The premise of this Hungarian/German/Swedish co-production is solid, even if the execution feels a little slack and the running time too long.

The real problem here is not the shameless blurring of fact and fiction, but how unforgivably dull it all seems.

The visuals are undeniably dreamy, but they mostly seem borrowed from other filmmakers’ dreams.

It’s a tricky proposition that will surely ruffle the feathers of many viewers, but one that also makes a curious, if lasting, impression, thanks in part to strong turns from actors Anais Demoustier and Josh Charles.

The film’s methods are boldly unorthodox and its constantly alternating moods and shifts in tone from drama to humor, joy to tragedy can be disconcerting. It’s not a film for all audiences, but despite its eccentricities it is always watchable, thanks to strongly drawn characters and the soul-stirring poetry of its imagery.

While the director prides herself for having a mix of pro and amateur actors improvising scenes, many awkward moments emerge as the characters seemingly are just instructed to let their conversations and interactions flow: the result is missed beats, protracted silences and characters staring at each other or into space for too long.

The result is vivid when focusing on those directly involved in the war but laborious when devoted to the fretful hand-wringing of do-gooder outsider characters, which is a lot of the time.

For the first time his ongoing collaboration with scriptwriter Paul Laverty, Loach's studiously safe-hands approach -- typified by regular collaborator George Fenton's near-incessant score -- can't counterbalance fundamental screenplay flaws.

This beautifully crafted film intrigues as a story never told before and ratchets up dramatic interest through a succession of unexpected turns.

Binoche and Stewart seem so natural and life-like that it would be tempting to suggest that they are playing characters very close to themselves. But this would also be denigrating and condescending, as if to suggest that they’re not really acting at all.

The screenplay... seems to generally lack a throughline or focus, coasting from party scenes full of drugs and alcohol to work-related drama but rarely managing to get inside the head of the self-destructive character the designer had become by the 1970s.

Wild Tales opens and closes with a bang, and at its best is a riotously funny and cathartic exorcism of the frustrations of contemporary life.

It's enriched by signature qualities – the humanistic, nonjudgmental gaze, the absence of sentimentality, the ultra-naturalistic style – that have always distinguished the Belgian brothers' fine body of work.

The plotting here is so hopelessly tangled, clichéd, and bereft of psychological complexity that it's difficult to care what happens to any of these people.

Cronenberg assumes a distinctly clinical approach to the emotional, social and business shenanigans on display here, a perspective that has brilliantly served some of his overtly psychological, horror and sci-fi pieces but gives this one a brittle and airless feel.

Anchored by a masterful performance by Timothy Spall in a role he was born to play, and gilded by career-best effort from DoP Dick Pope, working for the first time on digital for Leigh to bridge the gap between the painting and cinematography, Mr. Turner manages to illuminate that nexus between biography and art with elegant understatement.

Simultaneously a modern essay on suffering, an open-ended thriller, and a black social comedy, it is most importantly of all a thinly-veiled political parable drenched in bitter irony that takes aim against the corrupt, corrosive regime of Vladimir Putin.

As usual, there are only fragments of thoughts, nothing is developed, and it will be left only to the tiny band of die-hard Godardians to try to make any meaningful sense of the disparate fragments stitched together here.

Dolan's fifth feature feels like a strong step forward, striking his most considered balance yet between style and substance, drama-queen posturing and real heartfelt depth.

Wise beyond its years, like the teenage protag Gelsomina, Le Meraviglie (The Wonders) is a wistful but no-tears swan song recounting the disappearance of traditional rural life-style in Italy.

The final half-hour is a joy to watch, as turning points follow in rapid succession.

Coming Home sinks into a conventional tragic romance rut that not even engaging performances by Gong and Chen can save.

Creepy, suspenseful and sustained, this skillfully made lo-fi horror movie plays knowingly with genre tropes and yet never winks at the audience, giving it a refreshing face-value earnestness that makes it all the more gripping.

As in any classic Western, there are blunt pleasures to be had every time the tables are turned on men in black hats, as well as from direct, threat-loaded dialogue, meaningful looks, geometric arrangements of heroes and villains, and tense hunts for prey that play out both in rugged mountain settings and the tight quarters of buildings.

Always commanding attention at the film’s center is Pearce, who, under a taciturn demeanor, gives Eric all the cold-hearted remorselessness of a classic Western or film noir anti-hero who refuses to die before exacting vengeance for an unpardonable crime.

Mesmerizing in its incremental layering of a bizarre, tragic and thoroughly warped character study, Foxcatcher sees director Bennett Miller well surpassing even the fine work he did in his previous two films, Capote and Moneyball.

An exceptional animated feature from Spain, Wrinkles imaginatively and sensitively explore one of the major issues confronting most of the developed world: how to look after senior citizens in a rapidly aging population.

Straining for a quiet poeticism and, to its credit, occasionally achieving it thanks to the beautifully photographed scenic environs, Pilgrim Song fails to involve us in its central character’s introspection.

The actors' raw honesty and the unvarnished authenticity of the Southeast Texas environment lend weight to this slow-burn drama about responsibility, even if its storytelling is unrelentingly downbeat and lacks muscularity.

A fair-to-middling little date movie.

If it wasn’t for the charming top-liners who can make literary dialogue sound sexy in their sleep, the war in Fred Schepisi’s Words and Pictures would have to be called off after the opening skirmish.

Although the humor helps, the Groundhog Day-like repetition gets tedious; it makes you feel more like a hamster than a groundhog — or rather a hamster's wheel, going round and round, over and over again.

Embodying the same wholesomeness that has informed most of his screen work, gross-out comedies included, it feels like a tentative next step in Sandler’s evolving screen persona, one that has gone from good-hearted dolt to bumbling man-child to middle-aged father.

More notable for its small, incisive moments than as a moving depiction of the way that familial relationships are affected by life crises, the film makes only a minor impact.

Elliptical storytelling is both a strength and a weakness in a visually striking mystery thriller.

The film becomes a hodgepodge that will enlighten few viewers.

A feel-good movie about bridging the technological divide between youngsters and oldsters, Cyber-Seniors demonstrates that computer literacy is but a few mouse clicks away.

Although more than a little meandering and self-indulgent, the film is likeable nonetheless thanks to its incisive characterizations and canny capturing of true-life moments.

This moving documentary provides a much-needed account of its little-known subject.

This moving documentary lends a very human face to its powerful environmental message.

Despite the plethora of melodramatic plot elements, the film remains curiously uninvolving due to its compendium of clichés and sluggish pacing.

Engaging characters and the persistent appeal of dinosaurs benefit the doc, whose Byzantine legal content might otherwise be off-putting.

To call Don Peyote a mess would be putting too fine a point on it.

Clearly, these films are the work of people who love animals. More importantly though, going beyond the pat eco-conscious message that every kids’ film has to have, HTTYD2 touches on how complex the emotional bond between a person and an animal can be.

This film is straight out of the bottle with no metaphoric or psychological pretensions.

Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case is a professional, straightforward example of the behind-the-headlines sub-genre, executed in slick high-toned digital video and eschewing the soundtrack music so ubiquitous in documentaries nowadays.

A compassionate and psychologically revealing doc.

While it's more dramatically diffuse than the reboot and lacks a definitive villain, the new film is shot through with a stirring reverence for the Marvel Comics characters and their universe.

The heavily stylized film further demonstrates the actor's ability to create self-contained worlds behind the camera.

Without creating fully fleshed characters or truly involving conflict, the film aims instead to provoke howls of recognition and tears of gratitude by appealing to very basic notions of parent-child love.

It’s a rather fascinating bit of artistic self-indulgence that’s both made by, and about, self-indulgent men, although one that can certainly grow taxing. [Unrated Version]

This superb documentary captures Gore Vidal in all his ever-articulate glory.

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

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.

This is less a film about terrorists than an intimate portrait of boys growing up in a toxic environment. All the non-pro actors turn in natural performances, but the dark, brooding Rachid gets under the skin in the main role.

Atmospheric visuals and strong performances aren't enough to compensate for this would-be poetic drama's thin plotline.

It’s a marvelously imaginative conceit that transforms what could have been yet another dryly informative documentary into the realm of art.

Despite Meat Loaf’s hammily entertaining turn as the desperate owner of a musical theater summer camp, the film fails to live up to its obvious inspirations.

An elegant meditation on one of the most distinctive bodies of work in contemporary art.

It’s a loud Oz hodgepodge that never adheres to a prevailing tone long enough to allow viewers to emotionally engage with those characters in spite of some admittedly inspired CG flourishes.

Documentary will play best with very serious classical fans.

Another deep disappointment for fans of the raw, exciting "Ong Bak."

Banks succeeds in mining a few laughs from the otherwise strained, contrived proceedings.

Although unlikely to make any new converts, The M Word should well satisfy the filmmaker’s small legion of devoted fans.

The film will leave viewers feeling emasculated in more ways than one.

Advocacy filmmaking that also manages to succeed in pulling heartstrings.

Credit a rock solid turn by lead Jon Hamm that doesn’t shy away from revealing a darker underbelly to his underdog character, as well as a keenly-observed script by Tom McCarthy and deft direction by Craig Gillespie for the rewarding changeup.

A sharp-looking and enjoyable doc that celebrates the writer's legacy but, in its willfully obscure structure, seems a bit too bent on echoing his famous nonconformity.

With its splashy paintbox palette and jaunty pop soundtrack, All Cheerleaders Die just about hangs together as a cheerfully goofy romp.

Frame by frame, Ida looks resplendently bleak, its stunning monochromes combining with the inevitable gloomy Polish weather and communist-era deprivations to create a harsh, unforgiving environment.

Thomas Haden Church hits the exact balance of desperation and resignation demanded by the peculiar story.

Duplass and Moss are put to the test to carry the film entirely on their shoulders and unquestionably carry it off... On the other hand, viewers will have widely disparate reactions to spending 90 uninterrupted minutes with these characters.

Rose-tinted as the film’s perspective may be, Ping Pong Summer is still a lingering, entertaining glance back at an era that Americans just can’t seem to get enough of, whether in music or movies.

Motivated by an earnest need to inspire, Schmidt's debut suffers from stiffness but improves as it goes, the tension of its plot overcoming many dramatic failings.

The film lucks out by having an intrinsically compelling story, likeable underdog protagonists, and an exotic South Pacific location.

Pretty in a decaying-opulence sort of way and well cast, the film is more superficial than its nods to highbrow culture would suggest.

Although the situation seems to have thankfully been resolved several years ago due to the pressure applied by governments and international organizations, Desert Riders nonetheless serves as a bracing cautionary tale.

Acutely nailing the dysfunctional stand-up milieu both on- and off-stage, the micro-budgeted film is more a wryly-etched character sketch than an involvingly-plotted proposition, but it still manages to leave an impression thanks to Joshua Burge’s convincingly-inhabited lead performance.

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.

The movie contributes nothing new to the genre, but disbelief is suspended willingly enough once the action gets up to speed.

A female solidarity adultery comedy that's three parts embarrassing farce to one part genuinely comic discharge.

Taking an approach that's as unassuming as its almost instantly lovable subject, the film neither plays up the novelty of teens obsessed with Bible trivia nor attempts to gin up fake intrigue.

While the set-up of Megan Griffiths’ mellow comedy-drama is a little labored, the performances are so engaging and the characters so pleasurable to be around that it’s easy to forget the script’s flaws.

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.

After building up a narrative head of steam, the film relaxes too much back into expository documentary form. What might have been thrilling is merely entirely engrossing.

Despite a slightly grating tendency to resist any kind of subtlety, the honest and convincingly played central romance does finally linger.

The drama and intensity that are [Haggis's] signatures are mostly missing from these vividly dramatized but uninvolving romantic crises, none of which are particularly believable.

The film only intermittently displays the snap, precision and stylistic smarts a mixed-tone project like this requires; a half-good effort is not enough where buoyancy and a sly-to-mean spiritedness are required at all times.

The outcome is usually fairly tiresome, but on occasion reaches levels of moderate originality.

Lacking sufficient self-parody to entertain as a campy monster-movie spoof, or the budget to thrill as action adventure or sci-fi, much like the creature it depicts, Poseidon Rex represents a throwback that even its own distributor can't really get behind.

The English dubbing is far from picture-perfect, with uneven voice performances and choppy synchronization dulling some of the material’s spark.

A tediously unfunny comedy that is chiefly distinguished by the fact that it marks one of the last screen appearances by the late Dennis Farina who steals the film as a Tom Clancy-obsessed, would-be military thriller writer.

Hough’s dancing is far more impressive than his acting, and BoA, despite her perky sexiness, is an even less compelling screen presence. But they certainly move well together, and that’s pretty much all that matters here.

Etxeberria is a good match for the film's Cassavetes-inspired character study. She's no Gena Rowlands, but this woman is clearly under the influence of something that might destroy more lives than hers.

Almost all of the performances achieve perfect pitch. This is a tribute to Lundgren’s direction, and he also makes excellent use of the serene Oregon locations.

Funny, fascinating, and packing a surprisingly poignant twist, the doc will get plenty of free publicity and, for unsqueamish moviegoers, will live up to the hype.

One of the aspects that keeps Time from projecting an advertorial vibe, its indifference to outside voices, may also leave casual fans wanting a bit more.

The writer-director’s affection for his characters — the script is loosely autobiographical -- is both palpable and infectious.