Highly engaging performances by Dev Patel in the lead role and Jeremy Irons as his curmudgeonly mentor gradually warm up the Cambridge story, but the Indian part feels perfunctory and unconvincing.

It's in the accelerating spiral of crime that the weaknesses of the script and direction become hard to ignore.

There’s certainly an overall sense of a formerly rich family’s fortunes dwindling, both economically and emotionally, but the three sections don’t add up to something more than the sum of their parts.

The Daughter spends most of its time following a recessive character who possesses information we’re not privy to, and the whole thing manages to be both remote and unsubtle simultaneously.

What should have been a tautly paced B-movie thriller instead comes to feel like a mini-series, leaving the viewer too much time to ponder the silliness of its narrative contrivances.

American Hero, which intermittently uses a faux-documentary style to awkward effect, never quite decides what it wants to be.

It is an unsatisfying film because we know no more about the people at the end than we did at the beginning, in fact, very little at all.

For every emotionally resonant scene, there's another that seems to drag on pointlessly, although the filmmaker once again displays a talent for delineating the emotional tensions that develop when disparate characters are thrown together.

It’s passably entertaining, and like the last one breathtakingly crafted, especially Colleen Atwood’s microscopically detailed costumes.

Doesn't delve deeply enough to be fully satisfying. Much like the drug it spotlights (to reference another journalism-themed movie), it will leave you hungry afterwards.

Pairing another Firth (no relation) with crackerjack newcomer Taron Edgerton, Kingsman's fizzingly droll chutzpah can't help but make Spooks: The Greater Good, for all Peter Firth's ballast, seem dowdily old-school in comparison.

The massive jumble of standoffs, near-misses, tense confrontations, narrow escapes and slick victories, while momentarily exciting, can lack plausible motivation and credibility. More often than not, one wonders not so much what just happened but why, and what was at stake.

Despite the film's flaws and missteps, there’s a low-key charm and sincerity at play in Cronies, as well as a sly recognition of fragile male egos and the way bravado can mask sexual anxiety.

[A] blankly heroic, clunkingly predictable portrait.

Lee makes a credible transition from directing comedy, but relies too frequently on sub-par special effects and poorly staged reenactments that only inconsistently pump up the action.

From one moment to the next, it's possible to on some level enjoy the shaking up of tired conventions in a swordplay fantasy such as this and then to be dismayed by the lowbrow vulgarity of what's ended up onscreen. The film gives with one hand and takes away with the other, which can be frustrating in what's meant to be an entertainment.

As spooky as The Shining's Overlook Hotel and Rosemary Baby's Bramford, the location -- actually multiple locations -- of the atmospheric horror film The Abandoned is spectacular. It's too bad that the same can't be said about the story.

Eric Hannezo’s debut feature showcases some skill in the craft department, but remains a strictly B-level enterprise in terms of content.

The proceedings too often smack of melodrama and, with the profusion of characters, some inevitably come across as stereotypes.

Kwek's critical view of his home country is certainly there, burning brightly, but Unlucky Plaza should be considered a small step for a promising socially-conscious filmmaker trying to connect his fury with the right kind of art.

While the screenplay by T.J. Cimfel and David White eventually proves unsatisfying in its plot revelations, the film certainly holds your attention thanks to Schindler's tautly paced direction and Riegraf's emotionally nuanced performance.

Especially refreshing, even radical, is its sympathy for characters who read for pleasure and value rigorous thought. Unfortunately, by the end, it’s gone as mushy and ragged as a homespun hemp blanket.

Truth is indeed sometimes stranger than fiction but Ripstein struggles here to turn his odd collection of two-dimensional characters into real people. What does impress is the gorgeously crisp black-and-white cinematography, which deserves to be seen on the big screen.

Pegging most of its hopes on two actors who hardly maintain the taut chemistry its long two-hander section requires, the pic plays like the feature debut it is, an uncertain drama full of attitude it can't back up with action.

If the story is meant to represent a microcosm of the immigration problem, it’s woefully reductive. If it’s meant to be first and foremost an action thriller, it does have a few nice moves to offer.

Although it’s an inspired gamble to introduce familiar genre elements into what’s essentially a high-strung relationship drama, Nina Forever’s repeatedly shifting tone ultimately proves more of a drawback than an asset.

At its strongest, Dark Night taps into the emptiness, hurt and longing beneath the pings and swipes of our "connected" world. But for all its artfulness, the film doesn’t shed light so much as push buttons.

More stylishly compelling and seamlessly produced than it is imaginative.