Anchored by four very good performances, Ma Belle, My Beauty unfortunately suffers from inertia and a lack of conflict. There is conflict, but it's presented in such a languishing way that it leaves the film grasping for something solid to hold onto.

This is a solid, intelligent, occasionally inspired comic book movie that delivers most of what a popular audience demands from the genre (including interstellar voyages and massively scaled action sequences) plus a little bit more.

It's fragmented by nature—a work of impressionistic moments in which intellectual and philosophical ideas are considered, and powerful emotions summoned and then allowed to dissipate.

Leo can sometimes have a jolt of energy from its slapstick sequences or its bright color palette, in which Leo the lizard flies through the air, floats on a bubble, or meets other talking animals. But it's all defined by its assembly line animation, in which the spell of watching life-like characters and settings can be easily broken by looking at the backgrounds of shots for just a few seconds.

A frustrating missed opportunity, The Lovers and the Despot takes a fascinating story about filmmaking, politics, kidnapping and propaganda and gives us almost no insight into the work of its two main characters, a director and his actress wife.

The weddings themselves are a hoot, shrewdly observed, witty, but genuine.

Touch Me Not is definitely abstract and intellectualized, although I didn't find it exploitative. But so much of the film left me cold, even bored.

While it’s drenched in style and features performances from an eclectic cast of actors who are deeply committed to the bit, and its expressions of erotic desire can be quite steamy, director and co-writer Amanda Kramer’s film feels limited and grows tiresome rather quickly.

Point and Shoot consequently feels like a film made by a storyteller — not a journalist — who doesn't know he can ask follow-up questions.

Cinematographer Samuel Calvin is to be commended for his striking work, and Reece shows an intuitive understanding of when to move the camera, and—more importantly—when not to move the camera. It's all very elegantly put together.

Siddiqui and Malhotra are well suited to the gentle tone of the film, both quietly expressive in scenes where everything is conveyed through posture and eyes.

Instead of relishing the specific details of this story, you wind up enjoying its familiar pleasures and then maybe its creators’ proficient execution.

Julia Jackman‘s beguiling feminist fairytale “100 Nights of Hero” is an enchanting tribute to the power of storytelling.

A bleak, brutal film; at times, its monotony can be draining.

Suffragette feels like a documentary in its visuals, but at the same time drowns in subjectivity (Maud's face in repeated closeup).

Overall, Les nôtres fails to dive into the depths of its subject matter, hinting at a dark underbelly that it never full explores.

Even if you lack a wealth of rap knowledge, Sample This is still worth seeing. Like "20 Feet from Stardom" and "Standing in the Shadows of Motown," it focuses on the studio musicians whose contributions are well-known but whose identities are not.

The backstage scenes are almost as entertaining as the mayhem of the campaign.

It’s a strangely aimless film with some good ideas but it never follows through.

As for Paxton, he enters the story with an edge, establishing the authority and revealing sensitivity of a single father with a powerful job. It’s not a career-topping role by any means but it is a reminder of how the late actor could take on a role with sincerity and breathe some type of life into it.

I don't think Kimberly Levin's debut feature Runoff entirely works as a story or a statement. But as an experience, it's amazing — so unlike most other recent American independent films in its style and mood.

Director Joshua Erkman shows promise throughout “A Desert,” his first feature, but his movie’s unyielding scenario, co-written with Bossi Baker, makes it hard to want to hang around while thinly drawn characters vaguely establish the movie’s themes.

It’s fun, tense, and slimy. It’s also nowhere near as ambitious as some of the films in this series deemed failures. We can’t have everything.

This one is about 15 minutes too long. It could well have skipped the teen party at an enormous mansion and done with a less protracted misunderstanding. Other than that, it is a delightfully adorkable time.

And when the movie’s over, nothing is resolved that the filmmakers didn’t side-step or reduce to a few unconvincing symbols of hope for a more equitable future. You might like Enforcement if that’s a line you already want to buy; there’s otherwise not much here to change your mind.

Frozen II is funny, exciting, sad, romantic, and silly. It has great songs and a hilarious recap of the first movie, and then it is all of that all over again.

Attachment very much wants to set its horror within Jewish mythology and Ultra-Orthodox life, and yet this specific choice always creates an exposition overload, which has a more distancing than inclusive effect.