Though it ignores the many situations that could go wrong in the ever-evolving universe of virtual reality, this fascinating ode to touchless connection proves beyond doubt that the intense emotions born in the skin of their avatars transcend into their flesh-and-blood hearts.

Guest Artist feels like a typical one-act, intelligent but not especially distinctive or compelling.

The film’s clever editing (credited to Klinger and Geraldine Mangenot) jumps back and forth through time in intriguing, sometimes intoxicating ways, and even when the drama flags there’s always a stunning image to stare at.

I suppose the fact that I was affected as I was by Wedding Doll is testimony to its emotional effectiveness. But while Hagit is able to crack a smile at the movie’s end, I feel a pall wrapping around me every time I contemplate her predicament, or the predicament of her real-life models.

Proves to be a kind of career rehab for Dad.

Radio Dreams is an example of both the compelling passion and polarizing fallibility that can arise when a director works primarily from the heart.

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.

Really, whatever you do, don't watch "The Last Key" without the emotional support of a buddy who can confirm that you're not just imagining this: these movies are still getting incrementally better.

Between its evocative ensemble, fluid editing, and interest in Aboriginal culture, High Ground is worth a watch, even if it ultimately feels overshadowed by the message it’s trying to send rather than being defined by the story it actually tells.

It’s the simplicity of the story combined with the excellence of the filmmaking—again, often deceptively simple—that makes it work.

Producers Jason Blum and James Wan, both horror titans, once again show they know how to freak audiences out while maintaining a sly sense of humor.

The gooey center of the film works for those with a high tolerance for things that might make a majority of the population queasy.

What's missing is a sense of how Monroe, seemingly a law-abiding young man before his family's financial dark days, suddenly went from being a go-along-to-get-along type to a budding criminal mastermind.

This Quake delivers with skill. The build-up to the disaster nicely intensifies with a feeling of dread, and some of the subtlest early effects are the most powerful.

The pacing works referentially to its namesake and real-time ambition, but the characters aren’t quite interesting or engaging enough to sustain attention for the whole runtime, and the film’s crawl eventually wears on weary knees.

The film's tight construction and prolific action scenes carry it, and Blunt and Johnson do the irresistible force/immovable object dynamic well enough, swapping energies as the story demands.

Bridgend does have a life on its own beyond fact, but the narrative it offers in place of the headlines only further proves how phenomena like adolescence and death is better observed, not investigated.

Jagged rides the wave of that excitement, but avoids opportunities to explore deeper below the surface.

It’s an earnest, defiantly women-centric film that maintains a generally positive attitude about the future, albeit also one that feels a little less observational, a little more heavy-handed and prescriptive than the fiercely authentic Wadjda.

It took a second screening to better appreciate what the Zellners brought to the screen, but for some, that might not be enough to get past some of the movie’s weirder notes.

In the end, it feels like Morano didn’t trust her actors quite enough to be the conduits of emotion, falling back on too many filmmaking and screenwriting tropes that hamper the realism of their work.

The Lonely Island brand of humor might at first seem like an awkward fit for horror, but there’s an art to the timing of a well-done splatter flick that shares filmmaking DNA with comedy.

There are some wonderful sequences in Battle of the Five Armies, and the attention to detail is breathtaking (each different space rendered with thrilling complexity), but the film feels more like a long drawn-out closing paragraph rather than (like "The Desolation of Smaug") a vibrant stand-alone piece of the story.

The overall experience of “The Empire” is one that is consistently surprising and rarely dull. That being said, it’s not necessarily successful as a comedy.

Archive is a somewhat unwieldy sci-fi thriller to get into. The plot twists are many, and so are the cliches.

True to form, Hacksaw Ridge draws equally on Gibson's bottomless thirst for mayhem and his sincerely held religious beliefs — or some of them, anyway. It's a movie at war with itself.

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.

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.