Sam Weisberg

Most of this frantic moviemaking is more disorienting than riveting.

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.

It will only be criticized — rightfully — for its skirting over the resulting plight of Palestinian refugees, but Grossman is surely capable of making an equally absorbing, entertaining film on that subject.

[A] dour, dreary drama.

Scott Cohen's Red Knot exhibits such spot-on, heartbreaking honesty about behaviors that tear many couples apart — passive-aggressiveness, career obsession, seeking validation to soothe one's inadequacies — that it's easy to forgive Cohen his metaphorical excesses.

The tension never lets up.

By the Gun is a gangster film wholly devoid of suspense, atmosphere, or grit.

Theo Love's mesmerizing documentary Little Hope Was Arson is as evenhanded as it is unsettling.

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

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

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

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.

Shirinian has made a swift, moody film, with impeccable art design — Abner's diorama of the car wreck is a kooky marvel — a scarily convincing feel for recurring panic, and a thunderous, heart-rending performance at its center.

Mortensen is a pro at the slow burn, and he adds genuinely frightening layers of impulsiveness to this tempest-in-a-teapot scenario. The freshest twist is that each man has a notable advantage over the other.

Nothing wrenching happens, just unforgettable moments of piercing isolation and sadness.

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

Sharon Greytak's Archaeology of a Woman is a decidedly well-made, unnerving film.

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

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

Coldwater is almost boastfully grim.

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.

Under the Electric Sky manages to be amusing even while it’s annoying you.

This film is numbingly dull.

Equally seductive as it is inert, Terry Miles' Cinemanovels manages to cast an alluring spell, despite not amounting to much. It sticks in the memory, mostly due to the playful lead performance by Lauren Lee Smith.

What's fresh is Weinstock's interweaving of flashbacks, slightly altered versions of flashbacks, and flashbacks within flashbacks, so that viewers must work as hard as Lee to determine past from present.

[Ramsis] achieves many poignant moments, especially when his subjects express that they have never felt at home anywhere outside Egypt.

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

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.