Director and co-writer (with Boris Yutsin) Atsuko Hirayanagi has a knack for staging scenes in a way that makes them intriguingly uncomfortable, but that doesn’t succeed in elevating Oh Lucy! from some of its more commonplace features.

On the plus side, the movie’s production values are very nice and its cast is notable. And as it happens, neither of those are pluses, because what they mean ultimately is that good money is put into this kind of worthless woman-hating garbage even now.

The story is simple — too simple, in fact — and some of its more intriguing elements could use further developing, but the presence of Huppert makes Souvenir well worth a look.

It’s a smart thriller that features a few truly dumb decisions.

Tucci is wonderful, but Timlin comes close to eating him up almost as thoroughly as her character does his.

Geoghegan and Hendrix have the right instincts, which goes a long way, given that their vision is slightly limited by their budget. I didn't just fall for this type of film: I also admire its creators' knack for conveying what they like most about their characters through pulpy dialogue, impressive shot choices, and satisfyingly gory set pieces.

The new Death Wish is a vigilante film that's also about vigilante film cliches, when it remembers to think about such things, which is only occasionally. Most of its attempts to subvert or freshen up familiar elements aren't well developed, and they're certainly never strong enough to counter the bloodlust and gun worship that's invariably going to power this kind of project.

It’s impossible to deny the power of much of what’s on display here. Wilkerson looks at the racial discord and violence in the world around him and has the courage to examine his own legacy instead of just casting off the concept as something that happens to or is perpetrated by others.

Ultimately, these shocking and violent sequences become repetitive and gratuitous, making Red Sparrow feel more like a cheap exercise in exploitation than a visceral tale of survival.

Cinematographer Drew Xanthopoulos gives the actors very little room to hide, often framing their faces in extreme close-up during bracing moments of emotional nakedness. There are echoes here of Cassavetes’ most agonizing stretches in “A Woman Under the Influence,” as casual pleasantries detonate into a fiery inferno of resentment.

The narrative never really builds a good head of steam. That could just be because as a Westerner with extremely limited knowledge of Estonian culture and mythology, the barrage of tropes from there is relatively overwhelming for me. Even so, November never stops being a visual trip. And that may well be enough.

There is a real seed of dramatic possibility in Hannah, but Pallaoro smothers it beneath the lacquer of the film’s fastidiously mannered minimalism.

The Lodgers needs to be better than a great mood in need of a decent story and stronger characters.

After sitting through this rather unpolished production as it lightheartedly bumbles its way around a serious subject, I mostly wished that I could un-see it. To say that Half Magic, in which Graham also stars, is half-baked would be kind.

The movie is largely a story of personalities. Karl is fiery, brilliant, disorganized, passionate. Engels is, despite his courage and curiosity, a bit more of a wide-eyed innocent and certainly a more organized person. Their female partners do take secondary roles, but the movie depicts them as committed, innovative, and acute: true fellow travelers and comrades. The actors portraying these figures are all exciting to watch.

Sadly, Jones’ passion has not made it to the screen in a way that’s likely to make viewers feel the same excitement he had about the project so many years ago.

The result is a very creepy, suspenseful story that’s also a better-than-average character study.

Every Day has an intriguing concept that’s hampered by problematic execution. And it raises several questions it never answers in satisfying fashion, leading to a conclusion that will elicit not just head-scratching but unintentional hilarity.

An ambitious, challenging piece of work that people will be dissecting for years. Don’t miss it.

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

This is one of the best surprises of a still-young movie year: a comedy that takes nothing seriously except fun.

Even if it's not that funny, Detective Chinatown 2 proves to be snappy and persistent, complementing its bright color palette and energy with basic goals to alternate between silly, dark and slightly clever.

Any movie that can bring to mind a Joni Mitchell song as the credits roll — “Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'till it's gone” — has earned its keep.

The plot’s central mystery suffers from “Body Double” syndrome in that the movie has so few characters that the villain’s reveal can only elicit a shrug.

The result is a slow burn of a drama with a restrained tone that may put off some viewers, but which will captivate those who responded to its low-key wavelength.

A strong cast giving their all — including Jon Hamm, Ellen Burstyn, Bruce Dern, Catherine Keener and Amber Tamblyn — can’t do much with such heavy-handed, self-serious material.

This is a beautifully conceived and executed chamber comedy/drama with tragedy at its core. Potter’s characters are committed to a better world even as they make their own modes of living completely dysfunctional.

The dialogue creates an arch and artificial mood, never sounding like real talk despite the clearly talented actors (Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Michiel Huisman) playing the roles. The film itself seems to be in denial about its own story.

What makes Early Man enjoyable is the way Park and his writers detail the heroes' good-natured oafishness and the bad guys' snooty arrogance.

The problem with Samson is that while it cannot be faulted for its sincerity, it can be faulted for its sluggish pacing, inconsistent performances and lack of cinematic style that gives the proceedings a tacky feel throughout.

One of the year's best films, and one that transcends the superhero genre to emerge as an epic of operatic proportions. The numerous battle sequences that are staples of the genre are present, but they float on the surface of a deep ocean of character development and attention to details both grandiose and minute

While Double Lover is as squeamish as most Cinemax-style wank material about a certain male organ, it’s more than charitable about its female counterpart. One can’t be faulted for expecting greatness from a film that opens with a close-up of a stretched out vagina morphing into an eye.

Using skillful, involving storytelling and beautifully executed rotoscoped photography, director Ali Soozandeh creates a world of intersecting urban miseries and challenges.

Entanglement is gleefully weird at times, but it could’ve been a whole lot weirder.

Still/Born doesn’t get as many points as one would hope for originality. But this is an inspired-enough take on a woman's horror, where the fear of losing her other baby becomes a terror itself, as expressed through an excellent performance.

The film does a good job conveying the excitement generated by that band as a live act, especially in San Francisco and Los Angeles. But though it produced some remarkable music, Cream’s success was short-lived.

It’s an amiable misfire. But Brie Larson sure can light up the screen, and she does so here — she’s a pleasant singer, too — and that’s enough to raise this from a one-and-a-half star movie to a two.

What is most unexpected about Permission is its sense of poignancy and tenderness. In its own way, it's quite heartbreaking.

Ultimately, no one could save the script by John Whittington, who relied so completely on his concept that he failed to write jokes or characters.

Both in front of and behind the camera, Whitney Cummings tries to breathe new life into the hackneyed, men-are-like-this, women-are-like-this style of romantic comedy with The Female Brain. The results are frustratingly hit-and-miss.

The atmospheric but threadbare male bonding horror flick The Ritual is so well-directed that you can't help but groan at its lightweight script's many little inadequacies.

Golden Exits made me want to get up and go do something sensible and productive, so as to not be like the characters in the film.

Clearly there is a severe case of “Paddington” envy here and a hunger for yet another animated franchise. But easy chuckles are no substitute for genuine charm.

The problem is there's not enough sex and too much ... everything else.

To call Clint Eastwood's The 15:17 to Paris a mixed bag would be generous. It packs all the wild action you came to see into a 20-minute stretch near the end, and elsewhere gives us something like a platonic buddy version of Richard Linklater's "Before" trilogy.

The Cloverfield Paradox is a bit of a scam job, promising to reconcile entries in a series that have little in common save for a shared genre. It fizzles so badly at the end that you might legitimately wonder if it ever had anything to do with the other two films in the first place, or if it was produced independently of the series and retroactively added.

A movie as dumb and bloody as a slab of meat, but with Momoa playing an emotionally vulnerable logger who you also believe would throw an ax at someone's face.

It's an unsettling, and sometimes high-concept doodle, but it's awfully hard to resist a film that marries Atomic Age paranoia and optimism with Kurosawa's signature post-modern, atmosphere-intensive style.

The end result is pretty much what you might expect—a work so desultory that you wonder how all involved managed to work up the energy and enthusiasm to make it to the set each day.

Lead actors Byrne and Deen do grounded, stalwart work, and director Mitu Misra occasionally succeeds in making the characters’ milieu’s register with force. But the storytelling is rickety.

A movie that’s a pleasure to watch.

It’s an inspiring tale based on true events with a worthwhile message about finding your voice and asserting your identity. If only it were good.

Suffused with fantastical elements, dreamlike sequences and hallucinatory images, A Fantastic Woman stars Daniela Vega, a trans actress, and her performance roots the film in a kind of intimate verisimilitude.

What Winchester lacks in originality its creators amply make up for in execution.

The post-apocalyptic landscapes captured by the courageous lens of cinematographer Artem Ryzhykov are deeply chilling, especially when Alexandrovich stumbles upon a classroom littered with gas masks.

With its frequent use of puppetry and quirky animation, Boom Bust Boom suggests what an old-school episode of “Sesame Street” would’ve played like, had it focused solely on the subprime crash.

What Hammond and Markiewicz are most gifted at is cinematography. I’d gladly watch this film’s entire B-roll again just to bask in the gorgeous Mexican landscapes and vivid snapshots of the cities, outdoor markets and parking lots where various matches occur.

Padmaavat is a rare work of pop art that is both powerful and repugnant.

As delightful as it is surprising. The surprises begin with the fact that the Iranian master’s last work is, of all things, essentially an animated film.

Despite a few good scenes and ideas, and a final ten minutes that will be affecting for anyone who lived through the aftermath of the attacks on New York, the end product often feels like a standard-issue high concept romantic comedy with scaffolding of 9/11 solemnity built around it.

So poorly done, its tone so lackadaisical and uncommitted, it's not clear half the time what you're even watching. If it's supposed to be a comedy, it's not funny. If it's supposed to be a satire, it doesn't know what it's satirizing. The biggest problem is that the stakes are never high enough to invest in any of it.

The exceptionally fun martial arts beat-em-up Kickboxer: Retaliation is a very dumb, and very satisfying throwback to a simpler time when American action films were as predictable as they were formulaic.

West of the Jordan River works best when Gitai involves himself in the interviews. Gitai is a compelling screen presence—empathetic and patient, but also skeptical and necessarily forceful.

Please Stand By is a sensitive character study whose story beats are a little bit overly familiar, to be frank. Dakota Fanning is excellent as Wendy.

Writer/director Liu Jian has taken familiar stylistic elements, and made them feel fresh, and exciting. Have a Nice Day may be Jian's second feature after "Piercing I," but it feels like a major breakthrough.

A Ciambra is not big on plot, instead relying on its main character and his dangerous and frustrating escapades to generate empathy.

While there’s a bit of hero worship going on that deflates the piece, and Wain’s direction is surprisingly uninspired, the biggest problem is the script that tries to cover too much ground but doesn’t really have that much to say as it does so.

None of these characters or their stories is nearly as engaging as the movie’s many gonzo action sequences, though.

Had this been the work of a young novice filmmaker, I would say it showed some promise. But as it happens, Mr. Martin is approaching his mid-fifties. He should look for better writers, to begin with.

The Road Movie operates on a unique tonal wavelength, one that’s both manic and oddly comforting.

What Taylor and his game cast, led by Selma Blair and Nicolas Cage, do get right will leave you excited, and eager for more.

Still, there is more pleasure to be had in the dwindling returns of CMT's “Nashville” than in this country soap-opera.

I wish it had been a lot more fun, frankly. The movie’s tone never quite gels; it’s too outlandish and cartoony to convince, but not so outlandish and cartoony that it takes off into a realm of over-the-top exhilaration.

Conflict doesn’t have to be some huge melodramatic thing, but the total lack of inner conflict in Mary might be why Mary and the Witch’s Flower — as transportive and entertaining as it is — feels a little slight.

As an evocation of on-the-ground political reality, The Final Year is a a solid and often entertaining work in much the same wheelhouse as the durable political documentary "The War Room."

The cumulative effect is draining; you’ll walk out of the theater with the feeling that you, too, have gone to war – and an appreciation for those who are brave enough to do so themselves.

The plot thickens ... and thickens ... and thickens. Gudegast is clearly an avid student of heist pictures, and he layers this one with a lot of spectacular complications even while he muddles the average viewer’s potential rooting interest.

So vague is the picture about the meaning of the artworks it presents that they proved to be of little interest to me, until I researched them afterward. Far more compelling is Beuys himself, with his signature hat, haunted gaze and outspoken belief that art can be a vehicle for communication.

The film may be completely worthless from an artistic standpoint but it certainly can’t be beat from a convenience standpoint.

One of the most refreshing things about Laurie Simmons’ similarly provocative feature directorial debut, My Art, is in how it challenges the very notion of what constitutes a happy ending.

Writer/director Sam Hoffman's trite dramedy about personal redemption delivers mediocre performances.

Paddington 2 proves the smart-but-sweet combination that marked the first live-action film was no fluke.

A sweet film with a purity of purpose and intent, elevating it above other films portraying similar struggles.

Whether you're new to Inside or a fan of the original, the change that Vivas and his team do make to the ending will leave you scratching your head.

The languidly-paced picture has a staggering array of beautiful images and vistas.

The plot alone of this elegantly shot black-and-white import shares the Woodman’s affection for variations on lusty middle-age man who beds — and tutors — an adoring decades-younger nubile conquest.

The sporadic magic of The Polka King largely comes from its casting, and the hammy performances that follow.

While the issues it engages are timely and important, the film’s claim to fame really comes from its terrific accomplishments on every front, from writing and directing to acting and cinematography.

Proud Mary doesn’t deserve the lack of faith its studio has in it. In fact, it’s almost good, so close to success that its flaws truly become frustrating.

Frustratingly not-quite-there from start to finish.

It’s interesting to witness the encounter and hear the thoughts of young people from such a bitterly divided land.

This really is a paint-by-numbers action movie with two good things going for it. Those are brevity — it’s only 93 minutes long — and immediate forgetability.

The film is worth seeing because, regardless of things that I wish had been done better or differently, it feels like the beginning of a major filmmaking career, and because Pettyfer and Freedson-Jackson are so strong.

Dark Meridian ends up being is a generically violent gang drama full of bad guys standing around grungy warehouses, explaining themselves before shooting each other in the head.

Django is for the most part everything Reinhardt’s music was not: listless, glum and meandering.

It’s a flawed film, but there are elements that really work, especially the lead performance and some of Flanagan’s gifts with composition. Before I Wake is also particularly interesting to watch now as one can see it as a career stepping stone to the movies he's made since.

What elevates Hamoud’s screenplay beyond typical Tinseltown fare, however, is what is at stake by rebelling against cultural norms and choosing a liberal lifestyle—namely, bringing shame to your loved ones and being ostracized by your community.

The film gets increasingly hallucinatory as it progresses, and there's a vivid sense of growing danger.