Aloft

A reclusive falconer living near the Arctic Circle (Cillian Murphy) tags along with a journalist (Mélanie Laurent) when she goes to interview his mother (Jennifer Connelly), an artist and faith healer from whom he's been estranged for 20 years. Falconers and faith healers at the Arctic Circle? Who writes this crap? Answer: Claudia Llosa, the Peruvian auteur (of two features, two TV episodes and this) who got hot when her The Milk of Sorrow was nominated for a foreign language Oscar in 2009. This is her first venture in English, and let's not mince words: it's turgid, inert, pretentious claptrap, so incoherent that you'll learn more from the studio's synopsis on IMDb than from actually seeing it. Llosa jumbles time and has her actors speak in unintelligible mumbles—which, come to think of it, is no loss. J.L.