There's a lot of chutzpah on display throughout the film, even during essentially soggy, dialogue-intensive sequences, which are broken up by disorienting flashbacks. But Jung's biggest failing is his inability to make Sook-hee a heroine worth caring about.

This is an old-fashioned hybrid of a thriller and a coming-of-age narrative that explodes when a fortune gets dropped into it. Think of it as an adolescent “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” with echoes of '80s adventure classics like "The Goonies" and "Stand by Me."

There’s a resemblance here to both the story and the movie adaptation of the story told in “The Perfect Storm.” The characters involved are making a good faith effort—but good faith efforts by humans can only go so far.

It works. It really works. It's goodhearted and clever, and it knows when to end.

The movie is like sitting at a restaurant with a guy who’s got some of the best stories you’ve heard in your life — provided, that is, that you’re into stories about showbiz.

A consistent—almost catalog-like, you might say—array of pictorial wonders, Medeas, the debut feature from the Italian-born director Andrea Pallaoro is also a work of considerable daring. This plain, almost minimalist narrative presents itself from a position that neither talks down to nor attempts to cozy up to its audience.

Call Me Lucky will be an especially grueling ride for those who can identify with Crimmins’ trauma. Yet its toughness does not at all diminish its worth. It remains an essential viewing experience.

The sprawling scope of The Traitor is a big part of its dryly funny (though never in a ha-ha kind of way) appeal, and that takes some getting used to.

Can a film be too much and not enough at the same time? This is the conundrum of Ridley Scott's "Gladiator II," a movie bursting with just enough spectacle to keep it from being boring but, when you try to get anything out of it thematically, slips through your fingers like the sand in a warrior's hands.

After a year with too few action movies because of the shelving of the blockbuster, Nobody gives viewers an adrenalin rush that almost feels new again.

Pullman is always great to watch, the Montana landscapes are gorgeously captured by cinematographer David McFarland, and there are a couple of action set pieces that spark.

As a portrait of a great artist and activist, Finding Fela is worth a look, but it's Gibney's weakest work as a filmmaker.

Compared to the inherent compactness of “Dior and I” that crystallizes Dior’s collective craft and process under its new creative director Raf Simons, Halston is vast, and therefore, less of a thrill to watch than the real-life “Project Runway” challenge thrown at Simons. But it will be no less breathtaking for fashion enthusiasts, and anyone dwelling in the tricky intersection of art, history and commerce.

Ultimately, Greenland never comes together into a truly satisfying package, but it deserves a little credit for trying to do something unique within such a familiar framework.

The Mountain, with its long stretches of quiet, bleak subject matter, and Alverson's staunch refusal to let us in, or fill in the blanks, creates a genuinely unnerving mood.

While the text of “Kinds of Kindness” is rich enough to unpack in thinkpieces and coffee house conversations, there is a sense that there hasn’t been as much careful consideration of how it all ties together as in some of his best films.

Dreamin’ Wild is a rich and evocative portrait of the weight of broken dreams and the strength one can find in a family as unwaveringly supportive as the Emersons.

Ultimately, Futuro Beach is a film about displacement and identity, love and its costs. Its considerable satisfactions, though, come mainly from the way the story is told, which spells nothing out, and in fact is so reticent that the viewer is constantly drawn into the creation of meaning.

Ready Player One is at once familiar in its fabric and forward thinking in its technology, with a combination of gritty live action and glossy CGI. It’s an ambitious mix that can be thrilling while it lasts, and yet it fails to linger for long afterward, leaving you wondering what its point is beyond validating the insularity of ravenous fandom.

In a Valley of Violence, written and directed by Ti West, starts out slow, picks up speed, and finally launches itself into a screwball standoff, but always with a slapstick hilarious energy.

Overall, Franz and Fiala perhaps play things a little too safe with The Lodge, not straying too far from a formula they know has already worked before. “The Lodge” is more disturbing than scary, with its eerie ambiance and chilling plot handling most of the scares.

Written and directed by Mikko Mäkelä, “Sebastian” plays like a cautionary tale about toxic ambition.

Some of Unwelcome is legitimately creepy and upsetting. Some of it is hilarious. Whether or not the hilarity is intended is unclear.

It’s the filmmaking around the writing that casts a particular spell.

The best part of Lars von Trier's fascinating, engaging and often didactic Nymphomaniac is that, despite the sometimes-grim tone and bleak color palate, it's an extremely funny film, playful, even.

Martyrs Lane is ruled by grief, often dulled and overdrawn by it, but its young surrogates give us the unique opportunity to see its themes presented without compromise.

It it will be refreshing when filmmakers stop going back to the well and begin to make newer observations about young women, making these stories feel more unique. In the meantime, “Summer of 69” is a fun, chill time.

This decidedly dark and super-violent South Korean crime drama from Kim Sung-su tells a tale so jam-packed with betrayals, double-crosses and alleged authority figures that even the most dedicated of genre buffs may find it too unrelentingly grim and cynical for their tastes.

One can’t help but feel sad, and yes, sometimes infuriated, that Chevy Chase never fully figured out a way to enjoy his great success without making so many others in his circle miserable.

Is this a satire of the American Dream? A horror movie about how it became a nightmare? Or a comedy about a buffoon who basically stumbled into the men’s room on the right day? It seems unwilling to really answer these questions, content to substitute easy shots for difficult conversations about capitalism, politics, family, and marriage.

Greyhound starts to become numbing in its tactics, a film that’s simplicity feels more shallow than lean. And, yes, there is a difference.

Lined by an amicable sense of dark humor and a sporadically amusing bloodlust, this hit-or-miss compilation could bring Halloween cheer to genre fans, especially if a prop candy bar named Carpenter, or narration from Adrienne Barbeau, sounds like a horror convention dream come true.

“Le Mans” may not be the film for which McQueen is best-remembered, but the documentary makes a convincing case that it was formative in his life and career, impacting the way he saw family, cinema and the thin line between life and death.

What the movie is very good at revealing and expanding upon is how this reluctant actor became such a masterful one.

Everything about “The History of Sound” is restrained to a fault—until it’s about the music. And then it bursts with passion and pure emotion.

Fidell trusts the dynamic between her two main actors, and allows them a lot of leeway. The conversations have a fresh and improvisational quality. Best of all, she leaves space for the unexpected and the random.

At the very least, The Bad Guys encourages kids not to judge a book by its cover—and maybe even read an actual book about these characters afterward.

A Danish revenge Western starring Mads Mikkelsen, is a very real movie, and it is directed by Kristian Levring (“The King Is Alive”), whose sensibility is a little more nuanced than that of the sensationalist Refn, which is all to this movie’s benefit.

Throughout To the End, there is a clear sense of urgency to the call for action.

While it offers some gripping and/or darkly beautiful images, it's ultimately more about ideas than spectacle, proving (like every previous film by this team) that you don't need a gigantic amount of money to create an engrossing work of science fiction and/or fantasy.

It is remarkable how often movies, which usually take years from the first word of the script to the opening date, can be uncannily timely.

I am here to tell you that you will be shockingly entertained. Dora and the Lost City of Gold manages to ride a fine line between being true to the characters and conventions of the series and affectionately skewering them.

Aside from its breathtaking underwater cinematography, Kim’s documentary is very plain in execution. At home and on the land, she uses simple camerawork to follow their everyday lives and a basic straight-to-camera interview style to capture their stories.

It’s one of those rare horror movies to leave you with good holiday cheer.

Along the way there’s a scene of a secret meeting in a parking garage that’s more realistic, maybe, than the shadowy one in “All The President’s Men,” but not nearly as gripping. This problem persists throughout.

The episodic narrative of Seoul Searching can be too long and unfocused, but its stubbornness comes from filmmaking that is overflowing with self-pride.

A young Lithuanian woman learns about the healing power of love in The Summer of Sangaile, a movie that ultimately is about as shallow as that central theme sounds.

The twenty-something drama Waiting for the Light to Change is an impressive debut from director-cowriter Linh Tran. Set in a Michigan lake house during winter, it's a minimalist youth drama with lakefront atmosphere, a controlled, at times minimalist directorial style, and a cast that approaches the material with disarming naturalism.

Rich in atmosphere but short on substance, director and co-writer Gareth Edwards’ film has the look and tone of a serious, original work of art, but it ends up feeling empty as it recycles images and ideas from many influential predecessors.

An intelligent but not terribly effective drama. And its discussion of military ethics, especially with regard to what it means to be able to kill people without physical consequences, is promising, but it does not go far enough.

For a movie that is supposedly about the consequences of absentee fathers, it sure has little of importance to say about the families they desert. The Moon deserves better symbolism.

Juan Pablo Di Pace’s movie about memory, longing, time, and family is like a set of Russian nesting Matryoshka dolls.

It contains nothing to offend, but nothing to surprise or inspire, either.

At every turn, “The Annihilation of Fish” is wonderfully surprising.

It has a beautiful, low-key approach that earns its cheers and tears without resorting to the manipulative or dramatic tricks of a typical feature film.

Monster Hunt 2 is charming enough on a scene-to-scene basis that its success is worth noting.

Eventually, the documentary turns into a more traditional investigative narrative, as genealogists and wolf experts and Holocaust historians put different pieces together in an attempt to determine what was and was not true about Misha's tale.

If you’re a Herzog diehard, “Theater of Thought” offers plenty of new material to chew on, just as ol’ Werner does his consonants. But for most, the questions regarding the nature of reality and the ways our brain interprets it may not be the most insightful, save for how it affects Herzog’s understanding of his artistry.

Bloodthirsty isn’t as deep or dark as it needs to be, and that’s way more frustrating than its general lack of werewolves.

Screen adaptations of well-known books are a tricky art. Stray too far from the source material, and purists will be upset. Stick too close to the text, and you risk alienating others. Native Son sits somewhere in-between paint-by-number loyalty and artistic interpretation.

The film will surely have its own role to play in the arena that perhaps counts most: the court of public opinion.

Jake Gyllenhaal delivers as one would expect, proving again that he’s one of the most consistent actors alive.

A lack of ambition, just-off comic timing, and inferior world-building keep this bird from flying, despite there being just enough bits that work to make it worth a look, especially if you forget who made it.

The plot seems sillier the more one mulls it over, yet it’s a testament to the film that we’re not preoccupied with questions of probability for the duration of its running time.

It’s one of those films that may be overly reliant on jump scares when you tally them all up, but I’d by lying if I didn’t admit that a few of them legitimately made me jump.

There are endless horror movies out there in which a slow burn seems like it's just killing time before it's actually time to kill. But "The Feast" does well with that dread—it's the main course that proves to be the rip-off, however gory, indulgent, and horror-ready it is.

It’s a brutal slog of a film, admirable in its fearlessness in terms of dark subject matter, but the brutality doesn’t feel worth it in the end.

One of the problems with this My Cousin Rachel is that it’s hard to come up with any issue or reason relative to its creation, I’m afraid.

Young and Beautiful doesn't have the eerie power of some of Ozon's other films, like "In the House" or "Swimming Pool," but it is still a fascinating experience.

Williams’ playful, genre-bending music that mixes post-soul cool with skater sensibilities is probably more than a live-action narrative could contain. In the hands of director Morgan Neville, however, the story of Williams’ life lacks specificity and substance.

It's a pretty standard story of sports uplift, a familiar tale of triumph over adversity.

Cocker's magnetic persona is a huge part of Pulp's identity, but it's not the band's greatest legacy. So don't be surprised when Cocker's gas-leak hiss of a voice is drowned out by smoke machine cannons, and fails to swell until it bursts at the end of "Common People."

It’s a B-movie operating at the highest levels of craftsmanship, intrigue, and performance.

Told in a style that could be called old-fashioned due to its lack of cynicism in an era when heartfelt melodrama is often mocked more than celebrated, it’s fair to call this engaging drama a throwback, a movie that wants to sweep you away on the back of its passion and heartbreak.

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain has the same problem as its real-life subject, in that it goes off in too many directions at once.

At the nasty center of the otherwise dutiful Denial is a slimy, self-aggrandizing upper-class blowhard of a bigot who believes he has every right to circulate hateful and hurtful falsehoods to his followers.

Like many genre films this decade, “Heel” feels glaringly incomplete.

Unfortunately this film has none of their urgency or sense of control; for long stretches it just doesn't seem to have any idea what, exactly, it wants to say, or be.

This is a solid thrill ride all around, especially for those who like their Faustian parables with a bit of the bloody red stuff.

It’s a movie that puts the viewer into a bad dream, and is very canny in dispensing the keys to unlock the meanings of that dream — and in strategically withholding some of those keys.

If The Covenant were only an interrogation of the hollowness of American exceptionalism, as its first hour suggests, it’d be among the most honest portrayals of the country’s role in the region. But Ritchie eventually awakens from his stupor, pushing this combat-action flick to gonzo territory.

As for the a capella performances, there is something a little prefab and not as organic as those in the first film.

Don't see this movie if you have a weak stomach, or if you don't like movies that mix horror-movie violence and cornball humor. Don't see if it you're expecting production values beyond a couple of vehicles, a farmhouse and about twelve buckets of gore. Don't see this movie if your definition of a great or classic film is one that bowls you over with the importance of its subject or the awesome scope of its vision. Do see if it you want to be be reminded that it's possible to make a relaxed, engrossing, funny, sometimes scary movie on almost no money.

When Ebo concentrates on the satirical aspects that mock the hypocrisy she’s exposing, “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.” hilariously fires on all cylinders. It’s when the film tries to juggle the darker aspects that its seams start to show.

Director Simon Curtis and editor Adam Recht deserve a lot of credit for packing a helluva lot of story into a picture that’s only a hair over 120 minutes.

Pope Francis: A Man of His Word is a non-denominational sermon, under the cinematic care of an artist first, Pope Francis fanboy second.

Piercing, the latest horror film by music video helmer turned feature horror writer/director Nicolas Pesce, is more frustrating than it is actually bad. Because Piercing, an adaptation of Ryu Murakami's novel of the same name, succeeds as a darkly comic provocation. I think. Sort of?

What is truly delightful about the film is its loopy, gently slapstick sense of humor, its use of continuous running gags that pay off cumulatively (no small feat), and the dreamy sense that Schilling's somnambulism is pierced through only by the insane incomprehensible behavior of others.

Without Charlize Theron, the spy adventure Atomic Blonde would only be clever. She makes it insightful. The actress gives emotional depth to the highly mannered behavior of the film’s heroine.

A slow burn, sometimes to a fault, I’m Your Woman proudly revives a type of old-fashioned cinema with something new to say.

Instead of leaving viewers with a better or more informed idea of what makes her tick as a person and as an artist, "Halftime" feels more like a ruthlessly efficient election ad for a political campaign that was decided a long time ago.

It’s a simple, stripped-down premise that transcends cultural specificity.

That Guy Dick Miller is the perfect title for Elijah Drenner’s wildly entertaining documentary chronicling the 50-plus years of Miller’s career.

Burning Sands, Gerald McMurray's feature filmmaking debut, is one of the fresher entries, thanks mainly to its setting: a historically black fraternity on a historically black campus like Howard, the university where the co-writer and director got his degree.

Make it through the first 10 minutes. It’s just the film warming up. The rest of it flows.

What the viewer is not left short of is a whole lot of yelling and cursing in various languages as Christo’s collaborators and helpmates confront practically each and every crisis in a truculent panic. Art isn’t easy, we all know that. But does it also have to be this crazy?

A documentary should produce more than what would result from just listening to a band's collected discography. But you’d get nearly as much from a marathon of Beach Boys recordings as you would from watching this two-hour film.

The end result is a film that may not rise to the level of “Don’t Look Back” or “Truth or Dare” but still manages to create a sense of intimacy and revelation, even as we sense that there is really no such thing as an unguarded moment for Lady Gaga.