Tom Keogh

The basics of Draper’s story hold promise, but the film derails because Jack and Oliver just aren’t charming as social pariahs.

The unusual but revealing documentary Matangi / Maya / M.I.A., a hodgepodge of old video diaries, music videos, performances and interviews spanning decades, reflects M.I.A.’s passionate efforts to enlighten fans about victims of government oppression — while also getting people around the world dancing to her music.

Cooke presents a case that the war on drugs in America is not only a no-win scenario, it is no longer (if it ever was) designed to be won as much as fulfill disturbing, narrow agendas in the public and private sectors.

Perhaps in an effort to tell a PG story about an all-ages storyteller, Te Ata lacks vitality, pulling its punches and sometimes resorting to a cheesy shorthand. (A scene featuring Greene’s reservation leader and a racist senator is especially cheap.) Despite that, Te Ata lingers in the memory as a tale of an artist’s promise — and fulfillment.

There’s plenty here to enjoy.

Bell can sculpt a funny moment to polished realization, but deprive it of oxygen at the same time. It’s not until late in the film’s third act that a different feeling emerges, a looser hand that provides room for characters to be more warm and human than pieces in a constricted design.

Ripped works best as a middling series of gags about being far too many tokes over the line.

In more careless hands, Middle Man’s deranged farce could have resulted in an unchecked, undisciplined movie with nothing to say. But beneath the roller-coaster madness here is an earthbound terror that art is meant to reveal.

A riveting and illuminating documentary.

That’s a lot for a viewer to take in, and as pleasing as some aspects of Your Name can be, there’s no question Shinkai’s overstuffed movie often trips over itself.

For Here or to Go? offers an insightful group portrait but lacks imagination in a romantic subplot and (except for a requisite Bollywood-style dance number) is visually dreary.

Despite the stakes, Mendeluk can’t scare up any particular urgency, largely because everything is so contrived and inauthentic.

You feel hints of a strange energy in Emily that remind us we don’t always know why we do what we do in relationships. The hard part is holding on for the ride.

Driver’s performance as an uncertain man getting through the day-to-day prosaic, quietly buoyed by passion and artistic commitment, is exquisite.

What follows is a post-setup hour of imaginative action and dazzling stunt work, all taking place on one of cinema’s great self-metaphors: a speeding train changing scenes every few seconds and heading toward an unknown destination.

Within this uncertain world, Lopéz-Gallego relishes such noir staples as fatalistic shadows, eruptive mayhem and terse, ironic dialogue. But he and his cinematographer, Jose David Montero, also carve out fresh visual territory.

The script by Liu Zhenyun becomes ponderous and redundant, kept on oxygen by its lead actress’s complex performance as a child-woman with enigmatic wisdom.

The Charnel House is watchable, even if you can tell very soon what’s really going on behind mysterious doings.

So compelling is writer-director Joel Potrykus’ unnerving scenario — with its largely ambiguous tone of horror dramatically offset at times by explicit frights — that a viewer isn’t necessarily bothered by a lack of basic story information about who, what, when, where and why.

The film’s bleached colors and Reeves’ trademark woodenness add to its emotional remoteness, though Basso, Zellweger and Belushi create a convincing family in crisis. Zellweger, especially, delivers a fascinating, complex performance as a damaged survivor.

With its boyhood-to-manhood tropes (growing up means getting a girl’s attention and winning an idol’s respect), London Town can’t be taken too seriously. But it’s nice to see part of the Clash’s populist legacy in a fan’s journey.

The film distinguishes itself by what it lacks: simple, unrealistic answers to Perry’s regrets and the hole in his soul. His path to authenticity might not lead back to glory days, but contentment is closer than he thinks.

The best material gives the excellent Scott and Kroll plenty of love-hate energy: Robbie’s condescension, Bill’s passive-aggressiveness. It will look all too familiar to anyone who isn’t an only child.

A number of Kelly’s scenes play out like stand-alone sketches — some quite funny; not all of them essential — rather than parts of a whole. But that’s easily forgiven considering the candor of his insights and his strong cast.

Brother Nature at least enjoys moments of deep-end mania from Killam and Moynihan.

Co-writer and director Lars Kraume brings muted colors and a claustrophobic, urgent energy to the procedural part of this story, while reminding us that not every moral hero looks like Captain America — in fact, like Bauer, they can be a rumpled, misanthropic mess.

A harrowing spectacle that makes one forget to breathe.

Miike misses an opportunity to add even more resonance by telling us a little extra about each of the samurai fighting the good fight. But he's also busy shooting nearly an hour's worth of complicated fight choreography. Enthralling as that is, Miike's greatest achievement here is in giving us reason to deeply care.

Director John H. Lee keeps the action taut and often deeply felt when it comes to sacrifices and losses. But the script is often bogged down by deifying MacArthur.

D’Souza manipulates viewers’ passions while telling them who to blame for their bile. As for Hillary, D’Souza asserts she wants to nationalize all our industries and steal all our money. His lack of evidence undercuts his message.

[A] warmly revealing documentary.

If you’re partial to the Northwest outdoors, co-writer and director Alex Simmons (best known for documentaries) makes the long trip a visual treat, too. Indeed it is time for fresh air.

Despite promising elements of mixed-genre thrills, the film is finally the underwhelming sum of too many plot devices.

Time to Choose tells us all is not lost — yet. But the hour is late.

T-Rex is ultimately about a remarkable (and likable) young person finding her personal power despite pressure from all sides.

Writer-director Jo Sung-hee subtly evokes American Westerns and “X-Files”-like weirdness while dreaming up such pulse-quickening set pieces as a shootout in a fog-filled room.

Pali Road — an engrossing psychological thriller with a trapped damsel’s very sanity on the line — demonstrates how an enigmatic story can unabashedly overflow with disorienting puzzles and perverse twists, all for the sake of blurring the line between reality and illusion.

Though Dough is often in danger of running off the rails with improbable and unnecessary plot twists, it is always essentially entertaining and warm in its observations of hope rekindled through simple relationships.

What rescues “Diaries” and its grimy, cracked-glass look is its firm grip on Stephen’s incremental awareness that he and his misery are not the center of the universe.

As feverish and dark as this first feature by filmmaker Can Evrenol gets, there is a sense that something larger is at stake — an elusive explanation having to do with a recurring dream, twisted destiny and the bond of a promise.

For all its strengths, Krisha can also be self-indulgent and artificial.

Hock handles that perennial sports question — what is the athletic limit of a human? — with interesting sidebars about the brain and physics. Such mysteries mingle with irresistible lore in this satisfying work.

This modest film’s heart is really in the mysteries of small moments.

Anime enthusiasts will enjoy The Boy and the Beast, but so will anyone who appreciates a good fantasy yarn.

It is another sumptuous visual feast from the studio, full of endless images finely detailed and often lavish.

Director Park Hyun-gene skillfully engineers the inevitable triumph of the heart over every kind of human foible, and — why not? — a viewer is temporarily hooked.

Ting, to her credit, is more interested in the battle between heart and head, instinct and obligation, than in what follows. “Already Tomorrow” is about ambivalence, not gratification, and is more interesting for it.

Mustang could easily have been a pure heartbreaker, but it isn’t. It is surprisingly nuanced and even something of an adventure tale about a fight for freedom and identity.

A viewer might expect the film’s widescreen, busy images to fill with revenge-action sequences. But in its own way, Mr. Six is much more about a unique man adjusting an out-of-fashion personal code for a new type of crisis in the shadow of his mortality.

Chalk this film up as an unusually intelligent thriller about that which scares us the most: accepting our accidents of fate.

Rohmer's trademark dialogue...is as poetic in its plainness as ever.

One of the best films seen in many years about the mysterious workings of time and memory.

Abittersweet fable about the raw joys of human revival.

What makes Hit and Runway uniquely fun, however, is the unapologetic extent to which Livingston and Cohen turn it into an index of beloved Woody-isms.

Shaft is a decent popcorn movie and Jackson rises to the responsibility of appearing bigger than life.

The effects never really get ahead of the characters or the script's layered personality.

Few movies this year have been quite so rewarding with their 11th hour epiphanies.

Its own, tough-minded antidote to the grab-the-brass-ring whimsy of its premise.

The film's light success really comes down to Shannon, though, the exuberant "SNL" star whose alter ego actually seems more real and sympathetic here than she does in brief TV skits.

All such good intentions collapse by the third act, when Mission to Mars becomes a tediously late pastiche of chimerical nonsense from the early 1980s.

The lure of Sling Blade is both elemental and hauntingly familiar, and I would not be surprised if Thornton's breakthrough film is one day considered a classic in its own right.

Firmly establishes Crowe as a standard-bearer of original thinking in the dispiritingly redundant state of American cinema. Don't miss this one.

So funny and smart that holding it up against its predecessor is as pointless as comparing peak episodes of "Seinfeld."

I would rather have been scraping gum off my shoe than sitting there another minute.

Watching Left Behind's plodding screen adaptation may make you feel the Deity has already abandoned us to a shockingly dull post-apocalypse.

If McCulloch can draw this much humanity out of his actors, and do it in comedies with a deceptively easygoing poignancy, he's definitely a director to watch.

In the tradition of "Sunrise" and "Eyes Wide Shut," crises set the characters on a kind of dreamy, nocturnal journey through chaos and fear.

Certainly one of his (Scorsese's) most profound works.

We're forced to listen to misogynistic rantings devoid of wit, entertainment value, or even authenticity.

There's a lost opportunity here.

Nearly incomprehensible story.

It does yield solidly comic performances.

Not a waste of time, but not quite in control of its destination.

Levinson is at the top of his game with Liberty Heights, his instincts acutely cinematic, his purpose clear.

So mired in his own ludicrous equation for contemporary action pictures that it's constantly stuck in first gear.

When Phillips is out of the zone, however, Road Trip slows down, awaiting another redemption.

This is a pretty leaden cinematic experience.

Soderbergh appreciates the value of having fun with a so-so script, turning its cliches into fresh experiences and infusing energy into the margins of a predictable story.

Can anyone but a lapsed Catholic possibly be interested in this unpleasant, anti-Papist creepshow?

A black comedy that never gets black enough to inspire Farrelly-style decadence.

The film isn't merely bungled. It's starved and battered by Lichtenstein.

For Stallone, and his original script for Driven reflects a more mature, self-effacing perspective.

Doesn't go the distance in either story or style, unwilling to liberate itself from real or presumed expectations about what it takes to sell a movie featuring teenagers.

Comes across as a deceptively streamlined comic-drama; an unnervingly violent, gritty film noir with a wink.

The would-be emotional centerpiece of his three-hours-plus adventure flick is the most juvenile romantic tale of 1997.

Gun Shy can't rise on wobbly legs, and its real potential is lost for good.

An exquisite trio.

A huge surprise: a startlingly resonant yet unabashedly entertaining slice of American history, a popcorn movie with complex observations about, of all things, racism.

Look to the cast as the best reason to see this film.

It's insulting and devalues the experience of watching not just this film but all films.

A smart marriage of modest technical ambition, sophisticated material, and a hang-loose presentation that belies the production's no-frills sacrifices.

A sequel from hell.

Looks plain silly without an appropriate tone or sustaining context.

This is still Ron Shelton in good -- not great, but good -- form here, and the rewards are plentiful.

If you're paying close attention, there is reason enough to find Up at the Villa a fascinating experience, almost an experiment in some ways, but it's not a fully realized work of cinema.

Merely reconfigures the same predictable gross-out jokes, sentimental platitudes, and decorative sex that figure into half the screenplays in circulation.

About two lives in which transformation is a constant, destabilizing threat to freedom and sanity. That's a very provocative premise, though halfway through the movie Doyle and Walsh abandon its potential to go for easy laughs.

Misshapen but magnificent vision of a soulful quest -- in the thick of misery and fear -- for the meaning of our lives.