Sam Weisberg

Kim Seong-hun's riveting if empty-headed A Hard Day will be remembered for its increasingly ominous jump-cuts to mobiles ringing, vibrating, and flashing profane messages.

This gripping movie is essential viewing for any Irish history buffs who found In the Name of the Father a tad corny.

While not as kinky, dark, or schizoid as debuting director/screenwriter Michael Medeiros intends, Tiger Lily Road succeeds on its own small, claustrophobic level.

Whenever Plummer is onscreen, The Exception is scintillating entertainment. Unfortunately, it gets bogged down.

The result, despite a few stellar moments, is a not-quite-tragic-enough meditation on mourning and self-healing, crossed with a not-quite-gritty-enough portrait of indie rockers trying to break big.

That Bradley King's debut Time Lapse half-succeeds is a small miracle.

In the end, Relationship Status is wan when it tries to be scandalous.

Most of this frantic moviemaking is more disorienting than riveting.

All the ingredients for a gritty — if familiar — coming-of-age story are here. But London Town, though spirited, is consistently tension-free.

It's workmanlike and impassioned, but ultimately preaching to the choir.

It's an unsolved mystery in Hollywood why so many based-on-true-life polemical films end up so unremarkable.

Coldwater is almost boastfully grim.

The Man on Her Mind has a terminal case of the cutes.

Shrewder documentarians than directors Brent Hodge and Derik Murray would have balanced out the sentiment with grit. The movie is saccharine.

The performances often enliven the stale material... But the script's naïveté is galling.

Even at its well-meaning best, Refuge is listless.

While the film, to its credit, doesn't become a trite morality play, the ending is thin and contrived nonetheless.

As it stands, Child of God is brazenly, outstandingly bad, as vague, pretentious, and pointless as its sorry title. But it's certainly memorable, full of inadvertent howlers and destined to create a whole new subgenre of burlesque, audience-torturing cinema.

Without characters whose fates we care about, nor fully comprehend, even the most visceral shocks are just that: impressive moments with no lingering terror.

This anti-war movie is more passionate about CB radio communication than the horrors of bloodshed.

[A] dour, dreary drama.

This is, of course, a movie about affliction, and it ultimately succumbs to the bland, sentimental uplift we've come to expect from such outings.

This film is numbingly dull.

This is essential viewing for those who prefer their documentaries nearly 100 percent tension-free.

This is a maudlin, manipulative film, and while it's never aggressively annoying, that's only because it severely lacks energy. It registers like a pesky little sister who's doped out on Vicodin.

There are two rules that no version of Point Break should disobey: Don't skimp on surfing and never be boring. That’s two unpardonable strikes against new helmsman Ericson Core, who also photographed this stiff, humorless, tension-free remake in drab 3D.

This needlessly incoherent thriller treats its convoluted nonsense with grave seriousness. It's mawkish, maudlin, and tongue-tied — countless scenes end with characters excusing themselves to go to bed, and you may want to join them.

Whether the real-life Martinez is this hotheaded and quick-tempered is left a mystery, but it matters not a whit, because even five minutes in the company of this Martinez is excruciating.