An inspired-by-true-events story about Reno, Nevada’s first legalized brothel that’s both dry and flaccid, Love Ranch is set in the titular den of iniquity but misguidedly focuses on a washed-up Argentinean pugilist named Bruza (Sergio Peris-Mencheta) who falls in love with his new manager, Ranch den mother Grace (Helen Mirren). Grace takes control of Bruza’s…

A multicharacter saga incapable of rising above mere pleasantness, Let it Rain once again finds director/star Agnès Jaoui (Look at Me) teaming with Jean-Pierre Bacri on a dramedy fraught with socio-cultural frictions. Back in her rural hometown to speak at a political rally, domineering feminist author Agathe (Jaoui) reunites with unhappy sister Florence (Pascale Arbillot)…

A simple premise is hampered by nagging contrivances in Frozen, albeit not without also reaping considerably unnerving dividends. Trapped high above a snowy mountain on a ski lift that’s been shut down too soon, Dan (Kevin Zegers), his girlfriend Parker (Emma Bell), and his best friend Joe (Shawn Ashmore) are forced to confront the strained…

Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd gets reconfigured into a toothless British countryside rom-com in Tamara Drewe. Based on Posy Simmonds’ graphic novel, Stephen Frears’ film pirouettes around the titular Drewe (Gemma Arterton), a former ugly duckling who returns home with a new nose, short shorts and a promiscuous libido, and promptly sets in…

Joaquin Phoenix ditches acting for a rap career in I’m Still Here, a faux-documentary helmed by brother-in-law Casey Affleck that critiques not only celebrity life and culture but those very clichéd critiques as well. In late 2008, Phoenix decides that acting has turned him into a “puppet,” and that true creative expression via hip-hop is…

Ben Affleck returns to Boston for The Town, his directorial follow-up to Gone Baby Gone, and in the process finds a way to mildly energize a script awash in crime-film clichés. In what amounts to a Heat-lite saga concerned only with the criminal side of the coin, Affleck stars as Doug MacRay, a thief in…

Simultaneously reveling in, and critiquing, sexualized racist exploitation, Black Venus generates minor friction from its two-facedness, if not nearly enough to overshadow its prime goal of punishing the audience. Writer/director Abdellatif Kechiche’s follow-up to The Secret of the Grain tells the true-life tale of Saartjie “Sarah” Baartman (Yahima Torres), aka the “Hottentot Venus,” a South…

Setting aside the fact that it exists only because American moviegoers prefer not to read subtitles, Let Me In more or less faithfully duplicates 2009’s Swedish vampire drama Let the Right One In, the changes made to its predecessor roughly split between the inspired and misbegotten. Cloverfield director Matt Reeves doesn’t take many chances in…

Removing at least an hour from Aurora, Cristi Puiu’s follow-up to 2005’s The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, wouldn’t alter its plot or themes one iota, a situation that makes this three-hour portrait of stasis and emptiness a monumental slog to endure. Viorel (Puia himself) roams the Romanian countryside with, initially, no apparent motive or destination…

An astonishingly multilayered portrait of a romantic relationship that doubles as a commentary on the value of reproductions – and, thus, the cinema itself – Certified Copy finds Abbas Kiarostami returning triumphantly, after years of DV experimentation, to the realm of narrative filmmaking. From conversational scenes set inside a car to discussions being interrupted by…