Danny King

There is in Sully — as there is in Sniper — a purposefully conflicted reckoning with the very tenets of American heroism.

When the movie just sits with the characters on front porches or in backyards, Mackenzie's generous, hands-off approach with his actors — most of the conversation scenes play out in long takes with minimal camera movement — yields poignant rewards.

For the Plasma finds genuine, almost innocent-seeming delight in its own swerves in style and rhythm.

There is serious pain in this movie — pain that endures throughout the years — but also a sincere love for life lived, and life remembered.

It's another modest, functional success from a director who used to work on the margins.

Kimberly Levin's Runoff deals with an old-as-time moral quandary — how far will you go to protect your family? — but the movie achieves an understated resonance through Levin's emotionally sensitive compositions and her clued-in portrayal of life in a middle-American farming community.

Silver's empathy often produces moments of emotional catharsis.

Though an accomplished farce, The Overnight is most interesting when confronting its genuine emotional stakes.

The developments keep getting more outrageous from there, with the psychologies of the characters becoming increasingly bizarre.

Whether laughing, crying, mumbling to himself, or projecting a valiant stoicism, Gulpilil — beneath a white beard and a blanket of shaggy hair — commands the screen in close-ups liable to run for minutes at a time.

A mere hour long, the movie could stand to be more discerning with its material.

What makes L for Leisure more than just a collection of clever, well-photographed jokes is the utter sincerity embedded within the constant sarcasm.

Aside from a showy opening (a tracking shot that snakes through a club, cribbing freely from Carlito's Way, Boogie Nights, etc.), the movie satisfies mainly due to its affecting ensemble and considerable emotional intelligence.

Hilditch's approach to this end-of-days scenario can be heavy-handed... But Hilditch gets good mileage out of his cast.

Unfortunately, White Rabbit's grave, problematic conclusion attempts to broaden the movie's scope in a way that ultimately feels more unwarranted and distasteful than it does organic to the material.

This is an indifferently filmed, sloppily conceived story that finds infrequent life through resourceful production design (Gigi's house is strewn with Modelo, Red Bull, and scribbled-on note cards) and on-edge work from Tomei and Rockwell.

In Songs From the North, the South Korean–born, U.S.-based filmmaker Soon-Mi Yoo takes her camera to North Korea and, through a purposeful mix of on-location footage, poetic intertitles ("Is North Korea the loneliest place on Earth?"), and archival media, creates an empathetic snapshot of a country that is almost never depicted in such an accessible light.

The movie's flaws — silly plotting and unconvincing psychological groundwork — are Klein's doing.

Befitting a doc about a data-intensive struggle, the movie benefits from a wealth of resources.

Aside from some inspired uses of chiaroscuro lighting, the movie around Depardieu is mostly derivative.

If the results are occasionally broad and schematic, the actors (Woodley especially) are anything but, and Araki has an absolute field day adorning his kitschy, 1950s-ish view of suburban Los Angeles with a string of showoffy colors.

Poppe's closeness to the material ensures a level of passion, but he still fails to create a truly specific dynamic for Rebecca and Marcus's family, settling instead for a catch-all representation of the difficulties of maintaining a healthy home life while working in a dangerous profession.

The movie loses its zip as it becomes more dramatic.

The movie is partly saved by Bonifacio and DP Timothy Nuttall's regular use of patient long shots, as well as their capable grasp of widescreen composition.

An extreme, compassionate magnification of the minutiae of second-to-second existence (brushing teeth, counting money).

Guedes's complex performance leaves no doubt regarding the fragility of Veronica's psyche.

Fanny has a stagy sensibility, but Auteuil displays flashes of genuine, old-school craft.

Khan’s orchestration of suspense impresses.