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.

While Campos' tone and storytelling are not always the smoothest, and some of his choices are perplexing...he slowly builds a detailed mosaic of his central character and the environment she's so determined to conquer.

While there’s no doubt this is the work of a filmmaker entirely in command of her craft, there’s something a trifle academic and dry about the whole exercise, and slightly lacking in narrative cohesion given the nature of its origins.

Exposed mainly serves to expose the often torturous process of moviemaking and distribution.

The film offers up more than enough in terms of intelligence, insight, historical research and religious nuance as to not at all be considered a missed opportunity.

A handful of plot twists are not enough to compensate for an overtly heavy, often dreary affair that rides straight into the final standoff with little elegance and a wagon train of pathos.

Lonergan layers and then layers some more, allows his characters to stew, not always disclose themselves and then come to decisions and changes naturally, or after due deliberation. And they can relapse and not always be ready for the breakthrough moment toward which the story seems to be pointing. The result is something that feels more akin to a full meal than the usual cinematic popcorn.

The creepy evocativeness of its superbly utilized setting...and the well-realized creature designs make it a more than respectable horror effort. The haunting final shot alone makes it worth the price of admission.

Stacey Menear's screenplay doesn't manage to sustain its clever premise, with the final act featuring a banal and formulaic revelation that unfortunately takes what had been a spooky haunted house tale into familiar slasher movie territory.

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

Gentry's tense screenplay works well on its own, but gets a big assist from music and production design intent on conjuring some very specific moods.

Though Dockendorf doesn’t deliver the intended dramatic punch, he’s fully in sync with his lead characters, and Cook and Johnson are never less than engaging.

It can be definitively stated that Dirty Grandpa is utterly unfunny.

Despite the vivid evocation of its central character's helpless self-destruction, All Mistakes Buried offers little that we haven't seen before.

Its fleeting intoxications momentarily provide suggestions—and, for some, memories—of how the highest highs can sometimes make the drudgery of the rest of life worth it.

Few films feel as cathartic as James Solomon's documentary The Witness.

In terms of its form, the film is rather classically assembled, combining a voice-over narration with archive material (some of it never previously seen) and spectacularly filmed and staged shots of the now 83-year-old Lorius as he witnesses the havoc caused by the climate change he saw coming some 30 years ago in various locales around the world.

Deviating from the original in some key respects, this version of Martyrs doesn't make much of a case for its inspiration, but it may attract those hardcore horror fans averse to reading subtitles.

Its intriguing premise devolving into familiar genre conventions, 400 Days also suffers from clichéd characters and strained dialogue.

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.

At the helm of this ultra-earnest entertainment, with its expository dialogue and meticulous visuals, Craig Gillespie isn’t able to conjure a stirring cinematic experience. The pieces don’t fuse so much as fit together, and much of the action feels instructive rather than immersive.

While the storyline, in which Jack Black’s dumpling-downing Dragon Warrior is reunited with his biological father, doesn’t quite fulfill its prophecies, dramatically speaking, visually speaking it’s all quite impressive — one of those very rare animated features that completely justifies its 3D glasses.

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.

It’s an easy watch, though it certainly could have benefited from a little British warmth and humor (totally absent here.) The English dialogue is also much too elaborate and stilted to be anywhere near believable, further undercutting any remnant of realism.

Norm of the North is mildly diverting, although Pixar needn't be overly concerned.

An eccentric comedy likely to be best enjoyed by those steeped in the original novels, Band of Robbers doesn't quite spin its imaginative conceit into comic gold, but it offers some minor pleasures along the way.

Director J Blakeson...might be making franchise bait but he exhibits a relatively restrained reliance on spectacle, and the screenplay by Jeff Pinkner, Susannah Grant and Akiva Goldsman is light on the aphoristic earnestness that bogged down the most recent Hunger Games, or last year’s Goldsman-penned Insurgent.

To use what, under the circumstances, is a far too convenient metaphor, Bay is interested in accelerating from zero to 100 as quickly as possible and then maintaining speed, rather than skillfully shifting gears and adjusting speeds based on curves, hills and road conditions. In this case, he gets you there, but you know the ride could have been a lot more varied and nuanced.