Chris Barsanti

Many of the character actors occasionally elevate the film above some of the more clichéd family humor.

The film is a quietly gutting ode to Paris’s resilience in the post-Bataclan era.

While Ilker Çatak’s The Teacher’s Lounge makes full use of the dramatic possibilities inherent in its setting, it doesn’t exceed its remit by turning the story into a referendum on society.

Whether or not Vasilis Katsoupis’s film achieves escape velocity from genre limitations though overt sociopolitical commentary is questionable.

While John Trengrove’s skill is apparent in the slow build of tension, it also stands out in the arguably more impressive way that he holds Ralphie’s view of the world separate from that of the film’s.

By emphasizing the people in its tech tale, and the comedic possibilities in their mismatch, rather than the gee-whiz factor, Matt Johnson frees BlackBerry from the need to convince its audience how important the invention at its center was.

Shortcomings is a mostly comedic but fitfully insightful examination of a character type familiar to indie cinema: the solipsistic guy who fills the gap left by emotional underdevelopment with intense opinions delivered at bad times.

The film deals forthrightly with the question of purpose and whether or not it can be found in a career.

Cat Person only succeeds when it stays in a space of mystery and unknowing.

An astute and fright-filled story, ‘Aum’ is limited by the unknowability of its subjects, registering as a spooky echo from a distant era.

The artifice of There There certainly generates an added layer of frisson that might not have been there were the film shot under more conventional circumstances. But the root material has enough rich humanity and taut conflict to it that the result would have succeeded regardless.

Ryan White’s documentary is cute to a fault and filled with a rapturously uncomplicated glee about the joys of exploration.

By the end of My Imaginary Country, Guzmán has still not moved past the trauma of history. Nor, he suggests, has Chile. Not yet. But he does leave open the possibility of a future not beholden to that trauma and a nation that might now be able to write a new history for itself.

The film breaks little new ground but is at least a notable improvement on, well, The Mousetrap.

Davy Chou’s Return to Seoul quickly blooms as a study in contrasts, sublimely juxtaposing character and culture.

The suggestion that Ted Hall’s actions were that of simple and pure heroism leaves Steve James’s documentary in tension with the more nuanced view that Hall seemed to have of himself.

The films collected in A New Generation speak for themselves even when they don’t necessarily slot neatly into Mark Cousins’s curlicue thinking.

The film’s fantastical meta-commentaries don’t completely cohere but have a winning go-for-it audaciousness.

The Gray Man is a noisy, flashy spectacle that piles clichés atop ludicrous plotting and sprinkles it all with half-funny quips, all in the hope of bulldozing the audience into submission.

The film’s aesthetic approach is purposeful, echoing the us-or-them sentiment held by both groups aiming guns at the other.

While Donbass is far from perfect, hiding too much of its story and message in at-times dull and layered absurdity, it nevertheless presents a harrowing picture of how war and nationalism corrupt and degrade places nowhere near the battlefield.

Windfall has a difficult time landing on the right tone or getting a bead on its characters.

The Outfit is a dapper, twist-filled crime story that relies more on dialogue than gunplay to move the action.

Sharp Stick shows that Lena Dunham’s preference for solipsistic protagonists with boundary issues has its limitations.

The film consistently fails to underline the risks and pressures faced by the women in an underground abortionist network in Chicago in the late ‘60s.

Jesse Eisenberg’s satire hits its targets dead on, but he flattens his mother-and-son narcissists to the point of caricature.

Abi Damaris Corbin’s quiet and unobtrusive style helps 892 build tension primarily from character instead of incident.

During an amnesiac’s atmospheric nighttime ramble through Manhattan, the seeds of a narrative are sewn but never nurtured.