Farran Smith Nehme

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.

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 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.

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

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

Ivo’s farmhouse looks leftover from another century, which gives a timeless feeling, as does the regal bearing of Ulfsak and the dry humor of the script. The film telegraphs its pacifist message early on, but it’s still deeply affecting.

Like Father, Like Son has earned its right to reduce a person to a sobbing wreck.

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

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

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.

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

A Royal Affair is basically a good-looking set of historical Cliffs Notes. There, is however, one excellent reason to see it: Folsgaard, who by the end has made his betrayed and bereft Christian into a figure of genuine tragedy.

Bhalla’s advocacy gets its force above all from the oddly similar personalities of the two main subjects — Wallace and Sumell — zealous reformers possessed of astonishing optimism, even as Bhalla closes by noting that there are 80,000 prisoners in solitary in the US.

Big Star’s fans are so passionate that this film may well please some of them, but as for myself, I already knew their music was genius. By the end, I was muttering at every critic and musician and record producer, “Guys, tell me something I don’t know.”

When Uprising shows masses of Arabs marching for freedom, and using Muslim prayer as a form of peaceful protest, that in itself is a bit revolutionary.

Making elegant use of the austere landscape and the rugged features of star Jérémie Renier, the film shows how these doggedly practical and nonspiritual men cope with the eerie events, the cause of which is hinted at but never fully explained.

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.

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

In Devos’ hard-charging performance, she’s also fascinating, and that’s all a film requires.

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

Director Baran bo Odar puts all this in the service of ghastly clichés. The rape of children has long since grown nauseatingly familiar, in books, in films, in each season of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”

The result — directed by Rufus Norris and setting words collected by Alecky Blythe against music by Adam Cork — is mesmerizing.

It is engrossing, even funny at times, but it is a bit too jagged in execution to properly build to its tragic climax.

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.

Frankel has a fine eye for telling detail, and the result, while sentimental, is as irresistible as the dessert cart.

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.

11 Flowers boils down to a coming-of-age tale merged with a why-dunit — not unlike “To Kill a Mockingbird” — but the plot is molasses-slow, as threads are dropped, picked up and dropped again.

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.