Scott Tobias

The cast wrings laughs out of David Berenbaum's script as if it were a damp washcloth.

It’s undeniably moving, but straightforward to a fault.

The film falls apart once its mysteries dissipate. With them go all the dark ambiguities that colored the first hour.

A documentary that focuses rigorously on process and atmosphere at the expense of context and engagement.

Next Goal Wins could stand to go deeper into game strategy, or local customs and living conditions, or any number of personal stories, but the victories it does achieve are enormously satisfying.

As it settles in, the thrilling chutzpah of The Blue Room’s opening salvo gets lost in the intricate curlicues of the plot, which take away much of its illicit rush.

While it’s a shame Leong couldn’t find a fresher approach to Lin’s story—and that he left out any postscript about his struggles the following season in Houston—he does well in setting the stakes.

For all their brutality, the fights are so seductive and exciting that their consequences - the physical and mental toll exacted from the men and their families - sometimes fail to register.

Searching for originality in an addiction narrative like Animals is a problem, because these stories of decline and degradation tend to sound the same. So the limited time frame is the film’s strongest asset, because it’s only paying attention to the final hours.

As her character resorts to increasingly cruel and devious pranks, Hudson only seems funnier and more endearing.

Given an irresistible premise, Nathanson doesn't trust his material enough to follow through without excessive mugging, but his sense of the absurd leads to amusing digressions along the way.

The connection between Hu and Liu seems more scripted than real, founded on musty allegorical clichés about innocent country folk and corrupt city slickers.

Carries a potent statement about the superficialities of appearance, and how they're more meaningful to people than anyone likes to acknowledge. But when the players themselves are conceived this superficially, LaBute winds up invalidating his own point.

Moves forward on the conviction of its performances. Brody, in particular, shows uncommon sensitivity as a politically committed and temperamental photographer who responds to MacDowell's half-crazed resolution with heartbreaking zeal.

With its genuine interest in the immigrant experience and what it means to be an American, McFarland USA ekes out a victory in the margins, proving that a little openness and a little self-awareness can do wonders.

The film is righteous but propagandistic, gearing its considerable insight into the Deepwater disaster and its aftermath into a narrow, prodding call to arms. For a documentary wide-ranging to the point of being diffuse, the last-ditch rallying cry seems entirely out of place. It undermines its own complexity.

The film's outsized ambitions are deceptive: Everything here is less than meets the eye.

The small grace of The Good Lie, from Monsieur Lazhar director Philippe Falardeau, is that it fully recognizes the problem of telling stories of black hardship through the prism of white charity, and does everything it can to avoid those pitfalls.

Though he still doles out kills in a thin broth, Nelson puts enough craft and spin on the material to make it better than it has any right to be. Making the best Silent Night, Deadly Night is the very definition of a modest achievement.

Though bookended by extraordinarily powerful scenes that play off a potent religious metaphor, the middle section sinks into a morass of ill-defined relationships and uneven performances, which may be blamed in part on culture clash.

Despite an alluring set-up and heartfelt performances from the leads, nothing ultimately coheres, and mood trumps logic on every occasion.

Only in the final minutes, when Kári overreaches for ironic effect, does the film plumb too far into the darkness.

With their fawning documentary Year Of The Yao, directors James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo unreflectively buy into the spin on charismatic 7'6" basketball center Yao Ming, but on a certain level, who can blame them?

As in Hoop Dreams, troubles at home raise the stakes hugely on the court, though the dream here is far more modest: to slake their thirst for just one victory, and to know, for once, what winning feels like. Their pursuit of this elusive goal gives Medora a strong narrative through-line, but Cohn and Rothbart cling to it too fervently.

Class Of 1984 anticipated Lean On Me, The Substitute, and a spate of other high-school thrillers and docudramas that advocated a fight-fire-with-fire approach to teen violence, but it’s vastly more entertaining.

Better equipped to deal with the workings of nitro-injection systems than human emotions, director Rob Cohen's film grows less assured the more time it spends with its characters, particularly through its dull middle section. It does earn points for trying, however, and while Walker is a cipher, Diesel has enough personality for both of them.

There's ample opportunity here for a sharp consumerist satire, like a dryer cousin to the candy-colored pop-culture send-up “Josie And The Pussycats,” but Hartley misses his own joke.

The film's moralistic streak leaves a sour taste, especially because its battle of the sexes is so wildly off-balance.