While the races, which go back hundreds of years, last no more than 90 seconds each, Palio packs enough intrigue into its proceedings to practically fuel a miniseries.

A convincing and refreshingly indirect examination of handed-down emotional flaws.

Sinister 2 comes up a bit short on creative resources, although director Ciaran Foy probably gets enough right to entice those partial to the original.

After a while, you give up trying to make sense of the plot and sit there gaping at the car crashes, fight scenes, and shootings. The problem is that even the mayhem quickly becomes repetitive.

Muylaert does a deft job here of plotting her story and setting up her characters and their predicaments in ways that immediately invite reflection.

A genre mash that's mildly amusing until it can't think of anything else to do besides flop around in the deep end of conspicuous gore.

With its softball insights about midlife reinvention and its quasi-illuminating glances across the cultural and class divide, the movie takes its place, a la the similarly contrived The Visitor, on the spectrum of It’s Never Too Late character studies.

While wall-to-wall music is generally the bane and blight of contemporary documentaries, here Honigmann sensitively interpolates generous helpings of the orchestra's recordings to envelopingly persuasive effect.

An enjoyable entry into the swelling ranks of corrupt-the-youth comedies.

Rosenwald is not always successful in doing full justice to its rich subject matter, suffering from pacing problems and occasionally feeling drawn-out in its feature-length running time.... But it certainly deserves kudos for bringing long overdue attention to this unsung figure whose life was one big mitzvah.

Boredom has long since settled in by the time gunplay is involved.

The mental issues plaguing Hazel (Bella Thorne) aren't the only disabilities on offer in a film that sometimes heaps a little too much onto the fire, but Grau and his cast are sincere in their attempt to capture her struggle with empathy and dignity.

It lacks the wit and charm necessary to interest any but the most undemanding preteen viewers.

With an acute style marked by lengthy tracking shots and crisp natural cinematography from Laurent Desmet (Shall We Kiss?), Leonor manages to convey emotions through purely visual terms.

Don't watch the new documentary The Lost Key if you want to have good sex. Well, to be accurate, don't watch The Lost Key while you're actually having sex. A strict taboo on televisions in the bedroom is one of the tenets laid down in this film whose tagline promises "The Universal Secret of Jewish Sexuality Revealed."

Leacock proves to be charming company, sprinkling sometimes hilarious personal anecdotes among the high points of his career.

Fouad Mikati's tawdry psychological thriller features the talented actress in a film that bears no small resemblance in theme, if not quality, to the hit movie version of Gillian Flynn's best-seller.

Monson does succeed in editing the frequently dissimilar footage together into a fairly attractive package, although an animated sequence depicting the power of cosmic forces and another illustrating an historical timeline of human events feel rather too forced and self-consciously showy.

A home-captivity picture boasting all the implausibility associated with that genre and nearly none of the thrills.

The sobering message of the film is that independence doesn’t really mean anything in Africa if you’ve got resources that richer countries have an interest in and a general population that remains woefully poor and uneducated.

While the director unleashes his taut action sequences like clockwork, he's less deft in handling the characterizations and the decade-leaping plot, which seems designed to provide the film with some historical weight.

Absolutely Anything is a flabby misfire full of labored slapstick, broad caricatures and groaningly absurd plot twists.

A melodrama benefitting from excellent performances but suffering from a too-obvious script.

It's got a few things going for it and it's not unenjoyable to sit through, but, at the same time, the tone and creative register never feel confident and settled. It's not bad but not quite good enough either.

A sense of heaviness, gloom and complete disappointment settles in during the second half, as the mundane set-up results in no dramatic or sensory dividends whatsoever.

Besides his sure gift for incisive characterizations and acerbically witty dialogue, Johnson also displays a strong visual sense, with the film shot and edited for maximum effect.

Co-directors Brent Hodge and Derik Murray go exclusively to interviewees who lived or worked with the oversized, overenergized man, all of whom clearly loved him, and if the tone of their remarks (affectionate, amazed at his charisma) is totally predictable, the specifics have enough color to hold the interest of a casual fan.

Tixier paces the narrative well, but some viewers will resent his heavy reliance on anthropomorphizing the animals and the little sequences invented to add drama to the narrative.