Both de Léan and Storoge give you peeks at the genuine anguish lurking underneath the characters' narcissistic bluffing and porno posturing, even if the script drowns their best moments in verbosity.

Along the way, though, it is as infuriating as it is inventive, as it Just. Never. Stops. It is Quirkfest 2017. It is Paris Through the Looking Glass. But it’s certainly pure of vision, an ambitious accomplishment, and undeniably sweet.

Back to the Beach is fun for a while, but its six-person writing team can't figure out a logical way to wind it all up.

Despite the film's odd assembly of talking heads (Koufax, sure, but Ron Howard?) and narrow scope that rarely addresses how a first-generation community sought a new-world identity via knuckleballs, Miller's survey is a breezy compendium of fun facts and colorful figures.

These ragtag rebels exude an infectious determination, and while director Dan Stone fails in the adrenaline department, he succeeds in bringing home a memorable portrait of resilience.

It’s an unnecessarily quirky affair, with collages, archival footage and interviews in extreme close-up, which--perhaps intentionally--make it seem like an experimental ’70s throwback.

Robert Greene's documentary captures so many wonderfully delicate, private moments in Kati's life that it seems churlish to wish the film said more about what it's actually like to be a young woman today.

Neither Dekker's sloppy direction nor the cheapo make-up and effects do justice to the hand-me-down but sporadically lively script. Not the most sophisticated or scary horror film of the year, perhaps, but enjoyable enough in a ramshackle sort of way.

What lifts things right out of the rut is the cynical commentary provided by the hero's dog, communicating telepathically (in voice-off admirably spoken by Tim McIntire) and kicking the daylights out of all those boy-and-his-dog yarns.

As this engaging, if rote, doc points out, the name Eames, much like Victorian, now defines the style of an era. Yet how many of us knew that the industrial designers behind those midcentury molded mod chairs were an eccentric married team?

For those masters of small-scale vérité social dramas, it’s such a bracing sensation to see them tiptoeing into genre terrain, you’ll forgive the fact that the villains are two-dimensional and that the ending is jarringly abrupt.

There's not much beyond all the fawning, but the effusively talented Channing more than deserves the gush.

People who like their comedies pitch black (we're talking midnight, no stars or moon) should get a kick out of the tale of Steven Russell (Carrey).

There are sweet moments and callbacks to "L’Auberge," including a neat trick in which we see snippets from all three films in the credits, but ultimately Puzzle lacks the magic of its predecessors.

Ai is a great subject for a documentary, and his charismatic certitude helps to offset Klayman's unfortunate inexperience behind the camera.

It registers as a pretty hokey entertainment. But Peter Ellenshaw and Eustace Wallace's effects are put together with the studio's customary care.

Very good on local colour but a bit sugary in its attitude to the central relationship, it would have been better taking a bleaker cue from Tommy Lee Jones' admirably dry performance.

A woolly family caper with a nostalgic flavour, The Sheep Detectives conjures flattering comparisons with Babe.

The screenplay offers limited room for character development – Akilla arrives pretty much fully formed – and what we’re left with is an uneven puzzle, eye-catching in pieces but not entirely convincing when put together.

West holds your interest with material that should feel like a rip-off of The Shining. If this is mere placeholding until something more ambitious comes along for the rising director, it'll do.

High on noise, spectacle and heroism as the Allies invade Normandy, generally strong on performances and humour, but still over-long and laden with the usual national stereotypes.

The antics of Sinatra & Co become rather hard to bear, and the evocation of Las Vegas as a neon nightmare may possibly be unintentional, since the film was made by Sinatra's own company as an extended advertisement for the Clan's shows there. The heist itself, though, is a superb piece of movie-making.

Though the tale demands a darker outcome, the director disappointingly goes the Mouse House happy-ending route with a reprise of the original short film's finale - one that somehow plays with even more cringeworthy sentimentality.

It’s a vicarious pleasure to let The Dig’s warm, gauzy light wash over you. Blanketed in defiant optimism and soaked in summer sun, it’s definitely one to watch with your nan. When you’re allowed to, obvs.

The jarring juxtapositions only heighten the enigmatic air of the film's subject; even when he's right in front of us, he seems to be plotting his next wily act.

It's one thing to call a film about homophobia and human rights Any Day Now; it's another to actually have your character sing "I Shall Be Released" in full at the end. The intent is righteous. The dramatic overkill is deadly.

Visual Acoustics goes out of its way to remain as kindly and pleasing as Shulman himself.

The longer this "Abbott and Costello's Lethal Weapon" goes on, the more the fun dissipates - until a queasily violent climax, which, naturally, fully embraces genre stereotypes rather than dismantling them.

The movie isn’t adventurous, but I’m sure glad it exists.

Focus, instead, on the perks that Nightfall does offer: You still get the criminally underrated Aldo Ray trading hardboiled barbs with Anne Bancroft (“I’m a painter.” “Soup cans or sunsets?”); Brian Keith and Rudy Bond’s giggly good-thug-bad-thug double act; and the joy of watching beefy guys in boxy suits dangle cigarettes off sweaty lips and talk tough.

A no-frills propaganda piece put together by professionals.

Despite the looming threats on display, Kosinski never imbues his movie with a real sense of danger until it’s too late to take the threat seriously. For all of the movie’s flare, Only the Brave lacks dynamism.

As it is, the movie never quite delivers on the Big Idea, but at least Walken comes through in spades: he's out of this world.

This is a warm-hearted account of an adult’s painful journey, aided by a chirping counterpart.

St. Vincent has nothing on Rushmore, an obvious forebearer, even though it strains for the same egalitarian spirit of thrown-together family, one that includes a pregnant Russian stripper (Naomi Watts) and a sympathetic but firm Catholic schoolteacher (Chris O’Dowd).

For every camp element like Javier Bardem’s rainbow-vomit outfits or Diaz’s onanistic tryst with a car windshield, there are a dozen poetic-pulp moments that channel McCarthy’s pitiless view of the world to a tee.

The year’s 3-D deluge continues: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is an amusingly loopy kids’ meal about a small-town inventor.

That the duo will work their way back to each other is never in doubt, although Chazelle doesn't succumb to easy sentiment. If anything, he moves too far in the other direction, aiming for a wizened ambiguity that doesn't entirely come off.

A believably unbalanced Bening scores the movie’s true coup: Karen’s revitalizing relationship with a sweetly persistent coworker (Jimmy Smits) is a rare example of Hollywood doing right by midlife romance.

As subcultural anthropology, it’s unassailable. Yet the often ugly-looking DV aesthetic dilutes the cumulative effect.

Richard Jewell’s greatest feat is the generous emphasis it places on its Forrest Gumpian do-gooder’s complex sense of humanity; if only there were more of that to spread around to the other characters.

It’s a great adventure story, and Dower’s ebullient doc captures the exhilaration of following it on the news at the time. Perhaps it’s time Piccard embarked on another one of his quixotic expeditions.

The oddest thing about the movie - and perhaps the asset that will tip it over into the plus column for you - is that it's a bona fide scuzz-Western.

Christopher Nolan’s frosty espionage sci-fi delivers visual intensity but little heart.

There is the usual gamut of silly voices and gang of goody-goody creatures, including a gluttonous green tiger, but the cuteness is kept to a minimum. The amalgam of fairytale, sci-fi and Greek mythology is exciting, the backgrounds dynamic, the music catchy, the pace furious: kids will love it.

It seems a strange thing to say about a film featuring a giant man-eating mallard, but a bit more eccentricity wouldn’t have gone amiss.

As so often the case, this Marvel effort is best when its talented cast is flinging around snarky banter and self-aware asides.

Redford’s devotion to old-school liberalism and ’70s socially informed dramas has been a directorial-career constant, and at its best, The Company You Keep feels like a movie you’d have seen in 1975 — one informed by political righteousness and made for adults.

Alas, it all comes off as hit and myth, mainly due to our leaden, buzz-cut hero, Perseus (Avatar’s Worthington, no Harry Hamlin), and zero sparks of heavenly-body chemistry or humor.

Things hot up in the last 20 minutes, when Peter Jackson stops chucking intestines around and gets some serious hardware under way - we're talking rocket launchers and big chainsaws, equipment essential to the success of any movie.

It’s consistently pretty entertaining, even if it takes a while to get going.

Only Diane Keaton's performance counters the overall heavy-handedness.

Don’t expect Austen-style humour, though: ultimately, you may be frustrated by a narrative that punishes its pleasant protagonist so thoroughly. But credit to Brizé and crew for an impressive piece of filmmaking with a refreshingly contemporary approach.

At only 72 minutes, Spring Blossom whizzes by and ends a little abruptly. Some may go away unsatisfied, but others will see in Lindon an impressive young talent to be reckoned with.

The first-person sections, however, couldn’t be more clumsy or grating, and every time Diamond’s tone-deaf narration starts repeating the obvious, you can feel an eye-opening history lesson turning into a quirky, orbs-glazing travelogue.

You can't help feeling that an initially adventurous movie has had its rough edges sanded away.

Seeing as how Kill the Messenger comes down firmly on the side of Webb’s truth, it’s unfortunate that his discoveries are only confirmed via the end credits. Missing from the action, too, is the merest hint of our hero’s demise by suicide in 2004. These aspects should have been better showcased; as is, it’s not the whole story.

Unfortunately, all the major characters have a whiff of Hollywood artifice, largely because (as has happened too often before in his career) Frankenheimer gets carried away by their verbosity. But perhaps any Hollywood film giving the Palestinian case an airing deserves to be welcomed.

This Siberian jaunt, free from cultural weirdness and ethical barbed wire, is even more of a vacation for Werner Herzog than it first appears: The German codirector never left L.A.

It's the casting, stupid!

Fifty Shades of Grey is a sex-positive but hopelessly soft-core erotic drama that fails to be even a fraction as titillating as the E.L. James books that inspired it. And yet, that’s exactly why it works.

Delivers Moore’s usual grab bag of ironic kitsch, gotcha clips and infotainment-journalism.

Ambiguities trump answers, and possibly even logic. For those who aren't burdened by such things, the loopy, off-kilter pace and frontal-lobe frying provide their own unconventional pleasures. It's a cult film, in more ways than one.

The Bad Guys will work better for kids than adults: the comedy is broad, with farting not just a major source of laughs but an entire plot device, and the characters aren’t quite as lovable as the movie thinks they are, despite a winning voice cast that also boasts Marc Maron, Zazie Beetz and Awkwafina.

As a micro-to-macro tour of Germany's fraught relationship with its Jewish citizens, In Heaven Underground couldn't be more connective; as a straight doc, its aesthetic choices couldn't be more confusing.

A genuine labor of love and fictional self-loathing, Sullivan's animation style is undeniably compelling, whether he's channeling Grant Wood's paintings or Robert Crumb's monochromatic sketches. But the interweaving stories of commercialized religion, rancid Americana and alcoholic wretches start wearing thin around the movie's midpoint; by the end, the whole morose endeavor risks becoming downright threadbare.

This ride with Johnson and Blunt is so purely entertaining you may well want to go round again.

Thanks to the solid performances and fine camerawork, the film is not bad, merely professional.

The current minor boom in American horror films has two notable features: the single-minded concentration on the nuclear family as a point of attack, and the consistent rejection of happy endings. This tale of a family taking a spooky old mansion for the summer would be strictly formula stuff were it not for these elements; but veteran Eugène Lourié's art direction helps.

Titillation and tentative stabs at gender studies do not a cogent cri de coeur make. It's simply a provocation that's all hopped up with nowhere to go.

It doesn’t all work: the religious iconography is too obvious, and the more lurid horror elements – like the obsessive fans who literally haunt Cam during his training – can be so heavy-handed they’re more silly than scary. What never falters, though, is Tipping’s avid commitment to his concept.

It's as sour a vision of male-female interaction as Vertigo, though far less bleak and universal in its implications. That said, it's still thrilling to watch, lush, cool and oddly moving.

There's enough filmmaking talent evident throughout that you wish the journey were more satisfying overall.

Once the story takes a murderous turn, things quickly fall apart. Too many perfunctory side characters, such as Dennis's clueless parole officer, dilute any sense of tension; the bargain-basement visuals-all overlit interiors and unmotivated zooms-never rise above the luridly cheap; and hoo-boy, those final scenes.

Imagine "His Girl Friday" crossed with "Armageddon" and you’ll get a sense of the unfortunate disconnect that prevents an enjoyable light entertainment from achieving rom-com nirvana.

The setup is pure Looney Tunes, and indeed, Despicable Me is at its best when trading in the anything-for-a-laugh prankery that was a specialty of the Termite Terrace crowd.

Crushingly, the dependably perverse art-action director Nicolas Winding Refn has finally made a boring movie.

This covers much the same ground as Robert Rossen's earlier feature, All the King's Men, and Robert Collins' later telemovie, The Life and Assassination of the Kingfish. In decidedly more idiosyncratic style, however, with Cagney's aggressive energy suggesting the particular populist allure of the Southern shyster/demagogue.

Bakri has charisma to burn, but the complexity of Abu-Assad’s previous movies is traded in for weak genre thrills.

While the movie occasionally stretches too far to maintain thematic coherence, its momentum is sustained by the urgency of its case studies, as well as the sense of outrage at the injustices perpetuated at the behest of powerful monetary interests and its striking imagery.

Daringly plotless and disconnected (“just like my life!” squeals the target audience), Noah Baumbach’s latest, a breeze, feels a lot less self-absorbed than usual, mainly for not having a neurotic at its core.

You outsmart the movie way too soon.

When Gonzo divulges his classmates' darkest secrets, we're meant to disapprove of his transformation from swaggering New Journalist to WikiLeaks extremist. In the real world, we've still haven't decided which ethical version we prefer.

The Grandmaster, five years in the making, feels like a waste of Wong’s talents.

The mostly non-professional actors are uniformly excellent, while the painterly cinematography (a Polish speciality) and spartan score create a suitably chilly mood.

The world's worst film gets an affectionate making-of dramatization that's half as weird as the real thing.

The movie’s admirable fleetness, however, doesn’t mitigate some of its narrative errors — Alexander’s opening voiceover suggests his family is totally oblivious to his role in their misery, which is disproved by a later scene — nor does it counteract an overall sense of slightness that prevents this from being a family-film classic.

For better or worse, that detour into proverbial uncharted waters ends up hipchecking a by-the-book hagiography into the realm of compellingly cracked vérité.

The best thing you can say about the movie is that you couldn’t accuse it of being a sellout — nor would you think it was a Joe Swanberg movie.

Like that giant metaphorical carousel looming over them, it’s a movie that’s spinning its wheels.

Setting the movie in this unfamiliar but realistic world is intriguing enough, and Besson handles the action with consummate mastery. But the punk-chic style only accentuates the film's emptiness. That said, Adjani once again proves herself not only one of the most versatile actresses in European cinema, but also the most beautiful.

While marred somewhat by the griminess of its HD imagery, Splinters nonetheless successfully integrates the sport and an attendant subculture in a way that manages to enhance both, leading to a climactic competition that actually makes you feel something important is at stake.

Loach coaxes an endearingly poised performance out of nonprofessional Brannigan, and largely sells these scuffling characters as neither hopeless nor heroic—just terribly human.

Director Madeleine Sackler favors an agenda of advocacy over complexity, making The Lottery an effective, if unapologetically one-sided, piece of agitprop.

In this fun action-thriller, David Harbour’s Santa is less Saint Nick and more John Wick.

A brief appearance by The Zombies places the time of the season quite neatly, though London doesn't so much swing as creak eerily.

The trouble, as so often with Ritt films, is that the situation remains interesting rather than involving. But at least this detachment means that one has the leisure to savour the textures of Wong Howe's magnificent camerawork.