Benjamin Mercer

The Wailing might be a somewhat meandering and nonsensical genre recombination, but that spell never breaks over its lengthy running time.

In spite of all Wedding Doll’s strengths, its scenario comes to seem a little unseemly: Giladi establishes Hagit’s hopes and dreams mostly just to show the terrible ways that they’re dashed.

Trapero...often demonstrates his technical mastery here. But as a storyteller, he’s unfortunately less successful.

A well-appointed period piece that nonetheless has no time for Midnight In Paris-style nostalgia.

Early in First, Khaira compares music to oxygen. The film might’ve felt a little more enlightening if all the songs had room to breathe in turn.

Almost There, made under the banner of Windy City-based doc shop Kartemquin Films (Hoop Dreams), gives Anton’s kitschy-colorful portraiture the requisite close-up, but the film quickly becomes more compelling as a protracted intervention than as an act of advocacy.

Stalled in management mode for much of its duration, Riggen’s film nonetheless has its solid elements, one of them being Banderas’ energetic lead performance.

Though Farahani takes care to pose her project as both a portrait of and an intervention in Mohasses’ life, it winds up being considerably less interesting as the latter.

Nowhere the film goes is unexpected... but the plainspoken Freeheld charts a mostly admirable course there.

A lot more thought-provoking on issues of collective memory (or lack thereof) than the typical prestige picture, but it does falter dramatically in its later stretches.

The leads acquit themselves relatively well here, hinting at the interesting character study that could have been, but by the end the only captive left is the viewer.

While Still Life remains relatively successful at sustaining its plainly downbeat atmosphere—and at conveying the deep silence and stifled yearning of days and nights spent profoundly alone—it brooks too little subtlety in navigating many of the plot’s larger-picture developments.

Even with a runtime just barely over an hour, the shock comedy of Hellaware grows a bit numbing after a while.

Yet even if the individuals and their motives themselves don’t always come into full focus, The Green Prince is an absorbing psychological study of shifting allegiances.