The film is blessed with a fairly strong cast and while it isn’t nearly enough to make it succeed as a whole, whatever degree that certain scenes do work are almost entirely due to their efforts.

Every time it feels like Komasa and Pacewicz edge too close to sympathy for their modern monster, Tomasz does something that reveals those feelings to be unearned and undesired by the filmmakers. And it’s that give and take that makes The Hater interesting.

Sam Elliott is Sam Elliott as Sam Elliott in The Hero, a sentimental and sporadically effective celebration of the veteran character actor.

The director's gifted collaborators sometimes perk up this listless parable, but never enough to sell its second-hand fatalism.

There’s a nagging aura of “meh” encircling the proceedings.

In Your Dreams is an exciting, imaginative, and sometimes funny adventure story about a sister and brother who try to use their dreams to change their reality. But it is also a wise and touching story about the challenges of family and of change.

The film's solid grounding in friendship and comic teamwork carries the day. Unpregnant becomes more affecting as it goes along thanks to the sincere, committed, and mostly unaffected lead performances by Richardson and Ferreira.

With unbelievable dialogue and a truncated timeline of events, Song Sung Blue ends up dabbling in “Walk Hard” territory, making the film seem silly even when the couple at the heart of this story only ever wanted to play the hits.

Sadly, “Dreams” never figures out what it wants to say, and what it does convey is done with so little affect or pulse that it almost feels like an intentional choice to tell a “hot” story in as “cool” a way as possible.

Before You Know It shifts seamlessly from quirky to sad to mysterious to wacky to surreal within just the space of a few days, so much so that you’d never know it’s director Hannah Pearl Utt’s feature filmmaking debut.

These amiable fellow don’t understand young Robbie’s ambitions — what’s with the rock ’n’ roll and all? — until they put it together and exclaim: “You want to be in SHOW BUSINESS.” For all the grand achievements chronicled here — and the music still sounds pretty great — this still is a show business venture.

There are flashes of interest, and even some welcome screwball elements, but PVT Chat doesn't coalesce in a meaningful way.

Great sequels don’t just repeat, they build. This one treads beautifully-rendered water.

At War is an exhausting film to watch in the best sense, venting our anger at the dehumanizing forces in society until we are left drained, contemplating our impending challenges with newfound clarity.

Conners’ first narrative feature is a rocky start but not without some promising notes.

For all its investigation of rifts in reality and parallel universes, “The Universal Theory” provides proof only of the truth’s inherent slipperiness — and of its director’s great affection for his influences.

An impressive team comes together in front of the camera and behind the scenes for the heist thriller Triple Frontier, but the results are frustratingly uneven.

There's a good movie in Romano the feature filmmaker, but this isn't it.

Hadžihalilović's latest is both too hazy to make a great adaptation and too focused to be genuinely dream-like.

The disposable, summer diversion that many families will be looking for as temperatures rise and the start of school seems so far away, but most won’t be able to remember after they see it.

Lacks the original's momentum. It only sometimes builds to the peaks of lunacy that you want and need from this sort of picture. It goes here, it goes there, it does this, it does that.

The directors and the cast, through a miracle of tone, mood, and emotion, have made a film that feels true, that is sweet and sharp and unbearable. Every frame feels right, every choice feels thought-out, considered. All adds up to a heartbreaking whole.

Lingua Franca isn’t a screed. Far from it. Sandoval pulls us in gently with long, single takes which are often static, immersing us in the quiet rhythms of the lived-in environment she’s created within the Russian-Jewish neighborhood of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.

Heart Eyes is a raving good time. As a Valentine’s Day flick and a horror picture, it lands for fans of all kinds: those who seek warmth, wrath, or both.

Bichlbaum & Bonanno are naturally funny guys, which is great for character-building. But while they are activists before filmmakers, they are not established entertainers first. Maybe the sequel to this film will involve another test of their friendship when a comedy writer is added to the mix?

Luckily, the performances and characterizations add heft, and the very Russian vibe of soulful heaviness sets it apart from its American cousins.

A great score, a talented ensemble, and expert cinematography—all are undeniable here. And yet there are narrative elements of Babylon that feel hollow from the very beginning and only get more so as Chazelle tries to inject some manipulative lessons into the final scenes.

The film’s greatest asset, along with a sun-dappled cinematography, Banks is certainly game for every shade of Hope in her journey of poor decisions, escalated by bad luck and an eerie city that couldn’t care less about who falls down or survives the elements unscratched. In that, “Skincare” nails a routine well worth investing in.