You Resemble Me is at its strongest when it tries to humanize its misunderstood central figure in simple, intimate ways.

This is a sensitively made film that’s pretty frustrating. In the tradition of some vintage Italian films that got gathered under the rubric of Neo-Realism, it gives you a character to root for and then places her between a rock and a hard place with no cavalry coming to the rescue.

Toxic behavior is eternal, and Evil Eye sincerely depicts both those who do not recognize it, and those who are all too familiar with it.

The artful parallels that director Chan Tze Woon draws between contemporary and now middle-aged pro-democratic Hong Kong protesters often seem insubstantial given the movie’s thinly drawn narrative of historic events.

As Ruskin, Thompson’s real-life husband Greg Wise looks exactly like surviving photographs of the man he is playing: handsome, gloomy, lofty, and a little blank and bland.

Thankfully, there’s enough affection and charm in the movie’s first half to keep Teenage Badass running on fumes most of the way home.

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey illustrates a principle endorsed by many legendary directors: Casting the right leads will get you ninety percent of the way to success.

Too many times the characters in this movie sprint across the line separating quirky charm from know-somethingish affectation, and then stay on the wrong side of it.

Whittaker’s performance finds a balance between the tragic and comic scenarios her character experiences.

So while Clover may not be original, it is pretty watchable.

The gory, but weirdly blasé Russian black comedy Why Don’t You Just Die! feels like a gross exercise in style that’s also a passable tribute to Jim Thompson’s bleakly hilarious crime novels, and a brain-dead critique of post-Soviet consumerism.

Despite its lack of originality, as well as its lackadaisical storytelling and world building, it satisfies in that amiably weird way that only a "Cars" film can.

I got more enjoyment from reading Parlow’s exceptional interview in the production notes than I did from any given scene in the movie, some of which are so murky, they border on incoherent.

The action may be serious, but Brick Mansions doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s a ridiculous movie that has the decency to acknowledge that it’s ridiculous.

Crawl has a reptilian bite in its nods to the tradition of underwater monster flicks. It’s certainly not “Jaws” (what is?), or even “The Shallows,” but sloshing around the hazardous deluge of a Southwest Florida town on the brink of devastation by a Category 5 hurricane comes with its own kicks.

It mostly feels like a very long pilot for a Netflix show that would go to series, build a modest but loyal following, then get canceled after two seasons so the streamer doesn’t have to give everyone a raise for going to three. But there's loads of talent in it.

The movie is certainly colorful — this is a guy who, when he had it made, lived VERY large, even if he continued on what seemed like a quest to break every bone in his body multiple times. And it tells, as it keeps reminding us, a very American story. For all that, though, it doesn’t illuminate the guy’s character beyond what’s obvious.

Frustrating in its repetitiveness, Leon’s third feature is like a narrative exercise fascinated by both memory and youth. Italian Studies relentlessly experiments with form, but fails to fully congeal.

Dreibergs excels with his measured but immersive set pieces—like one that unravels in a snowy landscape at night, best exemplifying his directorial brawn.

With these two top-drawer talents anchoring Michael Engler’s The Chaperone, one expects the picture to be terrific, and for the majority of its running time, it does not disappoint.

It isn’t necessarily bad, per se, and it contains just enough in the way of intriguing elements to more or less hold one’s interest for its running time. However, Next Exit never shifts into a higher dramatic gear at any point, and it concludes on a note that is more than a bit unsatisfying.

The signal virtue of For No Good Reason, a documentary about Steadman, is that it puts a lot of that work up on the big screen to galvanic effect.

Shock and Awe reminds us all of this, and of the American media’s shameful complicity in fomenting an unjustified and vastly destructive war.

Everything about the romantic comedy What If is cute. Utterly cute. Undeniably cute. Uber–duber cute.

The material meant to beef up this story is so bland and underdeveloped it makes Renfield feel like a sketch concept stretched thin to feature length.

Regardless of its missteps, Grossman’s film should be seen as a necessary introduction to a multitude of stories warranting greater analysis.

With beautiful cinematography and quiet, contemplative performances, there’s no denying how captivating The Delinquents is at the outset. But as the film progresses, it seems to lose sight of itself. Even with a runtime that exceeds three hours, the ideas and characters explored in The Delinquents are incomplete.

And yet, while it does not really work — at least not enough to warrant a full recommendation — it is one of those films where some of the stuff that did work was good enough to inspire me to hold out hope practically right up to the closing moments that it would all somehow all pay off in the end.