With some excellent staging, fine cinematography and first-rate acting, the film largely overcomes the awe it demonstrates for its principal character and succeeds in creating a mystery where perhaps there is none.

Jimenez makes a youthful film about sex, lies and literature that has the awkward charm of first love.

Though not every moment is fascinating to watch, most moments are, and adult audiences should find its frank presentation of the diversity of intimacy thought-provoking and possibly therapeutic.

An extraordinary and quietly disturbing film.

Batra turns a story that sounds tired and goofy into a lovely film with a tone of tender sadness.

Director Parkinson has lived with this story for so long now that he knows exactly how to ratchet up the tension and manages to make the action visually compelling even though much of it takes place in dark and murky underwater conditions.

While the film occasionally stretches credibility and is also rather schematic in its characterizations, it tells its tale with skill and economy, and its observations about consumerist Israeli society are critically insightful without being overdone.

It’s a must-see for anyone interested in the mind of a major auteur, even if Thomsen tends to favor psychology over cinema.

It all feels like the film is setting up for nested tales within tales, but instead the layers don’t go that deep. Nor does the film offer up much in the way of thematic substance beyond love (between women) is grand, men are mostly bad, and matriarchal societies are better than patriarchies.

Proves to be an engrossing and entertaining polemic that successfully walks a fine line between thoughtful debate and, well, juicy gossip.

You could point a camera just about anywhere at Comic-Con and record something weird, amazing, funny, stupid or all of the above.

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.

In the revisionist Marie Antoinette, writer-director Sofia Coppola and actress Kirsten Dunst take a remote and no doubt misunderstood historical figure, the controversial and often despised Queen of France at the time of the French Revolution, and brings her into sharp focus as a living, breathing human being with flaws, foibles, passions, intelligence and warm affections.

Other than the actors, their costumes, and a few props, everything in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is digital illusion, and the effects are often exhilarating.

A one-note, lightweight, condescending comedy about the rubes of Idaho.

Perhaps if the film was more polished, and had some added depth, it might feel more substantial. As is, Hanging by a Wire is a gripping story not told thoroughly enough.

Mumblecore meets Arthur Conan Doyle in the ambitious, if not always satisfying, Cold Weather.

It is, at least in its closing hour, a moving dramatization of maternal feelings.

Irrepressibly inventive and often impulsively unrestrained, Emily Cohn’s CRSHD guilelessly celebrates digital youth culture and its sometimes messy inconsistency with abundant energy and attitude.

The surprise of Suffragette is how much anger and urgency it contains, and how much new material it unearths.

This mostly competent but largely uninteresting, bordering-on-silly work upholds the Allen tradition of just carrying on as usual

The drive to keep alive the name of a young American woman who died beneath a U.S.-made bulldozer driven by an Israeli soldier in Palestine continues in Simone Bitton's sober documentary Rachel.

Using a wide-ranging color palette that shifts from the warmer hues of the Sahara desert to the colder, sadder blues and grays of old-time Paris, Lie and his team provide a pared-down animation technique that recalls classic Disney, albeit with a rougher, at times abstract touch.

While the director unleashes his taut action sequences like clockwork, he's less deft in handling the characterizations and the decade-leaping plot, which seems designed to provide the film with some historical weight.

An engrossing real-life adventure that brings much-needed attention to an important environmental issue.

Patterson makes the most of his access to the two musicians, shooting on the run as often as sitting down for interviews with key participants in the presidential contest.

I Am Bolt presents a dynamic, consistently engaging portrait of the mediagenic track star, and even if it’s sometimes too laudatory, there are also many moments of heartfelt sentiment throughout the film.

An amiable if hardly unusual buddy pic.

Credit to co-writer and director Marc Rocco for the film's consistently high-level performances. Mulroney and Boyle scrounge up all the right emotions and insecurities in their street couple portrayals, while Astin is particularly terrific as a pathetic, downsliding junkie. [14 Jan 1992]

What it lacks, however, is a gripping and original plot, as well as enough dazzling set pieces to make all the late exposition worthwhile.

Sunshine is its own creature, taking inspiration from classic science fiction films but insisting on a gritty reality that much improves on past space adventures.

As the stakes are heightened, the filmmakers too often short-change dramatic verisimilitude with movie-ish cliché, implausible plotting and cumbersome dialogue.

As a director, Lee continues to hone his considerable craft and is unafraid to take creative risks along the way. But after leaving the scripting to others for his past few feature outings, he has returned to the word processor — and it's evident his screenwriting abilities haven't kept pace.

The threats faced in Runoff feel generic: predatory corporations, merciless banks, environmental contamination and encroaching industrialization just seem like overly familiar themes, lacking sustained suspense.

A final-act development lurches into overblown and slightly daffy extreme sicko horror, but there’s enough that works, especially in terms of sustained tension and big juicy frights, to give the xenomorph-hungry what they want.

The end result is pleasant but bland.

Frozen 2 has everything you would expect — catchy new songs, more time with easy-to-like characters, striking backdrops, cute little jokes, a voyage of discovery plot and female empowerment galore — except the unexpected.

Some may find the film overly schematic, but Garcia smartly uses three parallel narratives to probe the extraordinary nature of motherhood.

The result is a film that intrigues in its initial stages, with Cannes best actor winner Vincent Lindon (The Measure of a Man) delivering another Gary Cooper-esque stoical turn, but then overstays its welcome and fails to deliver in the final stretch.

For most of its running time, it’s a small-scale delight that balances quirky humor and heartfelt emotion to excellent effect.

Boasting excellent performances by screen veterans Peter Mullan and Gerard Butler, the latter delivering one of his best turns in years, The Vanishing feels familiar in most ways, including its title (the same as George Sluizer's classic Dutch thriller and its mediocre American remake). Nonetheless, the film proves highly effective with its slowly ratcheted up tension and eerie atmospherics.

The film achieves its power through a careful gathering of crucial details, in wordless glances, cruelties of nature and of man and the relentless determination to gain the promised land.

Gretel & Hansel may alienate some horror movie fans with its extremely leisurely pacing and emphasis on atmosphere and mood rather than visceral shocks. But while the film certainly demands patience, it provides ample rewards with its lush stylization.

This taut adaptation of Brad Land's 2004 memoir is less a dramatized depiction of headline-grabbing hazing tragedies than a penetrating consideration of the psychology of violence and its role in defining manhood.

A glorious paean to the lurid sensuality and gory excess of 1980s sexploitation and horror, MaXXXine completes Ti West’s trilogy of star showcases for his fearless muse Mia Goth on a delectable note.

Featuring veteran Austrian theater actor Philipp Hochmair and former circus performer Walter Saabel playing loosely fictionalized versions of themselves, The Shine of Day sporadically registers with beautifully observed moments even while suffering from its lack of a compelling narrative.

For the most part the film is compelling, with Jones' riveting performance as the alternately sympathetic and nasty protagonist anchoring the proceedings.

Civil often feels more like an infomercial than a documentary.

Sleeping With Other People is a brittle, bawdy, frequently funny romcom that might be too smart for its own good.

Perhaps best suited for younger audiences, who will be more receptive to a vital history lesson only if it's given a music video-style treatment.

This over-the-top, ultraviolent, hyperkinetic action thriller pretty much has it all.

Ayouch’s most personal feature film, it infects the audience with its passion and the unshakable belief that a person who has self-confidence and self-expression can really change society.

Enola Holmes 2‘s shortcomings don’t wreck the film — it’s a serviceable sequel — but the tension between the topics the film tackles and the soft-pedaled approach is one that hopefully won’t haunt future projects.

A surprisingly frank effort that demonstrates that the country's censors may be loosening their reins. This well-acted portrait of a young single mother displays a universality that should translate well to the art house circuit.

Gianfranco Rosi (Below Sea Level, El Sicario: Room 164) brings humor and sensitivity to his filming of the strange denizens who live and work around the Grande Raccordo Anulare, Rome’s huge ring road.

Shot on beautifully utilized film but employing images vividly from the Internet and mobile phones, it's an examination of the power that false ideas may have on people's imagination and beliefs when they are repeated over and over.

Handsomely mounted and well acted, the film breaks no new ground but remains engrossing.

Give Me Future only comes alive when it focuses on the underlying forces that allow the trio's radical sense of fun to take hold.

The whole collaboration feels undeniably stagey, but it’s still an empathic and frequently moving work that touches on the sheer volume of callers that workers like Thompson’s character, often unpaid volunteers, must contend with every day.

JCVD should entertain both movie and action buffs. Van Damme proves once and for all that he's not just a set of glistening pectorals. However, he's still in no danger of being asked to play Hamlet.

The picture is not dull, exactly, just mundane, marked by unimaginative plotting, cut-rate villains, a bland visual style and a lack of elan in every department.

It's an unforgettable, visceral journey into the heart of darkness.

This true story of a dolphin with a prosthetic tail has been precision engineered for full inspirational, heart-warming value.

By keeping things simple and understated, director Chris Weitz and screenwriter Eric Eason have crafted a little gem where humanity is observed with compassion, not condescension.

While its ambition and immediacy occasionally lead to some uneven patches, its insight nevertheless makes it a worthy addition to the growing library of films grappling with what just happened.

While Gretchen Mol delivers a delightfully exuberant lead performance, the film itself seldom goes beyond skin deep.

[Fraser's] superbly nuanced and expressive performance proves key to the film’s power, and he’s well matched by excellent supporting players.

Like the ambitious The Wandering Earth, the last Chinese epic to make a play for international glory, and indeed Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, The Eight Hundred is thin on characterization, and too often slips into rote narrative and war movie cliches (really, a runaway white horse?). And that's despite eight writers working on the script. The sheer volume of men fighting and dying in the face of overwhelming odds and stellar technical spectacle step into the gap where emotional connection should be.

The special sauce here, however, is the bond of love and support through tough times between Anthony and his mother Judy, stirringly portrayed by Jharrel Jerome and Jennifer Lopez.

Modest but moving, a finely observed portrait of a father/daughter relationship that will resonate deeply for many viewers.

As answers to the film’s big questions begin arriving in slapdash fashion, one loses patience for Tuason’s evasive, cluttered storytelling.

Lorna Tucker's documentary profiling famed fashion designer Vivienne Westwood displays a genuine tension between the filmmaker and her subject that initially proves intriguing. Unfortunately, that tension soon dissipates, and all that's left is a much too cursory portrait of a figure whose fascinating life and career should have led to a more interesting film.

It's a charming-looking, tenderly told story about friendship and diversity.

The result is a largely entertaining picture with too few (and late-arriving) scares to satisfy the multiplex crowd, but one that will please many die-hard genre aficionados.

The film should please his (Sokurov's) fans even while proving a frustrating, tedious experience for most art house audiences.

Over the long haul, the Wolfe brother never quite provide enough psychological and emotional ballast to flesh out their complex, conflicted characters. But these are minor flaws in an otherwise confident, gripping, highly charged debut.

Hamm makes plenty of sense in this role, but Mottola and Zev Borow’s screenplay doesn’t totally convince us the character is series-worthy.

The pacing slackens a bit in the midsection as Adam shuffles between immersive art happenings, sex parties and karaoke bars in scenes that don't always have as much bite or humor as they could. But the cast is appealing; the visuals are crisp and colorful, with a textured feel for the Brooklyn milieu.

Although Ridley Scott's 3D visual feast is no classic, the oozing alien tentacles hit all the right sci-fi horror notes.

Although scattershot in its approach and relying a bit too heavily on cutesy animation, Orgasm Inc. is an eye-opening exposé.

Constantine’s skills as a first-time dramatist are a serious weakness here. Though the subject matter is rich and the soundtrack terrific, character and plot take a back seat.

Chew-Bose’s screenplay doesn’t explore the characters deeply enough to replace the book’s jaw-dropping quality with any psychological depth.

Hart has fashioned a tale of matriarchal inheritance, but one whose fierce message is undercut rather than deepened by its child's-book clarity. The intriguing setup receives underpowered execution, the intended jolts landing all too softly.

One of the things making Goon so enjoyable is its fairy-tale suggestion that all humanity's violent impulses can be exorcized in a Zamboni-groomed ice rink.

With such an elliptical tease of a plot, which jumps back and forth temporally disdaining explication, some may feel a little of this travelogue goes a long way.

Though his stories suggest a pansexual curiosity, Neil himself seems only mildly engaged, and sluggish direction keeps both scenes with the nerd's dream girl and the jailbait-courting man from generating much heat.

While the director-screenwriter clearly has a sensitive affinity for his characters, his film lacks narrative momentum and fresh observations.

In shouldering the weight of representing Asian love Always Be My Maybe doesn’t quite allow its capable leads to do what has made them stars: just be themselves.

Even when its storytelling occasionally falters, the visual power of Thornton’s gorgeous compositions — in the monastery’s chiaroscuro interiors as well as the sprawling landscapes in the northern part of South Australia, near the former mining town, Burra — remains transfixing.

Mirza has created a film bursting with creative energy and distinctive aesthetic sensibilities. Even when the narrative slackens, you’ll want to keep watching.

A luminous central performance from Golshifteh Farahani distinguishes an ambitious if somewhat monotonously wordy adaptation of a prize-winning best-seller.

Etxeberria is a good match for the film's Cassavetes-inspired character study. She's no Gena Rowlands, but this woman is clearly under the influence of something that might destroy more lives than hers.

Although there is incident in the film's second half...it doesn't build to the level of compelling drama, leaving the film in a quiet, temperate realm that scarcely makes the pulse race.

Malgorzata’s command of her medium makes the film a pleasure to watch.

Featuring superb performances by the principal actors, Big Bad Wolves is mesmerizing from start to finish.

This tale of a young linguist seeking to keep a dying language alive is thought-provoking, visually compelling, and hopefully will help to raise awareness about this indirect form of cultural destruction. But its themes are subordinated to surprisingly bland treatment

This is a slick studio production with a huge movie star and top professionals occupying every production role so that the polish of this well-made film makes even homelessness look neat and tidy.

Disney may have written the book on live-action animal adventure stories, but it has been quite a while since there has been a chapter as terrific as Eight Below.