With the artistic choices he has made, Mendoza achieves a singularity of purpose in hammering home his message, and the experience compels one to watch even as one wishes to turn away.

A dynamic glimpse of contemporary Los Angeles funneled into an old-fashioned coming-of-age saga, Lowriders isn’t always persuasive, but it has plenty of heart.

River ends with relief, followed by a reversal that’s the last thing you expect from this unvarnished, unsentimental tale of self-preservation: an act of quietly powerful heroism.

For all its potential, the movie ultimately feels like a frustrating miscalculation; the ingredients are there — it's the recipe that's off.

Its blizzard of statistics notwithstanding, the film consists mostly of true-life stories that, while undeniably tragic, stir up more emotion than thought.

Articulate, charismatic, engaging and clearly brilliant, Ingels seems to have captivated the filmmaker so much that Big Time suffers as a result. Neither scholarly enough to fully satisfy architecture buffs nor distinctive enough as a biographical portrait, it falls somewhere in the bland middle.

In the end, sensationalism and simplistic emotions, bolstered by Klaus Badelt's sweeping score, decimate a story that has otherwise been unfolding nicely with gloom and intrigue.

While it's well-intentioned to a fault, and driven by deep convictions, the film also is diffuse, lethargically paced and short on thematic trenchancy, building powerful individual moments but seldom sustaining a compelling narrative thread.

With its sensory immersion in nature and its yearning characters, the gorgeously shot film is a memorable study of solitude and connection.

Unashamedly formulaic and relentlessly puerile, The Festival is no better than it needs to be, which may be as much commercial calculation as artistic limitation.

The film is smart with a cool New York irony that is easy to get into, but it owes its principal fascination to the enigmatic Condola Rashad, the stage actress seen in Showtime’s Billions and Joshua Marston’s recent Come Sunday, and her multi-layered performance as a charismatic but mentally disturbed Iraq war vet.

Supposedly chronicling the experiences of a man attempting to reconnect with the alien form he encountered as a child, Skyman squanders whatever potential thrills it might have offered with its lackluster execution.

Aggie is an extraordinary figure, and the doc is interesting enough. But don’t expect much invention or surprise here. The overall tone is frenetic and imprecise.

A great deal of human drama underlies all this, but not all of it makes it to the screen.

Agreeably upbeat and filled with expected sequences of gung-ho Aussie living, Paperback is light on its feet and pleasantly diverting. [09 Aug 2000]

Well, that didn't take long. Everything fun and terrific about "Iron Man," a mere two years ago, has vanished with its sequel. In its place, Iron Man 2 has substituted noise, confusion, multiple villains, irrelevant stunts and misguided story lines.

Overlaying the drama with the false cheer of lively music and bouts of humor, the story feels out of touch with the very emotions it desperately tries to evoke. Neither tearjerker nor very affecting drama, it defaults to somewhere in the middle.

The 134-minute film jams in much information, incidents and characters without losing any entertainment value. And, fortunately, its heroism isn't pumped up or glorified.

Cooler cars and more action follow Lightning and Mater as they mix it up with spies and Formula 1 racers in yet another Pixar winner.

This first feature by veteran visual effects supervisor Eric Brevig has its transporting, if benign, charms.

Ultimately suffers from an uneven execution and repetitive overload.

The sour-tinged comedy of excruciatingly English embarrassment deploys some talented performers on both sides of the camera but its promising parts never quite cohere into a properly satisfying whole.

Perhaps it is precisely Dumont’s point that satire and the real world have been converging for a long time, but this alone is not enough insight to sustain a movie that’s over two hours long and contains a protagonist few will warm to. for such a high-powered auteur/leading-lady collaboration, France feels decidedly unspectacular.

Tanovic wisely returns to his Bosnia and Herzegovina roots, where the small but highly nuanced story, set in prewar 1991, rings with authenticity and weight.

The two actors are solid, never overplaying scenes and capturing well that slow realization that their lives are never going to be the same.

The action never stops being fun, and it eventually does make excellent use of the heavy machinery Nels' job requires. Cold Pursuit just gets a little winded, like a 66-year-old action hero working hard at high altitudes.

As a family film in that vein it largely succeeds, buoyed by Black’s typical exuberance, Blanchett’s typical slyness and a richly evocative rendering of a Rockwellian suburb sprinkled with goofer dust. Less interesting, as is the way with many audience-avatar YA protagonists (sorry, Harry), is the main character, and Vaccaro’s rather hyper-articulated performance doesn’t help.

Offers more laughs than most comedies of recent vintage. But what was subversive on the tube feels muted at feature length.

Although it has a visceral intensity, this teen-centered prison movie doesn't avoid the familiar tropes of its genre.

Cleverly put together by writer-director Matthew Bate, the film takes a bizarre, cult folktale and turns it into a picture that is more provocative than entertaining.

While one can admire the commitment, technique, concentration and stamina required to keep the pressure cooker at maximum temperature, it still feels like an exercise, one so dramatically monotonous and tonally high-pitched that you want to escape almost as much as the characters do.

It's clear that Weerasethakul is even less concerned with conventional narrative considerations here than he was in the free-rangingly imaginative Uncle Boonmee.

It's a nicely chained movie melody of high adventure, of both the heart and the battlefield, set, of course, in the golden city of Camelot. [27 Jul 1995]

"Dream" brings together so much history, sheer adventure and terrifying moments.

As a portrait of bogus revolutionary rhetoric used to undermine and control women, it’s thoughtful and provocative.

A zinger-filled crowd-pleaser that open-minded Elvis fans (but by no means all) will have fun with.

Swank makes it work with a canny performance that conveys her character’s inner turbulence, much of it derived from her troubled relationship with her estranged grown son.

A bold rethinking of a familiar old story and striking design elements are undercut by a draggy midsection and undeveloped characters in Snow White and the Huntsman.

Dan Algrant’s lyrical recreation of a father-son relationship seen over time, through memory and music, has a sense of urgent originality that works even apart from its great Tim Buckley score.

There’s little that’s unpredictable in Miguel Sapochnik’s unabashedly sentimental sci-fi road movie, which could almost have been assembled in a robotics lab from the durable parts of countless movies past. But darned if I wasn’t misting up in the melancholy climactic scenes.

Thanks mainly to his (Jackson) considerable presence, Coach Carter works more effectively than expected.

A curious film with real heart but questionable technique. This art house fodder is just quirky and fresh enough to catch on with audiences.

An affecting drama made more poignant by honest-feeling autobiographical elements.

It's more breezy than bittersweet, more about acceptance and forgiveness than a movie made in 2020 has any right to be.

It’s an aggressive glossing-over of a career that is worthy of both reverence and introspection/interrogation/investigation. Entertaining, funny and light on its feet to a fault, Lorne offers only the first.

Perrier’s direction — which pays sweet homage to romantic comedies and vintage Hollywood — makes up for the underdeveloped narrative and occasionally stiff performances from the supporting cast.

Frustratingly timid documentary.

Rowan Joffe's film of Graham Greene's 1938 novel "Brighton Rock" takes a gothic approach to the story of a young thug obsessed with hell with little of the writer's subtlety and too much reliance on a loud quasi-religious choral score.

The result unfortunately has the blandness of a mediocre TV sitcom.

Somebody I Used to Know, written by Brie and her husband Dave Franco (who also directs here), is a sharply conceived and smart romantic comedy — the kind of film that might inspire hasty accusations of trying too hard to be different. It takes the narrative skeleton of the genre and enhances it with its own subversive elements.

A high-carat cast...tears into the juicy material with relish for the most part, but by trying to keep the prolonged sit-down affair from becoming excessively stagey, Moverman adds too many distracting flashbacks to maintain the original’s hard-hitting and well-aimed gut punch.

Despite the best efforts of the directors, Hell of a Summer just isn’t scary. Bryk and Wolfhard know how to tell jokes, but struggle with establishing a truly creepy atmosphere.

The track records of the performers are impeccable, but Issit has obviously never watched an awards show or similar event where comedy actors appear unscripted. Placing the weight of such a preposterous storyline on their improvisational shoulders was a disaster waiting to happen. And it happened.

Distinctly and proudly old-fashioned in its retro, film noir vibe, A Walk Among the Tombstones is notable for its dark atmospherics and strong performance by Liam Neeson.

It merely recycles 1987's "Broadcast News" with only a single reference to YouTube.

Proving that with solid direction, tight writing and strong performances an American remake can actually be as good as the foreign-language original, The Last Kiss, an unusually perceptive dramedy about contemporary relationships also manages to stand quite capably on its own two feet.

Ultimately lacks the textural depth and emotional precision that marks the work of obvious influences here like Robert Altman, but it does offer a pungent slice of contemporary Israeli life that should prove resonant for audiences interested in the social complexities of the region.

Thierry is utterly convincing and compelling from first to last, in a deglamorized but sensual performance of tautly controlled severity and uncompromising rigor.

This is a demanding and fitfully rewarding film which focuses minutely on the shifting relationships between its three protagonists.

One unfortunate effect of the jumbling is that it cools off Statham’s slow-boil performance, and prompts us to question the logic behind H’s plan.

Not hurting matters for foreign and Indian film devotees, the film features two icons of Indian cinema, Madhur Jaffrey and Naseeruddin Shah.

The gentle tone and disjointed sketch-show structure here will appeal to long-standing fans, but Mascots wins no prizes for innovation or progression. The jokes are uneven, the caricatures often overly broad and the plot almost nonexistent.

Somewhere in the murky depths of this modestly gripping thriller lurks a more interesting film about real-life monsters, the kind that prey on human minds not human flesh.

Imagine Paddy Chayefsky's "Marty" saddled with more sentimentality and sprinkled with a few more laughs and you pretty much have Last Chance Harvey.

The lameness of the gags and dialogue and the film's frequent deep dives for the bottom at the expense of real comedy speak to desperation in Hollywood to figure out the audience for contemporary naughty comedy.

Mama represents a throwback and a modest delight for people who like a good scare but prefer not to be terrorized or grossed out.

Lent distinguishing heft by its roster of screen veterans, this gripping drama provides an absorbing reflection on the courage and cost of dissent.

The cast commit gamely to the material, although the script is a bit underwritten, making sudden shifts in character a little odd and a bit random.

Films about serial killers have become so ubiquitous that they now form a subgenre of the crime movie. Even so, Antibodies, has a bracingly original take on the matter.

The sad truth is that we’ve heard countless harrowing stories of the Holocaust, and this one, for the most part, isn’t presented in a way that makes it indelible or urgent.

Laurent walks between pulpy suspense and a more serious grimness as she presents the action.

A wobbly comedy-drama.

It’s an eyebrow-raising true tale, one aided and abetted onscreen by the solid cast and strong sense of commitment. But Heckler is caught somewhere between being a journalistic historian and a dramatist without seeming expert at either. His screenplay connects all the dots of the story with no sense of shaping or modulation.

It's also solidly constructed throughout and the acting is impeccable. The problem is that it just lumbers along for two solid hours, never rising to any significant emotional or philosophical heights.

Fascinating and absorbing tale.

Modest but revealing documentary.

What Meyers doesn't do is take chances. She sticks to formula and predictability. In "Complicated," this is as much a matter of casting as writing.

A deeply personal, often wrenching documentary.

However nuanced and artful, the nightmarish unease is laid on so thick that, in combination with the cryptic narrative, it gradually turns to murk.

A look at how a post-industrial ghost town became home to one of the world's largest contemporary-art venues, Museum Town also exemplifies a problematic category of documentary: the project whose makers are close enough to the subject to deliver an attention-worthy film, but too close to make a comprehensive one.

It's a high point for everyone involved.

Sometimes eloquent and often rocky, Magic Hour is good enough to make you wish it was much less predictable.

With Hardy in fine form at the wheel, Havoc knows what its audience wants. It also looks great.

I Origins is a bracingly venturesome, exploratory work that achieves an exceptional balance between the emotional and intellectual aspects of its unusual story.

A smart and sophisticated comedy romp.

Hardly inexperienced at playing belligerent, outrageous and offensive a-holes, Hill offers a definitive account of one here, to which Teller can only play the blander, if useful, second fiddle who has to try, and try again, to stand up to the gruff bully.

A character-driven take on true-crime fare, Alex Karpovsky's Rubberneck marks a solid dramatic turn for a filmmaker best known for playing comedic parts in indie films like "Tiny Furniture."

Ramping up his style to a more dynamic and elegant level than he’s achieved previously, Fuqua socks over the suspense and action but also takes the time for some quiet, even spare moments to emphasize the hero’s calm and apartness.

Efficient, if ultimately rote, political thriller.

Sherlock Holmes goes wrong in many ways except for one -- at the boxoffice.

Immaculate works best when it abandons its attempts to be a kind of surrealist portrait of Catholic terror and leans into the campy horror of B movies.

Although touching on a multitude of aspects of its disturbing subject matter, it never really digs particularly deep into any of them, with the result that it ultimately proves unsatisfying

The Intervention feels bland and without consequence, as it’s not possible to invest in characters about whom we’re offered so little.

Very much reminiscent of "Napoleon" in numerous ways only minus the wit, the film is made somewhat palatable by its inherent sweetness and its treatment of typical adolescent angst.

Though the film’s European scenes carry too little dramatic weight and might be confusing for those unfamiliar with the novel, the Morocco-set opening 40 minutes are beautifully and quietly observed.

It tries to stretch the bounds of the narrative form, to upend convention and encourage us to rethink our relationship to storytelling. It aims to do all this with style — Begert’s direction is slick and capable — and absorbing performances from most of the cast. But Little Death can’t fulfill the ambitions of its intellectual exercise, resulting in a bifurcated film that doesn’t find its footing until the end.

Chadwick strikes a perfect balance between humor and tragic gravity, and the result is that an unknown story seems certain to stir the hearts of audiences worldwide.

A fanciful wisp of a film that feels slight at times. It's based on the slender novella "Pobby and Dingan," by Ben Rice, who also co-wrote the screenplay. Yet it winds up making some keen observations on the power of imagination.