If not for Sareum’s charismatic performance the film might fold like a house of cards.

Filmmaking craft is not the issue here, it’s the timidity of the storytelling that sits in sharp contrast to the boldness of some of the visual and sonic experimentation.

Brad’s Status rarely affords its titular character an opportunity to have a real conversation with anyone else his own age, so the movie becomes a monologue from someone you quickly realize you don’t really want to get to know anyway.

The conflicts are obviously real, but there is something about the tone that’s just off through most of the picture.

What immediately comes to the forefront is that McDonagh has choreographed an almost impossible feat of a brutally dark comedy that, thanks to both Rockwell and McDormand, elicits an emotional response you simply don’t see coming.

“Five Foot Two” is mostly about a woman pushing forward with her career in pain, and we’re talking chronic literal pain.

There are two things that make this movie stand apart: Metcalf and Gerwig.

Mahaffy’s uncompromising approach, and the quality of its performances, make it a rare and valuable testament: to the terrible danger of believing in miracles, and to the cruelty of a world that might make such belief necessary.

The worst aspect of ‘Rebel’ is that Strong seems to have no vision as a filmmaker. The movie thinks it’s throwing in some wise words about the art of writing, but they are superficial at best.

Despite some flat moments, Nobody’s Watching is consistently engrossing,

Even with these minor complaints, it’s hard to deny that It is anything but a triumph. The craftsmanship is impeccable, the performances incredibly strong..., and the fidelity to the source material, in spirit more than specificity, is admirable and appreciated. Had the story given even more time to breathe, it would have been one of the greatest Stephen King adaptations ever. As it stands, it’s simply a very good one.

mother! is something truly magnificent, the kind of visceral trash-arthouse experience that comes along very rarely, means as much or as little as you decide it does, and spits you out into the daylight dazzled, queasy, delirious, and knock-kneed as a newborn calf.

Uneven though it is, the film is peppered with enough cherishable dialogue tics and dummkopf punchlines to make it a enjoyable watch.

Few would argue that Oldman isn’t one of the finest actors of his generation, but this is a tour de force portrayal that will define his body of work for decades to come.

Silveira sets herself up for a balance between realism and aesthetics that she can’t quite navigate.

Without a single weak link in the exceptional cast...it’s a film that makes you feel a lot. But overridingly you feel lucky — lucky to be watching it, lucky that something so sincerely sweet, sorrowfully scary and surpassingly strange can exist in this un-wonderful world, and desirous of hanging on to as much of its magic for as long as you can after you reemerge back onto dry land.

Heady, bold statements about humankind are both the film’s best aspect and its chief flaw: There are just so many of them.

Disengaged and detached, the film’s greatest crime may be its inability to make any kind of impression.

Pilgrimage has all of the parts of a strong, engaging film. It just never learns how best to fit those pieces together.

Maybe if the film gave us the relief of a satisfying ending, the grimness, the ickiness, wouldn’t be so pronounced. But it doesn’t.

If the film is tender, it’s merciless at the same time.

Wingard’s film is an incoherent mess of tones and styles, confused character motives, and murky narratives.

Even in a future bereft of new ideas, it’s fun to watch Noomi Rapace act against herself six times over and her game performances in the midst of fast-paced action make What Happened to Monday? a mostly enjoyable thriller.

It’s not merely that The Only Living Boy in New York is reductive, corny and uninvolving; it’s that it tries to be something more profound and enlightened than it actually is.

It’s not an easy movie to love and it’s not an easy movie to hate either. It’s annoyingly, persistently just okay.

Unfortunately, some fumbled melodrama and the thorny issue of nationalism that hung over Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Wind Rises” compromise the finer impulses in In This Corner of the World.

In only his second film, it’s evident that Chon possesses a forcible voice for storytelling and a keen eye for character building.

Wherever you may fall on its ending, The Wound is a movie worth watching for myriad reasons, not least of which is the fact that it’s as emotionally and dramatically compelling as any American indie to come out this year. Seek it out and see it on the big screen.