It’s all quite perverse for sure, which of course is no surprise coming from either the actress or the director, though what’s welcome about Elle is the way they combine their talents to make a film that hardly skimps on the sex, violence and sadism, yet ultimately tells a story about how one woman uses them all to set herself free.

The film positively swills in its disreputability and all-around low-budgetness; sporting a healthy disregard for respectability, Schrader has just gone for it here with a highly focused recklessness that he turns to his creative advantage.

Running the gamut from social comedy to actioner to war movie, Clash is an original, often quite disturbing experience to watch.

A serviceable piece of B-movie entertainment without an ounce of originality

This bittersweet peek into the human comedy has a more subtle charm than flashier films like the director’s child-swapping fable Like Father, Like Son, but the filmmaking is so exquisite and the acting so calibrated it sticks with you.

Some individual scenes are certainly striking and the couple’s complex relationship and chemistry are believable but the overall narrative retains an erratic and somewhat jerky quality as the various elements don’t always logically build on what has come before.

Offers both a universally relevant examination of religious zealotry and, at the same time, a damning, satirical look at modern Russia, a country whose major institutions have become increasingly dominated and cowed by medieval-minded reactionaries and bigots.

Staying Vertical slowly morphs into something closer to a dark — and darkly funny — myth or fairytale, though this transformation isn’t entirely smooth.

More weirdly fascinating than genuinely good, this beautifully made, bracingly eccentric and often arch film will generate a measure of strong support but will bewilder more.

It is absolutely fascinating to watch how Puiu X-rays his characters to show how every single person onscreen belongs to several groups or affiliations at once...and how every one of them is either willing or forced to compromise parts of who they are to continue belonging to all these groups.

Lacking the astounding social complexity of his Academy Award winning drama A Separation, here the gears are not so hidden and a sense of contrived drama leads to some tedious sections. But all is forgiven when the final punches are delivered in a knock-out finale that leaves the viewer tense and breathless.

There is much to appreciate in Poitras’ low-key, down-to-business approach which employs instinctive editing choices, and not her own persona (she never appears onscreen), to build the most revealing portrait of Assange and his WikiLeaks staff in the public domain.

While the plot can sometimes feel too lightweight for feature length, with a score by composer Laurent Perez del Mar (Now or Never) that tends to overdo it on the gushy side, The Red Turtle benefits from the beautiful animation work of Dudok de Wit and his team.

Unassuming, idiosyncratic and set in the run-down eponymous New Jersey city that has produced more than its share of noted personalities, this is a mild-mannered, almost startlingly undramatic work that offers discreet pleasures to longtime fans of the New York indie-scene veteran.

The film at times is more playful than illuminating, but it's also a handsomely crafted and boldly idiosyncratic contemplation of a great artist for whom political compromise was anathema.

[A] stunningly self-important but numbingly empty cocktail of romance and insulting refugee porn.

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.

The film is anchored by incisive characterizations rich in integrity and heart, and by an urgent simplicity in its storytelling that's surprisingly powerful.

Expectations are fully met in Park Chan-wook’s exquisitely filmed The Handmaiden (Agassi), an amusingly kinky erotic thriller and love story that brims with delicious surprises, making its two-and-a-half hours fly by.

If not every detail of the band's fluctuating fortunes and lineup is chronicled with crystal clarity, the punchy scrappiness of Jarmusch's film — stuffed not only with electric concert footage but with a cornucopia of amusing visual references, plus cool graphics and some droll original animation by James Kerr — is an appropriate fit for the subject.

Cotillard’s performance is luminous throughout, enriching the willful heroine with the depth of a single obsession.

This endearing old-age drama works best as an earnest and colorful character study, even if it doesn't really break any new cinematic ground.

The director finds himself stymied by weak source material — Jean-Luc Lagarce's 1990 play about a young man who returns home to tell his family he's dying — and only intermittently well served by his starry French cast.

As much as all four men are familiar types, the director, writer and actors imbue them with humanity, steering their arcs through tense action — including a nice throwback Western shootout on rocky terrain — to a quietly moving conclusion.

This aggravatingly empty would-be suspense piece puts all its trust in its star to save the day, but even this compulsively watchable performer can’t elevate such a vapid, undeveloped screenplay.

The film works best as a poignant character study, observing Star as she settles into her independence and figures out who she wants to be, framed by a vast physical landscape that stretches socioeconomically from privileged wealth to squalid poverty. There's a wonderful intimacy in the way Arnold examines young women in her films.

Nichols has delivered a timely drama that, unlike most films of its type, doesn’t want to clobber you with its importance. It just tells its story in a modest, even discreet way that well suits the nature of its principal characters.

The intended metaphors and commentary about the interchangeability and disposability of bodies are entirely clear, although from the evidence it would appear that Refn is perhaps even more entranced by the surface glamour of the world he so voluptuously depicts than he is repelled by it.

The film is well-intentioned but dramatically unconvincing, full of clichéd situations and on-the-nose dialogue about kids getting their shot and living their dream.

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.

Some of the most acute pleasures here are in the doctor-patient exchanges, depicting with a rigorous absence of fuss or sentiment a relationship that's as much intimate as professional.

According to the most basic laws of cinema, Toni Erdmann, Maren Ade’s third feature as a writer-director (she has five times that many credits as a producer), shouldn’t work. It’s practically one long string of nesting, oxymoronic self-cancelling paradoxes: here is the world’s first genuinely funny, 162-minute German comedy of embarrassment.

Blurring the confines between documentary and fiction, it takes the empathetic viewer on an incredible journey that can be almost as painful to follow vicariously from a theater seat as it must have been on the pilgrims.

This challenging but refreshingly candid nonfiction feature is the debut of the talented Swedish-Danish filmmaking couple Frida and Lasse Barkfors, who have not only found a fascinating subject but who also manage to build a case against isolating sex offenders without resorting to such facile shortcuts as voiceovers or heavy editorializing.

Too much lethargic, unclear plotting and saccharine melodrama mean the gentle film is seldom as intriguing as its premise, even if Kurosawa as always provides arresting visual moments and has a commanding way of building atmosphere out of stillness.

Far from being the convoluted mess it could have been, incoming director Cheang Pou-soi (Yip serves as a producer) crafts a tight, swiftly paced action yarn that ensures viewers won’t be pining for the presence of the first film’s stars, Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung.

Cruz’s aces performance apart, very little about this extremely disappointing film feels real, and some of it is risible.

There are moments when The Other Side seems to traverse into arts-ploitation territory, and it’s ultimately hard to tell if the movie is trying to render its subjects with some humanity or otherwise if it's taking advantage of all these poor, beautiful losers.

Dreamy, poetry-filled and prone to veering off on tangents, the picture teases viewers with such self-assurance it's difficult to believe the twentysomething director is a first-timer.

Hoover doesn’t get into the nitty-gritty of the kids’ detox and rehabilitation, but Mokhnenko’s compassion is as evident as his self-regard, and inextricable from his sense of a moral imperative.

Uneasily blending familiar horror tropes with forced attempts at slapstick humor, Crush the Skull doesn't fully succeed in either genre, although it does provide occasional laughs along the way.

Other than some rather surprising DJ appearances, attractive scenery and beautiful bodies, Lebrija can’t find much to command attention other than an indulgently long and off-putting cock-fighting sequence.

That the film mostly falls flat has far more to do with the largely unconvincing material rather than with the co-stars, who are more than game for often clownish shenanigans Black and his co-writer Anthony Bagarozzi have concocted for them; in fit and starts, the actors display a buoyant comic rapport.

The film represents the director in a more pensive, even philosophical vein, less interested in propulsive cinema and more reflective about what would seem to mean the most to him—dreams, and the ability to make them come true. This is what The BFG is about but, unfortunately, that is basically all it’s about and by a considerable measure too explicitly and single-mindedly so.

Queen Mimi registers as little more than a minor curiosity.

Throughout, connoisseurs of Cage's career should appreciate a performance that rides the edge of his crazy tendencies.

Director/co-screenwriter Pearry Teo succeeds in investing the silly proceedings with spooky visual stylishness, providing enough scary demons and possessed mannequins to deliver the requisite jump scares. Unfortunately, the film also features sound, which results in the audience being able to hear the inane dialogue accompanying the familiar horror tropes.

Amid the rarely very creepy buildup to the Amityville-ish showdown to come, the screenplay piles on more unrelated domestic drama than the picture can take.

Best when it reveals the painstaking details of investigative work, worst when it plunges into improbable emotional depths, SK1 is an above-average policier.

The ironies of gentrification will be a chief attraction for this lovely new 4K restoration of the 16mm original. But that theme is just a bonus in a picture whose in-the-trenches look at poverty is humane and, sadly, perpetually timely.

What it all adds up to is either laughably baffling or just plain laughable, depending on how much attention one has paid.

Tai chi devotees will find much to appreciate here, especially the extensive footage of Cheng demonstrating his skills. But the hagiographic approach doesn't delve very deeply, and the repetition of extravagant tributes by talking heads eventually proves monotonous.

Addressing its serious themes with subtle and insightful humor, Divine Access is a quiet gem.

It’s a sobering, collage-like overview of a problem that sadly hasn’t much changed since Michael Moore’s angrier and more provocative (if perhaps less rigorously journalistic) feature came out.

The comedy here feels secondhand and becomes grating when no cliche is left unused, whether about nationality, race, gays or the female gender.

Unfortunately, as a director, Foster shows no knack or instinct for building tension; her style is strictly presentational, brisk and efficient, but with no sly trickery, desire to surprise or to forge technique that suggests an imaginative approach to storytelling.

Malik Bader's Cash Only is one of the more convincingly gritty indies to hit fests in several seasons.

The artwork is achingly delicate, but there's nothing subtle about Belladonna of Sadness, a blast of psychedelic madness full of rape, tyranny and Satanism.

Directed by French director Anne Fontaine (Two Mothers/Adore, Coco Before Channel), this is another gorgeously appointed but also slightly overly formal film, with a muted emotional payoff that, while appropriate for the story’s convent setting, doesn’t exactly make for must-see cinema.

Wispy and familiar in its themes and humorous strokes, Café Society benefits from an exceptionally adept cast led by Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart and Steve Carell, as well as from a luminous glow that emphasizes both the old Hollywood nostalgia and the story’s basis in dreams and artifice.

A thorough knowledge of Israeli history and politics would be helpful for viewers, as Rabin in His Own Words is sometimes sketchy and scattershot in its narrative. But its subject emerges as a thoughtful and articulate chronicler, and the wealth of footage presented, including rare home movies, is consistently fascinating.

In between bouts of torrid sex, the men engage in the sort of anguished, confessional conversations that Eugene O'Neill would find over-the-top. None of the characters are particularly interesting, even with the dramatic revelations they've been assigned.

Despite the occasional jolts, Phantom of the Theatre is not particularly scary. But as befitting its milieu, it looks fabulous.

Depp is convincingly vulnerable and forlorn, all while maintaining the Hatter’s otherworldly eccentricity, and Wasikowska has the requisite grit. But Alice’s mission feels as manufactured as the story’s whatsits and doodads, as Bobin struggles to infuse make-believe with emotion.

Despite the undeniable presence of a huge amount of action, X-Men: Apocalypse is decidedly a case of more is less, especially when compared with the surprising action and more interesting personal interactions (including the temporary subtraction of some characters) in other big Marvel franchises.

In its genial, low-key way, the film, premiering at Sundance, is a chilling account of cyberbullying, perpetrated on a disturbingly wide scale over many years.

This is a lean and efficient mix of thriller, drama and socio-political commentary.

For a film that's presumably intended to convey the rich emotional rewards of motherhood, it's not terribly convincing.

There's nary a single B-action movie cliché missed.

At just 70 minutes it comes across as rather too tentative and brief to amount to much more than a sensitively observed but ultimately inconclusive coming of age narrative.

The animation punches well above its weight with properly Looney Tunes-standard sight gags, polished, highly expressive character design, and rendering so intensely computed nearly every barbule and rachis on each individual feather is visible.

A textbook example of how not to turn real-life headlines into big-screen drama, Jeppe Ronde's Bridgend is a toxic combination of the laughable and the reprehensible.

An evocative portrait of strained friendships and creative turmoil.

Fortunately, the terrific lead performances by Jonathan Pryce and newcomer Jerome Holder are enough to help Dough rise above its formulaic ingredients.

Although stronger on atmosphere than narrative clarity, its gorgeous visuals and sensuous evocation of the exotic setting render it a hauntingly poetic cinematic experience.

In their awkward attempt to shoehorn these kids into the first pic's formula, Stoller and his writing collaborators care far less about creating believable characters than getting to the next laugh.

This is a genial, humane project with obvious fan appeal. But for anyone expecting a definitive behind-the-scenes film about the making of Star Wars, this is not the documentary you have been looking for.

Some viewers might find that very cognitive dissonance interesting in itself, but many others may struggle to connect with a story that's essentially about an assortment of extremely entitled, self-absorbed people who ultimately have little new to say about addiction, families or the process of recovery.

It ends up playing like a shoddy blend of V for Vendetta and Mr. Robot but without the budget bandwidth or style of either.

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

The uneven collection is guaranteed to permanently tarnish at least one of your favorite days.

Although based on a true story, this drama directed by Bob Yari about the relationship between a young journalist and the aging Ernest Hemingway never rings true despite the authenticity of its setting.

While the performers are appealing, 3rd Street Blackout is a too determinedly quirky affair to fully mine the comic potential of its clever premise. Much like its setting, the film could have used more energy.

Mother’s Day is bad from the start, and it doesn't get better.

One of the film's most poignant moments occurs at the end, with a brief shot of Hesse's gravestone. It was designed, we're informed, by Sol LeWitt.

The American Side is a loving homage that should be of particular interest to film buffs who can play spot the references.

Audience’s tolerance for this kind of heavy-handed, occasionally very mannerist symbolism may vary, though Messina does ensure that the religious parallels never completely eclipse the contemporary characters.

It's never fun watching a comedian's shrewdness ossify into shtick. Yet whatever incisiveness Ricky Gervais once had (and he had plenty, if The Office and Extras are any indication) is barely evident in the new Netflix-released satire Special Correspondents

It feels like every script-reader in the Italian-Swiss-German-Albanian-Kosovo coproduction cut out a line of dialogue in each scene, leaving behind an irritating silence and an enigmatic puzzle for the audience to second-guess.

This lame effort represents international collaboration of the most mediocre kind.

The documentary will nonetheless strike an emotional chord with anyone who's grown up eating the product it celebrates. And over the course of 100 years, that's a lot of matzos.

What’s particularly admirable here is the way the cast and filmmakers illuminate not just the wit and charm of young men, but also the callow cruelty of youth, driven by a killer combination of naïve idealism, solipsism, poor self-esteem and raging hormones.

When it isn’t trying too hard to be instructive or jokey, Tykwer’s film fluently conveys the hard truth of diminished relevance, geopolitical as well as personal. Hanks’ portrayal of a man caught between utter defeat and a yearning to begin again is pitch-perfect.

Featuring hilarious yet acutely observed performances by Michael Shannon and Kevin Spacey as the titular characters, Elvis & Nixon, receiving its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, is a hoot.

A certain integrity and seriousness of intent gleams through, but Nina is just too big a subject, and talent, to be compressed into such a small package.

An officially sanctioned but pleasingly gush-free cinematic monograph.

German Kral's Our Last Tango balances between a studious fascination with the dance form's history and an embrace of the passions it stokes. Far more engrossing than the usual doc of this sort.

Although it's hard to avoid the feeling of invading their privacy at times, the viewer becomes thoroughly invested in the fate of the film's subjects.