This is in many ways a white-knuckle brand extension for Honnold above all else. Still, the film frequently treads into knotty territory.

The insanely self-indulgent running time of two hours and 40 minutes and the tendency to undercut tension with fussy dialogue that continually draws attention to its cleverness make Zahler’s third feature a lot less fun than it seems to think it is.

This is in many ways an abrasive, wildly uneven film — raw and deliberately unvarnished in style, shot by Benoit Delhomme with a nervous handheld camera and lots of wide-angle lenses that mirror the darting restlessness and the uneasy perspective of a troubled mind.

Russell Mulcahy's In Like Flynn triumphs as a disgracefully entertaining romp that packs an unexpected emotional wallop.

McCarthy’s performance, which is paired with an equally rewarding turn by British actor Richard E. Grant, anchors this bizarre, compelling true story.

It deserves praise not as a polemic but as a richly humanistic, emotionally searing drama that sticks in the memory.

As ambitious and sometimes unsettling as it is, the film, after crossing back and forth over the line many times, ultimately feels affected in its aspirations toward making some profound statement about self-abasement and sacrifice, making one feel like rejecting the whole thing despite some striking individual moments.

Marred by juvenile humor and ersatz emotion, the film, directed by Pitipol Ybarra, is so bad that an even worse Hollywood remake seems inevitable.

One senses that Billingham is not always at ease with the narrative demands of filmmaking. But his startling eye for the common made strange is very visible here, and hard not to hope that he’ll make further forays into filmmaking after this very auspicious debut with a work that feels so close and true to his earlier material.

While Levin’s writing is sharp and observant, it’s also often overwrought and eventually just plain tiresome.

This first English-language outing by the ever-adventurous French director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust and Bone) is a connoisseur’s delight, as it's boisterously acted and detailed down to its last bit of shirt stitching.

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 remake is never uninteresting. But it begets the question of whether the slender thread of story about a coven of witches operating out of a famed Berlin dance academy can withstand all the narrative detail, social context and cumbersome subplots heaped onto it.

The intent is noble and the attention to detail admirable, but the overall effect is obstinately unmoving.

It's as if Neville, inspired by the scattershot commentary of the party guests in Wind, felt he'd been given permission to be a bit wild, even chaotic, with his documentary film style, an approach that proves both apt and a bit frustrating.

The film makes plenty of mileage from trading on the charm of a good bad boy, and Redford’s long experience in playing such roles serves him beautifully here; he knows by now he doesn’t have to push his attractiveness to be ingratiating. His work here is natural, subtle, ingratiating and doesn’t miss a trick.

Part sincere and part smarmy, part amusing and part windy nonsense, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs plays like an old Western-themed vaudeville show featuring six unrelated sketches of drastically differing quality.

The first-time director's grasp of pacing could be improved and the overlong movie can't quite sustain the energy and charm of its sensational start. But this is a durable tale of romance, heady fame and crushing tragedy, retold for a new generation with heart and grit.

There are chuckles and even guffaws throughout, though the comedy is streaked with despair, and also great tenderness. It’s the latest evidence of the director’s gift for tackling grave subjects with the lightest of touches; the film flows airily along, then knocks you off-balance with the weight of its insights and implications.

Wellesians will vigorously debate the aesthetic results of this torturously achieved accomplishment but, to the credit of those who, against daunting odds and nearly a half-century's worth of obstacles, arduously pushed this project to completion, the end result feels like a plausible fulfillment of the style Welles himself established for it.

Nachman and Hardy have produced another winning and relatable doc combining emotive storytelling with concisely focused filmmaking that's sure to charm viewers well beyond a sizable audience of dog lovers.

Indeed, the picture works best when it eschews dialogue and plot altogether and the lush musical elements combine with the intense hues of Manu Dacosse's 16mm-shot visuals to stimulatingly trippy effect.

The optimism of Inventing Tomorrow is quite uplifting, with dauntless teenage thinkers from diverse cultural and economic backgrounds working with resourcefulness and imagination to develop practical solutions to local eco threats.

Though it is intermittently witty, visually playful and laudable in its attempt to appeal to both head and heart, Laws abandons its characters to its big concept.

Attempts scares and yucks in equal measure and fails to deliver either.

Writer-director Boaz Yakin, who has directed everything from veteran movie stars to canine thesps in his career, has a harder time with child actors, eliciting performances that are uneven enough to attract attention to the script's weaker aspects.

The screenplay co-written by Clark and Thomas Moffett attempts to derive much humor from Atticus' relentless debauchery, but it all feels pro forma and repetitive.

[Yorgos Lanthimos'] fabulously entertaining tragicomedy, The Favourite, is a juicy power tangle connecting three women in the royal court of early 18th-century England, played by a divine trio who bounce off one another with obvious relish.