Sam Eidson is perfect for the lead role, but that doesn't exactly guarantee the fanboy crowd will embrace the film.

The cluttered plot keeps surging forward while providing too few illuminating insights, instead loading up on mystical mumbo jumbo and flashes of gore.

It’s Phoenix who keeps you glued even through the film’s sometimes challenging longueurs, in a performance as fully, insanely committed as any he’s ever given. If the character invites more cringing pity than emotional investment, that’s more to do with the distancing effect of Aster’s surreal approach than anything lacking in Phoenix’s raw, gaping wound of a characterization.

The new film is much pokier in its pacing, with duller characters. Despite some highlights, including Branagh in top form as an even more somber than usual Poirot, the film is watchable but it is also something lethal to a mystery: uninvolving.

Megamind is snappy good fun.

Joel and Ethan Coen clearly are in a prankish mood, knocking out a minor piece of silliness with all the trappings of an A-list studio movie.

A neatly packaged Walt Disney Co. picture with bone-crunching football action; a nice sense of the blue-collar, male-dominated milieu that nourishes football fanaticism; and a few too many tugs at the heartstrings.

If you loved The Matrix and hated the sequels (or simply found them unsatisfying), go see this one. Have a blast. (But wear a mask.)

Peter von Kant is perhaps a bit too rarefied an endeavor to significantly expand Ozon’s following, and some LGBTQ audiences might conceivably flinch at its protagonist’s self-flagellation, much as they did with Fassbinder’s. But its skewering of celebrity is mischievously enjoyable and its declaration of love for a queer-cinema forefather disarmingly sincere.

It's a pleasure to experience Scorsese as a circus master. One just hopes he doesn't continue in this vein.

Overall, the film is somber, gripping and at times achieves an epic sweep as a dark chapter on the Chinese diaspora.

It's an impressive movie, but the indie filmmaker has little to add to the debate beyond the eternal truth that the innocent always suffer most.

A documentary about autism that's nearly perfect in doing what an advocacy documentary should do: show rather than tell, entertain rather than preach.

Nine Muses is clearly the work of a talented filmmaker, and there are many moments to beguile the ears as well as the eyes. Yet it's a long slog through a few thousand years of myth and history, and most viewers are likely to grow impatient during the journey.

A hilarious date movie for couples of all orientations.

An exercise in opaque supernatural storytelling that's as frustrating as it is beguiling.

Omirbaev fails to invest either the murder plot or its political subtext with much suspense or conviction.

An account of one modern expedition that draws fruitfully upon the lore of another.

This film complements rather than duplicating the recent fest title "Butterfly Girl," which also refused to settle for generic notions of bravery and endurance to hone in on an individual teen's specific experience of illness.

A thoroughly entertaining doc that serves also as a primer on Brand's shockingly successful comedy career and an introduction to his singular personality.

Love at First Fight is overflowing with relentlessly acerbic humor that shapes the way the film's two young protagonists contend with not just each other, but also with the uncertainties of the world they're emerging into as adults.

What we're looking at is, in essence, an artwork that looks at other art — a concept film about a conceptual art project. It suggests that a one-minute part can be the whole for one viewer or that, conversely, the whole is made up of an infinite amount of smaller parts that can each tell only a small part of the story.

Gathering vintage interviews from a couple of different documentaries, the film movingly observes a man who can be physically unsettled by things he saw several decades prior.

Director Bose handles the material with a light, elegant touch. It helps that the cast, especially the remarkable Koechlin who gives a bravura performance in both physical and emotional terms, can carry it all off.

It’s a smart film with engaging moments. But working overtime to build an involving multi-layered drama with a flurry of hand-held camera movements and dizzying flashbacks, it ultimately turns repetitive and annoying.

Sheikh Jackson is a little too somber and straight-faced for its goofy premise, its protagonists often unsympathetic, its tone sometimes corny and melodramatic. But it is also an offbeat charmer that boldly sets up its bizarre conceit and runs with it.

It does offer a consistent level of tension, a few decent scares and a terrific lead turn by Christie Burke.

Whether viewers show up for the controversy or for the Bollywood star power of its charismatic leads, they should emerge impressed by its dazzling visuals and Bhansali’s masterfully composed and executed musical numbers.

Its approach to the source material (a close cousin to the Frankenstein tale) is emotionally and intellectually sincere, enacted seriously, if not always engrossingly, by cast and crew.

Despite its paucity of action and some unnecessary repetitions that extend the running time, the story rolls on smoothly.

Age Out stands beyond the shadow cast by these artists; it is its own strong film and, whatever flaws it might have, deserves a much more visible release than it is getting.

In its favor, Amanda boasts subtle, sensitive lead performances from Lacoste and Multrier, who has a rare easy naturalism for such a young performer.

This film will not resolve the question of whether technological “progress” represents an advance or a decline in civilization, but it certainly will provoke conversations about that issue. And the focus on a real person over a period of years certainly adds pungency to the debate.

Along the way, parallels with key characters from the children's stories and their adventures are gestured at vaguely. But the film doesn't particularly require in-depth knowledge of Moominism and can be enjoyed for its bright performances, on-point costumes and sets, and empathic portrait of young love.

The romance at the movie’s core doesn’t deliver the intended emotional impact, but there’s a tender, potent resonance to other aspects of the story.

An embarrassment to all concerned, the film was written, directed and produced by Soderbergh for reasons that are not readily apparent.

Several good ideas for a movie rumble around inside ATL, but they never coalesce.

It offers plenty of cheap thrills, or more accurately cheap kills, presented with the sort of attention to bloodthirsty detail that horror aficionados crave. Pity, though, that there aren’t really any more actual grindhouses.

The collision of adolescent hormones and parental folly, hardly new cinematic territory, gets a bracing absurdist slant in Youth in Revolt.

The movie's last act offers complications both expected and surprising. For the most part, it satisfies, especially in what proves to be the pic's most elaborate action sequence.

Though it's not particularly inventive, the film has a fine time pitting the office dwellers against each other.

Like a good ad, Art & Copy bounds along and never bores. That's a big credit to Pray's savvy compilation and of editor Phillip Owens' crisp cuts.

The director declines to get too specific about his allegorical intent, which could be sexual trauma or gender identity or just a mysterious body-snatcher nightmare. Either way, this is a spellbinding psychological puzzler led by a typically fearless performance from Léa Seydoux.

Attempts to pass itself off as a fast-paced caper picture doubling as a socially conscious apartheid drama but ends up equally unconvincing in both departments.

For every emotionally resonant scene, there's another that seems to drag on pointlessly, although the filmmaker once again displays a talent for delineating the emotional tensions that develop when disparate characters are thrown together.

The film has a solid feel for family dynamics and local color.

As Julia, Swinton belongs to that league of great cinematic alcoholics such as Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick in "Days of Wine and Roses" and Ray Milland in "The Lost Weekend." As an action character, she naturally evokes Gena Rowlands without ever trying to resemble her.

The huge political and social divide is in full evidence, but the strength of the doc is that it shows that those sides aren't as monolithic as the red and blue blocks on electoral maps suggest.

The film is both gripping in its execution — although a two-hours-plus running time feels a bit stretched — and totally bland in what it’s trying to say, with characters who don’t really stand out onscreen.

A winning combination of laughs and genuine shocks.

This tale of a dysfunctional family whose members experience enough personal crises to fuel a dozen films is a virtual compendium of clichés, but the star's sheer likeability makes it go down as easily as a cup of eggnog.

An intellectually rigorous but stylistically staid peep at the 20-something author of Capital and The Communist Manifesto, Raoul Peck’s The Young Karl Marx is at once historically impeccable and a filmic disappointment.

Viewers expecting a thrill ride might be disappointed. V engages in a couple of satisfying crime-fighting set pieces, but the story is more occupied with mystery and intrigue. Happily, it almost is entirely free of the hollow pomposity that marred the Wachowskis' last two "Matrix" films.

An enjoyable adventure fantasy that pushes all the requisite buttons while still managing to throw in a pleasant surprise or two.

Despite its narrative issues, there’s a lot to like about Oh, Hi! With its playful writing and game cast, the film is sure to attract young fans and find its audience. At its root, this is a surprisingly sensitive commentary on uniquely millennial romantic loneliness.

Truth is indeed sometimes stranger than fiction but Ripstein struggles here to turn his odd collection of two-dimensional characters into real people. What does impress is the gorgeously crisp black-and-white cinematography, which deserves to be seen on the big screen.

The jocular, amiable tone helps deliver the more serious social history lesson throughout, even if sometimes it feels like it’s shouting just a little too loudly to wake up the dimmer students at the back of the lecture hall.

The filmmaker presents a portrait of the emotional and physical effects of aging and maturity that is occasionally poignant but not particularly deep.

Alternates languidly between wistful nostalgia and a more clear-eyed assessment of its protagonist's choices.

Several shades darker in tone than the previous edition -- which, to be fair, didn't carry the burden of expectation that a sequel must bear -- the return to Narnia still casts a transporting spell.

Kuras’ film is competent, polished and awards-ready. And while that all makes for a fine viewing experience, the movie also feels at odds with its subject — a restless woman whose passion and hurt drove her to action.

Despite the intermittent lags, the production proves to be more than a salvage operation thanks mainly to those engagingly choreographed performances, led by an irresistibly charismatic title turn from Alden Ehrenreich who ultimately claims Solo as his own even if he doesn’t entirely manage to convince us he’s Harrison Ford.

Its feature-length assemblage of found footage, unified by an original soundtrack and eccentric narration by Tilda Swinton, will be too much of a good thing for some art-house patrons. But auds accustomed to the work of Bill Morrison and other archive-combing meditation artists should respond warmly.

Black and his co-screenwriter, first-timer Drew Pearce, have great fun reshuffling the deck, teasing about who might occupy what superhero suit and morphing the story along with identity revelations and expansions of the dramatic horizons; the well-chosen cast members respond in kind with virtually palpable glee.

The Sweet East provides easy jabs and the occasional laugh, but never seems to figure out what it wants to say.

Ultimately falls short of reaching the pleasingly pulpy heights of an "L.A. Confidential" or a "Chinatown" despite those obvious aspirations.

Solid performances from the small cast and robust visuals will be clear selling points with audiences seeking the raw excitement of an elemental survival film.

Troy Espiritu’s plot-driven screenplay and Mendoza’s preference for a gritty, documentary-like style mean that the final result is neither as deep nor as resonant as it could have been.

We know the achievements and victories of the era Nagy depicts, and yet, because she and her fine cast bring the story to such vivid, immediate life, the final moments of Call Jane are powerful with unanticipated joy.

The fact that it's actually based on a true story adds an extra layer of poignancy, heightened further by another superb Sophie Okonedo performance.

Pretty when it should be gritty and grandiosely noble instead of just telling it like it was, 42 needlessly trumps up but still can't entirely spoil one of the great American 20th century true-life stories, the breaking of major league baseball's color line by Jackie Robinson.

There's plenty to ensure fresh jolts for viewers who know Hitch's tricks inside out, to say nothing of young moviegoers who don't know Grace Kelly from Thelma Ritter.

The minor-key film benefits from Robert Carlyle's soulful performance in the central role, bouncing back and forth between dulled resignation and self-destructive anger.

The sort of endlessly twisty, mind-bending puzzle of a film that will make you question your cognitive abilities should you fail to keep up. It's no wonder the uncommonly clever and inventive indie film received the Best Feature award at the Philip K. Dick Film Festival.

There are big questions churning beneath the story, yet even Hildy’s personal turmoil feels somehow too neat. In the film’s sharp comic observations, though, and especially its two fine leads, something real and messy sparks to life.

The film is an ambitious mix of slapstick, black comedy and stinging social commentary.

The rock-solid bond between the film’s two drifting 17-year-olds... is the film’s undeniable highlight but the true depth of their friendship crystallizes quite late and is too often obscured by a subplot involving minor characters caught up in a cross-border drug running operation.

Totally Killer may not be destined to become a classic in its own right. But the Amazon release is fun enough for a spooky season night in.

Solid family fare. Like its source material, the Missouri-shot Saving Shiloh is down-home country without condescending to hicks from the sticks.

Though the film, which lapses at times into repetitiousness, could have been trimmer and sleeker, even non-aficionados will be swept up by its dynamic look at the creative process.

Stearns’ third feature (following Faults and The Art of Self-Defense) is his least satisfying so far; as visually drab as its predecessors, it has more difficulty mining its off-kilter aesthetic for nervous laughter and conceptual provocation.

Superbly made but burdened by some dull human characters enacted by an interesting international cast who can't do much with them, this new Godzilla is smart, self-aware, eye-popping and arguably in need of a double shot of cheeky wit.

A fascinating glimpse of kids' role in the evangelical movement's political agenda.

More warm-hearted than funny, Schwarz's feature debut benefits from an intelligent script and sympathetic lead performance by Griffin Dunne

Somewhat original and amusing. But only somewhat.

Doerrie goes beyond the "Lost in Translation" jokes about East-West culture clashes to communicate something meaningful and deep about Japanese art and thought.

This disappointingly conventional effort pales in comparison to the filmmaker's wildly audacious comedies.

A likeably unpleasant slice of adults-only Texas noir, which aims at the funnybone as much as the jugular.

The cumulative experience is affecting in its own minor-key way, an appealing throwback to old-fashioned family dramas of a more innocent era.

Cage is brilliant.

At its best, The Assessment smartly taps into and maintains its focus on the near universal anxiety about parenting in a world made increasingly uninhabitable by overconsumption and climate change. But the film loses its way when it widens its scope and tries to incorporate eleventh-hour world-building.

It all barrels along with a certain good-natured brio, even if ultimately falling short of bringing much that's new to what's already an overstocked table.

Mysius loses control of the tone, and the wayward direction of the last half hour, which unfolds mostly at a gypsy wedding and goes on 15 minutes too long, suggests difficulty finding resolution, a common problem with first films.

Polanski's crisp and twisted direction unravels one kinky film. [18 Mar 1994]

Delivering visual drama and understated character study, sometimes in disappointingly formulaic fashion, the feature has its incisive moments but falls short as both epic and intimate portrait.

The painstaking work done by Kobiela and Welchman to turn some of the artist’s most prized canvases into animated scenes can be impressive to behold.

It’s a complicated meta-commentary delivered loosely in the guise of a ghoulish conspiracy thriller, presented in rushed form to an audience that would happily devour many more hours of the actual ghoulish conspiracy thriller that this is not.

The story-telling is a little too pat to deliver the surprise moments that reveal character or sweep audiences up emotionally. The film remains a creepy story with a lot of morbid fascination, set off by the captivating young Florencia Bado in her first screen role.