Jeannette Catsoulis

Mainly, it has Ralph Fiennes to ensure that the center holds. As Orlando, Duke of Oxford and the spy agency’s founder, Fiennes might read more cuddly than studly, but he lends a surprising gravitas to this flibbertigibbet feature.

By ignoring Israeli voices and focusing only on the immigrants, Mr. Haar has produced a documentary filled with immediacy but free of analysis, a fascinating but ultimately unenlightening record of their plight.

Margolin’s empathy for Thelma (he based the story on a scam perpetrated on his own grandmother) lends the film a sweetness and occasional poignancy that help mitigate much of the foolishness.

Knowing but never jaded, Hollywood Dreams is driven by Ms. Frederick's no-boundaries commitment to her broken character, a performance that's as startling as it is touching. In Mr. Jaglom's maverick hands, the appeal of illusion over reality is both fatal and irresistible.

As tables turn and turn again — nudged along by a wolfish impostor (Ward Horton) and some creative torturing — the movie allows scant time to ponder each new tack.

A blistering story of rage and redemption that never fully illuminates the journey from one to the other.

Don’t Leave Home is a frustratingly befuddled movie that’s nevertheless fascinating.

The plot matters only inasmuch as it allows the returning director, Chad Stahelski, to stage his spectacular fight sequences in various stunning Roman locations, where they unfold with an almost erotic brutality.

A movie that feels more like an encomium than a thoughtful probe of a brilliantly mutinous mind.

Sarah Silverman burns through the indie drama “I Smile Back” without making the slightest move to gain our sympathy.

Poking the bear of repression has consequences beyond Mr. Zahedi's immediate artistic goals, as this layered, intermittently fascinating documentary makes abundantly clear.

Messy in parts and at least 15 minutes too long, Personal Tailor is also cunningly acted and lushly photographed (by Zhao Xiaoshi) in dazzling candy-bright colors.

The actors are so relaxed and personable that the film’s occasional glibness — and its over-reliance on coincidence to further the cross-pollinating narrative — is easy to let slide.

Unearthing a decent sample of these former members, as well as a wealth of archival film and photographs, the directors elicit testimony that’s diversely sharp, spacey, nostalgic and heartbreaking.

Woods, remarkably comfortable in her first film role, gives Goldie a steel spine and a feisty resourcefulness, her moments of vulnerability rare, but essential.

Part career profile and part psychological exploration, “Panico” smoothly accomplishes the first but teases gold with the second.

What could have been a very funny short film about self-control and befriending your id instead becomes a rambling commentary on father-son dysfunction and the limits of proctology.

In one sense, Wolf Man is a generic, and not especially scary, cabin-in-the-woods frightener that leans too often on tenebrous lighting and ear-shredding sound effects. . . Yet the extreme pathos of Blake’s plight is palpable, and Whannell is determined to make us feel it.

This weirdly engaging tale of banking and bad behavior makes 19th-century China look uncomfortably like 21st-century America.

A little wan but a lot likable, Gustavo Ron’s Ways to Live Forever is a forthright and surprisingly buoyant drama about facing death before you have really lived.

Good Dick surmounts its indie-movie quirkiness with exceptional acting and a sincere belief in the salvation of its wounded characters.

Simon Dennis’s photography is glossy and crisp, and a lengthy foot chase — making excellent use of the National Gallery — is inventively choreographed. And if the villains are little more than fireplugs in balaclavas, the violence they provoke is satisfyingly vicious.

The vein-popping mood is ultimately more exhausting than exciting.

Mr. Hardy, however, would rather busy himself with reminders of earlier creature features.... Luckily, John Nolan’s old-school effects are wicked good, and Martijn van Broekhuizen’s mossy photography is pleasingly sinister.

Battling a preposterous plot and second-tier performances that are, at best, serviceable, this roll-along thriller from Scott Mann works its keister off to turn beef jerky into chateaubriand.

The shocks are short and sharp, the acting is strongest where it counts, and the director of photography, Adam Marsden, washes everything in a swampy green that makes spooks pop.

None of this is especially scary, but, if you’re patient, Wan delivers the kind of hilariously sick climax that only a sadist would spoil. Or envisage.

Appealing, partly because it’s so unembarrassed by its genre's done-to-death social-injustice themes, this undercooked blend of science fiction and family drama virtually dares you to turn up your nose.