Simon Abrams

There are a lot of fragmentary ideas in The Real Thing, but they’re not cohesive or worthwhile as they’re loosely formed into one grey 232-minute lump.

The action in Funhouse is consistently cheap and generally silly. That’s sort of the movie’s point, but it’s also sort of hard to care when everything else is so tacky.

Too bad The Djinn is often as plodding as it is impersonal. This movie crawls whenever it needs to sprint.

You can either be sentimental or bitter about the movies, but you can rarely charm people by being both at once. Unfortunately, the people behind the Indian moviemaking comedy RK/RKAY took that risk, and wound up making a mawkish, inert fantasy about a filmmaker whose protagonist escapes his movie within the movie.

The Paper Tigers is still very much a martial arts movie that ends with a late-night rooftop fight, and then a celebratory dim sum meal. But if you already like this sort of lightweight crowdpleaser, you’re bound to find something worthwhile here.

In many ways, Zhang’s latest is the coldest film that he’s made in a while, though it might also be his most alluring.

Bloodthirsty isn’t as deep or dark as it needs to be, and that’s way more frustrating than its general lack of werewolves.

Unfortunately, the quality of storytelling here often isn’t strong enough to hold one’s interest throughout such a diminutive runtime. Still, you might enjoy yourself if you don’t expect much character development, but do look forward to some creative uses of improvised weapons, like a hammer and a septic tank lid.

A light touch doesn’t suit the heavy themes in The Power, a horror psychodrama that’s specifically concerned with sexual misconduct and then more generally about the abuse of (you guessed it) power at a London hospital.

The director's gifted collaborators sometimes perk up this listless parable, but never enough to sell its second-hand fatalism.

The Vault is not, in other words, just derivative—it’s also flabby and bland.

And when the movie’s over, nothing is resolved that the filmmakers didn’t side-step or reduce to a few unconvincing symbols of hope for a more equitable future. You might like Enforcement if that’s a line you already want to buy; there’s otherwise not much here to change your mind.

Thankfully, despite its creators’ general fussiness, The Truffle Hunters is good enough, if only because guys like Carlo and Angelo are more charming than they are eccentric.

What makes The Vigil so frustrating is that it feels like a product and not a reflection of its subject’s identity crisis.

Hovannisian's documentary would be much more convincing if he picked a single aspect of Tankian’s activism—or composing, or personality—and considered it in greater detail.

The ensemble cast members all dutifully perform their roles, but there’s not much for them to sink their teeth into.

This may be Goro Miyazaki’s most eccentric feature yet, but it’s also his least engaging. Earwig and the Witch doesn’t move the way it should, and that’s lethal when your last name is Miyazaki.

The unsettling mood and creeping pace of the Indonesian horror movie The Queen of Black Magic take some getting used to.

Watching Harlow struggle with the simultaneously impersonal and obviously prejudiced nature of his imprisonment is often enough to make Caged seem like more than the sum of its parts.

Psycho Goreman isn’t clever or lively enough to be more than fitfully fun, especially given how much time is spent mocking generic, but painstakingly recreated plot contrivances.

An ambitious black comedy that never goes far enough.

The movie version of The Reason I Jump does not, in other words, successfully illustrate what its title promises, but rather generalizes about a sensitive topic to the point of inadvertently making it seem more unapproachable.

I can’t honestly recommend Climate of the Hunter to everybody; it’s not a generic horror movie, but rather a dark arthouse fantasy that brings to mind the films of Ingmar Bergman and Andy Milligan. To say that Reece’s movie is bound to be an acquired taste would be something of an understatement.

This movie is progressive intentionally, but not formally, and the difference between its creators’ themes and consideration is unfortunately glaring.

Trying to explain how this movie works as well as it does, without using excessive jargon or some kind of audiovisual aide, is tricky since “To the Ends of the Earth” isn’t about anything less than its heroine’s uncertain relationship with her foreign environment, and what she chooses to communicate simply by being seen and heard. Which is often thrilling to behold, but not so much to explain.

With its gleefuly nihilistic and destructive ending, What Lies Below ends on such a flat note that it makes everything before it seem like an inconsequential and/or needlessly convoluted set-up.

Jiu Jitsu is too disjointed and tame to be worth an impulse-rent; it's also too silly to be enjoyed with a straight face, and too lazy to be endearingly dopey.

The movie’s off-putting and constantly foregrounded political agenda wouldn’t be so unpleasant if the action scenes were more plentiful and/or thrilling. They aren’t.