Farran Smith Nehme

The film is nominated for this year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar, and it doesn’t deserve to snatch the prize from the towering likes of “Ida,” “Timbuktu” or “Leviathan.” Yet in its gaudy, predictable way, Wild Tales is enormous fun, and the consistent wit of the quiet stretches shows there’s more to Szifrón than shock tactics.

The Wall winds up as a captivating fable, an end-times scenario that’s more about the survival of the spirit than the body.

It’s a sympathetic portrait of an artist whose heart lay more with new work than old glories, right up to the end.

It’s a truly interesting slasher fest; in this one, the heroine gets to be both beauty and beast.

The movie's most exciting when the precision and jaw-dropping nerve of the gang holds center stage.

It’s a film heavily dependent on tone and atmosphere for its charm, the budding relationship shown through things like a lovely twilight bike ride down a hill to the shops below.

We know Paris never went anywhere, and the film’s a little too flashy and theatrical, with too-neat ironies. As a duel between acting talents, though, this is first-rate.

The bright palette of Reality is an obvious way to underline the hero’s unraveling, but it looks good, and it works.

In addition to the magnificent music, the movie takes its rumpled charm from Fry's unfeigned fanboy manner.

There isn’t a lot here about her films, or great performances, but this is two hours of Ingrid Bergman, much of it rarely seen before. I’m not about to complain.

The film is both elegiac and amazingly retro, like the nature specials that baby boomers were weaned on - although it's not for animal lovers, unless you have a specific grudge against sables. "Happy People" is the title, but it's virtually all men.

The remarkable performances from the central trio are what carries the film.

In the poignant, symmetrical end, Touré leaves the idea that the real yearning of these people is for a fair shake in their own home.

Directors Matthew Pond and Kirk Marcolina wisely keep this unrepentant charmer, in her 80s during filming, on-camera, save for when they’re interviewing fascinated writers and fed-up prosecutors.

Gibran’s book was huge in the 1960s, and it feels fresher here than it has in ages, although the visuals are stronger than the music.

John Maloof’s documentary has an opening both apt and witty: Talking heads, one after the other, struck dumb by the mystery at hand.

For those willing to lock into Reygadas’ mad wavelength, the beauty is worth the puzzlement.

Meier's tight focus on her primary characters pays off: Seydoux brings a strong array of emotions to a highly unsympathetic part. And Klein, whether plugging his ears with cigarette filters or suddenly embracing a woman he barely knows, is heartbreaking.

Its tactile feel for the dirt and labor of a farm, and tender regard for the young protagonist, are immensely endearing.

The film is built from moving, frank interviews with survivors from two families who hid, speaking over and around extensive re-enactments. Passages from the memoir of one family matriarch, Esther Stermer, in many ways the heroine of the tale, also are used as narration.

The evidence Jarecki amasses against the drug wars in The House I Live In is more than strong enough to withstand any excess rhetorical zeal.

Ethical objections to Milgram’s work are presented as killing the messenger; well-known issues with his methodology appear not at all. The movie’s an intellectual shock tactic, but it succeeds.

The overall film is a mix of “The Thin Blue Line” and Costa-Gavras’ “Z.” At times overemphatic (no one will ever accuse Gitai of holding too much back), this docu-thriller is also agonizingly suspenseful, despite the foreordained conclusion.

The on-camera experts make intelligent, earnest points, but the Web means there’s no such thing as a real ban. Indeed the movies have always been available, as two former neo-Nazis point out.

The result is quite a ramble: Leacock talks about how equipment influences filmmaking, the making of a custard and the wanderings of his cat. Through it all, happily, his company is a pleasure.

These elisions give an odd feeling to a film so long in the making. Crewdson's work ultimately begins to seem less enigmatic than he is himself.

Eerie and utterly riveting.

For a long while, director Benjamin Epps goes for breakneck farce; at its best, this is a batty mixture of family-values editorial and teen spoof.

It's never dull though, and the familiar characters and stock motivations are convincingly put across. And there's always Xu, who's turned to acupuncture to suppress his empathy, as you wait for the inevitable moment when suppressing it won't be enough.

Brazilian director Anna Muylaert’s deft, funny film is set in São Paulo, but the class distinctions shown have no borders.

This film loves its characters, but loves their ideals even more.

Often extremely funny, always thoughtful, the movie transcends its static nature to become a deeper picture of modern Iran than any news story could offer.

A remarkable attempt to portray what might turn soccer-playing boys into fanatical murderers.

Swift and often compelling, it’s also blessedly unbiased.

Kaili Blues has the kitchen-sink feel of a new director eager to try every art-film technique in the book, but the film’s beauty and inventiveness are riveting.

Brooklyn Castle is an engaging tale, and the principal is wrong: These kids are much more lovable than the Yankees.

The conceit is slight, but Hong's playful structure conceals sharp observations about fantasies, communication, and how foreigners and natives interact.

Beautiful to look at, with its burnished interiors and magnificent Turkish steppes, this long film builds to a powerful conclusion. Ceylan’s characters grind each other to a powder while hardly raising their voices.

In short, the crows are pests, but the movie shows them great affection, as do the humans who discuss the ways they must accommodate the crows. After a while it is impossible not to admire the birds’ intelligence and resilience, and see that perhaps it’s the other way around: The crows are the ones putting up with us.

Tamhane’s quiet techniques build to pure, cold fury.

This is the penultimate film of Albert Maysles, who died on March 5, and Iris has a bit in common with “Grey Gardens,” his masterpiece. Apfel, unlike the Edies of that movie, is sane — so much so that the movie’s main flaw is lack of conflict. Iris’ marriage to Carl, who turned 100 during filming, is incredibly sweet.

Europe’s immigration dilemma was also the focus of Aki Kaurismaki’s winsome “Le Havre,” and the Africans themselves were front and center in Moussa Touré’s “La Pirogue.” This film is somewhat less effective; Crialese’s message seems to take priority over a deeper sense of individuals.

Technically, the film isn’t terribly exciting: talking heads interspersed with shots of young people making their symbolic “leap of faith” from the walls. But the directors have chosen eloquent interviewees, and the passionate attachment they feel for their city gives the film heart.

This engaging, funny documentary catches up with Beltracchi as he and his wife are serving time in an “open” prison in Europe.

Winocour skillfully films Augustine being exhibited for other doctors in several disturbingly erotic scenes, but elsewhere Soko’s stolid, one-note demeanor takes a toll. The script, which gives Augustine no background and mostly shows her either being “treated” or having an episode, doesn’t help.

There are no surprises, but for once there’s a set of artsy millennial characters who feel like real humans, and Berlin looks great.

While clearly on the side of the protesters, the filmmakers are still determined to explain every legal detail, and at times matters become bogged down in endless televised journalists and snappish legislators.

This loopy absurdist comedy is the final work of Andrzej Zulawski, the famed Polish filmmaker who died in February.

Dolan embraces passion and melodrama to a refreshing degree, and Dorval and Clément are terrific. But Mommy can be exhausting; the structure and plot rhythms are all over everywhere. A montage to “Wonderwall” (every last note of it) seems to sum up the movie; too much, but exhilarating all the same.

While the premise (inspired by the true story of tune-challenged American socialite Florence Foster Jenkins) could be as cruel as “Carrie,” Frot’s would-be diva is achingly sympathetic.

It’s endearing how this glorified haunted-house movie tries to reclaim all the old tools, and do so with a straight face and a PG-13 level of violence.

Where Zhao excels is in the range of emotions she gets from a mostly nonprofessional cast.

The final scenes, when Mancini meets Kim’s son, have the awkward feel of an “Oprah” episode, with the editing and music suggesting a catharsis that isn’t always backed up by what’s on-screen.

It’s sprightly, funny and at times piercingly sad.

While Campillo does graceful work — the way he draws focus in a scene is a pleasure — the script drags and the pseudo-romance is hard to believe, especially when one plot point concerns Daniel asking for a bulk-purchase sex rate. Eastern Boys never quite fulfills the promise of those first few minutes.

Oddly, though, for a film so dedicated to celebrating what he can still accomplish, his early performing career gets a lot more emphasis than the music still being composed. And that's a pity, because what little we hear is entrancing.

Things go awry in the last act, as the movie stops dead for more songs and a tragic coda that seems forced and trite, rather than the three-hankie finale we've all earned. Still, Cumming is wonderful.

Time has robbed Blume’s subjects of shock value, but her perceptiveness hasn’t dimmed. The movie’s sincerity carries it along, and makes this story endearing despite its filmmaking clichés.

Jealousy has a quiet melancholy that’s very pleasing.

The first half has erratic pacing, but past the midpoint the film roars into action. Dornan is monotonous, but Murphy is intense enough for them both; side romances for the men feel phony but apparently are based in fact.

An explosion of images, mixing seedy, hand-held reality with groovy grindhouse imitations. Most of the shots are vivid, some are even thrilling.

If the movie has a star, it may be cinematographer Oleg Mutu, the Romanian who lensed “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” and “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days.” Even when the pace wanes, the images are still gripping.

This is a handsome movie, rich in period detail, but the stately pace slows to a crawl in the second half.

The film has a nice sense of female friendships’ emotional depth. But as a woman, Duris (while amusing) is not much more convincing than Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in “Some Like It Hot.”

He may be saddled with an overly ironic title role, but Bystrov is terrific. His cowboy squint and dogged intelligence are enough to give you hope for Russia, although the movie certainly won’t.

It’s a swift, vivid movie, but 10 years past the scandal, not much is new.

The story is something of a trap: Both irresistibly poignant and an invitation to wallow.

When The Last Gladiators treats brawls like greatest-hits clips for more than half the movie, then suggests fighting is behind Nilan's decline, it feels like trying to have it both ways.

With ravishing landscapes, violent political allegory and a glacial narrative that takes an abrupt left turn in the third act: Lisandro Alonso’s Jauja resolutely checks every 2015 art-film box.

At nearly three hours, it’s entirely too long, needlessly padded out with an intrusive interview-framing device.

Brief and timely, this documentary directed by Shosh Shlam and Hilla Medalia is also frustrating.

There’s a simplicity and directness in Chaplin of the Mountains that keeps it aloft; its wholehearted sincerity feels much fresher than any number of slicker, more cynical films.

The plot doesn’t entirely escape formula, and the ending is jagged and forced, unable to commit to either hope or gloom. But for at least part of its length, My Brother the Devil brings refreshing changes to a genre badly in need of them.

Swift, confident, and exceptionally nasty, this Argentine film bears roughly the same relationship to the Martin Scorsese of “Goodfellas” that Brian De Palma does to, well, all of Hitchcock.

Much time is spent on inter-museum wrangling, and the personalities aren’t vivid enough (as they were in “The New Rijksmuseum”) to build tension. The interest lies in the close look at the strange vision of this great artist.

It’s an ambitious, often arresting film, but it lacks cohesion, and the seesawing plot and motivations seem more indecisive than mysterious.

Yet while Nemes criticized “Schindler’s List” as “conventional,” all that’s new here is the hyper-realistic technique: Saul’s quest is not very far from the girl in the red dress.

This is, by some distance, the best movie of the three, and it showcases the impeccable symmetry of his compositions, while retaining his compulsion to wag a finger in your face.

Its sentiment is appealing, though, and its sincerity doesn’t cloy.

Filmed on abstract sets, it’s full of playful touches, such as lines delivered in front of a screen that looks like a comic-strip panel, and glimpses of a mole puppet popping out from a fake lawn.

The firefights and chase scenes, no matter how much they adhere to genre, seem more real than the people trapped in the corruption.

For a long stretch this movie plays well. Quiet moments, such as when Victoria plays a piano waltz and reveals herself to have a concert-level talent, have a feel for urban yearning. Costa is appealing; it’s a pleasure to watch her brush her teeth in real time.

By refusing to consider that Dickens and Ternan ever brought each other any happiness, the movie is more Victorian in its attitudes than even some Victorians were.

As lovely as Jimmy’s Hall is, Paul Laverty’s script is not so much talky as speech-y. Some conversations play like bullet points about Irish politics and the iron grip of the Catholic Church.

Some of the film's flourishes are ill-judged.

The sincerity and simplicity of the film, however, lift it somewhat above the ordinary run.

It’s involving, as biopics go, but the shattering debates that still swirl around Arendt’s view of the Holocaust are relegated to walk-ons.

The Other Son is played with warmth and conviction by its cast. But it's also a little pat and toothless, set in an Israel where not even the notorious border crossings seem that difficult.

The movie was always going to be a record of another unique New York institution, making way for another glass box.

The film is passionate, but not exactly revelatory.

It’s a baggy movie, with some things (such as whether Idris taking Ritalin in high school improved his performance) unexplained, and it may appeal most to those raising kids themselves.

In terms of its outlook for young girls in Georgia, the movie title might as well be “Buried Alive.”

Pace and mood are equally glum, and so much information is withheld that the twisty relationship can’t build much tension.

The sex is the main thing that makes Kiss of the Damned worthwhile.

This enigma-delivery system from a sharp mind has enthralling moments but becomes a bit enervating in its self-seriousness. By the end, the whole thing feels more academic than mind-bending.

Played with enormous charm by Samuel Lange Zambrano, Junior is a handsome kid.

Director Ava DuVernay, in showing Ruby's life in waiting, occasionally lets the pace slip into tedium.

Saint Laurent was known for an almost monk-like focus on his work. And so this film springs to life — the actors, the camera, the editing — when we see his creations the way they were meant to be seen: in motion, and worn by beautiful women.