Kore-eda's trademark humility and humanism is here, and we do get glimpses, even stretches, that suggest the piercingly bittersweet vitality of his best work. But "Our Little Sister" feels like "Kore-eda lite."

From the cloying, ever-present score to the complete lack of narrative momentum, it all adds up to a film that's easily Van Sant's worst, and is a sad black mark on McConaughey's mostly excellent recent run. Ultimately, Sea Of Trees feels like an entirely appropriate title: it makes you feel like you're drowning, and it's full of sap.

Amazing to look at, amazing to listen to, yet just a bit underwhelming to really think about, Sicario Denis Villeneuve's Mexican drug cartel drama is superlatively strong in every conceivable way except story.

There is no shading, there is no ambiguity, and while there are observations and stilted epithets aplenty, there is precious little wisdom.

This really is Audiard operating at the top of his game, mostly dropping the contrivances of "Rust & Bone" for incisive character studies and a deeply humane, almost warm, worldview.

The book is so counter to our contemporary narrative demands that liberties would need to be taken for a movie version, and for the most part Osborne takes the right liberties, ending up with an extremely beautiful, very charming, thematically rich take that’s sure to be one of the better animated movies this year.

Muntean is so careful to avoid any whisper of contrivance or manipulation that he doesn't even land on any particular conclusion or moral.

The humor is there on paper, but it ends up emptily quippy and gag-filled rather deriving the jokes from situations and character, and only one in three end up landing, mostly thanks to Robbins.

There are some chills to be had here, but they taper out exactly when the action should really be ratcheting up, and the film’s tension burns out so quickly that it might as well have been sucked into an inter-dimensional portal of its own.

While the sexuality is pushed far too far for mainstream audiences, it's also true that Noe's conception of sentiment and romance pulls the film back from being truly transgressive about its gender or sexuality politics.

Really a two-hander overall, Disorder is part home-invasion film, part bodyguard romance and part PTSD drama that delivers solidly on the first two fronts and and partially on the third.

Trier’s sensibility for the dynamics of family, for the depiction of nebulous memory, and for the detail of life (the film’s full of beautiful, complex scenes), means that I’m already eager to take a second look and see what else there is to unpack.

An exciting, splattery, funny genre movie that somehow never once feels disposable.

It is so lived-in and authentic in its real-world detail, and so enigmatic and mysterious in its diversions and sidelong glances, that it's difficult not to see it as overridingly personal, not just to the director but to the viewer. It's a true act of the most optimistic communication and communion.

Steeped in a nostalgia that often feels borrowed and canned—the space-age era impulses of progress and possibility from the 1950s and ‘60s—Tomorrowland asks that you never give up or lose hope, literally and figuratively, over and over again, to the point that the movie has little else to say.

Tale of Tales is magnificent, the way a performing bear can be magnificent.

Made of crystal and suppressed tears, shot eternally through windows and mirrors and half-closed doors, Todd Haynes' Carol is a love story that starts at a trickle, swells gradually to a torrent, and finally bursts the banks of your heart. A beautiful film in every way, immaculately made, and featuring two pristine actresses glowing across rooms and tousled bedclothes at each other like beacons of tentative, unspoken hope.

Inside Out is not just fun and breezy, it's also truly weird and wicked smart in its thoroughly heartfelt conclusions.

The D Train goes off the rails (weak, unfinished, poorly constructed rails), and wrecks somewhere between mediocre and unfortunately disappointing.

[A] third-rate, run-of-the-mill actioner, which, for some reason, was edited to look like an episode of “CSI.”

It's a gripping and thoroughly effective, perhaps even brilliant piece of biographical documentary filmmaking.

The script is well-structured, refined, and satisfying, and the direction is sure-handed. Not to mention, it's refreshing to have lesser-seen romances and different kinds of friendships on screen. Emotional and entertaining, I’ll See You In My Dreams is a sweet and sensitive tale.

It's not funny enough to be a comedy, not well plotted enough to be a thriller but it's also not smart enough to be an actual exploration of all or even any of the many philosophies it, and Abe Lucas, espouses.

In the end, all the strangeness adds up towards something genuinely significant: an atypically rich and substantial comedy that's stuffed with great scenes and performances even before you start to chew on its bigger questions.

The Connection feels at best like a cover version of the classic American crime films of the 1970s, and at worst like so much glossily mounted karaoke.

Every Secret Thing is not built to satisfy, and so its sour ending doesn’t help its uneven experience. Every Secret Thing is not unlike last autumn's abduction drama "Prisoners." Both demonstrate an excellent level of craft and are handsomely shot and composed, but both suffer from narrative issues.

Come for the blistering, full-tilt action, stay for the thought-provoking consideration of the post-apocalypse.

Perhaps due to its rote, by-the-numbers story, all of the original film’s less tangible, hard-to-bottle qualities are absent: its delightfulness, its playfulness, and its natural charisma.