It all goes down easily thanks to a terrific cast.

The film delivers a compelling portrait of the complicated issues involved.

The earnest doc offers enough spirit-lifting moments to prove its thesis and leave viewers inspired.

The maverick Japanese writer-director-actor known for his vicious set-pieces and macabre sense of humor eventually delivers some lip-smacking pleasures in the slow-ignition yakuza thriller Outrage Beyond.

Xue’s second feature is an exemplar of commercial filmmaking, and production help from a handful of Hong Kong pros (in editing, costume design, cinematography) give it the polished finish the fluffy material demands.

A return to form for John Sayles.

It would be hard to find two more contrasting actresses than Otto and Pires, but Barreto plays off their differences in culture and personality.

Jillian Schlesinger’s first feature, made in collaboration with Dekker and composed largely of footage that the hardy adventurer shot herself, is both low-key and lyrical as it focuses on the mundane and the magnificent.

Ever-curious, self-deprecating about occasions in which his fumbling English keeps him from making questions clear, Gondry works with sweet earnestness to understand his subject and convey that understanding to us.

The central performances by Emile Hirsch and Stephen Dorff hold the film together with the intensity of their brotherly affection and support.

Documenting the 2010 journey in somewhat haphazard but always compelling fashion, Pad Yatra: A Green Odyssey well reflects its subjects’ goal of merging spirituality and environmentalism.

Crucially, Jung and Boileau manage to convey the bonds of affection and love that hold this unusual family together, in a manner that will ring a moving chord with many who have experienced similar circumstances.

Craig Lahiff’s feisty genre outing is a neat surprise.

A quietly effective thriller with a few clever narrative tricks up its sleeve.

The filmmaker, who co-founded ADI with his wife Jan Creamer, documents the dramatic developments in compelling cinema verite fashion.

Gori Tere Pyaar Mein’s characters are so engaging, and the stars complement each other so well, that it’s easy to overlook the film’s faults and wish the best for them.

Weekend of a Champion begins as a motorsports movie but ends up a portrait of two wily elder statesmen who have survived into their seventies by skill, stealth and sheer luck.

Director Matthew Vaughn strikes an energetic balance between cartoonish action and character-driven drama... The mix grows less seamless and the story loses oomph as it barrels toward its doomsday countdown, but the cast’s dash and humor never flag.

It’s a relief to report that the final film is actually quite charming, thoughtful and as cuddly as a plush toy, albeit one with a few modern gizmos thrown in.

The doc happily devotes most of its time to a stylish, energetic account of Hanna's career to date and the impact it has had on a generation of women.

Although a bit too leisurely and featuring a few too many interminable group therapy scenes, the film nonetheless succeeds in packing considerable dramatic impact thanks to its incisive characterizations, realistic dialogue and well-drawn milieu.

A compact, effective thriller set in way-rural Ireland, Jeremy Lovering's In Fear makes the most of three actors, a car and a network of narrow roads winding through the woods.

Insidious co-creator Leigh Whannell’s economical script vividly reimagines Elise’s motivations for using her “gift” to aid the demon-afflicted while providing a clearer plotline that avoids many of the convoluted indulgences of the first and second episodes.

The Purge: Anarchy efficiently exploits its high-concept premise while delivering far more visceral thrills than its predecessor.

This carefully-crafted tale of collective psychosis, satanic ritual abuse and pseudo-science, starring Ethan Hawke and Emma Watson, is satisfying as a compact, if over-cautious, horror-tinged psychological thriller. But it's most interesting beneath its polished, doomy surface, where complex concerns about the cultural origins of our fears are skillfully explored.

Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case is a professional, straightforward example of the behind-the-headlines sub-genre, executed in slick high-toned digital video and eschewing the soundtrack music so ubiquitous in documentaries nowadays.

You laugh in spite of yourself in This Is Where I Leave You, a potty-mouthed comedy with enough exasperation, aggravations, long-standing grievances and get-me-outta-here moments of family stress to strike a chord with anyone who’s ever had to endure large clan gatherings that might have lasted a bit too long.

In his most effective full star turn in perhaps a decade, Kevin Costner dominates as the greenhorn general manager of the beleaguered Cleveland Browns.

Melfi comes up with any number of good and effective scenes and there’s plenty to enjoy in the performances.

At its best, the movie achieves a broody dazzle, even as the narrative proves less memorable than one would have hoped. But the fluency of Mann’s direction and the slow-burn chemistry between Chris Hemsworth and Tang Wei counterbalance the more ordinary, and not always involving, procedural elements.

A delightfully old-fashioned kid’s flick with a meaningful message.

An affecting drama made more poignant by honest-feeling autobiographical elements.

Gina Prince-Bythewood’s entertaining music-biz melodrama is no less satisfying for the familiarity of its soapy trajectory.

It makes savvy use of the well-worn found-footage format, modulating its creepy scenario with considerable skill.

Adapting their highly successful stage version to the screen with keen comic-timing but much less cinematic panache, Mathieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patelliere offer up a lively take on love, friendship and baby-naming.

Journey to the West may not rank among Chow’s classics, but it’s a crowd-pleaser that also serves as a reminder of what the director can accomplish when he’s on his game.

The young Spanish director Eugenio Mira and his American screenwriter Damien Chazelle have fun paying homage to the pulpy potboilers of yesteryear.

The tone veers into film-fan geekery in places, but Jodorowsky is such a natural showman and irrepressible egotist that his ancient anecdotes never become tedious.

Only fitfully does the film manage the kind of lift-off as that achieved by Pynchon's often riotous 2009 novel and, most disappointingly, it offers only a pale and narrow physical recreation of such a vibrant place and time.

Renner appears completely immersed in his role and when the clouds of doubt accumulate and the man becomes a professional pariah, it's a painful thing to see.

Like his erratic protagonist, Gilroy doesn’t always know when to settle down or call it quits, and the film’s constant shifts of tone can grow tiring, even if the action as a whole never gets boring.

No one who sees the film will feel it breaks any new ground, but as a cinematic equivalent of comfort food, it goes down easily.

A cinematic hangout with a playfully prickly but very sympathetic subject, affording us a chance to sit at his feet while sampling a body of work that impresses on many levels.

Given the challenge of solving a problem like Bathsheba, Mulligan succeeds, more than Christie did, in providing an answer.

Allowing its subjects to bare their souls as much as their bodies, Exposed is as frequently moving as it is entertaining.

The city isn't the star of the film, nor is Lehane's excellent dialogue, and neither is Roskam, here making a sure-footed jump to America after his Belgian debut Bullhead. The picture belongs to Tom Hardy, whose astonishingly sensitive performance even the great James Gandolfini steps gently around.

It is a strange cross-breed between an old-fashioned WWII epic full of genre cliches and a modern update whose meticulous historical recreation is frighteningly real.

Director Won Shin-yun delivers a seemingly non-stop series of exciting set pieces that are only slightly marred by occasional visual incoherence.

Dominating it all is Cumberbatch, whose charisma, tellingly modulated and naturalistic array of eccentricities, Sherlockian talent at indicating a mind never at rest and knack for simultaneously portraying physical oddness and attractiveness combine to create an entirely credible portrait of genius at work.

The story is a jigsaw puzzle in which all the pieces are of an indistinguishable gray, making fitting them together a tricky matter.

Binoche and Stewart seem so natural and life-like that it would be tempting to suggest that they are playing characters very close to themselves. But this would also be denigrating and condescending, as if to suggest that they’re not really acting at all.

Facing the physical challenges of depicting Hawking’s disability, Redmayne pulls it off with enormous grace and endurance.

The picture is deeply weird, with an entrancement factor almost entirely dependent on the performance of Michael Parks.

A great true story is telescoped down to a merely good one in Unbroken. After a dynamite first half-hour, Angelina Jolie's accomplished second outing as a director slowly looses steam.

On his first trip behind the camera, the British-Iranian Amini shows his skill at working with actors and sensing the way they can fill out literary characters. His screenplay generally feels more naturalistic than Highsmith, the dialogue less spare.

A more mature work from actor-director-producer Zach Braff that feels like a Garden State for grown-ups.

Abu-Assad and his cinematographer Ehab Assal have every shot under control and rarely need to go overboard to convey a strong emotion.

Simien intensifies the impact of both action and dialogue with a self-reflexive directorial style that creates a marginally heightened sense of reality, revealing more about characters' motivations than would conventionally be expected.

Engaging characters and the persistent appeal of dinosaurs benefit the doc, whose Byzantine legal content might otherwise be off-putting.

Always interesting, frequently explosive, but also sprawling and unfocused.

Swanberg's modest script lays out some fairly mundane domestic situations, which the actors elevate with a collaborative style characterized by gentle humor and authentic, frequently overlapping dialogue.

More structure and polish doesn't keep Lynn Shelton's latest from being recognizably hers.

Technically and in his work with actors, Philip represents a great leap forward for Perry; a subsequent jump might involve presenting a central character with whom viewers could legitimately engage.

The film’s combination of psychological drama -- cue the childhood trauma -- with blood-splattered limb-cutting, talking heads in the fridge and talking pets on the couch is a risky one that finally works because Perry and Satrapi find the right tonal mixture for the material.

The film succeeds in that it provides a more vivid sense of this sort of 19th century childhood -- and Lincoln’s youth in particular -- than most people would have had before.

Genre comparisons aside, the expert timing and clever setups that were exhilaratingly employed in You’re Next are mostly absent here... Fortunately Barrett and Wingard haven’t lost their ironically humorous touch, as most of the film’s uneasy laughs revolve around upending typical thriller expectations.

Kikuchi manages to make Kumiko interesting company no matter how far the character recedes into herself, using subtly expressive body language that would have been at home in silent movies to create a very strange self-imposed social outcast.

The film comes off as more of a succession of self-contained comedic vignettes than as an incisive portrait of a woman vainly trying to have it all. But Plumb’s plucky, eccentric character is so winning that you find yourself rooting for her nonetheless.

What is most endearing is the delicacy with which writer-director Ritesh Batra reveals the hopes, sorrows, regrets and fears of everyday people without any sign of condescension or narrative trickery.

Enjoyable heist pic is more talk than action.

The film's impact is greatly enhanced by the superb performances by the young lead actors who handle their characters’ complexities with impressive skill.

Meyer and Luke Matheny's script is full of the kind of nit-picky detail one hears when birders converse, and milks some life lessons out of philosophical differences between "listers" and "watchers."

[A] sleekly assembled and intriguing if clearly very commercial proposition.

A delightfully unforced comedy with a sure grasp of character and setting.

Despite its occasional missteps, the film relates its important and sadly too-little-known story with skill and efficiency.

Finely acted and minutely observed, Ilo Ilo certainly has the texture of real life. The performances feel authentic, the emotional shadings agreeably nuanced.

The story's conclusion benefits from a closure that is satisfying despite — and even because of — its predictability.

Almost all of the performances achieve perfect pitch. This is a tribute to Lundgren’s direction, and he also makes excellent use of the serene Oregon locations.

Vitthal realizes the virtues of keeping things simple, minimizing the complexity of shots and editing to keep the focus on the characters, which constitute the strongest component of the film.

Land Ho! is appealing for not going the route of easy gags and dumbed-down humor.

However off-putting this fragmentary approach might be for those who'd prefer a clean chronology of important works and their assimilation into academic histories of art, it's clear by the end that the aesthetic fits the subject like a glove.

Ingrid’s complex and flawed psyche finally does come into view in the home stretch but it feels like Vogt’s kept his narrative cards too close to his chest for too long. It’s a shame, especially because Petersen (Troubled Water) is terrific in a very tricky role.

Mitt humanizes a man who was never nearly as good with his target audience as he was with his family.

The greatest strengths of the film clearly come from Green’s novel, which resolutely refuses to become a cliched cancer drama, creating instead two vibrant, believable young characters.

Always commanding attention at the film’s center is Pearce, who, under a taciturn demeanor, gives Eric all the cold-hearted remorselessness of a classic Western or film noir anti-hero who refuses to die before exacting vengeance for an unpardonable crime.

Some years from now, Starred Up, a rough, violent and, to American ears, half-indecipherable British prison drama, will be remembered as the film that announced a new star, Jack O’Connell.

The movie contributes nothing new to the genre, but disbelief is suspended willingly enough once the action gets up to speed.

Credit a youthful, energetic spirit, nicely conveyed by its cast of naturally-acting newcomers, a workable raw-footage construct and a spare but smartly spent special effects budget for the satisfying end result.

So much better than one would expect for a fifth installment in a franchise, this tribute to female friendship and girl power is a kick.

Though the screenplay, based on Laurence Benaim’s biography, is all build-up and no payoff, there is just enough emotional insight to compensate for the lack of narrative fireworks in the last half-hour.

If the plotting was only more coherent and audience-friendly and the story-telling more disciplined, the film's extraordinarily complex atmosphere would be irresistible.

Less a rock-doc than a surprisingly affecting look at sibling dynamics in a creative family where one brother is vastly more successful than the other.

Sadly believable and benefiting from an unshowy performance by first-timer Gina Piersanti, it will have many viewers eager to see what Hittman does next.

Director Mulcahy's fast-moving dynamic, aided by cinematographer Stephen H. Burum's rhythmic shots, editor Peter Honess' zesty punctuation and composer Jerry Goldsmith's titanic score, brings necessary bulk to The Shadow's surface dimension. [01 Jul 1994]

Much like its characters' romantic lives, How to Be Single is more enjoyable when it's being casual.

Keeping the creepy/kooky mix entertainingly intact, Goosebumps translates R.L. Stine’s frighteningly successful young adult horror fiction series to the big screen with lively, teen Ghostbusters-type results.

An impressively mature directing debut from Italian actress Valeria Golino, who crafts an often engrossing character study around an assisted suicide activist.

Displaying a rare inventiveness and technical facility in this increasingly tired, cliché-ridden format, Afflicted delivers a genuinely suspenseful ride while making you wonder how its more elaborate effects were achieved on its obviously low budget.