Even for how negatively I responded to the bafflingly inept Marauders, I choose to believe that Miller and his overly talented cast didn’t just do it for a paycheck. Even with that in mind, it’s hard to forgive.

While White’s direction is atmospheric, the sense of tension never gets crucial; the movie’s got more of a mood of resignation than of conflict. For all its respectful and respectable qualities, it also suffers from a certain inertia.

Carnage Park is an extremely empty experience.

Veteran French director Anne Fontaine approaches a spiritually and emotionally complex real-life slice of history with deftness and understated drama in The Innocents.

Powerful and emotional, without being manipulative. It is deeply inspiring, without trying to be. It is honest about Owen's struggles, and the struggles of his family.

Every few seconds there's an image that delights for delight's sake.

There's nothing specific, thoughtful or emotionally involving about Election Night beyond a basic need to push buttons, and get a rise out of viewers. The good guys are actually bad, and the bad guys are too indistinct to be hateful. Vote with your wallets, and go see something else.

For what it's worth, The Legend of Tarzan is several unpretentious cuts above the pompous, leaden "Greystoke" of over thirty years ago.

It’s just dull and hollow — a massive waste of time and money. The characters are flimsy, the dialogue is stilted and the amount of destruction is ridiculous.

The only reason it’s not unbearably saccharine is that Paul Rudd, again, grounds a film in something that feels genuine. He’s never an actor that comes across forced, and he does his best to find the truth in Burnett’s overwritten script.

There’s a lot more nonsense here, all of which starts out intriguingly before overstaying its welcome.

The movie is pedantic, humorless, dry — all of the things that, as it happens, “The Searchers” is not.

The result is another vacuous melodrama/thriller that doesn’t lay a glove on the era’s historical complexities.

A welcome surprise for sports cinema, The Phenom handles itself like Robert Redford's "Ordinary People" when exploring the psychology of a Lebron James or Johnny Manziel-like sports sensation.

If all I saw was the first half, I would have given it a shrug and left in a semi-foul mood. But the whole is greater for being two parts in this case, making me glad that I have finally lost my Hong Sang-soo virginity.

Best of all: you don't have to wait until a concluding set piece for To to prove his prowess as a storyteller.

As inherently astonishing and powerful as this little-known episode is, it has not been well-served by Ross’ lumpy, ill-conceived script, which ends up wasting Matthew McConaughey’s terrific lead performance and other strong acting contributions.

With all its humor (and there is a ton), Wiener-Dog, following the journey of a dachshund as it is shuffled from owner to owner, is one of Solondz's sharpest visions of futility.

Waititi’s film defies its convention through grounded characters, witty dialogue, compassionate filmmaking and inventive storytelling. Hunt for the Wilderpeople is consistently clever and even moving. It’s proof that we’ll keep listening to the familiar stories if they’re this well-told.

The Daniels have made a film that's at once a labor of love and a work of sheer arrogant nerve, one that is as likely to be described as a classic, an ambitious misfire, and one of the worst films ever made by any three people who see it together. How many movies can you say that about?

The most striking part of Nuts! is its extensive use of animation.

The Neon Demon only works when Refn finds the right middle ground between obliquely hinting at and explicitly spelling out what his movie's about.

Lively is superb here, giving one of those hyper-focused, action-lead performances that's as much an athletic feat as an aesthetic one.

Parched is a filmmaker’s attempt to understand how and why these women continue to live.

The episodic narrative of Seoul Searching can be too long and unfocused, but its stubbornness comes from filmmaking that is overflowing with self-pride.

While Clown is far from the disastrous misfire that typically stains VOD horror movies (most range from awful to “I never want to see a movie again”), it comes apart about halfway through, losing a very difficult tonal balance. Having said that, there’s more to like here than the studio burial would have you believe.

Feels like it probably began life as a one-act play, set almost entirely in Lucy’s living room and with a small cast of characters. It has that feeling of a piece that needed a bit more workshopping to discern its purpose and, like a lot of independent cinema that feels like it has theatrical origins, never becomes convincingly cinematic.

The film rarely comes to life because Rollins, the only compelling actor in the otherwise amateurish cast, is underutilized, and virtually everything else underdeveloped.