For everything admirable, like the way female Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana (the wonderful Gakire) resigns herself to a violent death, there's a heavy-handed metaphor-a cute gaggle of orphaned goats-ready to smack away the intelligence.

It’s an enjoyable primer for audiences who haven’t seen any of her films, while those more familiar with her work will take great pleasure in listening to her musings.

The film clandestinely captures marauders in action while embedding itself in the imperiled home of aging farmer Michael Campbell. He's not the movie's ad hoc martyr, but something more compelling: a simple man whose fight for personal justice has matured into patriotism.

You can’t help but feel all the palpable joy is eliding some darker realities that would lend the copious musical performances a deeper resonance.

This shadowy film may ooze with espionage enigma, but Darby’s real-life role finds him casting himself as a crusader; he’s like a hipster Zelig, lost among media appearances, evasive social principle and TV-propagated naïveté.

This is textbook Kaurismäki, neither fresh nor unwelcome.

It’s well performed and a periodically fascinating study of Bradford’s seedy underbelly that’s rarely seen on film

If it never quite rises to the kind of parable one half expects from the Corman factory, it's still OK.

Eye-candy–wise, the film plants a big wet smooch; everything else about this happily-ever-after tale, however, feels like a mere air-kiss.

It’s Shannon’s slow, steady world of hurt that makes the film watchable.

You still leave impressed at the way Stanton fiercely protects the aura of mystery that makes him such an indelible onscreen presence.

While the film's interviews with students, parents and educators tend toward the repetitious, the hammering of the same bullet-point ideas time and again only lends greater urgency to this exposé of an increasingly rotten system.

What’s ultimately more impressive than the vigorous madcap action and innocuous humor, however, is Bowers’s willingness to address adult themes--alienation, regret, class tensions--with a directness that shows a surprising respect for his target young-adult audience

It’s all well and good for the under-12s, but this movie never packs the kind of emotional punch we know Pixar is capable of.

Dazzling on his recently concluded Kroll Show in multiple caricatures, Nick Kroll makes a savvy pivot to a role that allows for similar shades.

Its plot is riddled with holes and its ending is overcooked, but it’s packed with terrific actors – Toby Jones, Gillian Anderson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, even Robert Duvall – and achieves the light chill of a Christmas ghost story. Not one Poe would have been proud to write, but perhaps the sort of thing he’d read on holiday.

The middle section of the story is where Rise truly takes off, perhaps in ways that will have viewers forgiving the rest.

Overall the movie isn't as synchromeshed as it might be; the rivalry between champions Carradine and Stallone isn't very interesting, and some of the gags aren't sick or funny enough. But it's a great audience film.

Alas, this is a film that builds to a backroom compromise on carbon emissions, not the most thrilling of dramatic structures. The serious issue of global warming won’t be minimized by a mediocre documentary, but it has yet to find a filmmaker inflamed with rage and visual passion.

Apart from a fascination with the hate-spitting mouth and throat of Lyubov Petrova’s vocally pyrotechnic Queen of the Night, the visual gimmicks are individually tolerable. But they don’t add up to anything particular.

The result is a work that radiates a boozy, Bukowski-esque downward spiral, all alcohol-fueled anger and aimless sadness.

Sobering stuff for an animated movie that pitches itself somewhere between cutesy children’s entertainment and hectoring Grimm’s fairy tale. The problem with 9, though, is that it lacks a consistent tone.

For those of us who’ve been fans of Dequenne since her role as a blanc-trash Belgian waif in "Rosetta" (1999), her subtle portrayal of the pathological perpetrator proves that she’s monumentally talented.

This impassioned documentary could have the same real-world impact as Errol Morris's "The Thin Blue Line," and help to free a wrongly convicted man. The filmmaking could be better, but it's hard to argue with that kind of potential.

Blue Caprice is probably what more post-9/11 cinema should have been: desperate for explanations, inchoate and wrapped in unspoken loneliness. Even though we can stomach it better a decade later, we’re still not healed.

If you can view it without thinking of Disney f***ing about with yet another children's classic and relax in the studio's last decent use of Technicolor, then you're in for a treat.

The film aims for the stars but might have gone stratospheric if it cooled its jets ever so slightly.

Someone surely thought to call this knowingly ridiculous genre mash-up "Cowboys vs. Ninjas," though even that title wouldn't hint at all the you-gotta-be-kidding-me craziness on display.

Across 146 minutes, the film does its best to cram in every detail on the pop singer and actor (played by Naomi Ackie) and her meteoric ascent from the gospel choir to the Superbowl. Such a tack normally spells only the most surface level engagement with the subject. Unfortunately for this biopic, it follows suit.

Sure, the final act is the sort of monster battle we’ve seen countless times, but Shazam! Fury of the Gods never loses the energy and easy laughs that makes this second-tier hero far more fun than a lot of his more famous colleagues.

The script is sharp, if formulaic, but the film suffers from several contradictions: this is a farce without sexual tension, a family film with Stallone in the lead, a Landis comedy without vulgarity.

The dramatic scenes are a touch overcooked, and there are moments when it feels like a particularly high-end school play, with everyone shouting “Avast!” and “Ahoy!” like they really mean it. The action, though, is consistently impressive: When man and beast go toe-to-tail, your timbers will be truly well shivered.

The film lacks nothing in verisimilitude. Only, perhaps, something in meaning: all the ingredients are assembled, but one leaves the cinema still waiting for someone to hand over the recipe.

The movie hinges on a lengthy lesbian sex scene between in-on-the-joke leads Asta Paredes and Catherine Corcoran; "Blue Is the Warmest Color" this ain’t.

Lee's tough decision to include photos of the victims' smashed-up bodies was probably correct, but adding 'soulful' music to some of the interviews was more questionable.

Too many characters contribute to a dulling of the cross-cultural spark found in the original (and in the better-known A Prophet). Kinnaman doesn’t have as much to play with this time — without his double life, he’s just an unsmooth criminal.

An uneasy mixture of European art movie (the Resnais-like flashbacks that punctuate the narrative) and American ciné-vérité (it was shot on the streets of New York), The Pawnbroker never achieves the intensity its subject matter threatens.

The resolute Greyeyes and the always-brilliant Chastain chart their respective characters with real chemistry, and White captures the pair’s brewing romantic tension. For underscoring the brief but beautiful optimism of two ill-fated outliers, her woman comes out ahead.

The distressing Ford penchant for symbols of religiosity which had marred The Fugitive does the same disservice here.

Tonally, it’s a touch awkward (like the movie as a whole), but Larraín’s endgame set on a snowy mountainside is as abstract as the final moments of "The Shining" — a film that’s also about the life of the mind.

Midler gets to play her vulgar, trashy self twice over, Tomlin introduces a little comic variety as the gutsy blue collar worker and the drippy sister, and Abrahams handles the mechanical plot with skill, if not style. The frenetic fun reduces everyone to a cipher; it's difficult to care about any of them.

A thick sheen of luscious lens flares and Terrence Malick–like poetic lulls feel like icing on an undercooked mud pie—Bedford’s script deserves a stronger engagement with its characters’ desperation. Instead they collide in a clichéd ending that feels padded.

Quentin Tarantino showcased her bubbly personality (and ass-kicking dexterity) in 2007’s terrific gearhead horror movie, "Death Proof." Now, seasoned stuntwoman Zoë Bell gets a vehicle all her own—a disposable battle royal no-budgeter that’s immensely elevated by her presence.

Is this sequel defending its fan base and preempting criticism about its transparent agenda? This IS a soap opera, folks--and acceptable escapism for those old enough to see it yet still young enough to shriek at undead dreamboats.

Marred by a blatantly artificial English countryside and by a somewhat clichéd story, it's nevertheless a supreme example of Grant's ability to be simultaneously charming and sinister, and of the director's skill with neat expressionistic touches (most notably, the glass of milk).

While this totally impartial approach is admirable, it also robs Collapse of any invested sensibility. Smith has given this bull a stage on which to rage, but why the filmmaker has bothered to mount the platform in the first place is, frustratingly, anybody’s guess.

The writer-director does have a wonderful eye-a shot of a tractor wheel sticking out of the Hudson River is museumworthy-but his grasp of the melodramatic could use a little more grounding.

Watching this sturdy, sensitively acted Old West drama, it’s easy to wonder how many westerns Viggo Mortensen would have made if he’d been kicking about in the ’50s and ’60s.

Like the product that inspired it, The Founder is tasty enough while it lasts but never quite fills you up.

The whodunit element is less gripping than the original's study in soaring megalomania, but Price's urbanely mellifluous voice makes him an admirable successor to Claude Rains, and John P Fulton's special effects are well up to par.

Excellent support from Davidtz, Goodman, and Joy, as Hobbes' brother, though as the plot twists take precedence over character, much of the film's nuance trickles away and, along with it, the tension.

Even the movie's trio of outstanding actors come off like mouthpieces from a creaky Group Theater play, spiced with an occasional Cagneyism or two.

Extract, for all its surface reminders of Judge’s 1999 cult hit, "Office Space" (it’s set around a suburban bottling plant), shows its maker taking the smallest step toward lesser comic matters of infidelity and bong abuse. It feels slightly beneath him. That’s not to say you should skip it.

Adela’s troubles feel slight and underdeveloped in the face of the world around her; it’s all too appropriate, in the end, that nature swallows her whole.

Rebirth knows it needs to make its scaly stars frightening and surprising again and manages it in Spielbergian style.

There is plenty to relish, notably Newton and Morley hamming it up (as, respectively, the rumbustious Bill Walker and the overbearing tycoon), and Deborah Kerr in her debut; but it does tend to just sit there.

Spanning four years, To Be Heard has a large enough scope to map its subjects' rocky road to reinvention, concentrating on various bumps along the way.

Jonathan Levine’s night of debauchery and hugs hits a sweet spot of inoffensive offensiveness.

Credit goes to Creadon for venturing beyond the classroom to look at how the teachers and students manage small victories despite limited resources.

The story beats are as familiar as they come, and there are a few halfhearted stabs at redeeming Roberts’s clueless character when it would have been better to push her feeble-mindedness to Anna Faris–esque extremes.

Instead of showing how prejudice seeps into the private intimacies of daily life, the film turns its attention to the other characters, including Flipper's junkie brother Gator (Jackson), who fuels a subplot evoking the destructive effects of crack on black society. Sadly, this aspect, which allows Lee his most unsettling and impressive scene, seems loosely tacked on to the main thrust of the film.

Just funny enough to not feel like a retread.

Hauer's Parker, shambling, shrewd and powerful, is humorous and appealing, and Noyce skilfully orchestrates a hilarious army of gurning baddies. It thunders along admirably, if rather unbelievably, and to counter the sickly moments with the cute kid (Call), there's plenty of pleasurable ass-kicking.

The final word on this incident will require a more thoughtful filmmaker. But hopefully, that artist will possess at least half of Bay’s punishing, peerless craft.

A cute suitor shows up at Natia’s side with the gift of a pistol (for her protection, he insists), and you wait in vain for it to go off. Rather, the fireworks come in last-act shouting bouts, sincere if slightly disappointing.

Writer-director Von Trotta, an icon of the New German Cinema, doesn't have the technical chops for the fireworks you desire, so she settles for wan earnestness.

At times, there is something almost spoofy about this film’s relentless miserableness. Its 30-minute long hallucinatory dream sequence didn’t work for me – it might be that you need a degree in Russian history to make sense of its allegory on the nature of power.

Manly, sharp-edged submarine B movies don’t come along often anymore — so consider this Cold War off-white-knuckler a welcome blast of recycled air.

Where Loving Vincent imagined the great artist’s world in the style of his paintings, The Peasants lacks that same clear purpose. Instead, it’s an animation that feels like a live-action film in disguise.

In the director’s hands, these societal passion plays and “documentaries” offer a terrifying, top-down perversion of art itself--another insidious extension of politics by other means.

The filmmakers do a good job of laying out the whos, whys and wheres through diagrams, reenactments and testimonials from veterans on both sides of the skirmish.

One can maintain the energy and patience for donnybrooks and general insanity only so long.

It's almost cruel to criticize something so essentially lighthearted and disposable, but it must be said that a lot of these jokes feel distinctly recycled, mainly from "Broadway Danny Rose."

The narrative is unadventurously straightforward, and anyone looking for any neat twists or wrinkles will be disappointed; the spectral nature of Finney’s allies could have made for a neat final-act reveal. But the performances are uniformly strong, with McGraw stealing scenes and Hawke exercising his dark side so effectively that, after this and Moon Knight, he’ll leave you in no doubt of his flair for villainy.

Kim Mordaunt’s when-life-gives-you-land-mines tale is light on well-drawn characters, but its performances, especially from the nonprofessional junior members, more than light the fuse for the finale.

Firth is exceptional in letting us into his dissolving pride.

For an evening in, it’s reliable entertainment. That’s thanks mainly to Stranger Things’ charismatic Millie Bobby Brown, whose charming, brilliant and surprisingly fighty sleuth steps out from the shadows of her more famous brother, Sherlock (Henry Cavill), in a sparky story of young feminists socking it to corrupt 19th century gents and bent coppers.

The location (an Irish castle) is used imaginatively, the Gothic atmosphere is suitably potent, and there's a wonderfully sharp cameo from Patrick Magee as the family doctor.

Predictably, the documentary got a rousing reception at hipster-laden SXSW; real people might find it a touch easy.

The film’s conclusion sadly carries the taint of silly schmaltz (‘What kind of magic is this!?’ one character actually says), but like all those non-Disney takes that came before it, this Pan deserves some credit for trying something different.

The burgeoning relationship between both the athletes, bonding over a kindred "otherness," is handled tastefully by director Kaspar Heidelbach, though the lack of new insights on the subject of National Socialism's wickedness ultimately reduces a well-staged film to a historical footnote.

Watching this see-in-the-dark muscleman brooding against gorgeous otherworldly vistas, all while crafting pointy homemade weapons and befriending a scene-stealing CGI canine (no joke), is a sci-fi aficionado's delight.

Wilson’s play, about dreams deferred and a son seeking approbation (The Leftovers’ Jovan Adepo), could have used a more cinematic rethink. But even flatly presented, it has a richness of rage that’s unmistakable.

Although the film is well performed and beautifully shot by Robert Surtees, its ideology is highly objectionable, celebrating as it does the turning of the boys into hardened killers.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams feels stuck in a middling zone of too much conjecture and not enough scholarship.

These victims are now no longer invisible-an achievement that shouldn't be dishonorably dismissed.

The film is at its most entertaining when it’s a showcase for Smith and Lawrence’s easy chemistry, whether improvising a Reba McEntire country song to appease some rednecks or bantering about Burnett’s bad eating habits during a convenience store hold-up. They’re eminently watchable. Then again, when the highlight of an action movie fourthquel comes with the two stars watching a younger man do his stuff, it might be time to call it a day.

Part alt–art-history lesson and part pilot for CSI: The Louvre, Peter Greenaway’s deconstruction of Rembrandt’s 1642 painting The Night Watch contends that the work is--after the Mona Lisa, Da Vinci’s The Last Supper and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel--the fourth best-known artwork in the world.

It’s all watchable enough but hardly a giant leap for documentary making.

For an animation studio that too often specializes in the frivolous and glib (begone, Shrek series!), the move to the dark side is refreshing.

The Magic Faraway Tree isn’t on Wonka’s level, let alone Paddington 2’s – two other Farnaby joint – and the aesthetic is occasionally a bit CBBC, despite the bucolic settings and intricate sets. But with the cracking cast, thoughtful message and the odd rollicking adventure, it’s a fun family movie that’ll finally give you permission to switch off the wifi.

It's this desperation, and the racial undercurrent of black versus white, that Horn is keen to exploit. Marshall makes a promising feature debut; and Herrington, pushing beyond the expected triumph-of-the-underdog clichés, underpins the crowd-pleasing Rocky-style fight action with some unobtrusive social comment and confident visual storytelling.

Adapted from Dimitri Verhulst’s semi-autobiographical novel with a flair that recalls the squalor-and-dazzle visuals of “Trainspotting,” Felix Van Groeningen’s highly entertaining tale is full of hilarity, horror and heartbreak (sometimes within the same scene).

Some viewers might give the movie a few extra points for its retro vibe of taciturn badassedness. But little punctures the wall of emotional remove-the pulse rate is way too controlled for entertainment's sake.

Third of the Rosenberg/Newman collaborations, and a wry, leisurely relief after the heavyweight experiences of Cool Hand Luke and WUSA.

Bal's familiarity doesn't breed contempt. It does make you wish, however, for something above and beyond the usual high-art-cinema catnip.