Jeannette Catsoulis

The Outwaters conjures a swoony, dreamlike atmosphere that heightens the shocks to come.

Unfortunately, in keeping its inflammatory subject matter at arm’s length, Provoked does exactly the same to its audience.

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.

A tale of two brothers, one band and a boatload of psychological baggage, Mistaken for Strangers is, like its maker, scruffy, undisciplined and eager to be loved. The big surprise is how easy it is to comply.

Smartly written and flawlessly acted, Lovers of Hate is a Trojan horse, the kind of movie that begins so self-effacingly that we don't expect any surprises.

Morally cunning and with a tone as black as pitch, Pieta, the 18th film from the South Korean director Kim Ki-duk, is a deeply unnerving revenge movie in which redemption is dangled like a cat toy before a cougar.

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.

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

Exquisitely captured in natural light by the cinematographer Alexis Zabé, Juan’s journey is framed by sherbet-colored houses and lemon sidewalks, dipping palm fronds and a burnished, turquoise horizon. The director calls his style "artisan cinema"; I just call it dreamy.

Its violence is low-tech... and its look is old-school, but its message could not possibly be more momentous.

The Ice Tower is ultimately too glacial and secretive to fully satisfy. The real magic here lies in Jonathan Ricquebourg’s dazzlingly chilly images, and two leads as compelling as the fantasy that set them in motion.

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

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.

A mess from start to finish — though, judging by the ending, this story won’t be over any time soon — Insidious: Chapter 2 is the kind of lazy, halfhearted product that gives scary movies a bad name.

Pitiless in its intent, and hopeless in its sense of sorrowful dereliction, The Dark and the Wicked fully earns its horrifically distressing final scenes.

A cringingly awkward tale of sexual predation and female lunacy.

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.

Ignoring critical issues like financial transparency, Ms. Sackler sells her viewpoint with four admirable, striving families, each of whose tots could charm the fleas off a junkyard dog.

The conclusion is rushed and poorly staged, yet the damp caul of loneliness that envelops the film’s early scenes feels moving and true.

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

Until its surprisingly effective ending, You Go To My Head keeps its drama under the skin. Like an animal in captivity, Bafort, who is also a model, slinks and lounges with long-limbed grace; but it’s Cvetkovic who holds the movie steady, giving Jake a secretive, worn gentleness that’s tinged with tragedy.

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.

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

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.

A documentary that yearns to be an adventure movie, Stolen Seas can't resist drowning its invaluable insights in thundering, drum-heavy music and flashing visuals. Magnificent in its thoroughness and nuance, this dense, multifaceted study of Somali piracy really needs to settle down.

Brooklyn 45 is overlong, repetitive and at times wearyingly stagy. The actors, though, can’t be faulted, convincingly turning unappetizing characters into broken people trying to move on from a war that keeps pulling them back in.

The artifice of the form works something wondrous with the material, highlighting the generic nature of our response to extreme violence.

This disorienting, dippy documentary makes one thing abundantly clear: for the Hubers, the toughest climb may be into their own heads.