Zachary Wigon

Refusing to take sides or vilify his characters, Adler finds the humanity in all parties.

The degree to which Highway candies up Veera's slumming toward freedom feels so fundamentally out of touch with the realities of poverty that it skirts into offensiveness.

Not fully understanding its own merits, Easy Money is accidentally fascinating in some moments, but purposefully formulaic in many more.

Using its narrative as a launching pad for abstract visuals, the picture reminds viewers that even the most striking images demand context to create anything like drama.

Sergio Castellitto's Twice Born irresponsibly appropriates the horrific siege of Sarajevo to serve as aesthetic backdrop for a story that exhibits no real interest in the conflict.

Thoroughly transporting, the peacefulness and clarity of Cousin Jules can't help but reveal, by contrast, the restlessness and agitation too common to life today.

Often threatening sentimentality yet never quite sinking into it, Josh Barrett and Marc Menchaca's This Is Where We Live benefits from the good taste of the filmmakers, whose appetite for understatement ensures that the picture maintains dramatic effectiveness and only rarely lurches into histrionics.

Heath never puts together a larger narrative about the decline of Inuit culture and offers little political history of the situation.

The Motel Life too often revisits the same emotions and sentiments, leaving us with a portrait that feels frustratingly simple.

In essence, the film is a lecture, but Zizek's associative thinking and understanding of the applicability of psychoanalysis makes it a lecture like no other.

What we're presented with is a scattering of scenes amid an overpowering backdrop of geopolitical and anthropological explanation, and nothing resembling drama.

While Eberle's execution falls short, the scale of his ambition can't help but stir admiration.

The film's delivery system sets itself up for failure.

Matthew Johnson's The Dirties explores high school violence from a refreshingly original angle.

Unfortunately, Argento never acknowledges he's in on the joke, nor is the film quite ridiculous enough for us to coast enjoyably on derision. When it comes to B-movies, sometimes anything less than way too much isn't nearly enough.

With dexterity and care, Swanberg illuminates our muddled perceptions of our own relationships. He fixates on the minutiae of hanging out, the stuff of little loves and lies, the feints and thrusts we make in sorting matters of head and heart.

The crookedness of the narrative is compounded by the film's failure to display its characters' great pleasures (surfing and drugs) in visually expressive ways.

Treating one's audience like ignorant children in need of lecturing is hardly a way to win fans, or display one's own artistry.

I'm So Excited! is characterized by a distinct brand of unsuccessful yet ambitious storytelling, the kind often found in minor works by major masters.

This picture may not have the structure of a more practiced documentary, but what it lacks in delivery it compensates for with fervency.

The stunning visuals captivate for much of the picture, but as the novelty wears off, and the beauty turns from stunning to repetitive, the non-surfers in the theater may begin to grow restless.

Stories built around a mystery can have a difficult time creating a satisfying answer, and this picture is no exception.

When functioning like a magic trick, this breathlessly entertaining picture delights in its showmanship, but the more entertaining the trickery, the tougher the explanation, and when the truth is revealed the answer can't help but fail to satisfy.

Triumph of the Wall is often painfully boring and rather shapeless, not so much a crafted film as a compendium of one guy's musings. Regardless, in an era when seemingly every documentary is tied to a hot-button issue, making one about a guy building a wall is endearing.

Epic certainly manages to tell a compelling tale. Yet in a post-Up era where animated films can pulse with profound truths, the question remains: Is mere entertainment enough?

Sightseers is a jet-black comedy that understands exactly how absurdist it is, and its murders are always played for laughs.

While she doesn't quite achieve the screwball zaniness she strives for, Chism deserves commendation for crafting a farcical work that feels like it concerns real characters.

Formulaic despite its trespasses, Love Is All You Need leaves the lingering sensation that more fun could have been had if the film cut loose and lived a little.