Searchers, The

A bit of determined uplift that would be more effective if it didn’t try so hard

The Spanish title of Only Human by Dominic Harari and Teresa Pelegri is Seres queridos, or “loved ones” and suggests one of those happy-clappy, boosterish Euro-junk films, like Cédric Klapisch’s Auberge Espanole, in which everybody is part of one big happy European family living in a tolerantly multicultural spirit stronger than any differences between them….

Like Felicia’s Journey, Patricia Rozema’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park is a film whose other virtues—in particular, the visual evocation of Regency England and the excellence of the performances of Frances O’Connor as the heroine, Fanny Price, Alessandro Nivola and Embeth Davidtz as the charming brother and sister, Henry and Mary Crawford, and Jonny…

Peter Mullan finds yet another scandal in the Catholic church, presenting us with movie nuns who are nothing like the ones in The Bells of St. Mary’s

A movie about self-satisfaction that is itself way too self-satisfied to have anything very interesting to say

“She was too good for this life. . .” wrote Philip Larkin of the graffiti-covered bathing beauty on the advertising poster for “Sunny Prestatyn” and his ironic pity came to mind as I watched Gillian Anderson piling up the pathos as Lily Bart in Terence Davies’s screen adaptation of Edith Wharton’s novel, The House of…