simplest terms, defining it in terms of the reluctant soldiers who know that only accidents of birth and location determined which side of the battlefield they inhabit.

It’s a mash-up of familiar genre elements—too familiar, frankly—given a welcome sense of scope and shading by the location.

What makes Pearl Jam Twenty a little better than the average fan-friendly documentary is that Crowe focuses on the more significant parts of the Pearl Jam story: not how the group wrote "Alive," but how it's struggled with maintaining artistic credibility while selling millions.

The movie doesn’t shy away from magic spells and arcane African blood rituals, but the real dark mojo that Bass is bringing so starkly to the big screen involves the cycles and privilege and exclusion that seems to persist through every attempt at exorcism.

The themes of Jakob’s Wife are a bit simplistic, but the lead performances are incredibly complex, drawing on the two stars’ decades of screen (and life) experience.

As a slice of history, Ip Man is disappointingly simplistic. Yip, Wong, and Yen never develop any real tension between Ip's true story and the exaggerated myth-making of a martial-arts movie. But as an exaggerated, myth-making martial-arts movie, Ip Man is often thrilling.

Roughly 99 percent of the time, if a movie that seems like it should be a big deal appears almost out of the blue, it's because it's lousy. The Double doesn't exactly buck that trend.

The deep strangeness of Drifting Home can take some time to adjust to. But in this quirky and boisterous picture, the surreal predicament is ultimately just an offshoot of these kids’ common fears about growing up.

At its best, Running From Crazy is a powerful portrait of a woman who’s wrested control of her life by understanding the patterns her relatives fell into, and consciously breaking them.

Muted and ambiguous — sometimes to a fault — “A Banquet” is well acted and well crafted and should resonate with viewers who have had experiences similar to those of the movie’s perpetually anxious mother.

The film is impressive as a star vehicle, if a bit rickety as an action picture.

Together, Morosini and Oswalt capture the panic that seizes some parents when they see their kids slipping into despair. They sensitively dramatize one father’s fear that everything he does to make things better will permanently ruin everything — though that doesn’t stop him from blundering ahead anyway.

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.

It’s more gentle and fanciful in tone, and though it’s as episodic and digressive as Jodorowsky’s best-known work, the various pieces add up to a clear, not-so-odd narrative.

La Petite Lili isn't conventional or crowd-pleasing enough to appeal to audiences who like their foreign films safely sentimental, but it's also not daring enough for those who expect art to hurt a little.

Viewers who can endure the at-times tediously dour first hour of “Next Exit” are rewarded with a tense and emotional final stretch, with a lot to say about what gives life meaning.

This is the first act of a better movie, stretched to fill a feature.

In the terms it sets at the start, Dachra is mostly but not entirely successful. It’s not overtly political (though an argument could be made that it’s partly about how Tunisia has changed since 2011’s civil unrest), and it is pretty gripping.

A few broadly comic moments aside, This Is 40 also captures the rhythms and concerns of real life in ways that slicker Hollywood comedies don't.

Each segment runs too long; and none of them has the kind of killer ending an anthology film deserves. But they do all deliver what they promise: a 1999 look and vibe, with moments designed to make audiences squirm.

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.

Biller obviously feels for these plywood people she's created. She surrounds them with rich color and eye-popping décor, and fills them with the awareness that as awkward as their sex games may be, they may one day miss what they stood for.

Marston and Sheppard have come up with a terrific premise, and have worked it into an often highly entertaining movie. But after a while, all the narrative ellipses and question marks start to feel like an affectation — beguiling on the surface, but un-genuine.

The movie is pretty lightweight — disemboweling aside — but has a fair amount of punch, and it could appeal to connoisseurs of self-conscious pulp.

While Murdoch exhibits masterful control in a recording studio, he isn’t a natural-born filmmaker. Much of God Help The Girl feels haphazardly stitched together, with pieces missing or placed in the wrong order, as though Murdoch didn’t get all the footage he needed.

Böhm doesn't do so well with Wildling's scare scenes and gore, because he seems more focused on making a coming-of-age character study than an effective fright-flick. But he has one remarkable character in Anna, who's played by Powley as a feral gal with a heartbreakingly doleful soul.

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

The movie lays out key data points that persuasively — if a bit dryly — position laboratories as the inevitable future of food. But more engaging are the sequences showing technicians at work and lobbyists trying to win over a skeptical press and wary farmers.

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

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.

[Morgan's] observations about Hollywood’s image-consciousness and the transactional nature of L.A. relationships are nothing new. But there’s a specificity and a liveliness to her jokes that makes them feel almost fresh — or, at the least, relevant.

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 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.

Like “Winter’s Bone,” the film is at its best when it follows its heroine closely, letting the audience understand more about her life with each step closer to danger.

A movie that very quickly becomes yet another story about people with guns chasing other people with guns, through featureless forests and abandoned buildings.

Tron's thematic overtures have a certain silly charm, enhancing rather than detracting from its core virtues. What really makes Tron work is an astonishing sense of design.

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

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.

Creative Control is funny and imaginative, where many films of this type are dispiritingly plain.

The film hits its stride about halfway through its running time before sputtering down the stretch. But for the most part it’s pretty snappy.

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

At its best and its sharpest, this film is less about supernatural monsters than about the common fear of drifting apart from the people you love.

The film doesn’t always work as a genre exercise, but it’s a winner as a character study, in large part because of how committed Hagan is to playing Janie’s derangement. Casting directors in search of the offbeat should take note.

Compared to the morose plots of later Elvis movies, Blue Hawaii is a breezy vacation, and Presley looks appealingly relaxed as every Hawaiian's favorite haole.

The film works best when it gets into the nuts-and-bolts of the sex scenes themselves, past and present.

Miike has served up some of the most dumbfounding images in contemporary cinema.

Seems Like Old Times is some of the best work that all of these people ever did on film.

Strong lead performances by Aaron Paul and Emily Ratajkowski are squandered in Welcome Home, a low-tension suspense picture with pretensions of saying something profound about broken relationships.

Beneath the affectations, there’s poetry in Kid-Thing, and truth in its depiction of how absolute freedom can be a kind of trap.

Believer has a well-told, entertaining story sustaining a running time 20 minutes longer than “Drug War.” With the extra space, Lee explores the motivations of his two protagonists, working toward similar ends for different reasons.

The new English track is predictably clumsy, but the story and images overcome it.

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.

Yes, the idea that the tree/father is literally tearing this family apart is way too blunt, but Gainsbourg and Davies sell it by playing the scenes naturally, with minimal histrionics.

It’s mostly a collection of surreal moments, headed nowhere in particular. But Moore milks a lot of the ironic potential out of his milieu.

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.

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.

Felon's dialogue is overheated and some of its plot twists are preposterous, yet it's still white-knuckle tense, and held together by dozens of small, well-observed moments.

For a rock star and old-movie buff like Rob Zombie, The Lords Of Salem offers a chance to riff on the notion of rock ’n’ roll as the devil’s music, while recreating scenes from old Hammer witch pictures. Zombie does both of these things—just not always as expected.

Some kind of wonderment.

The main reason for anyone to see One More Time...is Walken, who brings a lot of life and fine shading to what could’ve been a one-note deadbeat dad type.

In keeping with the S&M theme, Matsumoto keeps changing R100’s direction, defying the audience in hopes of providing a more perverse kick. Often, the results are astonishing.

The less oblique and more direct the movie gets, the worse it is.

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.

As it happens, the weakest part of Ip Man 3 is its run-of-the-mill, almost juvenile potboiler plot.

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 movie bleeds honesty, though its individual components are more memorable than how they’re assembled.

After an opening 10 minutes that promises something depressingly mediocre, the film takes a turn to the atmospheric and gruesome, and winds up being one of the year’s more provocative shockers.

An excellent cast and some skillful direction goes a long way toward making “The Aviary” feel genuinely revealing.

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.

Though it's a well-worn story, Candy does touch on a universal anxiety. For two people basking in the heat of an all-consuming love, what happens when the power gets cut off?

Say this for Albert Nobbs: It's not some run-of-the-mill "life lived in service" drama.

Queen Raquela's plotty elements don't always work: The acting in the story-driving scenes sometimes comes off as amateurish, and the circumstances that send Rios halfway around the world seem contrived. But de Fleur gets an astonishingly good performance from Stefan C. Schaefer.

As with Rossi's acclaimed documentary "Page One: Inside the New York Times," "First Monday" covers too much ground.

While Saints And Sinners will strike some as a refreshingly even-toned social study, it's also a documentary heavy on talking heads and low on real drama. It's beautifully shot and deeply felt, but, for the most part, hearing a description of the film is as good as watching it.

Though Robbins acts a little stiff, Morton remains stunning throughout, playing a mixture of her wide-eyed, deeply sensitive characters from "Morvern Callar" and "Minority Report." She suggests worlds within worlds.

The main problem with The Promised Land is that Jhally and Ratzkoff are eager to foster dissent, but not to invite it into their own movie. Their talking heads sound rehearsed and repetitive, and the righteous anger dissipates without a contrary opinion to provide a ceiling.

Illustrates how the rhetoric of civil rights changed after the breakthroughs of Martin Luther King. With the world's media finally paying attention, critical thinkers like Carmichael, Davis, and Malcolm X were able to push back against the fretful questions about violence, and redefine the story of blacks in America over the centuries as one defined by violence.

There’s an element of parlor trickery here that the movie’s never entirely able to overcome.

A good mystery and earnest performances keep the movie lively, though the confined location and limited plot ultimately make the end product feel paltry.

Watching an actress of Hunter’s caliber in a meaty leading role partly compensates for the creaky plot and overearnest tone.

As always with Greenwald, it’s refreshing that he doesn’t simply indulge in fear-mongering. He has the resources and the research team to sort through lots of data, culling the relevant points and encouraging action.

This is a B-movie with the pretensions of a prestige drama; and frankly, the less ambitious version would’ve likely been better.

Dorfman does an excellent job of constructing a dialogue- and performance-driven chamber piece; but he shows less skill at staging fight scenes and raw terror.

The result is a horror film that progresses organically and unpredictably, even willing to take a turn for the tragic, if that's what's inevitable.

Generation War never becomes great, but it overcomes its stiff start in large part due to its scope.

Bate invites a disparate bunch of SULM true-believers to explain their obsession, and many of them point to the same spirit of voyeurism that makes YouTube videos go viral today: that sense of getting an unfiltered look into how other people live.

Algrant’s film — which he co-wrote with Emma Sheanshang and David Brendel — is really about Tim Buckley’s son, Jeff, an equally adventurous rocker whose fame ultimately eclipsed his father’s, though he too died young.

Assisted Living gets a little better as it wears on, and at least it's refreshingly short.

Even at its bluntest, Seriously Red draws a lot of heat and light from Boylan, whose Red enjoys embodying the casual confidence, folksy wisdom and bombshell bravura of one of the world’s most beloved entertainers.

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.

There are jokes here, and dramatic moments too; but everyone is so darn earnest all the time that nothing truly exciting happens. Instead, we just hang out with some pretty decent folks for a while, and then the credits roll.

Director John Pogue brings some grit and energy to the action sequences, but ultimately Blood Brother is just a compendium of pulp clichés, with nothing to say about these characters or the worlds they inhabit.

It’s that intuitive fusion of whiplash-inducing plot twists and political anger that makes The People Under The Stairs so fascinating, even when the humor’s too blunt or the scares too soft.

The result is a movie that feels both fussed-over and meaninglessly cruel.