Guillaume Canet makes like Bruce Willis and other past regular-guy-as-action-hero models in “Ad Vitam,” which he co-wrote. The entertaining Netflix concoction stars Canet as a Parisian ex-cop forcibly pulled into new perils connected to the shootout that got him sacked. Putting its hero through paces that embrace everything from parkour to parasailing, Rodolphe Lauga’s feature […]

Ambition outstrips expertise in writer-director Phil Blattenberger’s “Laws of Man,” whose serpentine plot winds up seeming a wild goose chase — one whose execution should have been, well, wilder. Action and atmosphere are too poorly supplied for this stab at a noirish retro thriller to emerge as anything but talky, awkward and unconvincing. Set in […]

There have been relatively few biopics about choreographers, but it’s hard to think of a better one than “John Cranko,” about the late South African who made his name in England and Germany. Steering well clear of “Eureka!” moments and other clichés within the portrait-of-an-artist genre, Joachim A. Lang’s feature finds unusually vivid means of […]

In tallying up the casualties of war, there’s seldom a thought for the animal kingdom beyond our own two-legged species. It’s assumed that Mother Nature will simply “adapt,” her less-evolved populations abandoning old habitats and finding new ones on their own when forced. “Checkpoint Zoo” trains its lens on 5,000 or so beasts who didn’t […]

This year saw one of the most zealously-guarded corporate empires of intellectual property spring a leak, as all the Magic Kingdom’s horses and men couldn’t keep Mickey Mouse from entering the public domain. Strictly speaking, what was no longer protected were the first three shorts in which that fabled rodent appeared, all made in 1928 […]

With its stationary long-shots of domestic life, “Family Time” is like the “Paranormal Activity” of dysfunctional-holiday-gathering movies: There’s a sense of spying on people who don’t realize they’re under a microscope. Of course, Tia Kouvo’s debut feature is duly scripted, directed and professionally acted. But her approach is so effectively low-key, you might occasionally forget […]