Perhaps fittingly, part of the problem with Everyday is that it’s too short, both in micro and macro terms. Ninety-odd minutes isn’t long enough to make the full weight of the elapsed time register.

What makes it effective isn’t the facts of the case, so much as the way Philomena lets viewers spend time with its characters and get to know exactly who’s getting hurt.

Delivery Man has sentiment and affability embedded in its DNA, but Scott and Vaughn don’t do enough to nurture the film to its full potential.

It’s a pleasure just to spend 85 minutes looking at Corbijn’s photos and videos, but as a character sketch (which is really all this documentary is), Inside Out is, perhaps appropriately, pretty spare.

Narco Cultura makes it abundantly, forcefully clear that the illicit business of narcocorridos thrives on the illicit business of cartels—and business is still booming.

Even though Gondry and Chomsky’s very different sensibilities don’t mesh in such a way that either man’s work gains substantially from the alliance, they’re each such good company individually that Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy? is still entertaining.

The movie seems regressively punitive, to the point where it arguably qualifies as slut-shaming.

It’s not just bigger, it’s better, and it bodes well for the future of the series, if not necessarily of its unlucky protagonist.

The Book Thief crams story after story into such a small space that it can’t realize any of them in depth.

Freely adapted from Goethe’s two-part play, Sokurov’s Faust is a work of crushing tedium, relieved only by the spare moments of beauty that pop out like dandelions in a washed-out landscape of oppression and grotesquerie.

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.

Occasionally entertaining but rarely memorable, 12-12-12 never goes beyond the level of a really good bonus feature on a special-edition concert CD.

Charlie Countryman feels like the cinematic equivalent of a dodgy first novel, the kind authors write when they’re young and full of romance, hubris, and pretension—then look back on later in life with something approaching mortification.

Too much of Dear Mr. Watterson is taken up by Schroeder and an array of non-professional C&H-lovers offering vague praise, with little to no real analysis—aesthetic, historical, or cultural.

It feels like 100 minutes of arch nudges, a highlight reel from Politicians Say The Darndest Things. Political junkies may find that appealing, but for more general viewers, the film—like Rick Santorum’s campaign—feels largely irrelevant.

Little beyond Servillo’s presence gives the film any ballast, which is both asset and liability, freeing Sorrentino to pepper the screen with wild setpieces and fits of inspiration while encouraging a certain shapelessness.

Nebraska is one of Payne’s best films, a near-perfect amalgam of the acrid humor, great local color, and stirring resonances that run through his work.

Cold Turkey is well-acted, and at times even well-observed, but about 20 minutes of the material actually matters, and the rest is mere putter.

At times, it’s hard to imagine how a real, physical visit to a Kabakov exhibit could improve upon Wallach’s film, which plays like the world’s trippiest docent.

As the rare overlap between music doc and advocacy piece, Musicwood is hopeful about a relatively unsung issue without necessarily being naïve.

As in Hoop Dreams, troubles at home raise the stakes hugely on the court, though the dream here is far more modest: to slake their thirst for just one victory, and to know, for once, what winning feels like. Their pursuit of this elusive goal gives Medora a strong narrative through-line, but Cohn and Rothbart cling to it too fervently.

Birth Of The Living Dead excels in Kuhns’ gathering of critics, academics, and filmmakers to analyze how and why the film works so well.

Paris Countdown has style to burn, where “style” means “uses lots of lighting gels and some camera flourishes,” but it doesn’t have a coherent point of view or a solid take on the genre.

Newell brings the tale a brisk touch, avoiding the fate of Victorian costume epics bloated by too much window-dressing.

Part of the point may be how trauma simplifies life by stripping away everything inessential, but just as there’s little satisfaction in watching Daisy pursue an unworthy goal, there’s little satisfaction in watching a specific, colorful, keenly felt portrait become such a familiar story.

As contemporary romantic comedies go, it’s by no means an embarrassment, ranging from politely bland at its worst to very nearly inspired at its best. It could have been so much more, though, had its makers been prepared to grapple with the genuinely thorny, surprisingly incisive idea at the movie’s center.

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.

What is successful, and suggests a promising future for the Polsky brothers as directors, is the film’s central relationship, which never feels less than genuine.