Chuck Wilson

Mountain Patrol: Kekexili is sometimes slow going, yet it builds in power as nature begins to take its toll on the patrol, and its cumulative effects are haunting.

Nair, who, in this film as in so many others, aims for the beating heart of the predictable movie moment.

Kane believes in happy endings, but he makes his characters earn theirs, as each couple is forced, ever so subtly, to face its own inner nonsense. The filmmaker has divine actors at his disposal.

A Prayer Before Dawn feels scarily authentic, and may be too much for some. But there are moments of grace amid the setting’s despair.

It Felt Like Love is brilliantly, brutally tactile.

Housebound is a tad long, and its murder mystery a bit of a muddle, but that doesn’t matter. The final third is virtuoso.

While it's Dave's madly humming brain that propels the film, Davis, whose every glance is a short story in itself, makes Dana's internal crisis equally resonant.

For these gifted directors and their fine ensemble, the notion that every life forms into a mosaic of intimate, largely unobserved details is the story most worth telling.

Both a thriller and meditation on the loss of innocence, Super Dark Times is rich with the minutiae of a bygone era...but Phillips and screenwriters Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski press hard against the instinct for nostalgia.

Fascinating film, which tracks Éva's slowly dawning realization that she's being played for a fool, an insight that may be driving her mad.

Moving and vibrant Italian-language film.

This film is lean, tight and irredeemably vile. People are gonna love it.

The superb ensemble never plays for sympathy, and the movie isn't as depressing as it may sound. Its hushed, contemplative quality is oddly affecting.

The true mystery, Red Lights' real thrill ride -- and what seems to interest Kahn most, despite his skill at arranging the trappings of suspense -- is marriage.

To use a phrase from the film, The Armstrong Lie is a "myth-buster." It's wholly necessary, brilliantly executed, and a complete bummer.

Millions is an intelligent children’s film that may prove to be a guilty pleasure for adults.

Despite its sci-fi hook, Movement and Location turns out to be a surprisingly resonant film about how impossible it is for most people — no matter their cosmic time zone — to carve out a life that's emotionally honest.

Lowery isn't a Malick and he's certainly no Kazan, but he's his own man, and a filmmaker to watch.

Yu has transferred to her superb film, the hushed awe she must have felt the day she walked into the room - and, in a sense, the mind - of this strange, singular individual.

The Russian Woodpecker is very much like Fedor himself — eccentric as hell, smart as a whip, and, at the end of the day, a heartbreaker.

The finale goes on and on, but the movie is nicely photographed (by John Bailey) and duly empowering, and should please the vast teen-girl audience for which it's intended.

Zeiger's superb documentary about the Vietnam War era's GI protest movement is jammed with incident and anecdote and moves with nearly as much breathless momentum as the movement itself.

Devotes too much time to a shrill, unfunny security guard who's pursuing the girls, but he does stage some zippy sequences, from the red-clad Julie's skateboard dash home to witty bits involving an energy-depleted electric car.

A horror movie that's not horrific enough, Soul Survivors plays like a "Twilight Zone" by way of "Touched by an Angel."

This is writer-director Hilary Birmingham's first film, and it's a lovely thing, as reserved and unfussy as its characters and, like them, full of surprises.

Wordplay offers a running tutorial in how crosswords are created - lessons that are enhanced by the onscreen graphics of designer Brian Oakes, which, come tournament time, allow moviegoers to see the clues and grids the contestants are working on, theoretically allowing us to solve the puzzles along with them.

Captured extraordinary performances from a cast of non-actors, as well as magnificent images of a vast landscape.

A bit disjointed but also vibrant and loving.