A stunning, difficult film.

As compelling as the life-and-death situation is, it becomes a bit of a drag in a movie pushing two-and-a-half hours that could definitely benefit from a tighter edit.

The story’s anchored by strong performances from Belgian star Cecile de France (The Kid With a Bike, Hereafter) and French singer-turned-actress Izia Higelin (Mauvaise fille), who have a natural chemistry that’s not only credible but actually infectious.

Ramsay’s film is hard to love, but that beautiful visual casts such an intense glow it pulls the whole unwieldy thing together.

It’s an unassuming comic drama that sneaks up on you, its emotional honesty fueled by gorgeous performances of unimpeachable naturalness from Will Arnett and Laura Dern.

Driven by a brilliant, ferocious performance by Michael Fassbender, Shame is a real walk on the wild side, a scorching look at a case of sexual addiction that's as all-encompassing as a craving for drugs.

Effectively anchoring the picture is Keke Palmer's lovely lead performance as Akeelah Anderson.

Most disappointingly, the dancers never get their close-ups; whether by choice or by some enforced arrangement, Wiseman doesn't approach the gorgeous women to give them the chance to tell their side of what it's like to work at the Crazy Horse.

The mean streets don't get any nastier than the high school parking lots in this cool-crafted mystery.

To his credit, director Scott Derrickson...navigates through the different zones with a fair degree of actual coherence, and delivers the entire package with evident ease and some flair.

In a genre movie climate marked by cheap thrills and easy scares — whatever gets us not to click on something else — it’s nice to see a film that sustains a strong ambiance of dread simply via someone looking out the window and shopping for groceries.

Not only does it find the nastily enjoyable vibe that eluded its predecessor, but it also tells a story worth following — while balancing its most appealing character with others whose disposability (they aren’t sent on suicide missions for nothin’) doesn’t prevent them from being good company onscreen.

A winning mix of sharp comedy and touching bits that keeps the laughter -- a few tears -- flowing.

With fierce arguments, often drawn on partisan lines, raging across the country, The Lottery will be of vital interest to anyone interested in the topic, especially the parents of young children.

A thoughtful, emotionally tricky debut benefitting from two strong lead performances.

You don’t have to be a follower of Eagles of Death Metal, or even glancingly familiar with their music, to appreciate the emotional power of Hanks’ deeply felt film.

The culinary setting gives this familiar formula an appetizing twist.

Hong, who again wrote as well as directed, hasn’t suddenly become someone interested in things such as densely plotted narratives and surprise twists, with the few events that happen only excuses to dig a little deeper into the behavior and feelings of his protagonists.

How she (Dunham) made her movie is more impressive or at least unique than the actual story she chooses to tell.

Though some of its insights might sound like common sense from the outside, the doc sees many places where they go against the grain; it's likely to provoke some "aha" moments even for viewers who couldn't care less about Super Bowls and World Cups.

Punctuated with moments of illumination, humor and even occasional visual flair —the opening shot executes a stately 360-degree cityscape pan from a high crane — Present. Perfect manages to retain interest despite a certain repetitiveness and some patience-taxing longueurs.

The decision to approach Johnny's life as a love story causes Mangold to neglect the development of Johnny's music.

A beautifully animated tale of the growing friendship and occasionally rather cloying emotional travails of two 12-year-old girls.

Grungy and uneven, but it has a rollicking pace and clearly intends to be good fun so that audiences may overlook its unsteady rhythms, pretensions and inconsistencies and take it for the fast and very furious ride it wants to be.

If the lighter scenes sometimes lean toward sitcom cuteness, Jacobs has a sufficiently deft touch to get away with it. The territory often seems closest to that of NBC's unjustly short-lived "Freaks and Geeks," which is by no means a bad place to be.

Refusing to offer easy answers or perspectives, Dormant Beauty is directed in such a way it doesn’t need to take a clear-cut position on the question, because like all the director’s work it has no concern with convincing people of anything, but a great deal of interest in illuminating contemporary Italian society.

Engaging and lively.

This tedious exercise in abstraction by Belgian filmmakers Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani well apes the visual stylization of such filmmakers as Mario Bava and Dario Argento without bothering to provide anything equivalent in terms of theme or content.