Craig D. Lindsey

With Uwais choreographing the insane fights and Indonesian genre vets the Mo Brothers catching every bloody, manic minute, both fists and bullets get dished out with equal, frenetic fury — and the movie offers plenty of "Oh shit!" moments.

It’s Not Yet Dark is an uplifting portrait of a debilitated man driven to excel by a relentless desire to live life and love those who surround him.

Just like high-wire showman Philippe Petit, Tower is a brilliant, dedicated artist who has spent most of his life wowing people with his talents — but is ultimately always out there by himself.

Both Sharif and Ahmed make sure audiences leave Nowhere to Hide well aware that Iraq remains a war zone — one where innocent people remain caught in the crossfire.

The filmmaker, who also co-edited The Novice, depicts Alex’s freshman year in quick-cutting, frenetic, anxiety-ridden fashion, with composer Alex Weston’s string-heavy score properly ratcheting up the tension and Fuhrman gamely acting like a harried but dedicated ball of nerves.

As consistently depressing as this movie is, it thankfully shows you that before you dismiss the denizens of an entire region as poor white trash, you should listen to their story.

Oregon is more than a bittersweet look at a man deciding to end his life before he’s too invalid to have a say in the matter: It’s a study of how plain ol’ stubbornness can keep a family forever brimming with dysfunction.

As much of a nightmare Mom and Dad spins in turning parents into raving, homicidal lunatics, this movie also knows how hard it is for actual moms and dads to just get up every day and try to be good parents to these little muhfuckas.

Blues is mostly a spirited, rambling trip through the history of this American music, but that journey is under the cloud of a melancholy bleakness.

Tickling Giants comes off as both a fact-based look at fighting fire with funny and a prescient cautionary tale.

Palansky had the good sense to let the performances elevate the material, never letting this turn into another cheesy, predictably twisty yarn.

Boom makes the case that the scene Basquiat came from was more fascinating than Basquiat himself. Even though many of the artists, admirers, and friends interviewed for this doc praise him and his gonzo genius, several of them suggest that he strived to be more of a rock star than a punk artist.

Canadian documentarian Jamie Kastner (The Secret Disco Revolution) has crafted an entertainingly kitschy version of an Errol Morris film.

I'm thankful No Greater Love is around to make people realize how much war heroes need our love, help and support once they come back home. Just telling them "thank you for your service" ain't gonna cut it.

It is fascinating seeing people come to a holy place — a place that's more about love and spirituality than religion — with their hearts and minds open, just looking for guidance. And whether you believe in God or not, isn't that what we all want?

National Bird shows that war will always be hell, even for those who aren’t on the battleground. Kennebeck directs with a cold, distant eye, almost giving her subjects the same treatment they gave all those poor souls they targeted.

I guess that’s ultimately what Reed and Gunn wanted to provide: a view of African Americans that’s messy, complicated, dramatic, and, most important, honest. It’s also a fascinating artifact of black people getting together and making their own art — mainly because they wanted to see themselves properly represented onscreen.

No Date, No Signature presents a story of flawed but generally decent people trying to put right what went so horribly wrong.

In the end, this relentlessly scenic travelogue/valentine is Willer literally giving her old man peace of mind.

Even amid all the campy, uneven creepiness The Fog unleashes, you have to give it up to Carpenter for continuing his knack of making women just as ready as men to get into heroic, survival mode whenever some strange shit goes down.

As the flick teeters between feel-good message movie and a burlesque of gay panic, the director scratches the surface in order to show how people rarely look beyond the surface of others.

I’m sure the movie was made for Yeun (who also serves as executive producer) to finally have a chance to prove he has leading-man chops — and Hollywood should start giving him movie-star, action-hero gigs, like, yesterday.

For a documentary about two men who were big-time drug dealers back in the day, The Sunshine Makers is a quaint, damn-near-adorable bit of nostalgia.

Although Tracktown presents itself as adorably, harmlessly twee, I wished Pappas had tapped deeper into the dark side she hints at — the side that makes her protagonist more concerned about being a winner than about being a person.

All through the film, you pray it doesn’t go down the bleak routes that films like this usually go — and, most of the time, it does. Night Comes On is an assured first shot from Spiro but, damn, I couldn’t wait for this fucking thing to be over.

While the movie does address white people’s thorny relationship with rap and cultural appropriation, it demonstrates how delicate satirizing that can be when it gets kind of serious near the end — a long, long end — and suggests that being the best at battle rap can also mean being the worst.

Director/producer Eve Marson doesn't characterize Hurwitz as devious or nefarious. Instead, she presents him as a naïve, way-too-trusting schnook — an even more troubling diagnosis.

The filmmakers do an effective job at making a clever horror show out of postpartum depression. So it’s a shame the movie goes off the deep end in the final act, as the story literally comes to a bloody, tragic finish.