Part gritty public service dystopia, part modern-day farce about the yellow vests movement that ripped through the country in late 2018, the film can be both entertaining and surprisingly funny, especially if you’re familiar with France’s politics and current economic woes. But it’s also too on-the-nose about what it wants to say, or rather, shout as loud as it can, regarding the country’s accumulated social wreckage.

Making a convincingly assured feature debut, TV and web series writer-director Carey's script nails the raunchy-sweet tone required to bring off this R-rated teen-centered comedy with remarkable charm and relatability, mining a rich vein of girl-centered sexual curiosity and experimentation "loosely inspired" by personal experience.

One might question the operatic finale, which doesn't quite have the inevitability of the greatest tragic love stories. But the film's humanism gives it an overwhelming impact. To Israeli audiences, the experience must be even more explosive.

It's an adrenaline rush of a film.

There's a new bogeyman in town, and he makes all other pretenders to the terror throne look like a bunch of cuddly Disney characters.

Although Trucker doesn't have the social import that made "Norma Rae" a hit, it's an affecting, small film that could catch on with sophisticated audiences as well as more down-home types.

The lineup of fine actors keenly registers minute details about the passage of time with humor, wisdom and a sharp sense of how moments of rash or just misguided behavior can forever dictate a life's path.

As for the trio of animals who play Lulu, suffice it to say that if the film is a hit, kennels won’t be able to breed Belgian Malinoises fast enough. Forget the near-naked stripper gyrations in Magic Mike; when Tatum wraps his arm around Lulu as they sit and watch the sunset together, it’s the sexiest he’s ever been onscreen.

A picture that clearly aspires for more ends up with considerably less.

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.

Bolshoi Babylon explores the bizarre case in more detail, but grows even more interesting when it examines how this storied cultural institution struggles to survive tempestuous politics both inside and outside the theater walls.

By turns touching, funny and sometimes strangely existential, David Osit and Malika Zouhali-Worrall’s documentary, destined for broadcast on public television’s POV program next year, succeeds in telling a highly personal story in a surprisingly relatable manner.

Handling its complex issues and complicated plot developments with forceful clarity, the film proves simultaneously heartbreaking and inspirational.

Where the drama is headed is never in doubt, and the steps it takes to get there are often familiar. Yet by this time we are sufficiently invested in the couple to care deeply. If anything, the intrusion of mortality makes the relationship more believable as both Parsons and Aldridge (Epix’s Pennyworth) imbue their scenes with warmth and heart, regret and exquisite sadness.

An obvious "Ocean's Eleven" knockoff, minus any of that franchise's hip sensibility.

Magic Mike XXL is ridiculously entertaining.

Despite the sometimes tedious pacing and repetitive script, it’s a classic-feeling slasher that delights in gore — think Friday the 13th — and an affirming example of Janiak’s confidence behind the camera.

Divided into seven narratively ill-defined parts, Sorry/Not Sorry moves like the first draft of an article that has all its sources, but doesn’t quite have a thesis yet. Rather than contemplating the nuances of C.K.’s rise and fall, it is simply an information piece, adding footnotes to the story we already know.

The Peasants is a ravishingly beautiful visual triumph.

But for all its vividly detailed eccentricity, the movie, like Abby, connects the dots rather too easily. As Clifton Hill digs deeper into exceedingly sordid stuff, it doesn't dish up the kind of aha moments or chilling frissons that would lift the story from clever contrivance — until a final, delicious twist pulls the rug out from under this richly atmospheric but not always convincing tale.

There are times when Black Phone 2 wears its stylistic influences — including not only the Nightmare on Elm Street films but many other horror movies from the ‘80s — too heavily on its sleeve. But the extensive borrowings are easily forgiven when the set pieces are delivered with the sort of panache that they are here.

A quiet stunner of a drama.

A combination of exposé on Air Force experiments with chimpanzees and cuddly pet story, Project X should fly high as family entertainment.

Ultimately Fear X feels more like an intellectual exercise than a convincing drama.

There's enough solid internal logic mixed in with the murky ambiguities to keep The Wretched far more compelling than its generic title might suggest. The filmmakers are working to a formula, but they definitely have fun with it, which is contagious.

Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx are on fire in the lead roles: They're both charismatic as hell without sacrificing any of the emotional honesty necessary for you to believe that these movie stars are a scruffy reporter and a mentally ill musician.

It is to Dance's considerable credit that he never lets the filmmaking overtake the understated storytelling.

Cartoons can get away with being serviceable and skillful without much creativity since they have an endlessly renewing audience. "Mad 2" surfs along on such waves, entertaining youngsters while mildly amusing adults.

Advocacy filmmaking that also manages to succeed in pulling heartstrings.

Sisto has an arresting visual style, a firm command of tone and an impressive ability to steer his fine cast onto the same rigorous wavelength, all of which makes him a talent to watch.

Writer David Hare and director Ralph Fiennes have a good feel for the artistic world the story inhabits and professional dancer Oleg Ivenko does a more than creditable job in personifying one of the 20th century’s most celebrated artistic figures, but the narrative bounces all over the place trying to cover too much ground when concentrating on the core drama would have far better served the desired end.

Through wit, surprise and an irrepressible ballsiness comes a scorching humor that neither curdles nor becomes exhausted.

The story of Mohamed, who leaves behind his normal life for the money and excitement of piracy, is illuminating, even if he is never a terribly sympathetic character that the viewer can warm up to.

This is a self-satisfied exercise that's only occasionally as much fun as it thinks it is.

While this psychosexual twaddle will no doubt have its admirers, it seems a long shot to attract a significant following or herald the arrival of a director to watch.

At its best Ferris Bueller is a free-spirited romp, a devil-may-care respite from grueling dailiness.

In The Weather Man, Nicolas Cage doesn't so much play a protagonist, warts and all, as he plays a protagonist who is all warts.

Although Hill certainly puts in a few sly tips of the hat to canonical and cult favorites and is clearly enjoying exploiting the audience’s expectations of the genre, Dead for a Dollar isn’t an empty nostalgia exercise. Nor is it a revisionist postmodern deconstruction. It’s somewhere between the two, built on a narrative architecture as classical in its vernacular as Doric columns on a bank, but with details that will surely remind audiences of the future that it was made in the 2020s.

A powerful account of self-actualization spanning 20 formative years, Liesl Tommy’s biopic is also an intimate gift of love, rich in complexity, spirituality, Black pride and feminist grit rooted not in didactic speeches but in authentic experience. The ageless music, of course, is the galvanizing force, but it’s the personal struggle behind it that makes the story so affecting.

The actor (Shepard) delivers a beautifully understated, world-weary turn that largely makes up for the slow-paced film's longueurs, and which in a better film could be described as iconic.

The film is a genuinely gripping tale about international terrorism that hopscotches across three continents.

A mildly diverting naughty comedy, lacking the pure comic nastiness of "Bad Santa" or the sheer audacity of "Up in Smoke."

This 3-D Imax film puts you at eye level with awesome creatures that look like alien beasts from deep space.

Resembling a short story more than a narrative feature, the film tells its slender story in leisurely fashion, relying more on mood and atmosphere than dialogue or character development.

Naomi Watts and Matt Dillon bring impressive emotional and physical heat to Sunlight Jr., director/screenwriter Laurie Collyer’s beautifully observed character study of an unmarried couple living on the economic margins.

Moussaoui captures the drama with a simple style that can seem a bit lackluster at times, although he makes good use of the Algerian locations and coaxes compelling performances from his cast. In the end, his narrative's three-pronged structure is perhaps the film's strongest asset.

What Dower is interested in here isn't the hijacking itself or even how it has gone unresolved for decades, but rather the nature of the D.B. Cooper obsession.

This is a typical Moore oeuvre: funny, often over the top and of dubious documentation, but with strongly made points that leave viewers much to ponder and debate after they walk out of the theater.

An engaging sports movie about the greatest racehorse ever and his female owner who literally bets the farm on his supremacy.

Shows tremendous control and discipline, especially for a young filmmaker on her first feature. Director Julia Loktev might be working on a profoundly low budget, but her camera work and lighting are precise and imaginative.

Volume two gets down in ways the first half doesn't, although anything resembling real sensuality remains MIA.

For a story primarily about the dregs of modern life, what’s most admirable about At Work is how it never succumbs to pure miserablism, leaving us with the feeling that if Paul somehow managed to adapt to this brand new, horrible world, perhaps so can we.

Veteran actor Richard E. Grant makes his writing and directing debut with Wah-Wah, a startling portrait of his own startling and unusual childhood, growing up in Swaziland in the waning days of the British Empire in Africa.

Lilies of the Field is a funny, sentimental, charming and uplifting film, in which intelligence, imagination and energy are proved again to be beyond the price of any super-budget.

While all this might have made for a potent short subject, the abstract visual monotony begins to wear thin shortly into the 98-minute running time.

While Angel brings little new to the lexicon of serial killer biopics, it hits the target as an effortlessly palatable aesthetic experience, more shiny period pageant than probing character study.

No matter how silly and outlandish the action gets — and it does become ridiculous — it also delivers the goods its audience expects.

Delicate and unhurried almost to a fault, though also hauntingly sexy and even humorous at times.

Eccentric, misguided and occasionally charming and sweet, this curiosity item with Sean Penn in one of his nuttier performances is unlikely to be embraced critically or commercially.

The repetitive storyline about successive heists during a Muppets European tour grows tiresome and the fun is intermittent.

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

It lacks infectious magic. Any promise of originality fueled early on by the amusing sight of unicorns sniffing through suburban trash quickly dissipates as the siblings' journey gets under way, their progress marked by slapstick gags, predictable close shaves, encounters with characters that often feel like plot padding and standard life lessons writ large.

The film is not good, but it is singular — and absolutely chaotic.

Port Authority is a little fragile in terms of its narrative skeleton, at times tending to idle in place when it ought to be moving forward, but the film's characters and world are drawn with immersive engagement, and the mood is transfixing.

The ending is a bit flat and anti-climactic.

Not for the faint-hearted.

Treating the subject of creative exploitation not with overheated moralism but as a year-in-the-life social chronicle, the picture makes a solid, if very tardy, follow-up to the director's 1999 breakout Jesus' Son.

Not a single person in this ensemble comedy doesn't suffer from colossal stupidity.

It’s a little too treacly and childish in places, with a storyline that goes exactly where you expect. But those drawbacks are somewhat compensated for by a series of arresting set-pieces, each one taking us to a spectacular Far East location not yet visited by this kind of high-powered Hollywood cartoon.

Rudd and Scott hail from different universes of movie comedy, but manage together here just fine, particularly since each takes a different path.

Karia’s attempts to make the play cinematic work well at times.

While Giuliani Time offers a wealth of important information that many might have long forgotten, its impact is diluted by its heavily biased nature and lack of balance.

The performances are all fine, with Sawa and Stahl providing forceful presences. But Sullivan is particularly memorable, delivering the sort of galvanizing, physically and emotionally demanding turn that would be of the star-making variety if Hunter Hunter were to be seen by a wide audience.

Although Criminal retains its source material's cleverness and intricate plotting, something seems to have been lost in the translation.

Haute Cuisine is light on plot, long on flavor and deliciously French.

Her (Zoey Deutch) wildly entertaining performance proves the standout element of the picture, which never quite reaches the comic heights for which it's aiming.

The film's characters are lively, the women all look terrific (the guys do too, for that matter), and its many romantic story threads weave into artfully told tales of love lost and found.

Although Evil eventually suffers from its heavy-handed treatment of its subject, it is a well-made and engrossing melodrama.

Rather than sensationalizing their subject, Paravel and Castaing-Taylor never forget that Issei, while clearly troubled or ill or both, is still a human being, too. It is a testament to the talent of the directors, who also shot and edited the film, that such a complex moral stance rises organically from their material.

"Iron Man" has more wit and style, but Hulk is a neat thrill ride with an intelligent script by Zak Penn and smart, well-paced direction by the French director of "The Transporter" series, Louis Leterrier.

The film never quite clarifies its own attitude toward Hart. It simply doesn’t spend enough time with him to allow the audience to decide whether he was a truly transformative politician undone by tabloid reporters or just another slick operator. This robs the film of a tragic dimension that it might have achieved.

The scant character development is not enhanced by the film's directorial style.

Vanderbilt’s commanding Nuremberg couldn’t have arrived at a more consequential time.

This academic, albeit beautifully shot, exercise will appeal mainly to those who like their Greek tragedy served with no frills or explanations and a bare minimum of dialogue.

The movie offers no simple solutions, nor even a feel-good ending, but throws a cold light on the human tragedy that underlies many of today's headlines.

It's a gripping ride through the storm...with powerful imagery, a simple and accessible story and a stellar performance from Kim Yoon-seok.

With its assortment of mouthwatering ingredients and dishes, In Search of Israeli Cuisine is an unadulterated foodie delight. But much more than that, Roger Sherman’s documentary offers fascinating insights into a little-understood country, using the culinary prism to illuminate a complex, still-young culture.

The film, bearing no small debt to Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, inevitably has a familiar feel. But director-screenwriter Nguyen infuses it with enough fresh elements to make it fully entertaining.

What spark there is in the movie comes in the scenes when Vivian and Nana are getting to know each other. Both actresses have a sweet chemistry and strong screen presences that you wish were better utilized.

Intentionally provocative, artistically uncompromising and self-consciously polemical, La Leyenda Negra attempts to inform by incitement, challenging audiences to concede to an unvarnished view of migrant life in working-class Los Angeles.

In Channing Tatum, who also starred in "Saints," the film has a good-looking, magnetic hunk to draw a crowd. Terrence Howard lends the pedigree of great screen acting, and Zulay Henao adds charm and glamour.

The film’s true MVP is Cusack, delivering a wittily subtle and acerbic turn that well displays his gift for deadpan comedy. He elevates the material whenever he’s onscreen, providing hints as to the more interestingly subversive film Adult World might have been.

Aided by the dynamic cinematography of regular Ari Aster collaborator Pawel Pogorzelski, a pulsing electronic score by Brit musician Bobby Krlic and sturdy effects work, Soto brings an assured hand, balancing action with character-driven scenes and comedy with suspense throughout. The pacing is brisk, infused with youthful energy, but never so frenetic that it doesn’t allow intimate exchanges time to breathe.

The story itself finally feels lost beneath the levels of artifice rather than heightened by it.

Opening with superbly creepy, character-driven suspense filmmaking, Unlawful Entry closes with a succession of shock scenes that look like they were lifted from a slasher film. In between, however, there are enough hard-edged, efficiently mounted thrills and plot twists to keep thrill lovers engrossed. [22 June 1992]

Beyond a few scattered insights, Quest mostly remains on the surface of someone it portrays as a kind of culinary Prometheus, all the while failing to justify why that should be the case. It's like a tasting menu that never really turns into a full meal.

This lively, likable, if somewhat on-the-nose work grabs viewer attention with fourth-wall-breaking monologues, jocular explanatory graphics, and tightly choreographed dance numbers to vintage American and Iranian pop songs.

However mindless and heartless it may be, Through the Never succeeds as pure sense-swamping spectacle. It is a blow-out banquet for Metallica fans, and a blockbuster rock-and-rollercoaster ride for any heavy metal tourists curious to see this music played at major-league level.