As a harmless time-waster, Good Trip has its charms, but also its oversold shtick.

Rapu's film is still somewhat scattered; its Earth Day release date only serves as a reminder of the many superior eco-docs one has seen about remote paradises threatened or destroyed by encroaching forces.

Saddled with an excess of voiceover and a shuffled flashback structure that keep the characters at an emotional distance, All Day and a Night feels familiar in both its bleakness and its ultimate offering of hope.

Closeness, the original title of which, Tesnota, also apparently implies being walled-in or suffocated, is dramatically erratic, with tense and compelling sequences alternating with diffuse and/or flat interludes that don't advance the narrative or pay off in other ways.

Intended as a 90-minute nail-biter, the movie starts off strong but loses steam about halfway through and never quite recovers.

Wildly episodic in structure and violent in the extreme, Dreamland doesn't fully succeed in sustaining its outlandish conceits. The pacing also drags significantly despite its brief running time, lapsing into a talkiness that provides too much opportunity to pick apart its absurdities.

Good-looking and technically well crafted, the film struggles to get past pastiche and conjure an involving world of its own.

If ever a comedy cried out for tight 85-minute treatment that keeps the gags pinging fast enough to disguise the thin sketch material at its core, it's this hit-or-miss two-hour feature.

As I might have said during my own high school days, The Kissing Booth 2 is "mad stupid," but it's still not as overtly slappable as Netflix's other low-budget teen comedies.

If Ainsworth is ever turned off, you won't know it: She and DP Ben Ainsworth make everything look interesting, if not necessarily appetizing.

Clocking in at just over an hour, Hill of Freedom is Hong Sang-soo's shortest feature film to date. And it's his most lightweight, as well, with the Korean auteur merely reshuffling his tried-and-trusted play on non-linear structure, camera movements and characterizations without offering anything decidedly new

This tale of a despondent man's attempt to find someone to help him commit suicide never really hits the emotional heights it should; it may be that the film's proponents are confusing simplicity with profundity. [30 Sept 1997]

The sour-tinged comedy of excruciatingly English embarrassment deploys some talented performers on both sides of the camera but its promising parts never quite cohere into a properly satisfying whole.

Despite promising opening sequences and some above-average performances from a trio of young actors, the film's points become more elusive as its technique becomes more blunt. [16 March 1992]

The film boasts pungent atmosphere, as well as hard-hitting performances by leading man Michael Pitt and such reliably good character actors as Ron Perlman and Isiah Whitlock Jr. Unfortunately, the promising elements never coalesce into a satisfying or engrossing whole.

Incomplete-feeling film, which inadvertently illustrates how empathy without balance can obscure truth.

Anna, who’s caught in a midlife crisis that deepens throughout the movie, clearly doesn’t know what she wants. But the problem is that Weisse, the director, doesn’t always seem to know what she wants either in this prickly, wavering character study that both confounds and compels, and that doesn’t manage to land its ending.

The result is a passably entertaining diversion, glossy and decently acted but devoid of any kind of edge.

As capable as the actors are, I can't say I cared much about any of the characters, which made the emotionally uplifting climax feel underpowered. The scope for which this handsome but bland film strives so hard is present mainly in the wide-open spaces of its picturesque locations.

Director Nick Rowland couldn't ask for a more magnetically tormented character to anchor his low-key-to-a-fault feature debut.

Though its running time is brief and a lot of the writing is sharp, the tug-of-war between a onetime literary lion and his wide-eyed No. 1 fan lacks the necessary tension to make the drama's outcome matter.

Turning his famous furrowed brow away from the realm of life-and-death nail-biters, Neeson elevates the proceedings with his dry delivery and nimble comic timing. Made in Italy makes you wish the actor did more comedy.

Oleg Malovichko and Andrei Zolotarev's script neither brings it to life nor quite has us rooting for its destruction.

This would be a very different movie in most other hands, and in many cases, a worse one. Still, there's something missing in this look at a happy life's destruction.

The picture wallows for a bit, having deprived itself of the teen cheer that was its main driver. Of course the sun will come out again, after those Amber has given so much to eventually find a way to force her into the role of gracious recipient. The fact that the way they do this is entirely appropriate to the character doesn't keep the film's feel-good climax from feeling very, very familiar.

Like many a stage mother, Thom Fitzgerald's comic drama is pushy. It tries too hard, in all too obvious ways, to win over the audience.

To the extent that it works, much credit goes to Keery, for finding the real human need inside this twentysomething cipher.

Where the movie hits flat notes is in the way it spells out its points rather than letting friction percolate through the action.