Ronnie Scheib

A strong cast, formal visual style and cynical voiceover that propels the action help elevate this Seattle-set gay romp from the ranks of the stereotypical.

For Semans’ conceit of an obsessively narrow world to really work, he needed to have established an initially more expansive milieu.

Luft grounds the film with an insistently believable performance, while other thesps float in and out of cliche.

In an act of "selfless service," a group of American women, backed by industry giants like Clairol and Vogue, open a beauty school in war-ravaged Afghanistan. The anomalies are manifold: Gun-toting soldiers patrolling the streets are visible through the windows as rookie beauticians busily snip, perm and tweeze.

An admirable if downbeat character study, Gabriel still sinks into a psychological quagmire.

Greif obviously ascribes to the Blake Edwardian school of comedy, laying out gags with commendable topographical precision. But, unlike Edwards' unique mixture of sophistication and slapstick, Funny Money falls squarely in the tradition of pure farce, itself an anomaly in this age of aggressively abrasive personality comedies.

Safer, more conventional and closer to broad TV sketch humor than Christopher Guest's comedies of manners, The Grand never quite recoups in laughs what it loses in spontaneity.

A Whisper to a Roar traces a too-familiar step-by-step political pattern: the transformation of a liberator into a despot, his subsequent reign of tyranny and the popular uprising against it.

Perhaps the least accessible of Tian's films, this serenely elliptical poser will elude all but the most devoted arthouse auds.

This offbeat charmer succumbs to the same airless artificiality that has claimed many recent efforts in the genre.

Though the picture meanders somewhat in the absence of a clear throughline, the focus on Scott's music and electronic experimentation remains strong throughout, thanks to an eclectic roster of musicians and scholars and a generous sampling of his compositions.

Uniquely Southern documentary has become surprisingly timely this election year.

Once Heifetz becomes a household name, Rosen struggles mightily to milk drama not from his musical genius, but from his relatively unremarkable personal life.

This inordinately likable and consistently funny boxing saga-cum-romantic comedy doesn't so much ridicule the "Rocky"-type inspirational sports fable as gently deflate its heroic overdrive.

Certain moments in the film resemble nothing so much as attending a school reunion, being buttonholed by an old acquaintance and shown snapshots of the grandkids. A complacently conservative acceptance sometimes seems to blanket all of 56 Up, as if maturity entails a serene blessing of the status quo.

Frank Langella's note-perfect, tour-de-force turn as a man elegantly shaping his own demise is nicely counterpointed by a shambling Elliott Gould as a bird-watching private eye.

Brand has assembled a cast of world class improvisers, yet doesn't take advantage of their own particularized, inflected rhythms, as each ritualistically experiences a jump-cut fragmentary flashback in front of the same bathroom mirror.

Though no "Love and Diane," this modest film nevertheless reveals the fragility of hope in survivalist mentalities pre-programmed to expect the worst.

Maxine Trump’s feature loses focus as it progresses, though its insights into guitar making, forestry harvesting and environmental shortages resonate strongly.

Likable but lightweight slacker comedy.

Evocatively fleshed out with surprisingly iconic homemovies, passionate love letters and well-chosen pop tunes, Kleine's homegrown Jewish "Madame Bovary" escapes the navel-gazing boundaries of the personal-diary docu by the sheer force of its evocation of bygone sensuality.

Moving, engagingly low-key curio.

The improvisational zeal with which Cusack approaches his role (absent from his miscast villainous turn in “The Paperboy”) is particularly fun to watch.

If Dalsgaard’s advocacy of Gehl’s utopian vision largely ignores the socioeconomic forces arrayed against it, the film should nevertheless enthuse pedestrians, bike riders and public-space proponents everywhere.

Its extremely narrow focus on the death throes of an art form, rather than the art itself, limits its appeal.

An ambitious, low-budget neo-noir, Stephen Purvis' El Cortez navigates the genre's tawdry twists and crosses and double-crosses with intermittent flair.

Despite a comic Yiddishe mama turn by Meryl Streep and a sensitively nuanced performance by Uma Thurman in a convincing changeup from her recent kickass action roles, Prime remains an oddly juiceless older woman-younger man romance, with a Freudian twist.

Gay Gotham farce written, directed and starring veteran actor Craig Chester ("Swoon," "Kiss Me Guido") delivers plenty of well-timed slapstick, a brace of oddball zanies and a couple of show-stopper musical numbers. Material is uneven, but rhythm and pacing keep action moving smartly.