Rachid Bouchareb confines his story to the bonding between the two leads that arises out of sadness and uncertainty.
Though rich in ambiguity and a generalized sense of apprehension, the film almost entirely avoids that spy-movie staple: the explosive set piece.
Romantics Anonymous is a typically anodyne rom-com given a certain poignant piquancy by the paralyzing shyness of its romantic leads.
The Heir Apparent: Largo Winch offers up a decidedly Francophone take on the American blockbuster formula.
The Lie is a film about accountability that repeatedly absolves its lead character of the need to have any.
With Rid of Me, writer-director James Westby trades in a lot of false assumptions.
Steven Meyer’s filmed excavation (both literal and figurative) treads a middle ground between illumination and cheap waterworks.
Under Fire is an aesthetically dubious but frequently fascinating documentary about the stresses of being a war reporter.
Xavier Durringer’s film unfolds as a series of closed-door meetings, semi-public negotiations, and lots of private worrying.
The film is so caught up in its own romantic notions that it never bothers to question the validity of these ideas.
Bruce Robinson’s The Rum Diary is an amorphous hodgepodge of a film that wants to be many things.
Preston Miller’s God’s Land walks a fine line between satire and earnestness.
The film is an almost self-consciously staid recreation of Margaret Humphreys’s mid-1980s efforts to bring light to a national atrocit.
Self-critique is the watchword of the first half of Oliver Laxe’s docu-fiction hybrid.
Not everyone’s life is compelling enough to warrant the documentary treatment.
Footnote is a very Jewish comedy about academia, familial bickering, and life as a cosmic joke.
There’s little in The Way that doesn’t succumb to platitudinous conceptions of spirituality.
Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s film is a static, faux moral reckoning dictated from on high.
Trans-global cross-currents and the continued practice of neo-colonialism are at stake in the haunting Sleeping Sickness.
The Turin Horse is a cyclical fable of daily drudgery that strips human life to its barest elements and banalities.