Jeannette Catsoulis

For a tale spiked with so much torment, Fugitive Pieces feels remarkably soothing.

Shot mostly in black and white and with an improvisational feel, My Friend the Polish Girl is cool and clever, feigning social realism with winking calculation.

Fair to a fault, "Elephant" omits what could be considered crucial voices - like lawmakers, the Humane Society (which helped finance the film) and mental-health professionals - in its attempt to understand those who believe their particular beast is as harmless as a kitten. At least until it rips someone's face off.

Merging old-fashioned comedy routines with up-to-the-minute politics - all of it enabled by fun-loving personalities and a gift for rousing original songs - the ladies emit a genuine warmth that reels audiences in.

Strip away the smatterings of sex and globs of gore, and children would really get a kick out of Tale of Tales, Matteo Garrone’s colorful and kinky exploration of what women want. And what men will do to give it to them.

Temperate in tone but screaming with subtext, Jamie Marks Is Dead climbs above the current glut of supernaturally inclined entertainment by dint of a hushed unease that permeates almost every frame.

The humor is delicate, and the performances sweet and sure; the script (by the director, Max Mayer) is not entirely predictable, and the Manhattan locations (lovingly photographed by Seamus Tierney) have a starry-eyed glaze.

What We Become is a very pretty movie with a very dark heart. The payoff is brutal, but earned.

A perceptive and beautifully acted drama.

Empathetic and nosy, Ms. Ben-Ari is no unequivocal cheerleader for breast over bottle: If anything, her subjects’ time-consuming struggles and evident exhaustion could put a damper on the natural-feeding plans of the most sanguine new parent. Yet the film isn’t a downer.

Thematically underdeveloped yet pleasingly creepy, Tigers Are Not Afraid balances its mild terrors with appealing moments of childish creativity.

The film’s guileless, heartfelt style veers perilously close to corniness at times, but the superb cast dares you to mock.

La Soga moves with a crazed energy that denies moral nuance. But the banal narrative (based on events in Mr. Perez's life) is elbowed aside by Josh Crook's eccentric direction and images that the cinematographer, Zeus Morand, brands with near-poetic intensity.

Replacing the earlier movie's more depraved sequences with sustained tension and truly unnerving editing, the director proves adept at managing mayhem in cramped spaces.

As we join throngs of excited citizens at a public vote-counting, their uninhibited zeal for the process only highlights the jaded cynicism that threatens to overwhelm our own.

A sad chronicle of absent fathers and messed-up mothers, drugs as currency and violence as the period at the end of every argument.

An intimate, elusive drama about the boundaries of friendship and nationality, Fräulein presents immigrant lives with significantly more empathy than detail. For some, though, the movie’s narrative shorthand will be enough.

Presenting neither an argument for medication nor its rejection, Billy the Kid is a deceptively simple portrait of a shockingly self-aware and articulate young man.

More than anything, a Tyler Perry movie is an interactive experience, and Why Did I Get Married? is no exception. At the screening I attended, it was often difficult to hear the dialogue between bouts of enthusiastic applause and shouts of “You go, girl!”

The narrative eventually loses steam, but the movie’s politics remain as low-key as its acting and as basic as its special effects. Lapsis isn’t a polemic, it’s a caricature, and all the more likable for having its claws sheathed in velvet.

Crammed with colorful interviews, digital animation and live performances, this frisky and forthright film by Dean Budnick chronicles a vision of financing social progress with really great tunes.

Raw and resolute, this unsettling fable feels driven by an anger that remains largely unexpressed.

This sweetly nostalgic look at lost boys and lonely girls feels like it comes straight from the heart.

That assured style is the spackle that holds Kill List together: when the plot doglegs into insanity, and the characters follow suit, this brutal fever dream refuses to fall apart.

Though at times a tad worshipful, the film's tone is ultimately more awed than hagiographic, its commenters too cleareyed and candid to back away from negative publicity or public disenchantment.

Seamlessly dovetailing style and subject, Dragonslayer, a poetic and affectionate portrait of the professional skateboarder Josh Sandoval.

The film’s derivativeness — residents literally fight darkness with light — is countered by strong acting from the two leads and a director who just might be having the time of his life. That apparent delight seeps into almost every frame, giving the film a guileless warmth that drew my good will.

Sally, a welcome but unadventurous documentary about the astronaut Sally Ride (who died in 2012), wraps a risk-taking personality inside a risk-averse package.

Though rife with implausibilities, Transpecos is fortified by strong acting and a location whose desolate beauty is a gift to Jeffrey Waldron’s serene camera.

A highly respectable piece of genre entertainment, one with a little more class than most.

Absurd yet bold, lurid yet a tiny bit touching, Come to Daddy drags poor Norval from hopefulness to horror to a wickedly literal form of closure. More than a few audience members might even be happy to accompany him.

This minimalist survival thriller unfolds with such elegant simplicity and single-minded momentum that its irritations are easily excused.

The story’s conventional beats (the get-back-in-shape montage, the bad news delivered at a critical moment) cohere into a wholesome journey of long-delayed healing. The inclusion of the wonderful Mykelti Williamson, as Joe’s longtime friend and rodeo partner, injects a buddy-movie vibe that anchors the action in riding bouts that are smoothly thrilling without being punishing.

Mr. Khan displays a strong visual sense that makes pivotal scenes pop. The unlikely ending strains credulity, but what this confident debut lacks in subtlety, it more than makes up in execution.

Despite its immersion in tragedy and decline, So Much So Fast is leavened by unexpected humor.

As a trippy, trifling memorial to a time before its eponymous club was a mini-mall and rave culture a woozy memory, Limelight delivers the messed-up goods.

A creaky, sometimes forced drama that burrows under your skin if you let it, Welcome to the Rileys lurches along like Lois' car as she tries to exit her garage for the first time in years.

Like many relationships, Breaking Upwards starts in bed and ends on the street. The journey in between, however, feels as new as anything a tiny budget and a boatload of talent could produce.

Even if you resist the film's claims of being based on one family's actual experiences, The Possession is eerily enjoyable pulp. Perched somewhere between "The Exorcist" and "The Amityville Horror" - and with a dash of "The Unborn" - the story benefits from an unusually restrained sound design and special effects that enhance but never obliterate its troubled-family center.

The cannibals, coconuts and landlocked locations have been replaced by the high-seas high jinks that made the first film so enjoyable.

“Sidemen” is about more than just legacy. Blessed with extensive interviews with their buoyant subjects (all three of whom died in 2011 within months of one another), Mr. Rosenbaum and his producer Jasin Cadic shape a narrative of professional insecurity and personal resilience.

That space between reality and mirage is where Ms. de Van’s strength, and this movie’s true horror, lies.

All this gives “Cuckoo” a strange, lusty vigor that’s hugely entertaining.

The film is not a primer on this heartbreaking condition. Instead it recounts a deeply personal, highly subjective and inarguably thought-provoking story of one family’s quest for a certain kind of peace.

If we brush aside the unanswered questions, what we’re left with is a simple tale of two men: One who may have been lost, and one who only felt that way.

Dinosaur 13 may not be the best documentary, but as a scientific soap opera, it’s a doozy.

Its straggling, true-crime narrative, leaping hither and yon like a dog chasing butterflies, is not what holds the film together; the real glue is the emergence of a parallel between location and suspect, between literal dumping ground and figurative. This is so effective that there was no need for the directors to conduct a handheld, "Blair Witch"-y foray into the nighttime woods -- their film is creepy enough in broad daylight.

Rare enough to make NoBody’s Perfect an exemplar of fresh-air filmmaking that addresses the devastating legacy of the drug thalidomide with acidic wit and grumpy honesty.

This is nature defanged and declawed for kiddie consumption, so the emphasis is on awwww-filled moments.

For all its enthusiastic vulgarity and truly terrible punk rock, We Are Mari Pepa is a gently endearing portrait of four amiable Mexican teenagers feeling their way toward adulthood.

The narrative may flag, but the doomsday atmosphere and George Liddle’s production design remain vivid until the final, blood-splattered reel.

Opening an aperture into a process so ego-stripping that it feels unseemly to witness, The Work is enlightening yet also punishing.

Funny and feisty, gritty and sometimes grim, this first feature from the photographer Elaine Constantine delivers a sweaty snapshot of a very specific time and place.

Adopting an appealingly low-key approach to a high-stakes subject, this gently observant drama from Geoff Marslett takes its sweet time introducing the girl to the gun, but when it does, we’re all but guaranteed to care.

Soft in tone and muted in color, Waiting for August is a child’s-eye view of one family — among many in today’s Romanian economy — rising to the challenge of living without parents.

The movie’s quiet star is Douglas himself. Whether gently asking a tense Rubin about his upbringing, or helping Ono with her “box of smiles,” Douglas’s kindness and intellectual curiosity are more compelling than any political argument.

The result is a lovers-on-the-lam blast of pure pulp escapism, so devoted to diversion that you probably won’t even notice the corn.

Small and stagy and claustrophobic, Shining Moon is visually rough yet oddly enticing in its experimental awkwardness.

Touching on issues of artistic survival and the porous boundary between work and pleasure, Ms. Subrin, an accomplished visual artist and filmmaker, sifts addiction, celebrity and the plight of the aging actress into something rarefied yet real.

It's just as awesome as the tv show only bigger and prettier.

Photographed in crisp black and white by Nat Bouman, this enormously likable movie keeps sexual politics on the back burner and the universal search for connection front and center.

Using mostly amateur performers and improvised dialogue, Mr. Silver has created a profoundly awkward riff on dysfunction that’s uneventful but not unrewarding.

Part tribute, part musical mystery, ’Tis Autumn: The Search for Jackie Paris shines an overdue spotlight on a great who got away.

Gently discursive and virtually plotless, The Civil Dead is a walking-and-talking movie that finds uncommon humor in Whit’s need to be seen and Clay’s extreme discomfort with that responsibility.

Advocating freedom from a system that "doesn't want you to die and doesn't want you to get well," this hard-hitting film leaves us finally more hopeful than despairing.

Mr. Fox may be a romantic, but he understands that love is rarely all you need.

Niall MacCormick's direction, while unfocused, locates a sweet center in the bonding of the two young girls, effortlessly capturing the way unexpected friendship, like first love, can completely alter the look of the world.

In this visual caress of postindustrial blight, disintegration has never looked so gorgeous.

Some predictable plot turns aren’t as damaging as they could be, thanks to solid acting (there isn’t a weak performance in the bunch) and lead characters with distinct personalities and motivations.

A documentary that presents the sexual exploitation of young women as a systemic cancer that feeds on public misconception as much as male appetites.

Cool and cerebral, Apparition stubbornly resists our desire to connect with its troubled characters... Even so, the film’s sophistication creates space for us to ponder deeper, unanswered questions.

If the movie’s hilariously cruel treatment of the halt and the lame upsets you, you can enjoy the crisp cinematography, operatically repulsive effects and frequently witty dialogue.

Repackaging the revenge thriller in parakeet colors and distinctive African beats, the Congolese writer and director Djo Tunda Wa Munga gives Viva Riva! a playful sensuality that goes a long way toward disguising formula.

The Spanish writer and director Nacho Vigalondo has audacity to spare. Constructing a looping, economical plot and directing like a fire marshal in a flaming building, he conjures urgency and disorientation from the thinnest of air.

Mr. Siegel is no Cassandra: retaining the waggish tone of his previous documentary, "The Real Dirt on Farmer John" (released in 2007), he balances the doom-talking heads with cute animation and characters like Yvon Achard, a French "bee historian" who caresses the swarm with his elaborately styled facial hair.

Shot with a camera as excited as a squirrel-chasing dog, Cheerleaders has a girls-gone-wild energy and a twisted sense of humor.

Softened by some sweet, low-key moments between Vince and a fellow acting student (a very good Emily Mortimer) and by Mr. Garcia’s embodiment of disappointed middle age.

Captured mostly in gorgeous black and white, The Love We Make is alternately trite, touching, funny and fascinating.

Inert yet strangely compelling film.

A lean, mean revenge thriller that knows exactly what it’s about, Magpie has little originality but an invigorating clarity of purpose.

Sluggish, stylized and frequently washed in a bilious green tint, The Missing Person is yet oddly irresistible.

All This Panic can feel glancing, its more painful revelations sliding in unheralded and slipping away just as quietly. What’s left is a dreamy diary of a time that passes so quickly yet impacts so profoundly.

Existential ennui is not exactly fun to watch (or, one assumes, easy to perform), yet a meaningless life has rarely looked this beautiful.

A minimalist setup delivers maximum fright in Frozen, a nifty little chiller that balances its cold terrain with an unexpectedly warm heart.

Beautifully relaxed family scenes help us forgive the ponderous direction.

More tingly than terrifying (and more than a smidge off-the-wall), “Dark” has a cheeky boldness. Rea, a prolific independent filmmaker, deploys the gore judiciously and his actors are above reproach.

Though the movie’s loose, sampling style can leave regions and varieties poorly differentiated, its real stars are the vintners. Young or old, entrepreneur or family-only producer, all are passionate and poetic about their beloved beverage.

The movie observes collective pain with endearing absurdity.

With a warm heart and a nonjudgmental mind, Saint Frances weaves abortion, same-sex parenting and postpartum depression into a narrative bursting with positivity and acceptance.

Ten years in the making, Hats Off is a documentary tribute to the 93-year-old actress Mimi Weddell, one of those people for whom the word “individual” seems especially apt.

Cool It finally blossoms into an engrossing, brain-tickling picture as many of Al Gore's meticulously graphed assertions are systematically - and persuasively - refuted.

Portrayed entirely without sentiment, everyone here is equally abject, from the crushed victim of a human stampede to the starving baby playing in its own feces. The mood of scrambling desperation can be exhausting, but the filmmaking is never less than exhilarating.

Wrapping an existential question in the random rhythms of the road movie, Doomsdays comes at you sideways, its melancholy catching you off guard.

Keir Moreano’s muted yet moving record of his father's experience as a volunteer doctor in Vietnam, documents a journey that's substantially more philosophical than medical.

The general impression given by this warm, low-key film is that the spying was a simple act of pacifism. Countervailing voices are faint and few; anyone seeking more vigorous pushback will have to look elsewhere.

Surrender to its shaggy rhythms and you’ll find this sometimes tiresome portrait of a family of mythical beasts is not without intelligence and a strangely mesmeric intent.

The whole enterprise rests on Ms. Gilsig, who plays Anna with a subtlety rarely required of her crazypants girlfriend on “Nip/Tuck” or her clingy spouse on “Glee.”

As tadpoles morph into frogs, and fears are conquered, The Girl delivers a satisfying, sun-dappled fable about the kindness of strangers and the cruelty of peers.

More than anything, FrackNation underscores the sheer complexity of a process that offers a financial lifeline to struggling farmers.

West's throwback style and disdain for excess allows his characters to shine.

Directed by Hilla Medalia with exactly the right balance of musical theater and personal drama, After the Storm presents a touching affirmation of the healing power of right-brain stimulation.

A droll Nietzschean fable that's fully aware of its lapses into absurdity.

Monsters effortlessly compels. The ending may be pure sci-fi schmaltz, but it's schmaltz that this viewer, at least, could believe in.

Punctuated by Gregory Corandi’s gliding, God’s-eye shots of meringue-colored desert and placid shoreline, Saloum has the extravagance of fable and folklore. The plot is ludicrously jam-packed, but the pace is fleet and the dialogue has wit and a carefree bounce.

It’s a vintage flashbulb moment of two men at the peak of their talents, one on his way to securing his second world championship, and the other between the twin triumphs of “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Chinatown.”

Assembled without frills or fuss, A Man Named Pearl is as much a portrait of a small Southern town as of an unassuming black folk artist.

None of this is particularly cinematic (he relies much too heavily on title cards to fill in historical blanks), but it is engaging, mainly because the stakes were so high and the statesmanship so delicate.

Anyone looking for some idiosyncratic, visually stimulating entertainment this week could do worse than Where Is Where?, an intriguing narrative experiment by the Finnish artist and filmmaker Eija-Liisa Ahtila.

That said, this deliciously nutty love story - sample dialogue: "Let me eat this heart, then we can pick azaleas together" - is blindingly gorgeous to look at and exceptionally well acted, at least by the women.

Dog Sweat (the title is slang for alcohol) is surprisingly polished, the young actors warmly believable despite being restricted by the film's narrow focus.

A slick and absorbing drama.

Silent Souls is part folk tale, part lesson in letting go. In its quiet acceptance of the passing of time, this unusual film reminds us that to die is not always the same as to disappear.

An enigmatic and utterly compelling story of incinerated art, unbridled egos and exotic plants.

An effervescent comedy coasting on the charisma of its stars.

Cemetery is primarily a slow and lovingly detailed immersion in the sights and sounds of the jungle and the mahout’s devoted attention to his animal.

Respectful and thorough, this unembellished true-crime story might have only regional appeal, but its depressing reminder of our failure to prevent similar calamities will resonate nationwide.

Its arguments range wide without going deep, but its factoids about the medical benefits of hanging out in a forest — and the cognitive costs of a noisy school or hospital — are fascinating and persuasive.

Spackling over any copycat cracks with strong acting and fleet editing, Lights Out delivers minimalist frights in old-school ways.

More psychodrama than postapocalyptic adventure, the movie parcels out its scares in small, effective jolts, delivering just enough menace to remind us of the stakes.

What’s troubling is the film’s slow and steady exposure of a music business machine that gobbles up individuality and spits out a sellable package.

Vividly impressionistic and delightfully curious.

A devilishly entertaining curveball thrown at unsuspecting family audiences.

Stylistically stunning and completely nuts, Ping Pong is nevertheless perceptive about male social hierarchies and the benefits of knowing your place.

Adam Hootnick’s Unsettled makes the political personal, drawing a scattershot yet intimate picture of a nation divided.

As cavalier with structure as ever, Mr. Jaglom surrounds himself with familiars who embrace his cheery, disorderly style.

Highlighting the wacky while playing down the distasteful, Marie Losier's playful profile of the English musician and artist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and his second wife, Lady Jaye, takes a lighthearted look at the things they did for love.

As with last year’s “Lights Out,” [Sandberg] proves a master of the flash-scare, a nifty choreographer of precipitous timing and striptease visuals. But he’s also adroit with more leisurely horrors.

Coolly executed and seductively simple, Oddity, the second feature from Damian McCarthy (after the unsettling, underseen “Caveat” in 2021), is a fun, back-to-basics supernatural thriller that cares more about making us jump than making us cringe.

At once dryly funny and surprisingly poignant, Jethica uses the paranormal as a metaphor for abusive male behavior. The film’s deadpan perspective and unhurried pacing can diffuse its surprises, but Ohs has an offbeat style that’s fresh and fun.

Blessed with shivery setups and freaky effects — here, skin-crawling is literal — The Wretched transforms common familial anxieties into flesh, albeit crepey and creeping.

A movie of stark contrasts and zigzagging motives, Beauty in Trouble moves from the golden serenity of a Tuscan villa to the powdery chaos of a Czech garage without sacrificing thematic confidence or nuanced performances.

It’s Weaving who gives this blunt satire of class warfare a heart.

Pim's withdrawn demeanor and inability to verbalize his emotions - the character is basically one big ache - make it more challenging than it should be to immerse ourselves in his journey.

While Jorgen Johansson’s windswept photography creates a credible sense of isolation (he filmed in part at the Mull of Galloway lighthouse), we sense the ominous rhythms of impending calamity.

Ms. Richen elucidates an entire spectrum of views, from actively egalitarian to reactively homophobic.

Tom Shepard's quietly observant documentary tracks its stressed-out subjects through an array of personal and scholarly challenges.

Irena Salina's astonishingly wide-ranging film is less depressing than galvanizing, an informed and heartfelt examination of the tug of war between public health and private interests.

The Almost Man may be slight, but how many films can pack equal amounts of emotional nuance and inappropriately sprayed urine into just 75 minutes?

Critical Thinking does little to detach itself from genre cliché; yet this heartfelt drama about a rough-and-tumble group of high-schoolers who claw their way to a national chess tournament has a sweetness that softens its flaws.

Garbage Dreams records the tremblings of a culture at a crossroads.

Swerving from bland to brutal, endearingly coy to shockingly explicit, the Canadian import Good Neighbors finds pitch-black comedy among white-bread lives.

A flawed and fascinating film about fame and martyrdom.

A warm, entertaining compendium of counterculture voices and literary landmarks.

Where Soldiers Come From is, more than anything, a commentary on class. In its compassionate, modest gaze, the real cost of distant political decisions is softly illuminated, as well as the shame of a country with little to offer its less fortunate young people than a ticket to a battlefield.

A heartbreaking and meticulous documentary about life inside a blue-jeans factory in China.

My Brooklyn, Kelly Anderson's sensitive study of gentrification in her home borough, is as much personal essay as urban-policy survey.

Yael Reuveny’s Farewell Herr Schwarz traces a Holocaust mystery with stumbling curiosity and endearing sincerity.

Subdued and temperate, Skyman refuses to lean into the mystery of Carl’s claims or wind us up for a final resolution. Those elements might be present, but they’re never allowed to obscure what is essentially an empathetic, textured portrait of loneliness and loss.

Slowly uncovering the prejudices that calamity can unleash, Michael Richter’s screenplay lays bare the damage wrought by Sept. 11 while deftly dodging hysteria, wondering how we differentiate between innocent teenage behaviors and dangerous red flags.

Burdened by a silly R rating that may deter the very youngsters who are likely to enjoy it most, Yes, God, Yes (written and directed by Karen Maine) fights back with an appealing lead and an overwhelmingly innocent tone.

Ambulant corpses may be tramping all over our movie and television screens these days, but Wyrmwood has enough novelty — and more than enough energy — to best its minuscule budget.

When [Ms. Jones] bounds onstage with a holler and a howl — and diction that nails every last word to the melody — it’s clear she deserves that exclamation point in the title. Even if the movie around her sometimes struggles to do the same.

Like most films of this type, Room 314 demands a great deal from its performers, not all of whom withstand the intense scrutiny. Fortunately, the action is bookended by four of the best.

The cinematography isn’t the greatest, and the structure is hit or miss, but so what? In a movie this good natured, the heart is everything. The performances are hilarious, but the dancing is no joke.

Rough-hewed but naturally inspirational, True Son gains heft from its portrait of a city sharply segregated by race and income.

Like Douglas Sirk without the throw pillows, Sunflower is a shamelessly old-fashioned melodrama performed with such sincerity that resistance is futile.

Fueled by neither anger nor religious extremism - the director, Thierry Binisti, remains rigidly nonpartisan - "Bottle" is a gentle pairing of youthful idealism and tenacious hope.

When I Saw You is a soft-centered child’s-eye view of alienation, toughened by fine acting (Saleh Bakri shines as a fighter drawn to Ghaydaa) and Hélène Louvart’s full-bodied photography.

An affectionate, rollicking guide to the drive-in classics of Australian filmmaking from the 1970s and ’80s.

The movie’s cinematographers may hog the limelight, but it’s the sweat of the sound engineers that brings their work to life.

Wistful but never sentimental, it quietly turns the fortunes of one little store into a comment on the fate of many.

Collated for momentum, the film’s many interviews, wide-ranging archival footage and montage of modern ecological disasters form a blunt but carefully positioned instrument. And despite a bit of Michael Moore-style nonsense at the end the tightly edited narrative displays a reach (nine countries) and clarity of composition that hold the attention.

Guided by the work of a handful of burr-like journalists, this dense and disturbing documentary dives into the regulatory quagmire of California water rights with more courage than hope.

Teasing and shrewd, Rabbit à la Berlin is a floppy-eared fable about the uneasy trade-offs between liberty and security.

Sensible and unnerving, Stink! is likely to incite, at the least, a purging of Axe body spray from adolescent boys’ bedrooms.

Making the most of his limited budget, not unusual for the prolific Fessenden, he has produced possibly his most coherent and visually polished work to date. The makeup effects and lead performances are excellent, and Fessenden’s signature cheek (two strip-club employees are called Stormy and Melania) never tips into silliness.

Utterly baffling, yet never less than intriguing, Zeros and Ones lingers in the mind. Even after you think you’ve brushed it off, its chilly tendrils continue to cling.

The running time is too long, and the finale’s screaming too prolonged; but, unlike childbirth, this good-natured movie delivers a dry, funny and utterly painless experience.

Respectfully and without dramatization (the ideas are electric enough), the directors observe a cross section of articulate evangelicals and accompany a Christian group on a revealing trip to Israel.

These confrontational comedians — however serious the message, it’s always imparted with liberal dollops of humor — are experts at merging shock and showmanship.

While the movie barrels toward a final act that’s more feminist fantasy than credible conclusion, Bolger’s phenomenal performance locks us tightly on Sarah’s side.

Sensitive without being unrealistically utopian (this isn't a fairy tale), Me, Too movingly represents the frustration of the high-functioning yet falling-short individual.

If “Is This Thing On?” is sometimes too careful for its own good, it is also deeply trusting of its leads, whose faces, under the scrutiny of Matthew Libatique’s merciless close-ups, reveal the hurt the couple is unable to verbalize.

An adamantly linear, myth-busting stride through a prodigiously talented life.

A kooky, affectionate tribute that’s happily superficial.

Shapes a standard prison-break drama into a metaphysical study of freedom and reparation.

Mr. Wood has created a poignant portrait of an artist unable to escape the stamp of her class or the burdens of aging.

Filmed in high-definition black and white, Ms. Menkes's often exquisite compositions - a single, attenuated shot of the aftermath of a car crash is a miracle of choreography - drive a narrative mired in poverty and spiritual desperation.

A seductively fluid and tactile drama from the writer and director Karin Albou, explores love and identity through the prism of the female body and the rights of its owner.

Raising significant questions about the psychological effects of poverty on young children, this unsettlingly direct stab at atonement feels genuine.

A weird, wordy but oddly compelling thriller.

This ghastly scenario of poor preying on poor is, like the film's gray-green palette, profoundly depressing and entirely pitiless.

An unusually restrained and genuinely eerie little movie perched at the intersection of faith, folklore and female puberty.

Mr. Clark finds unexpected heart amid cliché and frigidity.

Pitting good against evil with striking intelligence and a near-operatic commitment to extreme suffering, Ms. Gebbe neither mocks nor celebrates Tore’s love for his God. Neither does she give any hint that it’s reciprocated.

Smart, wordy and sweetly sympathetic to lives lived online, Sidewalls coasts on Martín and Mariana's twin voice-overs, alternate musings on themselves and their city.

At times the groan and scream of collapsing metal sounds so authentic you might mistake Jackson’s heavy breathing for your own.

Offering few solutions beyond a single fair-trade fashion company, The True Cost — whose serene interludes compete with sickening recordings of Black Friday shopping riots and so-called clothing haul videos — stirs and saddens. Not least because it’s unlikely to reach the young consumers most in need of its revelations.

This quirky, obsessive documentary is about so much more than broken keys and busted type wheels. It’s really about how we create art.

The template of CODA — the title is also a term used to describe the hearing children of deaf adults — might be wearyingly familiar, but this warmhearted drama from Sian Heder opens up space for concerns that feel fresh.

Generating suspense without blowing the special-effects budget, Mr. Sanchez paints an intimate portrait of a tormented personality. Though horrors are eventually unveiled, the film is more chilling in its slower, quieter moments.

Swiveling from past to present and back again, the writer and director, Lee Su-jin, drops ominous clues — a bruised boy; a mysterious infection — that only slowly coalesce into a larger tragedy.

Defiantly amateurish yet never less than engaging, “Sweaty Betty” is a true oddity.

The special effects are fine, if unremarkable, but the actors are into it and the script manages to be thoughtful without dampening the fun.

While All Is True might not brim with excitement, it’s beautifully acted, richly photographed (by Zac Nicholson) and blessedly free of histrionics. Between them, Branagh and Elton have concocted a respectful story of loss, regret and wistful genius.

Dark Horse is a canny package that uses the classic structure of the sports-underdog story to deliver a glowing ode to community pride and the merits of collective action over individual gain.

A tantalizing glimpse of a determinedly outsider talent.

Though not nearly as mindful or meaty as Mr. Miike’s 2011 triumph, 13 Assassins, “Blade” is creatively gory fun.

A mournful Midwestern ballad devoid of grace notes.

Whether a melodramatic comment on art and anarchy, or a wild experiment in toxic maternalism, the film feels like a fever that just won’t break.

Swift and amusingly brainless, Hatchet II more than delivers on splatter expectations.

The movie accumulates a rueful nostalgia. Soft black-and-white cinematography (by Bill Otto and Carl Nenzen Loven) and low-key humor help offset the limitations of its partly crowd-funded budget, as does the naturalism of the partly improvised performances

This emphatic and empathetic documentary (directed by Sanjay Rawal and narrated by Forest Whitaker) presents the plight of our farm laborers as modern-day slavery.

In place of gouting gore and surging fright, this enjoyable adaptation of Joe Hill’s 2005 short story has an almost contemplative tone, one that drains its familiar horror tropes — a masked psychopath, communications from beyond the grave — of much of their chill. The movie’s low goose bump count, though, is far from ruinous.

The mantle of social relevance can be a heavy one, but Trust, a smooth drama about a girl's seduction and rape by a middle-aged Internet predator, is neither preachy nor hysterically overreaching.

The filmmakers stage an amazing race that almost absolves an overstuffed plot and an over-reliance on coincidence.

The movie is most effective in its early scenes of prickly menace, and while the Dolphin is no Overlook (the haunted hotel in "The Shining"), its old-world creepiness is exactly right.

Filled with clear, bright images and moments of skewed genius, this delicate debut effortlessly evokes those languid summer doldrums, when even a rotting girlfriend is better than no girlfriend at all.

Surrender to its vintage vibe and its emotional kick may surprise you.

A fascinating glimpse of a dreamer and a music culture that has always depended on dreams.

Coming out has rarely looked so pretty.

The film produces moments that catch in the throat.

If the film’s spare re-enactments are a little awkward, they also smartly repurpose Dahmer’s studied reserve into a meditation on perversion as hypnotic as it is repulsive.

Small and strange, Meanwhile on Earth seduces with its soft, barren beauty (the chilled cinematography is by Robrecht Heyvaert) and Dan Levy’s surreal score.

Essentially a geezers-fight-back siege movie (Tom Williamson plays the sole young veteran), VFW is riotously scuzzy and warmly partial to its rusty heroes.

Nevertheless the fierce loyalty of Mr. Liebling's nearest and dearest is extremely touching, and Last Days Here - despite its stinginess with back story and early performance footage - works hard to reveal the man beneath the four-decade heroin habit.

Niftily paced and tight as a chokehold, the script (by the comic-book writer Scott Lobdell) delivers just enough variation to hold our interest.

Watching the men as they work, attend 12-step meetings and struggle to repair frayed familial bonds, she unearths moments of raw revelation that quietly highlight our shameful lack of effective help.

Overlong and overwritten, “Dirt” nevertheless unfolds with an enjoyably comic quirkiness, a tale of two doofuses who sought meaning in symbols and found comfort in friendship.

Blessed with a trove of 16-millimeter film footage captured during this yearlong adventure, the director, Alison Reid, uses it as the foundation for a far-ranging story of scientific discovery, sexual discrimination and environmental alarm.

Their narcissism is repellent yet riveting, and Mr. Côté comes at his subjects with an artful, exploratory obliqueness that’s endearingly curious, as if discovering a whole new species.

This scrappy-slick confessional is a fascinating study in dualities.

A clear-eyed and utterly ruthless dissection of the battle for Ohio in the months leading up to the 2004 presidential election.

Wisely deciding to refrain from rapping our knuckles with greenhouse gas statistics and Al Gore-style pie charts, the filmmakers fashion a portrait of a conscience spurred to action by an unexpected opportunity.

The tone is unabashedly partial, yet the women are such entertaining company it’s hard to mind.

Delivers a brave, head-spinning commentary on the potency of advertising and the seduction of the soul.

Equal parts enlightening and alarming.

Against all reason, Byron's televangelist-led quest for clarity compels us to follow, the film's melting, naturalistic images softening the occasional scream of dialogue repeated beyond all necessity.

My Scientology Movie relies on a shaggy, meandering charm. At times it plays like an extended skit on “The Daily Show”; yet its disorder also makes its insights — like how strongly the church’s training sessions resemble acting classes — feel refreshingly organic.

This spare but potent melodrama revels in the desiccated landscapes provided by South Africa and photographed with dusty purity by Giles Nuttgens. Through his lens, the spectrum of sunbaked skin and parched dunes is as rich as any rainbow.

Light on plot yet heavy on chemistry, Paris 05:59 is at times a little precious. But the two leads are so believably besotted that their occasional immaturity doesn’t rankle.

What begins as an amusing fluff piece ("Daddy's messed up," mumbles one woozy subject after dropping his gurgling infant) slowly emerges as a compelling and often touching peek at punk paternity.

The director, Simon Curtis, deftly choreographs what feels like a series’ worth of brief interactions into a mostly satisfying whole.

A movie that’s at once disappointingly superficial and utterly charming.

[An] elegantly unsettling documentary.

A low-key character study whose gently repetitive rhythms mask an unusually keen sense of nuance and subtlety.

The film’s unvarying lack of drama or direction can be wearing, but the schlubby originality of its subject fully repays the longueurs.

The movie is sharp, charismatic and so light on its feet we never know which way it will turn.

By rights, Never Goin’ Back should be a chore to sit through. The jokes are dated, the behavior tasteless and the setups tired. Yet the movie has a ramshackle charm that’s due entirely to its vivacious leads, whose mutual devotion and easy, unlabeled sexuality feels endearingly innocent.

At heart an unlovely love story illuminated by sudden flares of violence, the film reeks of hopelessness and moral destitution, offering its lovers few means of escape.

At heart a repulsive slash-and-bash with philosophical pretensions, Killers is classed up considerably by strong acting, a multi-strand plot and a tone that’s both nihilistic and mournful.

Explores the link between female sexuality and corporate profits with a style that's as entertaining as it is revelatory.

The men refused to be deterred by institutional rigidity, political apathy or a skeptical scientific community. Their perseverance is cheering, giving the movie a brightly buoyant tone that belies the suffering at its center and renders the sometimes distracting musical score largely unnecessary.

Packed with illuminating interviews and lyrical movement, Breath Made Visible portrays a woman with angels in her feet and innovation in her blood. Long may she rock.

Proudly crass and amiably dumb, Nicholas Stoller’s gag-crammed sequel essentially takes the bones of the 2014 original and gives them a gender flip.

Like a bedtime cup of cocoa, Marc Turtletaub’s Puzzle has a soothing familiarity that quiets the mind and settles the spirit.

The director, Craig Saavedra, generates surprising warmth from the familiar tropes of the odd-couple road movie. Shooting mostly in the verdant sweep of California's wine country -- and with a superb supporting cast -- he allows Mr. Le Gros room to engage.

Unfailingly modest and profoundly humane, The Way We Get By profiles three people over 70 whose lives have been changed by a simple act of service.

With its whispery conversations, sepulchral atmosphere and soothing play of light and shadow, Cave of Forgotten Dreams is probably best enjoyed in a chemically enhanced state of mind.

Mr. Tyrnauer surreptitiously hoses away the layers of dirt to reveal the fragility of his subject’s anything-goes hedonism.

Assassination has sprinkles of wit and a nicely restrained anchor in Lee Jung-jae.

Enjoy it; according to the spectacularly nauseating final moments, a cure for this virus seems unlikely, but “[REC] 3” (a k a “[REC] Apocalypse”) is a virtual certainty.

A trashy treat coated in a high-art gloss, The Attachment Diaries gleefully kneads melodrama, noir, horror and sexual perversion into a pathological romance between two deeply damaged women.

Julian P. Hobbs directs by getting out of the way of his star's soulful eyes and considerable talent, allowing Mr. Mays to feed on the tension between the rationality of his character's courtroom argument and the utter lunacy of his beliefs.

Patiently directed by Hans Petter Moland, Ulrik's journey back to life slowly draws you in.

The film embraces humor — would you want a one-legged man guiding you through a minefield? — without surrendering sensitivity. The screenplay may echo with atrocities, but it’s not consumed by them.

Neither slick nor propulsive, The Loneliest Whale gently combines aquatic adventure and bobbing meditation on our own species’s environmental arrogance.

Everybody loves a do-over, but this could become tedious were it not for the undeniable chemistry of the two leads, whose dialogue crackles like cellophane.

In Kit’s world the absent father (a familiar theme from girls' novels including "Little Women" and "A Little Princess") is an epidemic, and the picture makes this the impetus for children's resourcefulness and emotional development.

With a likable cast and a wholesome message about the true meaning of success, The Tiger Hunter might balk at the harsher details of immigrant life, but it has a generosity of spirit that lifts everyone up.

Interweaving Inuit life today with re-enactments of the culture 100 years ago, People of a Feather warmly portrays a cold, uncertain present and a worrying future.

Though powerfully acted and dazzlingly shot (by Walter Carvalho) in heavenly black and white, Heleno is a feverish opera that, like its doomed antihero, loses vitality much too soon.

An unusually perceptive scrutiny of absence and emptiness.

Patiently and delicately, Ms. Trachtman teases out the tricky dynamics of a family dealing with a disabled child.

Starring flying debris and surging walls of water, The Impossible takes the template of the old-timey disaster movie, strips it to the bone and pumps what's left up to 11.

A surpassingly silly monster movie with a side helping of satire, Trollhunter beckons mainly for its stunning Norwegian scenery and slyly effective government-bashing.

Somber and insubstantial, October nevertheless suggests that the Vega brothers are developing a careful, painterly style. Whether they will be able to match it with narrative depth remains to be seen.

For all its dazzling allure, Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, a feverishly psycho thriller set in the hermetic world of classical ballet, proves a meaningless exercise in Grand Guignol exhibitionism.

Its characters may be stressed out, but its rhythms are leisurely, the skill of the actors mostly countering the weaknesses in the script.

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.