This potent work about stolen childhood deserves attention because of the freshness of the cast and because it confirms that Gavron is a director to watch.

While that personal connection lends an undeniably poignant aspect, the film never quite fully captures the essence of the enigmatic legal and political fixer.

It's as if a bunch of horny grad students decided to loot a costume store and then remake Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom with camera phones, but less fun.

While it hardly sells Wrinkles as a culture-shaking phenomenon, this modest documentary will play best to those who enjoy being creeped out by him enough to suspend their disbelief.

It's also — for better and worse — never quite as grim as its grisly, sometimes gag-inducing action might suggest. Falling in between outright psychological combat and black comedy, Harpoon might flounder a bit without Gelman's ironic tone.

Whimsical and wistful, if occasionally a little too self-consciously kooky, British comedy-drama Sometimes Always Never constructs a pleasant portrait of a mildly unhappy family living in the English northwest.

Not only does the film offer a superficial reading of all the famous movies that inspired it, but there’s also an incredibly bro-ish sentiment to the whole thing, as if Franco and Boone binge-watched half the Criterion Collection while slamming down brewskies on the couch.

The Parts You Lose somehow manages to be both unmoving and tension-free, wasting the talents of several notable actors in the process.

The two elements never mesh convincingly, proving neither substantial enough to work as compelling drama nor sufficiently suspenseful as action-thriller.

Saving some of the best for last, director Philippe makes outstanding use of footage of what in the trade is called the money shot, the startling payoff that everything has been building toward — in this case, of course, the scene featuring the “chestburster.”

Collisions all but screams "Issue Movie," and is extremely unlikely to reach anyone but the already convinced.

Celebration ultimately resembles more of a snapshot than a fleshed-out portrait, but it's one that's likely to linger in your memory for a long time afterwards.

This tale of a teenage gang of petty criminals whose alliance becomes fractured by a surprisingly big haul doesn't generate any real suspense and lacks the depth of characterization to make up for it.

In the Tall Grass is at least impressive on a technical level. Cinematographer Craig Wrobelski manages to find every conceivable way to make tall grass visually ominous, with Mark Korven's spooky score and the ambient sound design making valuable atmospheric contributions as well.

Generic and too self-indulgent, if energetic and occasionally funny, the film’s greatest attribute is by far co-star Crispin Glover, who steals the show as a deranged French-speaking assassin named Luc Chaltier.

Initially a caustic and somewhat programmatic checklist of alt-right obsessions, Cuck becomes more tonally and dramatically interesting after it shifts gear midway through, when Ronnie's story becomes a lurid psychosexual nightmare reminiscent of Darren Aronofsky's "Requiem for a Dream."

Too many endings and romantic subplots that do nothing but bloat the running time and detract from the snowy action could easily have been jettisoned by editors Tang Man To and Li Lin for a leaner, loftier final product.

As a director Teng isn’t a standout stylist, and the film’s technical specs are perfectly adequate, not flashy. Similarly Send Me to the Clouds doesn’t go out of its way to be overly confrontational.

How this outspoken film, Bustamante’s most gripping to date, will fare domestically is an open question (it has not come out yet in Guatemala). It had a blazing bow in the Venice Days sidebar (Giornate degli Autori), where it easily grabbed the best film prize.

The cast commit enthusiastically to the material, walking that fine line between comic exaggeration and an almost earnest dramatic sincerity.

The documentary — a polished directing debut for veteran sound editor Costin — will leave many geekier audience members wishing it were three times as long.

Scorsese's choice to make this a standalone feature and not a limited series seems mildly perplexing. Anyone hoping for the propulsive dynamism of, say, Goodfellas or Casino may be disappointed. But The Irishman is also on many levels a beautifully crafted piece of deluxe cinema.

Although written as a supporting role, Suarez Paz’s portrayal of Rey adds depth to the story and ultimately carries the film. So much so that you wish the movie had been about her.

De Pencier’s cinematography has a good eye for the beauty and horror of man-made or -altered landscapes, and it is hard to deny that the film benefits from being seen on as large a screen as possible, as impressive crane or drone shots fill the screen. But like with Burtynsky’s photographs, it is also hard to deny that the beauty of these shots stands in stark contrast to their purported message.

Miller demonstrates even less conviction than his writers, relying on frequent flashbacks to fill in backstory that’s not evident from the main plot and substituting CGI exteriors for actual locations. His workmanlike approach conveys the essentials without delivering many of the thrills or stylistic flourishes that the genre demands, adequately fulfilling a familiar expectation for forgettable entertainment.

The disappointing end result feels less than the sum of the talents involved, a weak script and thin high-concept plot only just held together by smart visual wizardry.

Blumhouse has certainly proved very successful with its inventive, low-budget approach to horror, but now that the company is spewing out movies like an assembly line, more and more duds are starting to appear. Everything about this effort, including its hackneyed, overfamiliar title, smacks of laziness and a cynical indifference to its lack of originality.

To paraphrase an old joke, this raucous alta kocker comedy, about a long-married Jewish couple experiencing a day from hell, isn't really very good. And the running time is so short! But the film is impossible to entirely dislike nonetheless.