The Patience Stone largely functions as a one-woman play, with Farahani’s character soliloquizing over her husband’s body.

One would expect a film about French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir to look beautiful, to be shot in warm, sumptuous colors. And one would not be disappointed in Gilles Bourdos’ Renoir.

Occasionally the film seems as if it will make a political statement (the value, or lack thereof, of torture, for instance). But it doesn’t really follow through. But they keep us occupied with twists, well-played, and some of the laughs are genuine, if uncomfortable and guilt-inducing.

In Praise of Love has virtually no plot, no characters and is not about love, and there is precious little praise in it. It's an essay in film, and it's not always consistent in that: You'll never quite know what he's trying to say. But the film remains great because of the way he says it. Memorable images and dialogue worm their way into your psyche and won't let go. [18 Oct 2002, p.8P]

Though the stories explored in Bombshell are explosive, the film's uneven pace makes them merely sizzle like reading a news brief instead of an illustrative Vanity Fair profile.

Belle is a beautiful period piece, but it's also something more: a study of racism, classism and sexism in 18th-century England.

It takes the charred bones and ash of Argento's witches and roots them in a reality entirely familiar to our own.

There are obviously a lot of parts here, and they don’t all fit together successfully; the shift in tone toward the end is particularly unsettling. But it’s not for lack of ambition on the part of the Daniels, nor the performances by Dano and Radcliffe.

It's a somewhat goofy movie that also manages some real scares. Best of all, it makes excellent use of an element of vampire stories effective since Count Dracula confronted Van Helsing in Bram Stoker's novel: I know that you know, and I also know there is nothing you can do about it.

This isn’t a great horror movie so much as a fun thrill ride. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett know just how to put Weaving’s talents to good use.

Sorrentino drenches his audiences in the movie-going experience — when you’re done, it’s something akin to enjoying a rich meal, even if you didn’t quite understand how all the ingredients combined. All that’s important is that it satisfies, and ultimately, Youth does.

It's all very stylized and flashy and modern, self-consciously hip in a way that's clearly been designed to speak to generations for whom Elvis Presley may not be the King of Rock 'n' Roll so much as the guy on the soundtrack to "Lilo & Stitch."

The script feels structurally inept, building up scenes and characters then cutting them off, never to be revisited. The end result is a film that feels full of staircases that lead nowhere.

Napoleon isn’t a failure on anyone’s part. But it’s not a rousing success, either. It’s not really a rousing anything, which is the problem. Maybe Scott should have gone in even more on Phoenix’s quirks and mannerisms, which are the most purely entertaining things about the film. Whatever the case, it doesn’t quite measure up.

Alexander Payne has a lot of fun — and has some serious things to say — in Downsizing, a film that goes from fascinating to sometimes merely functional, but never truly loses its way.

Forbes' story and her direction of it may seem too sunny for some. But she keeps us refreshingly off-balance throughout, by letting us in on her memories the way she recalls them.

Miles Ahead is by no means a perfect film, but it is an interesting one. In this case, driven by Cheadle’s performance, that’s more than enough.

Ultimately Fury is a good, conventional war movie that might have become something more.

It’s fun enough in places, outrageous (in mostly a good way) in others. Ultimately, however, the plot falters enough that it’s more like a two-hour audition for Great Actress. Chastain passes with flying colors, even if the movie doesn’t.

The danger in making a movie like Coming Through the Rye is in the constant referencing and hero worship of bigger, better, towering works of art — you can only exist in their shadows and pale all the more for the comparison.

He's always on - this is a documentary, after all, so even when O'Brien is offstage, he's still performing in some capacity, cracking wise at the camera, of whose presence he is acutely aware.

The goal here was to show the tragic downfall of a once-praised hero, similar to the actual poem written by Wilde with the same name. But because of the lack of depth in supporting characters and half-baked writing, this movie couldn't have ended fast enough.

The problem with Peyton Reed's film is that when he shrinks the always-affable Paul Rudd, he shrinks a big part of Rudd's charisma, too.

Director Francis Lawrence does a nice job capturing the claustrophobic environment of District 13 and has a good eye for action shots. But the actors are what really sell the movie.

Jensen has a real gift for comedic editing, knowing just how long to play out a bit and when to move on. And Mikkelsen goes all in with his performance (as does everyone else).

It’s not a disaster, and it doesn’t lack for ambition. But it’s wildly uneven and kind of blah, if that can be said of a movie with nonstop, often incoherent action, self-aware needle drops and not nearly enough smart-aleck quips from a cast we’ve seen deliver plenty of them in the past.

Crown Heights is soul-shaking only in the abstract. In execution, it’s deathly dull.

Igawa is almost a magical presence, projecting a calm in Ozu that is infectious.