Simon Abrams

The maddeningly unfocused Israeli documentary West of the Jordan River doesn’t reveal anything insightful about Gaza settlers’ reasons for either supporting or rejecting a two-state solution.

What Taylor and his game cast, led by Selma Blair and Nicolas Cage, do get right will leave you excited, and eager for more.

Veiel’s refreshingly open-ended approach invites you to find your own answers.

Writer/director Sam Hoffman's trite dramedy about personal redemption delivers mediocre performances.

Really, whatever you do, don't watch "The Last Key" without the emotional support of a buddy who can confirm that you're not just imagining this: these movies are still getting incrementally better.

Retrograde, bloated, and formulaic. It's also consistently sincere, energizing, and charming.

This big, splashy blockbuster is perplexing because it's full of loosely-connected incidents that are rarely character-driven, or even narratively intelligible beyond a point.

The filmmakers over-extend themselves to solicit empathy for their doomed protagonists. Youth is so unbearably nice that I eventually wished it were remade by misanthropes.

A gonzo ten-minute standoff between Adrien Brody and a man-eating pitbull single-handedly justifies the existence of the otherwise uninspired heist thriller Bullet Head.

You may think that you, the viewer, have it bad by the sixty minute mark, at which point you probably won't care who is inevitably going to backstab who. But just think of the poor subtitle translator who had to agonize over dialogue so leaden that it took the joy out of a word that's as joyfully outdated as "swindler."

Amateurish horror-comedy.

A typical Hong character performs the same actions over and over again, with minor, but noticeably different results.

Queer writer-director Mitchell Lichtenstein (the mind behind the vagina dentata horror-comedy Teeth) and an impressive team of collaborators inspire laughs and/or terror out of the libidinal hang-ups of frail stay-at-home mom Constance (Jena Malone) and her unfulfilled spouse, Joseph (Ed Stoppard).

I was also so disturbed by this film that I felt I had to rewatch certain scenes just to confirm that the emotional exhaustion I experienced while watching it wasn't just a personal preference, but rather a problem I had with what Iwai and his collaborators do in the film.

Gibney may encourage viewers to condemn the police, but his self-righteous editorializing doesn’t make up for the lack of convincing evidence.

Until her plight becomes emotionally engaging during the film's creepy finale 20-30 minutes, watching Most Beautiful Island is an unproductively unpleasant experience.

Come for the gory swordplay, stay for the half-serious melodrama.

While I can't exactly recommend seeing Jigsaw, I can tell you that it's fun to watch. I just don't think it's the kind of fun the filmmakers' planned.

Leatherface tries to show us what made the man we know the legend he is now. Sadly, the makers of Leatherface didn't put enough thought into a sleepy story that could easily be titled "I Was a Teenage Leatherface."

The turgid revenge thriller The Foreigner is an all-around lousy movie.

The Christmas-themed home-invasion movie Better Watch Out starts out as one kind of unpleasant, then switches gears to a higher level of unearned nastiness.

If you are willing to suspend your disbelief for 132 minutes, you may find yourself head-over-heels for this film's brand of gross, thoughtful pulp fiction.

I want to recommend Don't Sleep because it is, intellectually, more compelling than many of the indie horror films I tend to watch. But I can't recommend this movie, mostly because it's not smart enough to deserve that praise.

American Made may be superficially a condemnation of the hypocritical American impulse to take drug suppliers' money with one hand and chastise users with the other. But it's mostly a sensational, sub-"Wolf of Wall Street"-style true crime story that attempts to seduce you, then abandon you.

The limitations of Palansky and co-writer Mike Vukadinovich's shared vision are, realistically, the biggest problem with Rememory.

The Limehouse Golem only reflects its creators' lack of imagination. Medina and Goldman invest so much time in (poorly) misleading audiences that they say nothing memorable about the past, or why it matters to today's audience.

This is the horror movie equivalent of canned Spam: you could have it so much better if you tried harder (or at all).

There's a lot of chutzpah on display throughout the film, even during essentially soggy, dialogue-intensive sequences, which are broken up by disorienting flashbacks. But Jung's biggest failing is his inability to make Sook-hee a heroine worth caring about.

Unfortunately, Lau just isn't charming enough to carry the utterly forgettable The Adventurers, a tepid remake of John Woo's already lame heist flick "Once a Thief."

Song's performance makes me wish the rest of A Taxi Driver was as thoughtful.

Bonello knows exactly when he's said just enough, and that makes the experience of watching Nocturama more engaging.

Wolf Warrior 2 lectures you, pummels you, and then expects you to cheer.

The heroes of this film are, in other words, selfish, but never in a venal, or ugly way. They're human, and they do what they must to face each successive challenge they're confronted with.

Without Charlize Theron, the spy adventure Atomic Blonde would only be clever. She makes it insightful. The actress gives emotional depth to the highly mannered behavior of the film’s heroine.

The main distinguishing feature of this film is its almost-novel nesting-doll plot structure, and passing thematic interest in its narrative's formulaic nature.

Kuso may often feel unproductively loud, and monotonous, but it is a head-scratcher worth contending with.

Endless Poetry is as galvanizing as a lightning rod because it's equally accepting, and intolerant, a pro-individualist work about celebrating and cultivating yourself.

The characters in this film are defined by motives that are small enough to be relatable, and actions that are big enough to be inspiring.

Paulina is, in that sense, worth seeing, even if its basic plot repeatedly stalls. It is a thoughtful movie, but not necessarily a fulfilling one.

Indie sci-fi film Kill Switch is the worst kind of science-fiction film: the kind that coasts on a central gimmick instead of delivering either visceral or intellectual thrills.

Harmonium is consistently about mood more than anything else. You sink into the film at first. Then, with each new leisurely introduced plot point, you struggle to regain your sense of calm since, after a while, the film's protagonists are doing the exact same thing.

You might come to Camera Obscura expecting nothing more than a kite-high concept like "camera that photographs future murders." But you too will be disappointed if you expect anything more from the film since its creators do not offer satisfying cheap thrills and/or thoughtful consideration of a veteran/artist's tortured post-war psyche.

A spectacularly miscalculated historical epic.

Sleazy Australian kidnapping drama Hounds of Love will make you wish you were watching a more traditionally nihilistic horror film.

The problem with The Drowning isn't that the characters are insubstantial, but rather that they don't dry up and disappear fast enough.

At some point, queasy horror-comedy Another Evil stops being about one man's comically vain attempts at exorcising his home, and starts being a weird character study about a laughably desperate wannabe exorcist.

It's loud, it's gory, and there are musical numbers. Behold, the first great summer film is here, and it's a three-hour-long action-adventure about a leader whose heroic deeds make Conan the Barbarian look like a wimp.

Dumont's characters' motives are consequently hard to divine, despite convincingly twitchy performances from French actors Fabrice Luchini and Juliette Binoche. So while I do recommend Slack Bay, I must warn you: this is a misanthropic comedy that features cannibalism, weird religious overtones, and a lot of goony pratfalls.

The film patly confirms what "The Lion King" already taught '90s kids: we should take comfort in knowing that everything in life is natural when seen as part of the "circle of life," as surprisingly effective voiceover narrator John Krasinski reminds us.

The film's short-comings are especially upsetting since Schwarzenegger is actually rather good in the film, and proves once again that, despite a severely limited range, he knows how to brood.

Lowe's attempts at getting into anti-heroine Ruth's head are largely unsuccessful, though her performance is sometimes effectively hysterical.

This isn't a knowing parody of a beloved show, a la the 2012 reboot/parody "21 Jump Street"; it's a sample of the brain-dead entertainment against which its creators are supposedly reacting.

I found myself captivated by The Devil's Candy because of how well Embry conveys his character's angst-y struggle to understand himself.

The characters could have embodied traits of typical office drones and managers, turning the film into a savage black comedy. But those elements aren't developed beyond a point, making the movie's only selling point its excessive gore and violence.

Maslany and Cullen's characters seem intended to be psychologically realistic, but they're only as complex as The Other Half's surface-deep style.

Indian melodrama Rangoon somehow manages to be emotionally resonant despite being overstuffed. This is no small feat given how many different genres, tones, and characters this film juggles.

Blood-soaked Indonesian martial arts flick Headshot is for anyone who liked "The Bourne Identity," but wished it were way more violent.

Is it good? Uh, well, kind of. Does it make sense? Hmm, er, ask me another. Is it worth seeing? Oh, absolutely.

The Great Wall has significant problems — namely with Damon and sidekick Pedro Pascal's lack of bromantic chemistry — but chief among its rewards is its ability to marry its Eastern and Western sensibilities.

Smart and scary horror films about faith, and loneliness are rare, and for the most part, "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" is pretty exciting.

Disappointing because its creators don't do anything interesting with a fairly novel theme: a mother's possessive love for her estranged daughter.

Wu and Lin have great chemistry, but only because Chow was smart enough to reimagine Journey to the West as a rare character-driven big-budget action-adventure — the kind of thing Americans might love if they knew it existed.

Writer/director Tomer Heymann's uneven doc Mr. Gaga offers a character study of Israeli dance choreographer Ohad Naharin, but the scope and power of Naharin's art only becomes clear when the dancers illustrate rather than comment on his distinctively twitchy, animalistic "gaga" style of movement.

Watching The Lure is a bit like having manic depression—the thrilling high points are just as relentless as the crushing low-tide ebbs.

Kung Fu Yoga doesn't feel like a young man's film. Normally that would be a cause for celebration, but in this case, Chan's latest doesn't just address, but rather shows his age.

One of those rare animated movies that transports you to a different setting without demanding that you focus on narrative or character development.

"Bird on a Wire" is a time capsule of a specific period in Cohen's career. But it also neatly illustrates the singer's personality in an accessible and compelling way. It's that rare concert doc that isn't for established fans only.

Neophyte writer/director Christopher Papakaliatis eventually shows an affinity for filming two people in love, but his actors often lack the chemistry to make us believe that their bond transcends all socioeconomic boundaries.

When Cage works with a less decisive director—or just one that's content to let Cage do whatever he wants—he seems to forget what acting is and desperately bellows for attention, like a neophyte actor whose intensity is his fallback pose.

German Concentration Camps Factual Survey may not teach us today much that Schindler's List, your local rabbi, or a quick Google search can't, but it remains a vital artifact of a time when Dachau and Auschwitz were not synonymous with "genocide."

Unlike the actual video game, Assassin's Creed isn't ridiculous and fun, but rather ridiculous and turgid.

Even the most masochistic filmgoers should avoid Waxman and Seagal's latest collaboration, a boring vanity project that doesn't even competently flatter its star.