It intimately focuses on its main character’s personal triumphs and refuses to fall into heavy-handed polemicism.
It imbues a pessimistic view of the seemingly bottomless depths of human cruelty with sorrowful tragic force.
Craig Johnson’s film lurches from poignant melancholy to cartoonish slapstick, unable to settle on a consistent tone.
The aimless rhythms and low-stakes plotting make clear that Davy Chou is most interested in cultural anthropology.
Striking throughout are the seemingly caught-on-the-wing moments that subtly enrichen the film’s characterizations.
Deepak Rauniyar’s admirably balanced and humane social and political perspective is bracing throughout White Sun.
Before I Fall spouts tired platitudes about the value of altruism and living each day as it if were the last.
A melancholy air blows through every haunted frame of Hong Sang-soo’s On the Beach at Night Alone.
Kaurismäki rhymes his characters’ feelings of alienation to the mise-en-scène’s pastel blues and decaying browns.
Guadagnino’s film proves affecting as a chronicle of a young man learning to embrace his more emotional side.
In The Dinner, writer-director Oren Moverman wastes no time in establishing a tone of grandiose scabrousness.
Compared to its predecessor, director Danny Boyle’s T2 Trainspotting is a relatively aimless and sedate experience.
The film’s crucial shortcoming is its failure to illuminate both the inner life and artistic genius of Django Reinhardt.
The Space Between Us is simply disappointing when it isn’t trying to browbeat its audience into emotional submission.
24: Legacy attempts to tap directly into the inflammatory racial tensions gripping the U.S. at the moment.
Stephen Gaghan’s Gold finds no treasure of gleaming originality in its crushingly clichéd anti-capitalist parable.
In Sing, musical theater is simply an excuse for the filmmakers to deliver an animated version of American Idol.
The film is amiable thanks to the commitment of its lead actors and its refusal to condescend to its characters.
Josh Gordon and Will Speck’s Office Christmas Party generally smacks of trying too hard to earn its laughs.
Katie Holmes’s film is more earnest than remarkable, but with its heart in the right place.