Noel Murray

Guerrilla still holds up as social history, primarily because its description of seething frustration in a divided America has become spookily relevant.

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.

If the film has a significant flaw, it's that Venditti never explains in the film how she found Billy, or why she's interested in him. Billy The Kid often plays more like an extended home movie than something intentional and artful.

Studio Ghibli productions have always been adept at making the fantastic seem real, but with Whisper Of The Heart, Kondo and Miyazaki focus so intensely on the everyday that they make the real seem fantastic.

About 30 years ahead of its time, Blast of Silence follows a hit man (Baron) who heads to New York over the holidays and finds the Christmas spirit interfering with his killer instincts. [13 Apr 2008, p.E10]

The Great Flood works as a wordless narrative of human endurance, showing communities gathering to stack sandbags, then gathering again to dig out of the muck after their previous efforts failed.

Grant and Kermani skillfully keep the audience in suspense from start to finish, even if it’s just by withholding what the heck is actually happening.

It might've mattered to the audience too, if we had any inkling from the first hour of The Robber who this guy is, or why we should care what happens to him.

A documentary that’s both impressionistic and informative—admiring the magic of dance even in its formative stages, while also turning the making of art into a kind of procedural.

On the list of Disney-related 2016 releases about child-rearing and handicaps, this one goes just above "Finding Dory." What it lacks in wacky hijinks, it makes up in hard truths.

Prodigal Sons comes packed with multiple hooks. Aside from the sex-change angle, the movie takes a turn when Marc---whom Reed’s parents adopted before she was born--learns that he’s the biological son of Rebecca Welles, and the grandchild of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth.

Maybe this picture is just a string of wacky ideas, with no deeper meaning. But for those who take the ride, it’s an hour and 17 minutes they’re unlikely to forget.

This is a smart, melancholy crime picture, which takes its cues from the title of the perverse old standard Christensen plays on her stereo at night: “You Always Hurt The One You Love.”

The documentary seems a little structureless and unfocused at times, as Akers moves from dramatic moment to dramatic moment, not always taking care to connect them.

The Bridesmaid goes slack at times, as it follows multiple Magimel family subplots, but as always, Chabrol stages everything with an elegant economy, moving the camera in short bursts that direct the eye but don't distract. Still, the movie would fail completely if not for the dynamic between the two leads.

The story takes a while to get going, then rambles a lot once the premise has been established. And the dialogue zooms along so fast that it can be hard to follow. But young filmmakers are supposed to take chances like this.

Intentionally or unintentionally, there's a degree of accusation to The Woodmans that's discomfiting, almost as if Willis is indicting Francesca's parents for being so self-involved-even though they're just answering his questions as honestly as they can.

By showing the exhausting diligence that goes into moments of pure transcendent joy onstage, this doc should make new fans for Giordano’s living museum.

The Big House is an MGM film, and while it takes on the problem of prison overcrowding, at times it’s more like a window into a secret society, with its own codes and concerns. It’s an outsized, abstracted version of everyday life circa 1930.

Whenever the story starts to drag, Berg cuts to a scene like Big Brother’s era-defining performance of “Ball And Chain” at Monterey, which had even Los Angeles’ prematurely jaded rock superstars gaping in justified awe. They knew they were watching something explosive, in a package too fragile to contain it.

What Suleiman is trying to say becomes less important than the increasing boldness with which he says it. In the end, Divine Intervention has too many visionary setpieces, and not enough insight.

The movie holds to a steady but too-straight rhythm, hitting all the expected romantic-drama beats, right down to the occasional argument that threatens to stop the date cold. But Southside With You is also winningly sweet and earnest, and refreshingly frank about the problems that minorities face when they try to get ahead in a culture dominated by white males.

This aestheticizing of troubled lives proves problematic over the long haul.

Iron Island is at its most compelling early, as Rasoulof explores his human-scaled ant farm, detailing how people make lives for themselves in cramped quarters, using cardboard partitions and jerry-rigged appliances.

Hard-to-follow action and a silly, inconsistent tone work against the film, but Hope's reluctant can-do attitude and wry comments keep the energy level up.

It’s not a criticism to say that Smoking Causes Coughing doesn’t hold together, because cohesion isn’t what Dupieux is going for. He’s more about surprise and delight.

In order to make the situation more universal and existential, Raschid keeps the issues and stakes so vague that there’s no way for the characters or story to develop. The film, like its title location, becomes just another featureless box, designed to agitate and confound anyone who enters.

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