Blow the Man Down isn’t an earth-shaker, but it’s a small pleasure that makes you wish for more from its filmmakers, and soon.

Human Capital is so exquisitely cast, down to the smallest role, that it puts viewers in the unusual position of wishing a film were a TV series or a much longer movie, the better to take advantage of its best assets.

If this material were compiled into a book, it would be rightfully deemed great literature. As featured in Heise’s film, however, these insightful words are frequently marred by a style oddly akin to a mournful podcast, one that requires listeners to repeatedly peer at their phone to read the subtitles.

Even when Big Time Adolescence starts to become ordinary, it always has a freshness from its on-screen talent, and from the promise of Orley’s directorial eye.

Much of the movie is dedicated to the hard science behind the discovery of CRISPRs that has opened a whole new Pandora’s Box of possibilities both terrible and great, but I wish there were more of the human element in Human Nature.

Pegg and Temple’s responsive, well-attuned performances are actually the most frustrating things about Lost Transmissions since they’re good enough to make you want to care, even when their characters don’t seem to be worth caring about.

Fanning delivers a performance of such astonishing depth and emotional range that her presence here is both a relief and strangely frustrating, since the film that surrounds the young actor is sadly no match for the qualities she brings to Potter’s profoundly personal narrative.

The most noticeable influence is “Universal Soldier,” a film that shares so many plot elements that Bloodshot can be classified as a blatant rip-off. That movie spawned three sequels; I can only hope Bloodshot’s bloodline ends here.

The best thing about Stargirl is that Big Star's yearning ode to adolescence "Thirteen" is played in its entirety not once, but twice. If Stargirl introduces a new generation to the wonder that is Big Star, it will have done more than enough.

No matter, after much sound and fury the movie is more of a molehill than a mountain. Betty Gilpin deserves better and so do we.

Clumsy in its second act with its humdrum dialogue wedged between an alluring first act and a hasty third act. With such a ripe opportunity to explore the contentious relationship between our ability to fabricate both art and love, the film is a seductive noir that, as a whole, comes up empty.

There is a warmth to this film, an easy charm, that comes from a script aware of the genre conventions with which it’s experimenting and from a cast willing to jump headfirst into whatever surrealism is required.

With The Wild Goose Lake, Yinan signals the makings of a major filmmaker. Perhaps the world he creates is a bit too scattered for its own good, but you will still want to melt inside its stunning, riotous glow.

A drama that’s tastefully restrained to a fault in a particularly British manner.

Throughout the film, Ford’s behavior, which should be in the foreground of this story, seems to curiously fade to the back.

An insipid buddy-cop mystery that feels like a forgotten artifact of the 1980s.

The Banker remains only serviceable.

Swallow draws on how feminine perfection can so often be associated with self-destructive behavior.

The movie is potent with rage from end-to-end.

First Cow, adapted by Reichardt with frequent collaborator Jonathan Raymond from the latter’s novel "The Half Life," is many things. A simultaneously gentle and unsparing dissection of the formative flaws of capitalism, and thus of the “American dream”; a frontier story which captures the harsh realities and simple pleasures of a life built painstakingly from rock, wood, and soil; a heist movie; an argument for the power of baked goods.

The pacing is so jarring that the emotional payoff doesn’t develop as intended. And the overall irony, of course, is that this is a movie about the need for magic that could have used a little more of the stuff itself. But if it makes you think of your mom and dad fondly, even for a moment, well at least that’s something.

This is what movies can do, at their best, draw you out of yourself in spite of yourself.

Beautifully performed with searing honesty and naturalism by the entire cast, the one reassuring note is that sometimes someone like Loach is there to make sure that stories like these, people like these, are not missed, but seen.

An assured and refreshing first feature from writer/director/star James Sweeney. With the rhythms and conventions of a traditional romantic comedy, it is refreshingly unconventional in form and content, boasting a sharp script and a gift for cinematic storytelling.

Allowing the viewer to piece things together on their own is always welcome, but the film’s desire to surprise and outwit makes it contrived.

There are elements here, most of them embedded in another great physical performance from Garret Hedlund, that keep Burden from completely sinking into the Carolina mud.

Never as fun as it should be, despite a gripping central crime.

It's truly refreshing to watch a film where nobody has anything figured out, where life proceeds messily and imperfectly. Saint Frances is unpredictable in a very human way.