Niccol weighs the human toll on both aggressor and target with intelligence and compassion, while questioning whether technological warfare is inevitably destined to be an unending cycle.

Though the story’s early stretches feel slender and repetitive, Cheung gathers the undertow of atmosphere and emotion for a beautifully realized final half-hour, matching the striking visuals with involving, unpredictable interactions.

As a portrait of children who are wanted and loved, it's intimate and often delightful.

There's a hint of 'Twin Peaks' and a large helping of the Coen Bros. in this offbeat, cleverly crafted French thriller.

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

The knack for biting dialogue that Mills brought to Guidance is still evident, although his new effort can’t match the bracing sting of his wickedly funny debut.

The actor's compelling self-exposure, physically and emotionally, draws us into such a degree that we genuinely come to care about his well-being.

Van Damme is no mere fighting machine: His performance is buffed with subtle humor and a sympathetic, self-deprecating demeanor. The bad guys are terrific: Lance Henriksen as the cold and cunning sporting promoter and Arnold Vosloo as his psycho hunting dog.

The film is fresh and funny, but it is also meandering, at times vague and defiantly uncommercial.

Flowers is an emotionally precise, subtle and quietly gripping exploration of the romance and remembrance that they evoke.

Prolific Hong Kong lenser Johnnie To delivers another solid action picture with this latest effort, a cops and robbers yarn with social commentary mixed in along the way.

The film provides a vivid reminder that even undocumented workers deserve fair compensation from their employers.

While the film is a much more powerful visual feast than the original Monster Hunt from two years ago, it offers little in terms of expanding the first film's themes or pushing the storyline significantly forward.

Only in its final moments do things crystallize with a nasty, half-ironic commentary.

Snapshots presents a moving portrait of its central relationship doomed by societal constrictions. The female characters are well-drawn and vibrant, while the men are depicted sympathetically.

The film isn’t always subtle, and like much of the director’s work it sometimes teeters on melodrama . . . But it’s also undoubtedly moving.

Cross "Body Heat" with "No Way Out" and you wind up with Out of Time, a slick crime melodrama with more style than substance.

Taking satiric aim at a familiar target, conformity, Australian playwright Tony McNamara's film debut is by turns incisive and broad.

First conceived as a documentary, this debut feature from Geoffrey Enthoven betrays its origins via its naturalistic, raw style and occasionally suffers from aimlessness and poor pacing.

Misha's actual story is fascinating in its own way, but within the relative levity of Hobkinson's framework, her truth and trauma get lost in a detective yarn. The film lacks the heft to adequately explain the nuance of Misha's truth

One of his most piercing inquiries yet. ... Herzog is the clear-eyed student — at times amazed and delighted, and, at others, skeptical and alarmed. Amid the cryostats and nanoparticles and fiber optics, the clunky gadgets and impenetrable-to-the-layperson diagrams, he summons a wry and lyrical mix of awe and foreboding.

It's still a gimmicky, tricked-out tale that is all too self-aware. But the film does keep you guessing and probably guessing wrong.

The Fortune Cookie is Billy Wilder's best picture since The Apartment, his funniest since Some Like It Hot.

Love Crime has Hitchcockian pretentious, with perhaps a touch of film noir, but the "love" component is perfunctorily done and the "crime" pay-off is unconvincing (despite the twist in the tail). The Master would not have allowed the suspense to dissipate so wantonly.

A pitch-perfect musical comedy that at long last moves the talented John C. Reilly up the billing ladder from second banana to top banana.

An eye-catching combination of cultural history, performer profiles and competition footage that should see enthusiastic response from niche audiences in urban and specialty venues.

Unlocking the Cage makes its case for reevaluation of non-human animals' legal status in crisp, convincing fashion.

The lack of cackle-worthy one-liners here and the entertaining but highly predictable last act make this a little bit snoozy for savvier viewers.

What it has going for it in spades is supremely creepy atmosphere. The hospital virtually becomes a major character in the story itself, its washed-out coloring and neon lights making everyone look like they have a sickly pallor.

The mystery surrounding the Slones and their missing child is much less interesting than Core's burgeoning friendship with the local sheriff, Donald Marium (James Badge Dale), who assists with the investigation.

There's enough dark sizzle between leads Rachel Weisz and Sam Claflin to keep the audience involved through the underpowered middle stretches before the film regains its footing, delivering a disquieting shiver of a conclusion.

The film is only "superior" though, not great. The themes feel shopworn and devotee of crime fiction can point to the any number of antecedents for these characters.

A fascinating contemplation of adolescent sexuality that will be a star-making platform for its young lead, Marine Vacth.

While inventive, Neville’s doc can’t quite avoid the trappings of the celebrity-produced biopic, and is expectedly marked by typical hagiographic evasiveness.

Pacino gives a keenly measured performance, leading an excellent British cast through their paces in a richly colorful production that should please selective audiences and adds to the list of major film adaptations of Shakespeare's work.

It is a tribute to Bening’s performance that she keeps us mesmerized by Nyad even at her most stubbornly pigheaded.

Even if it tells us nothing new, Pulp is still a handsome cinematic homage to a unique band, a proud city and the unifying power of pop music.

Fulfills the requirements of grand-scale moviemaking while serving as a timely reminder that in the conflict between Christianity and Islam it was the Christians who picked the first fight.

Sequins will tax the patience of most viewers not enthralled with endless close-ups of beads and brocades.

On Swift Horses is about the shapes love can take, the varied lives we live and the many different ways one can make a home. It’s beautiful, heartbreaking and demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible. Here’s hoping it brings the romantic epic back into fashion.

Definitely acquired-taste material and will perform best in the hipper, bigger rooms.

Cumberbatch and Foy play beautifully together; the chemistry is palpable, and both performers know how to charm audiences without overselling the romance.

A crackling good suspense thriller.

Hits the screen with its disarmingly droll spirit quite intact.

A delightfully stylized caper involving a mute little girl, her pet cat and a cat burglar.

Rachel Weisz’s arresting, combative Lipstadt, a shining woman warrior, is a role she will be remembered for, while as her antagonist Timothy Spall (Mr. Turner) makes a spookily stubborn, thoroughly despicable, but still human Irving.

If the concept has a way of grabbing one’s attention, however, the execution proves too uneven to leave a lasting impression. Though Good Boy gets by for a while on the strength of its performances and the sheer oddness of its plot, the flimsiness of its characters drains the film of energy long before its 110 minutes are up.

Making a feel-good movie about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be a recipe for disaster, but French writer-director Lorraine Levy manages to avoid many, if not all, of the pitfalls in her touching family drama.

In the meaty bad guy role, Harrelson entertainingly goes all the way, putting him way out there on the ledge with any of your favorite loonies, psychos and unhinged nutjobs.

Katz has a clear investment in Healy's character and convincingly depicts his choices as inevitable even when they become anything but.

An affecting brainteaser with echoes of Lynchian dissociation.

This is a serious-minded, well-acted drama that shows just as keen an interest in character, specifically the integrity of two men from vastly different cultures who provide the story of brotherhood and survival with its racing pulse.

Although repetitive at times and, like so many show business documentaries, displaying a tendency toward self-congratulation, the film will prove fascinating for dance buffs.

Reprising the kind of musical performances, campus hijinks, stinging humor and sassy sisterhood put in place by its eminently likeable predecessor, Pitch Perfect 2 remixes the elements and comes up with something even slicker and sharper.

Melbourne-based brothers Cameron and Colin Cairnes show impressive discipline in their modestly budgeted feature debut, mixing gore and chuckles in equal measure and creating unusually fleshed-out characters that have the film knocking at the door of above-average splatter comedies like "Shaun of the Dead" and "The Cabin in the Woods."

Hall and Brown are a glorious kick to watch, their physicality at times bordering on slapstick.

Even the acerbic bons mots delivered with crisp aplomb by Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess, Violet Grantham, don’t match the tart-tongued precision of her best retorts. And the direction of Simon Curtis — the man who made even Helen Mirren dull in Woman in Gold — seldom rises above serviceable.

Eventually things play out a bit too thin, but Mistress is insightful entertainment that should be seen by anyone interested in the fascinating underbelly of Hollywood deal making. [07 Aug 1992]

It is a pleasure to watch the present-day Francis interact with people all over the world and articulate his hopes for improving the lot of the poor. The film is humane and unobjectionable, but in the end, it isn’t pointed enough to seize the attention of skeptics in the audience.

Portraying his most complex character to date, Adkins delivers a ferocious turn that proves visceral in its emotional as well as physical intensity.

The film’s immersion into the anti-abortion movement — with a smattering of pro-choice voices woven in — is consistently fascinating. But Lowen’s measured approach also raises a question: How loud does a warning cry have to be to register? Eye-opening though it is, at times Battleground is muted to a fault.

Stars Christopher Abbott and Mia Wasikowska go a long way toward keeping this tricky pic balanced, though Pesce's knowing use of sleazy-Seventies vibe (following the distinctive b&w spareness of The Eyes of My Mother, his only previous feature) creates the perfect world for them to do it in.

Frequently slaughtered for consumption in Europe, their inhumane treatment as revealed here will surely prompt outrage among animal lovers as well as those concerned with health and environmental issues.

A less successful aspect of the film is Cognet’s attempt to tie the concentration camps as contemporary spaces into the narrative, with shots of the now practically empty landscapes -- some tourists here and there notwithstanding -- interspersed throughout.

The 20th-Fox release will be one of the movies' all-time hits, one of the all-time great pictures. It restores your faith in movies. If you sit quietly and let it take, it may also restore your faith in humanity. It does this with infectious wit, with consistent gaiety, with simple and realistic spirituality, with romance of heartbreak and heartmend. This is set against the most beautiful scenery you have seen in your life. The Sound of Music is quite a picture.

The splatter violence is fairly tame by modern gore standards, and the episodic narrative sags in places, but the ecological subtext and feminist folk-horror elements make this almost entirely female-driven road movie an agreeably fresh addition to the zombie canon.

In an indie landscape with an insatiable appetite for trauma and misery, it’s a breath of fresh air, a fun time that’s also a witty commentary on shifting sexual mores.

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

The movie is filled with small moments of tenderness, insight and considerable wisdom.

Stylish and well-observed while ultimately not adding up to very much.

Certainly should appeal to viewers with an interest in current affairs.

It's no rival for le Carré when it comes to the old cross/double-cross stuff; but a surfeit of style and a tasty supporting turn by James McAvoy help fill the time between fight scenes, which — this being a film by the stuntman/codirector behind John Wick — are pretty much the whole point.

Family in Transition stands out both for the particularities inherent in its setting and the deeply sympathetic individuals at its center.

The drama works only in fits and starts. The vague danger that shapes it, and the narrative's underlying emotional intricacies, are too often explained rather than felt.

Halftime includes moments of disarming sincerity, when it seems like the doc and its subject, despite their cautiousness, are genuinely reaching for the truth.

How She Move doesn't exactly break any new ground. But the terrific dance numbers on display should please its teenage target audience.

Although Andre Gregory's fans will find much here to savor, this rambling and unfocused portrait smacks of self-indulgence.

Dazzlingly designed and staged in a theatrical setting so as to suggest that the characters are enacting assigned roles in life, this tight and pacy telling of a 900 page-plus novel touches a number of its important bases but lacks emotional depth, moral resonance and the simple ability to allow its rich characters to experience and drink deeply of life.

Although it's enjoyable to make the acquaintance of the well-played, crowd-pleasing Strangers, the encounter is quickly forgotten.

A shapely sequel that retains much of the sparkle and warmth that made the original such a pleasant surprise.

With a charismatic cast headed by Seamus McLean Ross and Samuel Bottomley, California Schemin’ is a nimbly paced yarn that may not have set out to reinvent the wheel, but makes for a buoyant excursion nonetheless.

Actors blossom under Frears' direction. There is no false moment or off-key note in this movie.

Goes a long way in bringing sexy back to a soggy genre, benefiting greatly from the presence of its likable leads.

As much a memorial as it is a docudrama and as such it will interest educators and students, and make for sober television. It's a pity, though, that more of an attempt wasn't made to understand the killer and explain such things as why no one apparently thought to phone for help or hit the fire alarm.

That the film works to the extent it does is due in large part to the filmmaker’s ingratiating, amusingly self-deprecating personality and his emotional honesty.

First-time director McMurray, who worked as an associate producer on Fruitvale Station, does a decent job of staging the action and maintaining viewer attention on the straight-line story. But there’s no subtext, investigation of his characters’ various stories or motivations for doing what they’re doing. It’s a very shallow film.

There is nothing radical or especially distinctive about the style of this mildly entertaining documentary.

Easy’s Waltz is a harmless, fleeting curio, a piece of ephemera that lilts by like a song that isn’t quite catchy enough to get stuck in your head — it has the decency to do its thing and then leave us alone.

While the film loses focus along the way, it has enough moving and powerful moments to make it a worthy entry in an increasingly crowded genre.

Power and Marks clearly have a facility with dialogue, and even though many of their plot points may represent standard dramedy material, the two elevate scene after scene with imaginative insults and witty banter among the characters.

Though it starts uneventfully, the doc perks up in its second half, highlighting the kind of practical headaches nearly no other artist in the world has to contend with.

A backwoods psychological thriller delivered faux-documentary-style, with mixed results.

A dramatically inert, lethargic dramedy that isn't nearly as quirky and poignant is it perceives itself.

Entertaining and comprehensive in its account of the man's career.

This is certainly an entertaining-enough watch, even for those without much rooting interest in Gaga.

It's an engrossing and often very funny tale.

The film is more than just a chic thriller. Alongside its clear -- at times overly so -- depiction the pain and vanity of social inequality, Virzi and the fine cast explore the unhappiness of rich and poor alike in a society that measures a person’s value in terms of euros.

What's cinematic experimentation without a few failures in the lab? Maybe that's why Howl is so appealing: The filmmakers don't get everything right but their passion for Ginsberg's genius and their excitement over trying to deconstruction a literary master work is contagious.