Chris Packham

Martemucci intertwines these stories gracefully, and with the charm and charisma of her cast, makes clever banter and script contrivances seem completely natural and unaffected.

Among Ravens wants to be the The Big Chill with Gen-X assholes, a weird ambition.

Premature, you will be exhausted to hear, is a teen sex comedy with the plot of Groundhog Day, its supernatural comedy hearkening more to Scott Baio's Zapped! than to Porky's.

Brian Knappenberger's The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz connects the dots of Swartz's past, assembling a vivid portrait of a sensitive genius with a strong moral sense.

The comic plot of Fonzy is outrageous, but to writer-director Isabelle Doval, it's just an armature that supports its gently funny characters and its themes of emotional and filial connections.

The frank honesty of these accounts testifies to the trust Junger and Hetherington cultivated among the Second Platoon in 2008.

Strangely Bechdel Test-failing and as far removed from real life as Middle Earth, Lucky Them nonetheless hits familiar beats in welcome and unexpected ways, and does it by the book.

Emoticon ;), a vanity project written, directed, starring, and sung by Livia De Paolis, is a grown-up's weird idea of how kids behave.

Director Nabil Ayouch depicts the sprawling, ramshackle Sidi Moumen slums with fluid camera movements... He finds the humanity and the hopelessness in its narrow streets, its fields of rubble, monstrous trash dumps, and grim marketplaces.

But the directors elevate the picture to a level of emotional genius by filming the children's play as a full-on cinematic adaptation, shot and edited with seriousness and polish.

Co-director and narrator Ben Knight interviews activists, officials, social jammers, and scientists, approaching the subject not with outrage, but with humor and optimism.

Fed Up is a workmanlike documentary, as undistinguished in style as a PowerPoint slide show. It nonetheless finds traction in its depiction of the food industry's Montgomery Burns–like practices.

The man who might be Robertson is both the point and the best part of the film. He comes across as sincere, his childlike vulnerability and the depiction of his life in Vietnam demanding sympathy.

Altered States of Plaine, like indies Pi and Primer, harbors ambition that towers over its super-saver discount budget.

Sincere and unexpectedly good.

Rio 2 wants to be a musical, but instead of timing songs to, say, the emotional peaks of the characters, director Carlos Saldanha opts for high-intensity intervals of singing every four minutes.

Director Jason Naumann treats the characters with genuine affection and a portrayal of faith that actually has integrity.

Small details and incidents accrete into a pointillist rendering of despair.

Mannered and often very funny.

The white saviors are flat, 2D manifestations of virtue... And the film's Indians? They aren't characters at all.

The Art of the Steal doesn't advance the nerdy intertextuality that has distinguished ironic crime films since Guy Ritchie, but writer-director Jonathan Sobol knows the ropes.

It's often funny, and the writers are smart, but the film is like an arcless, extended episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

What's remarkable is that despite the sweaty overdetermination of the film's dude-bro interactions and the whole prefabricated concept of performance air sex, the love story has actual depth and sadness.

Too bad that Urban's stab at black-comedy satire is hobbled by the obviousness of his characters.

Maxine Peake is a revelation in Run & Jump, communicating vitality and extraordinary optimism that practically bleeds out and infects the visuals.

Good-natured and completely forgettable.

Despite the psychological extremes, writer-director Francesca Gregorini presents her characters as recognizably human balls of complexity, nudging but never forcing them toward a sad, beautiful conclusion.

Peter Wingfield delivers an engagingly oily Claudius, and Lara Gilchrist's Ophelia is radiant. But Ramsay's Hamlet's madness never really overcomes the character's traditional emo temperament.