Critic consensus:It might be thinly written and messily made, but Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life is also appropriately glamorous and intense -- and powerfully led by a gripping performance from Erik Elmosnino.

Numbered reviews:1. Viewers unfamiliar with the length, breadth and weirdness of Gainsbourg's imposing body of work will find it difficult to connect with this film.
2. French comic-book artist Joann Sfar ... celebrates his subject's impudence and flair - and displays those qualities in abundance himself.
3. Lacks either the dramatic intensity or the arresting insight that might have lifted it out of the pedestrian realm of the admiring biopic.
4. What's surprising, and ultimately disappointing, about Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life is the degree to which Sfar allows biopic obligations to smother his more whimsical instincts.
5. Gainsbourg is a noble attempt and interesting enough to keep you watching, but it's bound to disappoint fans of the singer's and possibly will confuse any newcomer to the story.
6. Despite the attention the film pays to the divide between the man as the ungainly, loving second-gen immigrant versus the boozy provocateur, it's not a portrait of much psychological depth.
7. A viewer who comes into "Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life" knowing nothing about Serge Gainsbourg will not come out the other side especially enlightened about the late French-Jewish singer-songwriter's life, least of all why it is heroic.
8. Still, for all the 40-year-old filmmaker's interpolated animations and puppets, for the insouciant, slapdash tone that characterizes his graphic novels, and for his protagonist's proclivity for scandal, the movie is too timidly conceived by half.
9. Why was Gainsbourg a hero? The film leaves the question hanging. I am afraid it was only because, like Sinatra, he did it his way. Which no one can deny.
10. Elmosnino gives a deft and moving performance as the insecure piano player who reinvents himself as Gainsbourg, pop poet and improbable ladies' man, impelled to break taboos not only out of anger, but also to affirm his own existence.


Critic consensus:Kontroll is a smart thriller that's dark, gritty, and funny.

Numbered reviews:1. The hooded phantom who keeps popping up to shove passengers onto the tracks is the only figure in Kontroll with even a semblance of purpose.
2. A well-done Hungarian black comedy set in Budapest's underground subway system.
3. Like many modern allegories, Nimrod Antal's tour de force of grime, fluorescence and destinationless velocity is more concerned with atmosphere than meaning.
4. Bulcsú never surfaces from the underworld. Neither does the movie -- literally or figuratively.
5. Watch how inventively Mr. Antal keeps the action moving and you'll see why his picture has won a passel of prizes, bestowed by everyone from the Cannes Film Festival to the Budapest Hungarian Film Critics organization.
6. A fascinating story and film about the down-under in us all.
7. It's the whooshing terror that fries your nerves to a frazzle.
8. One of those hip, self-consciously trippy existential thrillers that blow in from Europe every now and then to rock the world of East Village university students looking for a superficially meaningful event to legitimize their Friday night bar crawl.
9. Placing his lunatic ensemble of social misfits into a series of episodic story blocks with faultless timing, the director evocatively captures the look, mood, sounds and, most of all, the eccentric attitudes of this alien realm.
10. Plenty here to enjoy if you're a fan of trips outside of the norm.


Critic consensus:Star Trek reignites a classic franchise with action, humor, a strong story, and brilliant visuals, and will please traditional Trekkies and new fans alike.

Numbered reviews:
1. With one film, J.J. Abrams has made Star Trek younger, flashier, sexier, funnier, and less intelligent, but more exhilarating than it has been in decades.
2. Even by the standards of its own predecessors, this Trek feels like it was made by a committee of logic-minded Vulcans (or franchise-protective studio executives) rather than a filmmaker with the singular personality of Nicholas Meyer.
3. A bright, shiny blast from a newly imagined past.
4. JJ Abrams is a miracle worker. He has taken a script that is so bad and so dumb as to be almost a disaster and made a movie that's a lot of fun and actually quite good from it.
5. And just think, they haven't gotten to the Klingons yet...
6. It boldly goes somewhere different and makes it hard to leave the film not hoping for a return voyage soon.
7. Is this where the future of Trek lies, in exciting action scenes and fun comic relief supporting underwhelming stories and stale ideas?
8. The effects, direction and film score were so beautiful and mind blowing that it made a grown man cry. That grown man would be me.
9. Take note, George Lucas: This is how it's done.
10. The aim here is to court a new generation of fans without alienating the true believers speaking Klingon in the box-office lines.