Life may have been very beautiful in this mountain town but even during its most tumultuous years, spending time within it isn’t exactly fascinating.

Costa is, above all, an excellent chronicler of the moods swirling in her nation, but there is a flipside to the way she paints the picture.

Almereyda’s feature is rich in acting talent, but this stagey, flat drama can’t match the wattage of its leads.

Cole clearly deserves as many posthumous tributes as the culture can afford, especially since he received so little in his lifetime, but reverence, particularly as a way of combatting decades of indifference, isn’t necessarily the best solution

The moral of this story is supposed to be shrugged off despite its overwhelming honesty, but Living downplays its drama to such an extent that it can feel as if Hermanus and Ishiguro lacked the nerve to attempt the same trick.

Fincher likely prides himself on turning coal into diamonds at this point, but Flynn's script can feel so retrograde at times that one wonders whether it might have been better served by a De Palma, Bigelow, or even a Verhoeven — which is to say, a filmmaker less concerned with making the lascivious seem prestigious.

No filmmaker is better equipped to capture the full sweep of this saga (which is why, despite being disappointed twice over, I still can’t help but look forward to “Dune: Messiah”), and — sometimes for better, but usually for worse — no filmmaker is so capable of reflecting how Paul might lose his perspective amid the power and the resources that have been placed at his disposal.

It’s enjoyable enough, and the acting is comparatively looser than most of what comes before it thanks to the allowed improvisations on set, a first for the director

Kim Jee-woon will always gravitate towards the bleaker side of the things, but “The Age of Shadows” suggests that his stories might benefit from just a little bit more light.

A horror movie — even one as grounded and genre-adjacent as this — can’t hope to survive if it doesn’t even feel believable on its own fantastical terms.

The sensory appeal of the technical limitations only lasts for so long. And as a feature, “Dry Leaf” does feel oh so long once there soon proves to be little variety to the bag of visual tricks over three hours.

As a 92-minute commercial for a deeper look at the case, Amanda Knox is unquestionably intriguing; as a standalone offering, it makes one hell of an airtight case for something bigger and better.

Both Dickey and Studi shoulder the lesser material through a charming naturalism that papers over the script’s artificiality.

Call it a Shakespearean catharsis or just call it a lark -- either way, the movie represents Whedon's least essential work, regardless of the material's inherent comedic inspiration.

While Deadwyler turns in a remarkable performance as Mamie, beautifully calibrating her love and anger in one riveting package, the rest of “Till” is prone to trope-ridden, predictable sequences that do little to advance her story or Emmett’s legacy.

Part road-film, part-gambling excursion, and part-bromance, the film does show the influence of its talented directors. But falters when it comes down the story itself.

A maddeningly shallow look at Ronstadt’s remarkable life.

While Glob took exception with the assessment that Apolonia’s personality was more interesting than her work, her surface level portrait of her as both an artist and as person ironically upholds that very statement.

As much as Questlove probes his many interviewees with questions about the expectations and responsibility that comes with “Black genius,” his film doesn’t live up to the ambitious framework he puts forth.

This sweeping, stagy movie sags and drags, never quite able to shake the weight of its own loftiness.

Slight and discursive even by the filmmaker’s idiosyncratic standards, Introduction refuses to auto-correct for anyone who doesn’t already speak conversational Hong.

While Much Ado About Dying strives to be a tribute to caretakers and Chambers’ dearly departed uncle, its baggy structure, dictated by David’s declining health, renders the film frustratingly inert.

The romantic scenes are cute, but they feel at odds with the drama. The laughs land like chuckles, the love registers as mere fondness, and the salient observation that countries recast themselves during wartime is reduced to a fleeting detail.

Regrettably, “never again” proves to be a misguided ethos for a film about pain that’s so nakedly unresolved, both in its characters, and in a world that has learned nothing from the lessons they were born to teach it.

While the moments focused on the kids’ lives are the best part of the film — James and Ramirez have natural chemistry and are compelling to watch — Baig occasionally falters on that front too.

A murky, vaguely sinister, but ultimately dreary coming-of-age film about a young woman’s blossoming sexuality under the spell of her mother’s old flame.

Amid all the barbarity for barbarity’s sake, Jonsson carries the film with a deep well of unspoken regret.

American Symphony greatly suffers from a lack of focus.