Unfortunately, Kim nearly wrecks the film's observational acuteness with a climax that shamelessly steals from Bob Rafelson's classic blue-collar drama "Five Easy Pieces," and this faux-gut-punch finale feels haphazardly sutured on rather than arrived at organically. Guess that ham-fisted opening shot was a sign of things to come.

Queer may be flawed, but its naked approach to such a raw subject, coupled with a remarkable lead performance, makes it a trip worth taking.

This film is less a fully fledged exercise in storytelling, and more a succession of stained glass windows, sumptuous enough that you almost forget the dark stories they depict.

A fine sense of yuppie suffocation—Spin-class listlessness and workaholic disconnection—sets up this indie as a potential suburban satire.

As a study of early midlife crises Tides is well performed and convincing, finding the loneliness in what passes for friendship. All four characters are hemmed in by their own self-absorption; trouble is, that also cuts them off from the audience.

This disappointing dramatization, mounted with generic blandness by Jean-François Richet, makes no case for the man's larger significance, nor does any emotional digging at all. Such detachment was no doubt considered artistically shrewd-it's a big mistake.

Watch the director's 1976 "The Tenant," and you'll know he can do more with less.

Often resembles a prime John Carpenter thriller--call it "Assault on Manger 13"--until an overcaffeinated angel-fu climax significantly lowers the intelligence quotient.

The result is a film that starts with a bang and ends with a shrug, but keeps us entertained throughout.

While it never hits the gritty heights of you-are-there junky journalism à la Larry Clark's "Tulsa," you still feel as if you've personally toured the abyss.

Scott manages the shift from tremulous romance to violent retribution very well, but his efficient handling of some surprisingly tough action scenes is compromised by a surfeit of pop promo clichés: billowing net curtains, clouds of fluttering doves, an excessive use of coloured filters.

The lunacy on view is strangely dreamlike, and no bad thing. It's only a pity the film actually tries to make sense. More abandon all round, and the result could have been a Z-grade cult classic.

An incomplete exercise that lacks crucial emotional brushstrokes despite a rich palette and a piano-heavy score, At Eternity’s Gate still offers the thrill of being inside an artistic process, adoringly interpreted.

More stupid movies should leave you with such a blissfully stupid smile.

Deadpan clownishness is The Fairy's raison d'être and its superior mode; when the lovey-doveyness turns cloying and the atrophied message-mongering creeps in, you wish the threesome knew when to keep their traps shut.

This fun, pacy addition to the dino disaster franchise doesn’t do much that’s particularly new – though what it does, it does with a fair whack of panache.

Look elsewhere if you want a linear timeline of Sebald's life or don't possess that titular virtue; everyone else will want to make a beeline to their local bookstore.

The troubling turns the story takes, which are meant as a rebuke to happily-ever-after stereotypes, are much more interesting in conception than they are in execution.

Francophiles understand that Vincent Lindon's presence in any film is a bonus, as few actors know how to translate sad-eyed, macho gruffness into so many different flavors.

As a thriller it's a bit soft, as sci-fi it's a bit simple.

Both overindulgent and the writer-director's most fascinatingly strange movie to date.

The filmmaker's work is infinitely more exhilarating when he's relieved of the need to be in any way serious. He should play dumb more often.

The transformation that you anticipate never comes; the movie feels strangled.

Shadows still functions as a study in superior sequel-itude, building a fine showcase for a reimagined character and the compelling, twitchy dynamo playing him. Should Ritchie ever learn to be elementary instead of epileptically overwrought, he may one day do proper justice to both.

Far be it from us to deny the director his deserved catharsis or to dissuade someone from speaking out about abuse. Still, Family Affair feels less like a documentary than one man's filmed therapy marathon, to which you're voyeuristically privy in an oversharing-on-Oprah sort of way.

Mercifully, it lacks the pretentious moralising of his later work, and is far more professionally put together. But for all its relative dramatic coherence, it's still hard to see how it was ever taken as a masterpiece.

There’s still enough of merit here (particularly a movingly low-key finale that strikes just the right note of reconciliation and regret) to suggest that Porterfield has the chops to eventually hone his talents to a fine point.

An interesting if poorly constructed and self-contradicting drama, directed with something less than assurance, but given some appeal by the honesty of its performances.