Alissa Wilkinson

Murthy’s story as a child of immigrants is not particularly unique. But her film is engrossing because of the rich tapestry of sources she draws on.

Sometimes it’s clear why a bad movie didn’t work: half-baked premise, poorly cast actors, janky editing, insufficient budget. Sometimes it’s less clear what happened. O Horizon is the second kind of bad movie, with a bonus element: Its existence gets more baffling as you realize what it really is.

There is a tender exuberance to “The Little Sister,” which renders Fatima’s development from an uncertain, sullen high school student into a more confident young woman as just one step on a journey.

Carroll is a phenomenally compelling subject, and her magnetic, joyful presence at the center of the film holds it together.

Everybody to Kenmure Street is an exceptional documentary, both in the story it tells and in the way it tells it, about what happened that day.

Time is slipping away for Tangier Island, just like its shoreline. Been Here Stay Here beautifully captures what it is right now, then asks us to consider what will probably be lost soon.

It’s a useful framework for understanding leaders around the world, and Baranov is the ideal cipher, someone who intimately understands how easily people’s minds are swayed and molded.

Not only is The Sheep Detectives delightful, but it’s funny and emotionally complex and, dare I say, unusually deferential toward the noble sheep, frequently cast as brain-dead losers in cinema’s barnyards (Shaun notwithstanding).

Drawing attention to the filming technology, Martel implicitly reminds us that Chocobar’s case only came to trial because it was filmed and uploaded to the internet in the first place.

There’s a reasonably OK movie somewhere inside Animal Farm, but it’s drowning in ideological confusion, which wouldn’t be such a big deal — one rarely asks children’s cartoons featuring talking pigs to be wellsprings of thoughtful political theorizing — except that this is “Animal Farm.”

While his celebrity has largely faded, Bernstein’s Wall makes the case that his charge to artists to lead the way in culture is timeless, and more vital than ever.

I was left befuddled about the movie’s message and, indeed, what I was supposed to make of the whole thing. That’s frustrating, and it’s not the sort of feeling you want to have when leaving a movie like this; it overwhelms whatever impression the rest of the movie might have left.

Here, what we are left with is a string of musical set pieces, like a greatest hits album, performed ably by the stars — in his debut role, Jaafar Jackson dances like he is possessed by his uncle’s talent — but strung together in repetitive false-note ways that are insulting both to audience and subject.

Even if you’re confused or mystified by the whole concept of cryptocurrency, the movie is a pretty solid introduction to how it works. More important, it explains why people got into it in the first place.

An exquisite debut feature.

Goodman’s career is fascinating on its own merits, and the film is full of footage of her doggedly chasing down politicians and sources who clearly would prefer to control their own story. But more important, the movie gradually explores the fundamentals of journalism that she believes in and passes on to colleagues.

I have rarely enjoyed watching two actors’ rapport the way I loved watching McKellen and Coel; it could have gone on forever and not been long enough.

Blood-soaked and intense, it is occasionally uneven in tone, with varying degrees of skill from the cast. But story-wise, it mostly holds together, a thinker of a thriller that, even when it heads into pure slasher territory, still has its brain turned on.

"The Cathedral” embodies everything that’s lovely about [Grashow's] work — its impishness, its openheartedness and its darkness, too — and Jimmy & the Demons captures all of that with a spirit that matches its subject.

There’s a flat empty nothingness to The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, even more than its flat empty predecessor, and that’s a huge bummer.

The result is less clarifying than bewildering, though it’s often very interesting.

It’s funny and beautiful and lively.

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is a worthy sequel, repeating some of the same beats as its predecessor, but cleverly reinvented so that it’s still unpredictable and hilariously bizarre.

It’s a properly scary movie, the kind that merits watching in a theater with a good sound system (or headphones in a dark room, at home). And “Undertone” provides terrific evidence of what a filmmaker can do even under constraint. The most powerful tool in an artist’s toolbox just might be the audience’s imagination.

It’s a fable, really, with a science-nerd edge and some charming animal friends. You could do a whole lot worse at the movies.

With In the Blink of an Eye, Stanton is juggling quite a bit, including many landscapes to create and a lot of imagination for exploration. While the visuals are not exactly eye-popping, the movie is plenty serviceable.

It’s a fan’s dream, to be sure. But in getting so close to a man who has so often been turned into a caricature, “EPiC” goes beyond just the concert: We enjoy both the performance and the man who loved nothing more than to perform.

It’s actually when the film returns to the main, quest-driven plot that the film lags, particularly around the middle; there’s just not enough interest among the team members and the action to sustain narrative tension, and the film feels like it loses its drive.