Andy Webster

Mr. Liford (yet another emergent indie filmmaker from Texas) can clearly write a script, handle a camera and construct a mood. Wuss may be slight, but Mr. Liford’s sense of pitch is spot on.

A Lego Brickumentary might be a resounding cheer for a brand, but it’s an eye-opener, too.

Shah Rukh Khan’s seasoned authority is a steady anchor amid the frantic contrivances.

Thanks to his editor, Domingo González, Mr. de la Iglesia skillfully keeps these many balls in the air, a palpable affection for his players seeping through.

Toward the end, Mr. Farr employs familiar cinematic sleights of hand, but with a finely calibrated touch.

“As I AM” rockets through its subject’s life, teeming with testimonials from the superstar producer-D.J.s Mark Ronson and Paul Oakenfold, among many others. And then it ends, leaving you spent. And wistful.

As Salinger, the formidable Chris Cooper has a brief but masterly turn, sympathetically rendering the writer as a curmudgeon defending his literary offspring.

With strong assists from the cinematographer Zachary Galler and her ex-husband, the composer Sondre Lerche, Ms. Fastvold, previously a director of music videos, has painted a resonant tableau of dysfunction.

The movie, directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, who directed Mr. Neeson in the efficient airborne thriller “Non-Stop,” has two saving graces: a tight script and terrific acting.

The action sequences deliver, as do the performances. You want these characters to make it, and their destinies are compelling to behold.

Mr. Romero, manifesting a self-effacing demeanor and sensible humanity, is a most agreeable raconteur.

This well-made, low-key drama, written by Mr. Gay and Tomàs Aragay, offers some insights into terminal illness.

Throughout, the solitary Mr. Tower maintains an unflappable refinement, dedicated, a college friend says, to “looking for some utopian possibility of living, because that’s what kept the darkness away.”

Yoshinari Nishikori’s period action film Tatara Samurai does not skimp with its swordplay, but its narrative arc takes you to a resolution uncommon for its genre.

The story may be slight, but the performances and ambience resonate.

Pushy, judgmental, tart-tongued and self-obsessed, the photographer at the heart of Otis Mass’s penetrating documentary, The Incomparable Rose Hartman, is, like her snapshots, a piece of work.

Since we can’t all attend Burning Man, we can be thankful for “Spark,” which is probably the next best thing.

[A] short but bluntly powerful documentary.

Hunter Adams’s Dig Two Graves is that rare chiller conjuring eeriness and dread without defaulting to abundant gore or flagrant nudity.

Under its slick, schematic surface, this tale of aspiration and redemption at least offers moments of genuine feeling.

Mr. Ruffin must carry the film, projecting interior activity and suggesting information where the script (by Mr. O’Shea) does not. That he imbues the film with a weight greater than its words is a testament to his skill as an actor.

The Queen of Spain, a light ensemble romp from the veteran director Fernando Trueba, has fun with movie lore even as it pillories Hollywood’s deal-making with the Francisco Franco regime in the 1950s.

Chris Perkel’s reverent documentary Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives is a valedictory for Mr. Davis.

Iron Moon has a slowly mounting, but lingering, impact.

Ms. Hammer’s gauzier sequences notwithstanding, the film’s most commanding image is the housekeeper’s description of the ruthless monasticism Bishop maintained and the compulsive writing she practiced in her studio. Amid excesses and entanglements, that concentration ensured her place in literary history.

In her pursuit, Shivani pistol-whips perps, performs a flying tackle on a criminal astride a motorcycle, shoots an assassin at point-blank range and stabs an assailant through the hand. Her final confrontation with Walt is a sweaty aria of hand-to-hand martial arts combat.

This movie makes you appreciate anew the one-on-one social dimension lost in the music industry’s headlong switch to digital downloads.

It’s not the derivative scares and rudimentary effects that keep this low-budget effort percolating but the improvisational energy of Mr. Santos and Mr. Villarreal, whose ease, chemistry and humor never flag.