Walter Addiego

The comedy-drama is worth seeing for Christie's performance as a former B-actress married to a philandering handyman. She radiates a mature sexuality that's a rare treat on screen these days, and when the camera strays from her, you want to reach over and turn it back.

The film's subject, a whistle-blowing research scientist who played a key role in the fight to regulate tobacco, deserves to be celebrated.

The film bolsters its case with plenty of facts, charts and expert testimony - evidence typical of this sort of advocacy documentary. But what makes the movie compelling is its focus on a handful of victims, who make the statistics painfully real.

The documentary Watermark is close to the cinematic equivalent of a coffee-table book. It relies heavily on visuals and offers minimal context. The project has a pro-environment feeling, which comes across implicitly, not through browbeating or preaching.

It could have been something substantial.

The result is a thrill ride with enough plunges and turns and loop-the-loops to make it worth a spin. What the picture lacks is the magic and resonance you feel in the best of popular entertainments.

It's an apocalyptic ghost story with some eerie images and a surprising turn toward the end, but it bogs down considerably between the good scenes.

Director Cordero manages the not-bad trick of generating suspense while keeping the overall tone cool and collected.

Has compelling stretches, but the film's formal concerns overwhelm the storytelling.

It's hard to decide what's worse about this feral clan residing in Brighton, England: their unspecified criminal enterprises, their penchant for bloody vengeance or their twisted family dynamic.

It's compassionate but unblinking.

Overall, it's a nice melding of sci-fi and a crime story.

There's no objectivity in this film -- Greenwald's goal is not to offer balanced coverage but to roil the waters.

Strel is one strange duck, and you can only wonder that Werner Herzog, with his fondness for captivating weirdos, didn't get to him first.

Intriguing and educational. For partisans of Bertolt Brecht, it's mandatory.

In the title role, Kikuchi is impressive, easily handling Kumiko’s comic and more somber sides and never allowing us to settle into a single or simple interpretation of the character.

It’s all so heavy-handed that it’s hard to stay engaged with the movie.

The film is far from perfect but has enough going on to compensate for its excessive length and some sentimentality.

With his caustic humor, director de la Iglesia is being billed as "the next Almodovar."

Taking a stand would have made the film stronger, and might even have been helpful to young Pug and his peers.

At first, the technique seems gimmicky, but finally it's as compelling a perspective as any to understand how these men passed through agony to some sort of peace.

There’s much of value to be had along the way to a nicely handled ending. It would be a mistake to call it a surprise, but it’s something that few viewers are likely to expect.

Short on complexity and depth, The Divine Order gives us a parade of heroines and villains. Instead of raising questions, it seems to want to induce in viewers a sense of smugness.

By the end you can't help but wonder whether it was a good idea to keep the youngsters under camera scrutiny for more than 12 years.

Among the film's more intriguing revelations is the key role California's almond crop plays in the nation's bee industry.

Questions of politics and policy, even urgent ones, seem pretty dry after watching Henry and the other elderly patients come to life. Those scenes are a revelation.

That the movie largely sidesteps partisan politics will no doubt irk some viewers, but may just be its greatest strength.

The scale is small, but Jellyfish has deep currents.

An intense and affecting report on the experiences of U.S. troops in one of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan.

Exhilarating for Lynch diehards.

There's some amusement in watching Michael Cera play an unalloyed jerk, but in the main this trifling film shuffles by with a few low-key jokes and observations, building to an abrupt moment of seriousness.

A droll, deadpan film, deliberately paced and told.

Something of an elegy to modernism.

You can't help cheering for Selena, but the good feeling is diminished by the sense that her story's been simplified and sanitized.

Ronin shows the mark of a veteran hand and is entertaining in fits and starts.

This documentary about men and women performing brutal work tasks for next to no money is full of arresting and eloquent images. It has little dialogue, and little is needed.

Not up to Ozon's standards.

Spiritually it's a John Woo-George Romero-Jim Thompson picture, outrageously bloody and weird.

The Trip to Spain, perhaps isn’t quite up to the series’ opener (“The Trip,” 2010), it’s certainly a healthy cut above the second film (“The Trip to Italy,” 2014).

A compelling documentary.

His affable, regular-guy shtick works well here, and he scatters the movie with such gleeful ads for his sponsors' products that, if his documentary work ever dries up, his next career choice is obvious.

It’s a lot of ground to cover, but if the movie fails to plumb the depth of Lear’s mystery, it succeeds in being an entertaining look at an influential figure.

There are odd comic moments, but this is a bleak, nighttime, nightmare world, where the couple seem to have about the same chance at a happy outcome as the accident victims.

It's full of visual flash, and can be enjoyed as a giddy ride, but you would waste your time trying to puzzle out the nuances of the story.

It’s best to accept Don’t Breathe as simply a piece of lowdown fun — connoisseurs of creepy and sometimes brutal chills will have a good time.

Kalashnikov is also smart enough to keep The Road Movie down to 67 minutes, which is all he needs to create this particular vision of hell. (And, by the way, he does so without showing bloody or mangled bodies.)

A charming and moving film about a slightly racy subculture in a highly rule-bound society.

Freed from the demands of adapting an established and complex literary piece, the filmmakers seem to have relaxed - and so can their audience.

Overall, this is a nice introduction to an amiably dour tunesmith who once wrote that "all art aspires to the condition of Top 40 bubblegum pop."

A dead woman tells her own harrowing story in the documentary God Knows Where I Am. It’s the kind of movie you need to be prepared for — its most intense moments have echoes of tragic literature.

Brower's legacy, however, is beyond question. Historian Starr calls him "an American hero," and though Brower was a prickly sort and a zealot, that judgment sounds right.

A doleful melodrama. There are some intense, moving sequences, but too much emotional badgering and a general shortage of finesse.

If you want lots of Will Smith and industrial-strength special effects, the movie delivers.

The tales are worthwhile, but it's challenging to find a common thread among them that goes beyond vague generalities.

Depressing. So is director Marshall Curry's avowal in the press notes that the film will leave viewers with "a more nuanced view of the world."

An edifying and forthright drama that aims to create a lump in the throat, and succeeds.

This tale of a young rape victim further brutalized by officialdom never lives up to its potential.

A fast-moving Congolese crime thriller loaded with graphic sex and violence - basically an exploitation picture. But it's hard to surrender to the gritty flow because the story is stitched together from such crushingly familiar bits.

For those willing to overlook its few slips into heavy-handedness, Corpo Celeste tells a compelling story of a 12-year-old girl thrust into a strange new world.

Despite a super-dark noir plot and respectable cast, Deadfall is a thriller that never quite delivers on its promise.

The film is full of low-key but telling observations, mostly about Gianni's plight but also about modern life in general.

A gripping study of Bobby Fischer, perhaps the greatest chess player ever.

Mesmerizing documentary.

The film finally seems to stagger under the weight of its own significance.

The idea is intriguing - an inflatable sex doll comes alive and experiences the world with wide-eyed innocence - but Hirokazu Kore-eda's "Air Doll" is only partly successful. The film's poignant depiction of human loneliness is undercut by saccharine notes and a drifting tone.

An affable comedy (with some serious notes).

The film is implicitly advocating a New Age or holistic perspective, with a dollop of Eastern religion added for good measure. (The title is Sanskrit meaning "wheel of life.")

While the film raises simple but deeply puzzling questions about memory and identity, the hit-or-miss search for answers by the subject and assorted experts, family and friends is finally unsatisfying.

There are some compelling performance moments, and it's sad to watch these talented and basically nice people drift apart. But overall the film seems like a collection of bits and pieces, and it's hard to see how it could have much resonance for non-fans.

Because he made "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (2004), there will always be high expectations for a new film by Michel Gondry. But while his new movie The We and the I, is intriguing in fits and starts, it isn't in the same league.

The film raises significant questions about manhood and offers a few gripping sequences, but isn’t fully satisfying.

At 126 minutes the movie is excruciatingly long, but it is still too short to pack in all the subtle changes in character he means but fails miserably to convey.

Quiet, moving and beautifully shot.

Haakon VII is a hero in Norway, and The King’s Choice tells us why.

The resulting film is a rich mix of movements and cultural phenomena that occurred not only in the United States, but several European countries.

While Pick of the Litter can’t be described as innovative, it still creates a solid emotional punch when we see several of the five now-grown dogs finally matched with grateful humans. It’s quite moving to hear the recipients detail how liberating it is to have the assistance of one of these amazing animals.

Fraulein works by an accumulation of details.

Director Paul Morrison ("Wondrous Oblivion") nicely re-creates the period, but puts too much weight on the sexual relationship as determining the men's artistic courses.

For a while, you can feel like a part of the golden circle.

The film is good enough to inspire viewers to learn more about Fela, but it should be better than that.

Gattaca is a welcome throwback to the days of good, low-tech sci-fi, stressing character and atmosphere over computer-generated effects and juvenile thrills.

The title comes from Indian legend in which Lord Rama tests the purity of his wife by a flaming ordeal (which we see enacted in an open-air pageant with comic overtones of Bunuel). This bit of mythology too handily prefigures a major element in the film's conclusion.

It's a handsome and entertaining small-scale picture with nice acting, some crisp (and some crude) dialogue and effective direction.

A film that's hard to watch and hard to recommend.

You may find yourself weeping toward the end, and, later, you may also find yourself wondering why. The revelations are staggeringly obvious.

A melancholy Spanish drama that’s competently made and checks off all the boxes defining a contemporary art-house movie. But it lacks the spark that separates top-of-the-line films from the pack, and watching it becomes something of a slog.

Lévy gets expectedly strong work from the veteran Devos and outstanding performances from Sitruk and Dehbi.

The director is clearly an admirer of Francis (both the saint and the pope), and was able to conduct extensive and exclusive interviews with the pontiff.

Not sure we need to know this much about his family life.

Mike Cahill's King of California reminds me of those '70s-era pictures beloved of the counterculture about appealing rebels who go down in flames of moral victory.

Doesn't allow the story's considerable nostalgia and sentimentality to overwhelm it.

Outstanding in support roles are Alison Lohman, playing a friend of Jerry's, and John Carroll Lynch, playing a neighbor who befriends Jerry.

The film takes its time detailing his mundane activities, often withholding the kind of information audiences usually expect, and it's Puiu's talent to transform it all into a highly disturbing portrait - both of an individual and a society.

Quibbling aside, Free Fire mainly works, as an indulgence in cinematic overkill for moviegoers who realize that sometimes too much is just enough.

Doesn't add up to much, but it's fast and funny and lets a bunch of top-drawer actors exercise their comic muscles.

In Amigo, a story of the Philippine-American War, veteran filmmaker John Sayles allows his political convictions to get the better of him. The movie is a heavy-handed attack on U.S. imperialism with little to compensate in the way of character interest and genuine drama.

I liked this movie somewhat, even if I'm not sure exactly what it means. Possibly it has something to do with arriving home, in the broadest sense. But in a Maddin film, uncertainty comes with the territory.

There so much entertaining information in Art & Copy, a documentary about modern advertising, that it takes a while to realize we are being sold something