Fierce and tragic tale of lost hope.

What matters most is that the movie is fun, pacy and enjoyable, a breath of fresh air sweetened by a deep affection for the material and boosted by a winning trio of leads.

This fascinating relationship gets smothered in pointlessly long takes, repetitive scenes, grim Western landscapes and mumbled, heavily accented dialogue.

The movie entertains, but it's a shallow entertainment where you have no rooting interest in the outcome.

Yojiro Takita, who directed enduring commercial hits like "The Ying Yang Master" and "The Yen Family," has made a popular gem -- thematically respectable, technically hard to fault, artfully scripted to entertain and touch.

Even if he's never able to mount a full-scale return to the happy depravity of his youth, Waters is one of bad behavior's most likable champions.

Utterly and passionately hagiographic, the documentary Seeing Allred presents 96 minutes of reasons to stand and cheer for celebrated feminist lawyer Gloria Allred. That means, of course, that for ultra-conservative lovers of Netflix documentaries, it's doubtful that Seeing Allred is going to dramatically change any opinions about her.

Despite its missteps and occasional pretensions, Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent provides a compelling portrait of the chef as tortured artist.

Policy wonk Robert Reich’s analysis of today’s parallels to the Great Depression is both statistics-driven and impassioned.

Ghost Stories is a witty and well-crafted love letter to old-school horror tropes.

The opportunity to see the stunning footage on the big screen is not to be missed, and the narration by Daniel Craig, delivered with James Bond-style drollness, makes it as much fun to listen to as to watch.

Santoalla isn't without its longueurs, even at 83 minutes, and can veer into the repetitive at times. But it scores in its judicious combination of archival materials (some of it shot by camcorder-fan Verfondern himself) with the directors' own interview-based footage, taking that most ancient of squabbles — a feud between farmers — and turning it into a poignant elegy for tragically lost opportunities.

Francis Veber's latest offering, remains faithful to the formula -- broad farce leavened with witty dialogue -- that has made him France's most bankable comedy writer-director and a surefire hit with international audiences.

Buoyed by enjoyable performances by character actors like Paul Ben-Victor, the picture is slight but likeable, especially for fans of its younger leads.

The film, which feels attenuated despite its brief running time, doesn’t dig deep enough to provide more than an impressionistic portrait.

A superb, comically gifted cast helps writer-director Jim Strouse lift this quite a few cuts above his previous work as well as above the general run of films about modern life and relationships.

Awesome will please fans of the band, but expect little crossover to nonfans. No new ground is broken here. From a cinematic point of view, Awesome represents simply a monumental postproduction salvaging effort.

Less giddy and more cohesive than the original, the film doesn't waste time, plunging almost directly into a spectacular heist.

The film is an initially insightful portrait of modern corporate society that unfortunately lapses into melodrama.

New wave Bollywood at its best, a Hindi-language film from a Mumbai studio that shows the influence of American and foreign films.

Although it takes a while for Yu's thesis to jell, the film makes a lasting impression as it delves into an unfashionable territory: character as fate rather than a function of pharmaceuticals.

If there is a missing ingredient in this otherwise extremely impressive opus, however, it is emotion. The contemplation of greatness, vastness and infinity doesn't lend itself to simple feelings and the succession of fantastic natural imagery begins to tire.

Just looking at men of this age adds new depth to questions about legalizing gay marriage and further normalizing the kind of institutionalized responsibilities straight people take for granted.

A deeply disappointing follow-up to her promising 2015 short Kiss Kiss Fingerbang, Gillian Wallace Horvat's I Blame Society is a first feature that points out many of its faults as it goes, as if to transmute them into satirical jabs at an uncertain object.

Featuring an award-worthy performance by Andrew Scott in the lead role and solid supporting turns by Brendan Fraser, Kerry Condon and Chris Messina, Pressure lives up to its title with its expert ratcheting up of sustained tension.

The work’s considerations of the intimate connection among being, art and life finally feel quite superficial.

Very funny at the outset and escalating steadily for most of its brisk running time, the film represents a big win for neophyte screenwriters Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O'Brien.

A refreshingly upbeat film that finds its roots in some seriously sobering events.