Marquardt hasn’t thought of a unique take on this predictable scenario, she’s merely done an expert job of disguising it. Still, the first half does function as a impressive showcase for her formal chops, as well as for Bloom’s gorgeously empathetic performance.

For every element that doesn’t work...there’s a moment that crackles with electricity and conviction.

Fowler is not a terribly charismatic subject, but the matter-of-fact manner in which he delivers important information and the stunning depth of his knowledge compensates, as does the steady way in which McLeod reveals pertinent personal details about his life and work.

It’s a story of utopia ruined by evil Israeli oppressors, and though that’s certainly accurate on some level, the film simply doesn’t go into enough detail, or question the interviewees’ rose-tinted nostalgia.

There’s a context to Struzan—not just biographically, but culturally—and while Sharkey seems to understand that, his movie, ironically, doesn’t illustrate it particularly well.

Unbroken just piles on the misery without tonal shift, any sense of rise and fall, or any interest in Zamperini’s inner life, beyond his catchphrase, “If you can take it, you can make it.”

Torn’s sometimes-stodgy dramatics give way to a genuinely unsettling microcosm of modern terrorism.

Despite strenuous efforts, 24 Days fails to make the case that Halimi would be alive now had the anti-Semitism of his abductors been properly recognized. And since that’s the film’s sole reason for existence, there’s not much else to say.

The Best Man Holiday alternates smoothly between raucous comedy and soap opera for a solid hour... Yet the balance begins to tip toward leaden melodrama in the crazily overloaded third act, which speeds past the line separating crowd-pleasing from crowd-pandering.

The ideas are admirably heady, and Phang, making just her second feature (after 2008’s little-seen Half-Life), demonstrates a sure hand with both her imaginative milieu and her cast.

At 144 minutes, Five Armies is the shortest and the least bloated and discursive of the Hobbit films. It’s also the one that relies least on filler material and extra character business, and the one that most earns its moments of outsized, dire drama.

The film falls apart once its mysteries dissipate. With them go all the dark ambiguities that colored the first hour.

Champs dances around the ring when it should be punching.

The film retains much of what worked about the first film, and it brings a similarly smart, patient, visually striking approach to the gags.

John Sayles’ Go For Sisters is his best film in more than a decade, and feels like one he could’ve made in the 1980s. It’s a small picture, simply presented, and exists outside of current trends—which isn’t always to its benefit.

The film respects its cartoon roots, but never its audience.

The Railway Man is such a safe, respectful portrait of true-life catharsis that it feels afraid to reopen the same old wounds it exalts Lomax for confronting.

There’s a lot going on in this movie. But all that texture turns out to be a virtue.

The makeup is really all there is to look at—visually speaking, the film is aggressively uninteresting. But beyond all Dead Snow 2’s flaws, it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that it has undead soldiers in Soviet and Nazi uniforms straight-up swinging pickaxes at each other.

It’s a mash-up of familiar genre elements—too familiar, frankly—given a welcome sense of scope and shading by the location.

In the end, it’s Salvo itself that’s murky and obscure.

Park’s pristine framing and yen for extreme violence give Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance the pop of a graphic novel, but there are times when his point about the poisonous nature of revenge is eclipsed by stylized torture and sadism for its own sake.

At its best, Running From Crazy is a powerful portrait of a woman who’s wrested control of her life by understanding the patterns her relatives fell into, and consciously breaking them.

It’s fun, but it’s ultimately more of the same in brand-new packaging.

The film’s engine stalls from time to time, but it never dies—much like the city it’s set in.

Ultimately, the filmmakers are more interested in congratulating Occupy for taking a stand than in shedding light on its fascinating infrastructure and backstory, as though a protest’s existence automatically spells victory for its cause.

Unfortunately, as with so many social-survey documentaries, the film’s macro view comes at the expense of any microcosmic depth.

Night Of The Comet borrows freely from everything from The Omega Man to Romero’s zombie films to Repo Man, but it never borrows so heavily as to feel like a rip-off of anything.