Robert Abele

Oldman treats Churchill’s words the way a Broadway virtuoso would: as the showstopper. And who can blame him? It works.

Boseman’s roiling magnetism goes a long way toward making it all work.

The filmmaking has a certain paint-by-numbers frankness that works in some ways, not in others.

The movie’s real showcase gold lies in the magnetic appeal of screwball comedy natural Erskine (Hulu’s “PEN15”); she’s a major talent who rightly runs away with the movie, conjuring in the viewer’s head a constellation of wishful star turns to come.

Whether we read about someone like Hasna or watch such a sad journey dramatized, it’s worth being reminded that stories like these always leave behind many who are forced to reckon with a society’s notion of what and whom they resemble.

Though it’s decidedly a Hollywood product in its polished, lockstep approach toward teen mindsets — an admittedly surprising swerve toward the mainstream for indie-marinated Russo-Young — the film’s sensitivities are honest enough to make it a cut above many youth dramas.

The Mule may not always stand with his most resonant work, at times betraying the awkwardness of someone set in his grizzled ways. But Eastwood’s tilled enough filmmaking soil over the years to know that the same ground can produce daylilies or contraband and that the most involving movies at least try to harvest both.

A road movie that, considering who made it, starts pretty far down that road, Cry Macho is familiar and loose, sometimes rattly, occasionally wince-inducing, and in a few moments genuine in ways no one else seems to know how to do anymore.

By the end of this captivating if unsettling movie, Foos’s unpunished criminality notwithstanding, you’ll have plenty to chew on about the nature of the relationship between journalist and subject.

The fifth entry, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, is the most divertingly enjoyable since the first. A professionally crafted brew of action, slapstick and supernatural mumbo-jumbo, it’s less likely to spur timepiece glances than did the last few bloated installments.

It’s a bit of an irony for ¡Viva Maestro! that Braun’s having to fit unexpected events and thorny issues of arts and politics, into what was surely intended to be a straightforwardly image-burnishing biodoc, has ultimately created a better in-the-moment movie.

In its modest, stripped-down way, it’s a worthy cousin to the genre stalwarts, anchored in the unvarnished power of Canet’s performance, and the no-nonsense approach to Christian Carion’s direction.

There’s no denying that Driver — with film after film cementing his status as a top-tier actor — is excellent at exasperated outrage, but it’s not enough emotion to save The Report from feeling like a handsomely mounted, expertly researched op-ed.

Writer-director Max Minghella’s U.K.-set fairy tale Teen Spirit — which takes Elle Fanning’s lonely immigrant adolescent from karaoke dreams to singing contest heights — is somewhere between feeling abbreviated and wearing out its welcome.

Dumont's imagination is fertile, but not exactly full when it runs close to two hours. What's always evident, however, is a punk-rock respect for Joan as a symbol of exuberant outrageousness.

Occasionally, when you Death Wish upon a star and that star is Banderas, you get a serviceable time-waster like Acts of Vengeance.

The mix of callous humor and romantic doom doesn't always hold up, but in its best moments, The Wannabe finds real spikiness in the pitfalls of anti-hero worship.

There's good cause to shake the biopic form out of its exhaustively linear, birth-to-death rut, and Bertrand Bonello's Saint Laurent — starring Gaspard Ulliel as the storied French designer — valiantly tries.

Though it’s nothing new — one thinks of “The Shining,” “Parents,” and “Serial Mom” — it’s still disreputably fun to watch, like a viral video of a crazy person in public, or eavesdropping on a drunken spat in a restaurant, or that feeling when channel-flipping lands you on a familiar dumb movie right at your favorite moment.

Where the story falters, though, the performers admirably hold one's attention.

Ever-present is the mild dissonance of fiery pioneers of expression inspiring charmingly pretty if standard art house fare.

Delicacy isn't going to set anybody's psyche on fire with its insights into grieving and emotional recovery, but as a crepe-thin romantic snack, it has its moments.

Two-Bit Waltz is watchably imitative, arch nonsense. It has committed performances — including a deadpan turn on the edges by William H. Macy as the dad who's only seen reading books — and the occasional, provocatively funny line of dialogue.

While there's regrettably nothing terribly witty or surprising about any of this as either love story or laugh machine, director Scott Marshall does manage a breezy, good-natured tone toward this oft-mocked cultural phenomenon that allows for eye-rolling and smiling in equal measure.

Though the film is well made, the all-aftermath approach to Meadowland leaves a lot — an establishing, enlightening character stability, for one thing — to be desired.

Loudmouth is better when it operates along parallel histories of strife and battle: galling incidents that expose America’s racial fault lines, and how Sharpton’s activism affected those spaces.

It’s a truly epic wallow in the sins of a charismatic and indulgent strongman, even if it never exactly balances out its lurid shimmer with lasting psychological resonance.

It's a prodigiously researched buzz saw of archival material, facts, feelings, testimonials, and nostalgia.

Though never disorienting or obnoxious (à la “Euphoria”), it can get tiring: a restlessness of spirit and technique that occasionally separates us from this lost antihero when we crave a closer connection to him. Especially since first-time actor Marini is stellar casting.

Annabelle works enough devil figurine juju to make for a modestly hair-raising prequel to the more satisfying scares of its predecessor, "The Conjuring."

Just when the central characters’ fascinating messiness achieves peak interest, you realize this movie’s earnest commercial shimmer is never going to segue into a denser, darker poetry.

A tender city romance about about gentrification and Black melancholy, “Love, Brooklyn” brings together appealing actors and the charms of New York’s ever-changing borough into soft focus. It feels a little too carefully arranged to ever truly get under your skin as a modern-day affair about disillusioned hearts.

Though we’re introduced to an assortment of prisoners, for much of the running time, Khabensky struggles to individuate them as anything other than archetypes, save his own brooding hero figure.

It’s disappointing that the story machinations get in the way, because the lived-in heft of Collins’ turn is better suited to the atmospheric portrait inside “Jockey,” the one scored for tonal moodiness by Bryce and Aaron Dessner, than the story that shoehorns in a dubiously engineered motivation late in the film for added drama it didn’t need.

Sometimes an experiment feels like just an experiment, and that’s where the well-intentioned query The Hottest August ultimately lands.

There's plenty of pacing verve in Costa-Gavras' technique, and the residue from that first thrilling peek inside the hermetic world of big-time money-moving never goes away. What's lacking is most surprising from this dissident filmmaker: the emotional outrage.

As a harangue about cyberbullying, it's purely exploitative, but when Unfriended zeros in on the whiplash mixture of freedom and torment we get from multitasking our online lives? It's srsly fun, imo.

This soft-jab tragedy never finds the depth of expression to become a truly layered tale about choices, regrets and what we do with the rounds we have left.

Though smoothly edited and breezily humane, 11/8/16 is still little more than a depiction of parallel roller coasters, one of which many voters felt was headed into a shop of horrors.

The People vs. Agent Orange has a gripping urgency, especially as a reminder that the history of chemicals’ effects on our bodies is still being written and fought over, and that what a secretive industry is allowed to cover up, it will.

West, one of the genre’s true artisans of sticky dread, certainly has fun seeding a handsomely mounted and shot (by Eliot Rockett) period melodrama with the trappings of imminent violence, from the crimson red wallpaper to a maggot-swarmed suckling pig. But Pearl rarely justifies itself as a franchised standalone built on the early psychosis of its bloodthirsty, unstable ingenue.

As hopelessly strained and unfunny as the fish-out-of-water material is in the guess-the-lines-predictable screenplay by Meg Leonard and Nick Moorcroft, the actors ultimately sell its sentiment, like expert landscapers who can make a homey garden using artificial turf.

If it sounds critical to say that the resolution of the murder at the center of the narrative is the least interesting aspect of the movie’s intrigue, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Early on, it's tempting to dismiss the noir pastiche The Girl From the Naked Eye as a warmed-over pulp wannabe, what with the overwrought camera work and clichéd dialogue. But in its moments of sometimes comically violent antagonism, the movie shows some flashes of genre pizazz.

Though admirably sensitive to the inner lives of opened souls, The World to Come is more a journal with faded photographs than a past made vividly present.

When rock star wattage is the focus, “Like a Rolling Stone” doesn’t distinguish itself, but when Kai finds those ties in Fong-Torres’ life between the son who dreamed and the man who accomplished, the movie is like airplay for an album deep cut: what was always there getting some well-deserved attention.

As alternatingly silly and serious as its mix of wisdom and wallops, and even with that blond bro gumming up the works, “Birth” is nevertheless zippy, B-movie entertainment.

Less a documentary than an acutely positioned marketing tool, Mindless Behavior: All Around the World delivers a chaotically high-energy burst of performance and behind-the-scenes footage for fans of the slickly produced hip-hop boy band.

The scrappy superhero-noir indie Sparks busks its 1940s saga of dark redemption with considerable visual energy, if not always coherence or competence.

For all the movie’s crisp attention to bifurcated lives, The History of Sound more aptly resembles a painstakingly dry still life than a moving picture.

Escape Plan is mostly a gray, thudding metal machine of throwback exploitation, but the goateed, goofy Ah-nold is so happy to be in the thick of an old-school bruiser again that he makes it feel like the dumb-fun flashback party it is.

"Next Chapter" may not exhibit the scrappy charm that characterized the first film's glimpse into a marginalized but colorful world, but for devotees, Dana Brown has assembled a love letter to a now-global culture.

There’s plenty of intelligence and atmosphere in play here.... But the prevailing tone is of pressure applied and nothing released, a genre exercise that plays as educational rather than exhilarating.

Ansari’s ambition is admirable but he’s better at diagnoses than solutions. His gold-touch move is giving the hilariously deadpan Reeves one of his best roles in years: a goofy meme brought to disarming life and the movie’s beating heart.

Al Di Qua is both necessary and, in Franco’s more flamboyant touches, perhaps a bit thickly applied.

It’s a winning cast, but don’t be surprised if you think about how many commercials for good times with friends or wellness products could be excerpted from the buoyant cinematography and editing style of Rise.

The mix of computer-generated imagery, hand-drawn simplicity in the humans and depth-conscious, textured backgrounds makes for a potent visual intelligence.

It’s a quiet, eccentric comedy-drama about artistic inspiration that won’t knock your socks off, but it has its own awkward charms about how artists forge their identity while wrestling with professional boundaries.

An often tense release-valve scenario flecked with moments of dream imagery and lyrical naturalism, “Beautiful Beings” certainly positions Guðmundsson as one of the more thoughtful chroniclers of the awkward age, even if he never quite knows how to corral his many moods into something wholly resonant about the nihilistic trap of delinquency.

Shifting his energies to a Victorian-era island blood cult hasn’t dimmed Evans’ taste for feverish body harm, but it’s more clearly laid bare his narrative shortcomings.

If the material isn't always smooth or funny or well-thought-out, the tone and spirit are agreeably light, with a visual sophistication for a meager budget that's admirable.

As with a lot of filmmakers transitioning to long-form narrative after success with bite-sized flash, “The Assessment” is a commanding mood piece until our thirst for deeper emotional and thematic resonance reveals its shortcomings.

Any caseworking suspense is drowned out by an over-abundance of visual pizazz: disjointed shootouts, arbitrary camera angles and cinematography that draws the eye to lighting patterns, not people.

It’s got some future-world smarts that sporadically elevate it above the junk that dominates this genre, and they help carry it through the routine spatter-and-gore moments and sci-fi clichés.

At times a beautiful wandering, at other times an admirable character study, but rarely a powerful whole.

The color riot, the polyester/shag décor and the cartoon portrayals detract. Girl Asleep thinks it’s a stylishly resonant fairy tale about identity when the primary takeaway is an exquisitely curated slide show.

Despite its bumpy execution and general thinness, Suitable Flesh boasts a playfulness that feels ripe for slicing up and serving anew.

Though plenty of road-tested war truths about sacrifice, honor, grit and intimacy get trotted out, "Stalingrad" is deep down a spectacle campaign forged in operatic violence and a siege of the senses, and on those terms it has its moments.

The mix is for the most part a welcome one, save one unappealing character, a retrograde love story, and an air that’s almost too blasé for its own good.

One can appreciate the effort behind this well-made Bonjour Tristesse without necessarily feeling its turmoil.

When the movie isn't forcing its cuteness or R-rated humor, there's a frisson of genuine screwball to The Right Kind of Wrong.

There’s an elegant severity to the natural elements that share the frame with the movie’s characters, manifested in silhouettes against vast cloudy skies, delicate snowfalls, shafts of light in dark interiors and crisp air filled with smoke and dust. A testament to lives cut short, Rust is beautifully filmed and all the sadder for it

Perhaps the best thing you can say about Kicks is that its strengths and weaknesses make for intriguing bedfellows, like a cautionary fable that’s as much about the hazards of forging an artistic authenticity as it is the pitfalls of a corrosive approach to manhood.

There’s an appealingly sentimental destination in store for Ronnie and Myla’s parallel quests that keeps the movie from floating away entirely on its all-too-airy premise.

Writer-director Chiwetel Ejiofor (following up his impressive 2019 directing debut, “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind”) proves more earnest than skillful at bringing heartfelt complexity to another tale of whiz-kid promise and resourcefulness.

Once We Are Still Here unsticks itself from hommage mode, it finds something cathartically funny inside the fearsome.

Flaked with offbeat witticisms, cheese ball effects and fanboy splatter gore, the surreal John Dies at the End has the vibe of a shaggy dog story, which works both for and against it.

Writer-director Xu Haofeng’s movie doesn’t feel like many other movies of its ilk. That’s mostly a good thing, even if the movie can’t quite fit all its eccentric pieces into a satisfying whole.

While Hamm and Bateman have the right idea overall, their love of contrivance too often gives The Journey the sense of being reverse-engineered to explain a breakthrough rather than driven by the messy, human possibilities of their what-if.

Sjöberg is so enamored with the dancing and overall positivity that moves and platitudes fairly dominate, when the movie could have used more narrative cohesion and engagement with his subjects.

As often as you may be tickled by its fanged silliness, you’ll also be drained.

Writer-director Saxon’s own virtuosity, occasionally aggressive, eventually leaves our hopes for real emotions wanting, once we’ve become attuned to the dazzle.

Wilson asks, can a male middle-aged crank get a sentimental education? If you even care whether that’s possible, Craig Johnson’s film adaptation of Daniel Clowes’ 2010 graphic novel offers a reasonably amusing case study in how that might transpire.

Despite the pedestrian screenplay (by Jimenez and Audrey Diwan), Dujardin and Lellouche are magnetic performers who slip easily into their antagonistic roles.

Resolutely somber, and self-aware about its deliberately tight and opaque visual style, it’s presentational more than lived, a series of filmmaking choices instead of something deeply felt and conveyed.

The truth is that “Rocky IV” and Creed II sharing the same cinematic universe requires supreme suspension of disbelief. But taken as descendants of the original, “Rocky IV” is the delinquent you never talk about, while Creed II at least knows how to keep the family business humming.

Warriors is a bruising, relentless experience, one more tiring than inspiring.

Though its focus is the two years the Sharps spent in Europe, it rushes through elements of their lives that would seem to warrant more examination

Branagh’s indulgences can grate, but you also sense how much he loves it all, which helps. It also helps that production designer Jim Clay’s elaborate recreations (of an age-specific steamer and Aswan’s Cataract Hotel) and Paco Delgado’s stylish period clothing make for steadily appealing visuals, and that the story is one of Christie’s more tantalizing, hot-tempered mysteries.

Not every eccentric tweak of hers lands, but it’s a wonderful feeling knowing McKinnon sees potential for humor every time the camera’s on her, even for a reaction shot shoved into an action sequence.

There are scenes of nerve-jangling terror that weld you to your seat, but they’re sandwiched in between a lot that feels very much sculpted for three-act character arc effect by Greengrass and co-writer Brad Ingelsby.

“Steve,” sincere in its hardcore concern, believably acted, is too scattered and schematically plotted to fully pull us into the emotional toll and scruffy joys of this work.

The movie elicits knowing smiles more than laughs, even as it reveals a boundless observational awareness about the beefs and slights that, for the small-minded, must feel like everyday Armageddons.

Gout undermines his own spiky, ambitious narrative with all the visual interference, as dazzling as it often is.

Probably no one movie could capture the scope of citizens forcing regime change in a dictatorial country, but the South Korean feature 1987: When the Day Comes valiantly tries in its own thriller-ish way.

At Troma, puke-green is the warmest color.

One's diminishing interest in the nuts and bolts of cheating a cheat can be forgiven when the sheer star wattage of the peppy cast is in close-up overdrive.

It isn’t terribly exciting as a movie — director/co-writer Steven Chester Prince mistakes drab pacing as a stylistic match for the laconic charm of his lead actor — but the serious-minded humor has a probing sincerity that carries you along.

Schwentke’s grim history lesson carries an undeniable propulsiveness. But it’s ultimately too ugly a story to be truly resonant.

As good as Teller is as a husband in crisis, the Oscar-winning Randolph is her own commanding source of light, enough to sell this movie’s feel-good abstracts and wry commentaries on her own.

The mix of essay, history, critique, laughable spectacle, and reflection starts to feel unwieldy and steered toward easy assessments about the perils of loving money and worshiping appearance over substance.

With actors this good, however, there's rarely a pinched expression, heartfelt speech or laugh line that isn't at least partly sold, even if the stunted-male psychologizing at the expense of the under-written women grows tiresome.

The character mechanics... leave the viewer always feeling a step ahead of the story and its too-late-to-excite twists. As a portrait of violence-riven motherhood, however, Riseborough gives Shadow Dancer most of its grave power.

Culkin's performance is never exploitative. His eyes often say everything, appearing simultaneously laser-focused and distant — he can't reconcile his brain with the world.

"How to Let Go” says all the right things about an unnerving peril, and the various ways some highly motivated people are trying to combat it.

That the film occasionally succumbs to certain rudimentary hallmarks of industrial studio horror is regrettable, but for the most part it’s agreeably suspenseful, date-night arm-squeezing genre fare.

Its low-gear celebration of fandom-inspired ingenuity, and belief in the power of creating as a reparative balm, earns it enough well-deserved smiles when things fall predictably into place in the latter stages.

Unfortunately, the director’s breezy approach doesn’t always make for a captivating viewing experience.

As tributes go, the documentary is always lively. Archival clips zip by and nobody ever gets more than a sentence or two before the film cuts away, which means it never burrows in as often as you might want it to, considering the colorful, thick life on display.

It’s remarkable how Bae’s commitment to the physical mechanics of a trickily metaphoric role in no way interferes with the heart she needs to show, and vice versa.

Garland’s active engagement with his themes, moods, and show-stopping ick is still something to be reckoned with in today’s climate of fear in the film industry regarding original stories.

Ithaka isn’t as effective an advocacy doc as it could be, sometimes feeling trapped between wanting to intellectualize with onscreen text and contextualized history and looking for observational moments that crystallize the pain and concern for the Assange family.

Good Grief ultimately promises more than its starter kit of rom-com elements and good intentions can deliver. But within that inviting aura are a number of pleasures, starting with Levy’s homo-neurotic appeal as a cynically romantic gay lead.

The more generalized confessionals on friendship and love are a lot simpler to grasp. But the real star is the riot collage of twisty, breakneck visuals underscoring these conversations and battles.

The film’s occasional flatness of tone isn’t always well-used — these may be the raw materials for a classic Hollywood weepie, but sometimes you want to see filmmaking, not a camera pointed in the general direction of who’s talking.

Thanks to its actors, there’s a credibly heavy sense of the personal prisons within literal ones that only a wretched war can foster.

Kai Po Che packs a lot into its two hours, with not a lot of subtlety -- and in some cases, bracing grimness. But its performances are enjoyably boisterous, and director Abhishek Kapoor refuses to linger on clichés for too long...before hurling his trio into their next complication or moment of triumph.

For the most part "Matru" is neatly energetic, a mix of screwball whimsy and softball seriousness.

The movie’s secret sauce is humanity through action, what Watts’ Pam in all her heart, knowledge, grit, solitude, caring, irritation, and worry shows us when she’s in her element: what losing and finding looks like in real time.

Though the plot turns aren't necessarily surprising and characterizations a bit facile, Wladyka manages tense moments.

For such a hippie-ish wingding originally designed to discourage the buying and selling of anything, "Spark" has decidedly bought into its subject and has no qualms hawking it to moviegoers.

The rest is an adrenaline ride, but one more wearying than eye-opening.

We Came Home has its amateurish side, but it's effortlessly affecting when showing how music acts as an extended hand across generations and cultures.

It’s an unhurried reverie that’s sometimes as wonderfully sustained as a fermata but also occasionally stifling due to filmmaker Eva Husson’s dedication to that tonal approach above all else.

Champs is all over the place and at times too polished for its own good — too many celebrity fan testimonials when more insider insights would have helped. But it comes from a place of caring for an oft-maligned sport.

Baumbach’s textural/visual/sonic approach is stylish enough that even when White Noise is just churning along, there’s always a keen detail to absorb or killer observation to take in, if not an emotion to latch onto.

Queen & Country — though often charming — has a tendency to wander and strain.

f you’re not in the mood for messages or social commentary, however, “Scary Stories” is still fertile enough with its accessible gross-outs and giggle shocks to serviceably add to a legacy of kid-centric mainstream mayhem Del Toro clearly loves.

When you won’t speak the evil of “Speak No Evil,” then a disservice has been done to the source terror and how expertly it refused to deliver us to a safe place.

A well-meaning but slapdash travelogue, Fioretta does find gratifying closure in the company that the Schoenbergs find: curators of a collective memory that won’t fade on their watch.

The quietly commanding turn by newcomer Santana - whose outward embrace of an already well-internalized transformation leaps off the screen with equal parts joy, melancholia and bravery - is a standout.

Ultimately, "2" is hit-and-run humor as hit or miss as any comedy of its ilk. If one has to sit in front of a jet spray of degradation gags, better it feel like the occasional seltzer spritz than a fire hose blast to the crotch.

As admirable as it is that “Klaus” in the overall isn’t a sugar-rush cartoon fix of wisecracks and mayhem, it’s also too lazily reliant on insults and insolence as its go-to mode for comedy. But what does work is the snowy, hilly luster of this bygone-era fairy tale environment, and the seasonal soul the filmmakers have tucked inside their invented history about children’s yearly haul.

I Am Ali may never truly wow as the umpteenth portrait of a living legend, but it has its charms in reminding us of one fighter's singular ability to knock us all out with his talent, personality and convictions.

At its most effective, though, The Decent One reveals a psychological portrait of a man devoted to his family yet consumed by a soul-blackening and horrifically destructive cause.

Palud’s directorial emphasis on that internal experience, guided by a simple shooting style trained on Vartolomei, is what keeps Being Maria afloat on its turbulent seas.

Even with its stumbling nature, though, Call Her Ganda is still a valiant effort to fuse inquiry, testimony, heart and protest in dealing with its complex intertwining of facts and issues.

The cumulative effect is more that of a handsomely crafted museum piece than a moving, emotional journey.

Perhaps because in giving the jump-around view — introducing us to not just Hart (Jackman) and family, but campaign staff, and reporters from a handful of newspapers — the effect is of a scandal skimmed, rather than explored.

This is a movie that could probably have done with less chronological vérité or media moments and more wide-ranging interviews drawing out observations from Prakash, Gunn-Wright, Rojas and AOC, because whenever we do get to hear them, we can see how smart, interesting and perceptive they are, and why they’re needed for the challenges ahead.

All that matters with efforts like this is whether the cookie-cutter plotting serves up enough situations for Atkinson to contort himself into and out of jams. After all, are the narratives what you remember from the "Pink Panther" movies? Or the silly things, like that Clouseau could so easily get his finger caught in a spinning globe?

Byrne does a fine job fragmenting William's innocent, scary and guilt-ridden sides, and Amy Seimetz makes his wife a compelling, grief-stricken figure. But The Reconstruction of William Zero has its own identity problem, essentially, being a solid sci-fi story with a welcome emotional component, yet never fully effective at either.

Flawed yet intimate, Diana respects its subject's hopes, strengths, weaknesses and legacy and, in the extraordinary Watts, boasts a formidably empathetic advocate.

Hsia has an appealingly slick visual style for the fast-paced if predictable turns in Sam's story, shooting the gleaming, bustling Shanghai as if it had finally earned its big-Hollywood-romantic-comedy stripes as a setting for the usual fish-out-of-water jokes, broad humor, meet-cutes, silly coincidences and happy endings.

Whether meeting a malevolent spirit wearing expensive sunglasses, seductively controlling her (Bazu) prey, or bringing her scheme to an operatically violent close, she gives"Raaz 3" its defiantly retro flamboyance.

Writer-director Eran Creevy shows himself to be well versed in the mythic sweep of Christopher Nolan's and Michael Mann's crime sagas, if not their intelligence with storytelling.

An admirably cagey effort to mine humor from the thorny cultural and racial divide that is Muslim-Jewish relations.

That silver-lining nature is also what keeps “Herself” from entirely distinguishing itself, too often leaving an admittedly powerful story about female fortitude to rely on schematics and clichés instead of the accumulated impact of its many well-played human details.

It’s a nice story of master and protégé, and in many scenes the bond between the irrepressible, humorous Guy and the quiet, observant Sullivan seems genuine.

At first American Animal has a mysterious unreality to it, a strange diorama about easy leisure's emptiness. But when James admits he's taken a job - upending the roomies' slacker utopia - American Animal becomes a philosophically strident evening of speechifying local theater (topic: human evolution).

For all the genuine charm on display, you may be disappointed to find that manic activity overtakes said charm, and that more isn’t made of a simple, clever premise.

As predictable as these stories invariably are, Lee's wonderful turn reignites the potent fantasy of peasant wisdom - if given the power - melting politically cynical hearts and legislating through decency rather than fear.

The actors give it punch, but in the grand scheme of caper comedies, The Art of the Steal is more breathlessly imitative than authentic.

When “Convergence” feels rushed for trying to squeeze in a global snapshot, its impact is diluted.

Nothing in The Universal Theory is going to blow your mind, but as it plays its fastidiously crafted notes of conspiracy and chaos, you’ll know the idiosyncrasies of the art house are alive and well.

No easy path to forgiveness and communication, this one, but as a tour-de-force howl of primal, damaged rage, it contributes in its own strange way to the current era of public reckoning and testy healing.

There's no denying Watts' skill at a certain kind of desolate cat and mouse, but it's in the service of what is ultimately a somewhat heartless exercise.

Kinkle's debut refreshingly sacrifices gore showpieces (though it is bloody at times) for a steadily increasing dread tied to a young woman's desperation.

If your taste for athletic snapshots has tired of tales of the troubled, Khan’s at least smoothly offers someone as comfortable being a Muslim hero and family man as he is a fast-jabbing contender.

Even when bits go thud, there's a brittle, unsentimental wit about kin's inexplicable tug that's hard to ignore, and the leads — game for some surprisingly sublime bits of physical comedy — eventually wear one's anti-charm defenses down.

Clermont-Tonnerre’s emphasis on playfulness and energy is understandable, but an opportunity to bring back a layered epicness to sex on film feels lost.

In the aggregate, Karam’s directing is so meticulously composed about conveying the density of what’s unsaid, and the mood around the people instead of the people creating the mood, that “The Humans” can feel a bit suffocating.

As push-pull friendships in churning waters go, Mia’s and Gianna’s is the visceral heart of Brühlmann’s film, which otherwise isn’t the greatest mix of teen angst and body horror you’re likely to see, but also nowhere near the worst.

Though Monsters and Men isn’t the most fully realized work, its innate intelligence and matter-of-fact sensitivity are the kinds of storytelling assets we need more of, especially when the fabric of life for many continues to fray and tear in ways that demand a larger societal reassessing.

For the diehards and the curious, it should hold some intrigue, because in its exploration of pop longevity and band dynamics, it’s more a cousin of Metallica: Some Kind of Monster . . . than the typically image-conscious, preserve-the-legacy music doc.

There’s a choppiness in the overall dramatic pull that — despite the surface appeal of the stars and Kormákur’s and cinematographer Robert Richardson’s visuals — keeps Adrift from making true waves.

No matter how much directors Eric Warin and Eric Summer (who wrote the story with Laurent Zeitoun) try to distract with dumb comedy — usually involving the annoying Victor — or cartoony action...the relationship between Félicie and Odette is a warm, heart-tugging one.

Filmed in five long 35mm takes, this murder mystery features a fair amount of cinematic virtuosity, but it’s too self-conscious and uneven to be entirely successful.

In the fraught relationship between controlling subject and probing filmmaker who start out as comrades in activism, the tension should be explored, not glided over. It leaves “Risk” feeling like the outline for a dozen different documentaries, instead of a complete one itself.

That you may learn a good deal about an unusually driven man, but never quite feel emotionally connected to him, means Ross has hit a workmanlike middle, crafting a handsome textbook more than a blood-pumping portrait.

Silent River feels intensely personal, but also impossibly closed off. But is that so bad? Ultimately, for all its awkwardness and attentiveness, its grab-bag of tones and problematic pacing, there’s a lot about “Silent River” that gives one faith in off-the-beaten-path cinema, from how much Lee cares about what his images and sounds convey, to how little he cares whether your narrative questions are satisfactorily answered.

The movie is built on the drifting life of a smart, stunningly beautiful and unfulfilled woman. But “Parthenope” shouldn’t have to strain as hard as it does — it plays like a fragrance ad. That qualifies as a disappointment for a filmmaker whose sensualist impulses are God-tier.

The best thing about Klinger’s time/memory/dream aesthetic is how it looks: the visual equivalent of an audiophile’s nostalgia for vinyl. But the time jumping feels precious, and the screenplay — written by Klinger and Larry Gross — falls too easily into clichés.

The movie is most interesting when addressing how important belonging in the world she covers is to Hartman as her recording it, and there’s obviously a hard-bitten, self-obsessed personality to explore, but it’s lost in the surface-skim technique.

When Table 19 tries to be a goofy humiliation comedy, it’s barely engaging. (The pratfalls are numerous and laugh-free.) But when it settles down into something like an indie ensemble about disappointment and the comfort of strangers, Blitz finds a more effortless tone.

A feature-length lampoon needs more than rubbery performances, so-so silliness and the constant thrum of meta humor to make it a consistently amusing variation on a theme.

What begins as a promising peek into the tragic cycle of waylaid promise that's crippling broken inner-city families is itself dispiritingly pulled sideways in the Baltimore-set indie LUV.

A fitfully engaging, well-intentioned but disappointing original biographical drama.

The polished assuredness under which Refn operates is considerable, and even appealing, and yet there’s always one element in any given scene — a music cue, a banal sound choice, a shot held until it screams “look at me” — that breaks the mood.

Slater has some effective moments and Franco excels at a certain kind of scary/funny psycho, but it doesn’t ultimately add up to much as either pulpy trash or exposé.

If only the falling-in-love machinations and character details weren't so wispy, Tonight You're Mine might have had more resonance. That said, the film has its moments.

While writer-director Andrew Renzi’s feature narrative debut is problematic whenever Gere isn’t onscreen (and even sometimes when he is), the veteran star exudes a damaged magnetism reminiscent of the character studies that thrilled discerning moviegoers in the ’70s.

The need to make an ordinary life extraordinary is so prevalent it smothers any genuine emotion from family members losing a loved one.

This meandering lark about a corrupt, spiteful and hopelessly distracted police force in a decriminalized, sun-scorched city never quite finds the funny bone.

Unless you're on this spiritually noodling movie's wavelength — an easier proposition when the great McKee is singing (she wrote the music with Akin) — this is narratively thin, tone-poem stuff

It's just all too breezy to have any real effect.

When Love works, Noé achieves a lulling, melancholic frenzy about sex and memory, but the foundation isn't strong enough to make his movie ever seem more than a stereoscopic fermata: one envelope-pushing note held way too long.

Not that there aren't sporadic pleasures in store for the star's completists — a seasoned gesture here, a well-timed tear there and the steely beauty of her ageless gaze. But it's not enough to save Souvenir from the sense that without her anchoring presence, this movie would float away.

The Hawkins brothers have an envelopingly moody visual style that strives for offbeat touches, at times easily conjuring the existential threat in desolate areas. But that can't make up for the story deficiencies and character superficiality in the script.

Bogliano — who hit it big in indie horror with "Penumbra" and "Room for Tourists" — is a mood man, adept at unease and admirably judicious about shock moments, if not exactly skilled with storytelling or pacing.

What aims for Hitchcockian slyness ends up an inconsequential jumble in the comedy thriller The Perfect Host.

For the show's rabid viewership, these testimonials are probably integral to a celebratory experience like the "Glee" live show. To everyone else, it's all gonna be Gleek to you.

Director and co-writer Thomas Lilti's mistake, though, is thinking the bland Benjamin's coming of age concerns are worth so much screen time. The sturdier character study in Hippocrates is of soulful, beleaguered Algerian-born Abdel (Reda Kateb).

A biography may have been impossible, but in spotlighting a writer who leaves no emotion or thought unexamined, this documentary won’t satisfy devotees hoping for a dive as deep as those their beloved author can produce.

What initially augured a spiky portrait of late-age restlessness recedes into a woefully generic case of shopworn cross-generational uplift, sprinkled with tired wisecracks.

As a showcase for accomplished performers tugging heart strings in a holiday awards season, it's perfectly serviceable.

Gould's admiration for the genre is affecting and sincere. The problem is that his and screenwriter Greg Tucker's love of horse operas both boilerplate and ruminative a la Peckinpah doesn't mesh well enough into a smooth ride.

At most, Naples ’44 makes a solid case for turning to Lewis’ prose and getting the full effect of his year there that way.

It all remains remarkably free of memorable comic situations, dramatic tension or emotional insight. Adolescence may be bruising, crazy or normal, but it's rarely this staid.

As a flashy, country-hopping ridealong with a style icon, it will appeal to fashionistas, but you won't learn much about the high-end world of clothing design beyond its ability to stretch someone's schedule to the breaking point, and land that someone a gig outfitting Jamie Foxx and Will Smith.

Between the forced artistry and the confused tones, it leaves this well-intentioned tale of transgressive imagination and transactional humanity more temporary in its effect than permanent.

Can't match an ounce of the suspense generated by contestants frantically buying airline tickets on Bruckheimer's own TV money quest, "The Amazing Race." This movie is a fortune wasted.

There are occasionally interesting peeks into the hard work of keeping a flame alive that burned briefly 30 years ago. But mostly this is a video tour book for fans, no more, no less.

The Crazies only ever amounts to genre-regimented madness.

The unintended take-away is that you can grasp why the Securities and Exchange Commission - terribly negligent though it was in investigating Madoff - might dismiss the claims of someone so theatrically odd.

In leaving out the rasp of life from this unusual story, Breathe too often feels like a mechanized exhale.

One just wishes the scaffolding of indie tropes around Paul and the better parts of Hellion weren't so shaky.

As violent act begets silly exchange begets another violent act, Sweetwater squanders its noteworthy resources — a cast enjoying themselves (especially Isaacs and Harris), and some effectively brooding outdoor cinematography.

It's not unfunny in spots, but it huffs and puffs (among other bodily functions) more often than it splits the sides.

Not an exposé, and hardly a case of sports-as-uplift, The Workers Cup feels like a toe dip when the topic calls for at least a deep wade.

A scrappy war flick with a fair amount of combat suspense but a whole lot of clichéd dialogue.

Wry, head-shaking smiles at bad behavior are many — open laughter is lacking. Wain maintains a frenetic, near-vaudevillian pace, but this is a tribute flick that rejoices in anarchy and tastelessness without being exhilaratingly either thing itself.

In Jason Reitman’s overstuffed, adrenalized Saturday Night, a dramatization of the windup to that fateful first broadcast, you don’t feel the buzzy air of revolution so much as hear the voice of present-day legacy curation getting in the way.

It’s an atmosphere piece first and foremost, and an effective one. But the characters, particularly the teens, feel primarily like micro-vignette archetypes of scattershot resonance rather than flesh-and-blood figures forming a tapestry in a taut tale.

It can feel more like an audio/visual presentation for a decarbonization conference than an impassioned, artful work building its message to a fever pitch.

Take Me to the River is at its most interesting when zeroing in on the back-and-forth between musicians of different eras who rely on unique jam-session skills.

Though its seriousness of purpose and visuals of trees whole and hewn keep Peepal Tree intermittently compelling, one wishes the more pointed audaciousness of Kanadé’s last film, the stylish acting-school melodrama “CRD,” were in effect here to rev the urgency of what is clearly a deeply personal crusade for the filmmaker.

Unfortunately this "Story" never finds its footing as either a creepy morality play or a performance-driven two-hander.

Labyrinth of Lies too often feels like machine-stamped issue cinema from a moldy Hollywood playbook.

Until its characters behave illogically in the third act and the direction shows suspense fatigue, Preservation displays a flinty resolve to be better than your average woodsy-nightmare thriller.

When the stakes are raised, ho-hum thriller plotting takes over and Okoro struggles to clarify what his characters want. By the end, everyone’s motivations are fuzzy and the promise of a uniquely complex story of cross-cultural education, opportunity and morality has withered.

When the key comic minds behind that singular sendup of past-prime glory-seekers aim to rekindle their magic, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues leaves one thinking some classics are better left in their original, endlessly re-playable states.

Mackenzie shaved 20 minutes or so after its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, but there’s still no getting around the fact that what starts as a human drama of occupation, unease, brotherhood, and political fracturing invariably must give way to the mechanics of lengthy, loud, and splatter-enhanced combat.

While her résumé of fantastical roles makes her seemingly right for this kind of part, Gillan is directed into a pair of off-puttingly stiff performances, more skit-appropriate than feature-rich.

It always feels like an exercise instead of an examination, a flow chart of bad decisions and explosive violence that may not glorify the poisonous nature of hard time but rarely skims below the surface of what it means to break bad.

Even with a gripping subject like blues-singing convicts, the documentary Music from the Big House has a disconcerting emotional distance.

As a micro case study about some acutely flawed 21st century strivers, When You Finish Saving the World has its well-turned moments, but when you want it to be gloriously messy about families and human interactions, it stays resolutely in lab mode.

What’s painfully clear is that all the artfully composed shots, hinky situations and extra conceptual surprises can’t make this Detour all that compelling beyond its crisp artifice.

Tonally, the film is a mess, unable to decide if it's a damning downer or...the inspiring story of conquering injustice.

It’s the movie equivalent of a multi-course banquet of colorful foams: wisps of flavor emerge here and there, and admiration reigns, but in the end you’re unlikely to believe you’ve actually had a meal.

Though there's no shortage of mustache-quivering energy and wide-collared strutting, Angel of Evil can't separate itself enough from the pack as a character piece to be memorable as anything other than a blood-spattered timeline.

With Cooties, what starts as recess fades all too rapidly into movie detention.

For reminding us all that Cage has a peculiarly gifted way with erratic types, The Trust has merit, but the rest of it strains to hold one’s interest.

The first half is a cautiously dread-inducing tour de force as the suspicious interlopers parse the shiny, happy members for signs of a darker version of paradise... The second half, however, when all hell breaks loose a little too quickly, is the disappointment.

Jamie Marks Is Dead admirably refuses to hew to conventional horror tropes and is acted with integrity by its young performers, but the film nonetheless has a nagging pulse problem.

It’s all highlights and lowlights, rarely interested in the in-between stuff that makes watching all the rounds of a bout so necessary to appreciating what it means to survive on the canvas.

Despite appealing features, including stars Emma Watson and Tom Hanks (who morphs his patented affability into casually sinister, Jobs-ian salesmanship), The Circle never builds up a head of steam as either dark drama, modern satire or dystopian thriller.

The confluence of rebellion, personal responsibility and genre violence never quite gels, perhaps because the realities of a zombie movie ultimately dictate where these things are headed.

The problem is that Ronan is also forging her compelling warts-and-all portrait of obliteration and recovery in another type of gale storm, that of undisciplined filmmaking at odds with the patient harvesting of characterization.

As a curdled storybook, Bad Tales is highly watchable. The problem is that the brothers aren’t telling stories fueled by powerful characters; they’re staging awkward cruelties as if for a gallery show.

Andres Veiel's documentary Beuys, plays like a fan's flip book divorced from meaningful resonance.

In the end, there’s a point about black struggle alongside white dominance in The Cotton Club Encore that Coppola can’t get quite right because, ultimately, atmosphere won out over emotion.

A snapshot of Los Angeles artists during a cultural pivot point, the documentary Young Turks sparks fascination and frustration in equal measure.

Graham, Robinson, and Barantini’s thematic concerns about how restaurants work are strong enough ingredients. It’s too bad they’ve been subjected to the one-note flavoring of a single-take movie.

What starts as a cheeky lark about bad reputations and snazzy transformations never really gels into something truly funny or even appetizingly weird.

As screenwriter, Billy Ray's adapting the original's Argentina-centric trappings to a tense post-9/11 milieu is smart, but as director his style is hardly atmospheric.

Rogue Agent is plenty fascinated by the abridged version of this saga — bad men are out there — but you’ll wish for that darker, less cleanly shaped telling the more you think about its scarier contours.

A capably rendered, urgently argued portrait in courage that never quite rises above curious-footnote status.

The frustrating thing about the British heist flick Wasteland is how it creates two admirably entertaining storytelling strands — one a friendship saga, the other a robbery caper — yet can't merge the two successfully.

Ascher is too content to let repetition of experience take over his film.

Ultimately suffers from a late-inning collapse into thematic obviousness and multiple endings.

The leads give it their all — Hopkins’ vinegary parrying is especially lively — but the overall takeaway is of historical puppets playing philosophical gotcha, when we yearn for three-dimensional humans filling up a room with their lives, learnings and flaws.

Its CGI renderings are no better or worse than last month's or next month's animation family outing. Its vocal talent - led by Russell Brand and Hugh Laurie - is suitably star-powered. The only thing missing is any real wonder, imagination or comic verve.

In one punchy way it's feverishly, genre-shakingly different. That difference makes the movie almost work. Almost.

Director Spencer Susser, who wrote the film with David Michod, has a kinetic filmmaking style and an impish, crash-and-burn sense of humor that keeps sentiment at bay long enough to let us appreciate the loose, uncomplicated performances from a cast that includes suddenly ubiquitous Oscar winner Natalie Portman.

For those already jaded by the onslaught of YA fantasy universes, The Darkest Minds is on the forgettably “safe” end of the genre’s coded spectrum.

In the end, Trespass steps all over its own genre strengths.

It’s dispiriting to watch Lowriders make every predictable move. It clutters an otherwise well-meaning snapshot of a vibrant community underserved by mainstream filmmaking.

Flowers is too exquisitely formalist — symmetric framings followed by willfully asymmetric shots — to ever feel flushed with real feeling.

As convolutedly scripted by Ma Yingli, and pushed around by the restless camerawork, it’s primarily a spotty fusion of spy-story contrivances and diffuse themes of truth and artifice, although the playground is plenty evocative.

The Ardennes is an odd mixture of glum-chic style and emotional curiosity, a story of brotherly tensions that primarily comes off like a movie posing as a story of brotherly tensions.

Even with all the design-rich invention and admirably committed weirdness on display in “Swiss Army Man,” we’re still in the land of immature males, poor-me feelings and superpowers. While the movie focuses on one end of the body, you might be left sighing from the other.

The best moments showcase Duvall and Franco, formidable stars representing different cultural eras, testing the waters of a father-son relationship bruised by outmoded views of love and sin.

A troop-rallying campaign infomercial as imagined by Michael Bay: hero-worshipping, crescendo-edited at a dizzying pace, thunderously repetitive and its own worst enemy as a two-hour, talking-points briefing.

What should be a nasty hoot, however, is closer to a ho-hum.

The problem is that for all the ways this story is entertaining as a magazine article or Dateline segment, it’s an awkwardly bloated bore when Love makes the affable, naïve Hyden not just his key interviewee but also his reenactment star.

Without its lead, whose full-throttle portrait is at least a burning flame, Gold wouldn’t work on any level.

Try as he might, Westmoreland can’t muster the same portraiture skills with a woman of mystery and brokenness that he’s shown with bold, expressive types (“Still Alice,” “Colette”).

Cathey brings a burnished, bone-deep authority to the question of who music belongs to, and it's handled in a way that doesn't forgive the movie's tonal missteps, but also doesn't dampen its earnest nostalgia for a lost time.

In Barthes’ curiously distanced, muted handling, we only sense points being made, not lives being lived.

Tyrel is a lab experiment with no insight into feelings of otherness beyond the blinding light directed at its wigged-out subject.

Passion will only rekindle your love affair with De Palma to the extent that his luridly artisan chiller classics are readily available afterward for another viewing.

It all leaves "Drewe" and its often jarring turns of motivation and tone - feeling haphazard and cartoony, and the whole thing more a vibrant mess than something comically disarming.

As a representative display of historical-but-reimagined players on well-worn ground, The Harder They Fall has undeniable pop, but as a movie needing character, narrative, and pacing beyond revitalized nostalgia, it’s all too often a bloody, showy mishmash that rarely holds its clichés and archetypes together with any lasting resonance.

The best you can say about the over-the-top Filth is that it's a brisk wallow, with enough elbow room to marvel at McAvoy's sinkhole aria of a performance.