John Anderson

Ms. McGowan has a wonderful face, and director Jenna Mattison spends a lot of time there. But the effectiveness of The Sound really comes from its atmospherics, which are rich and disturbing and a credit not just to the director but to composer Aaron Gilhuis and the people at Urban Post Production in Toronto.

In its way, it pokes at the very delicate membrane between horror and comedy.

God Forbid may be seen as a seamy peek into a couple’s private life, an exposé about the religious right, or both. But what gives it substance is the history recounted.

“1000 Women” is briskly entertaining and wildly informative as a clip show, insightful in its academic analysis, and the structure of the film enables a tidy organization of an often messy bunch of films.

Noisy, frenetic, grandiose and essentially a soap opera, director J.J. Abrams's second contribution to the franchise has everything, including romance: Never before have Capt. James T. Kirk and his Vulcan antagonist, Mr. Spock, seemed so very much in love.

A virulent but thoroughly entertaining trilogy of tales about the besieged lower classes of Edinburgh, ripe with vulgarity, self-loathing, violence and economic disorder.

Ricky Stanicky is, per the Farrelly aesthetic, eager to offend, gleefully vulgar and takes every joke too far.

The Greatest Beer Run Ever is far too interested in having a good time to get too heavy about a bygone American argument, but there are truths to be found in the film, by peering through its various fogs of war.

The story that directors Sami Khan and Michael Gassert tell so intimately is certainly about skirting the law. But it’s also about baseball, in which there aren’t always fairy-tale endings.

As pure comedy, The D Train is far more cringe-worthy than outright hilarious. But as a study in human nature, it’s beyond provocative — and maybe even instructive.

Consistently daffy, consistently amusing.

Uncle Frank feels like a memoir, and also feels extraordinarily true, and fresh, thanks to the untrammeled terrain it visits, at least in New York.

In addition to the disco rhythms, glitzy fashions and alarming hairstyles, Love to Love You, Donna Summer might strike a nostalgic nerve with how natural, funny and forthcoming its subject is.

Anyone expecting “Biggie” to be some version of “Unsolved Mysteries” will be disappointed. But it’s unquestionably an affectionate, entertaining and even enlightening portrait.

The world may be divided into “developed,” “developing” and “under-developed,” but the young people here seem to pay no attention to such differences. They may be thinking locally, but they’re aspiring globally.

Colette is not really a coming-of-age story, except as regards France itself. It’s a liberation story, one witty enough to be worthy of its subject.

Mr. Domingo is a force of nature in this film, delivering a complex, highly sympathetic portrayal, but he also determines what the movie actually is, while preventing it from going awry.

Lawless is one of those films that, through seeming serendipity, has a cast that defines its moment. There have been others - "The Breakfast Club," "The Godfather" and "Silverado," to name one irrelevant and two relevant examples. But Lawless really lucked out.

Being appalled by people who get their comeuppance is always entertaining, and American Pain fills that bill, though the misbehavior Mr. Foster chronicles is so shameless that viewers might start to lose their bearings.

There’s not a lot of mystery to Bye Bye Barry, unless you count the puzzle posed by a person like William Sanders, who is spoken of by his son in nothing but admiring and affectionate terms and must have inspired something in a child so devoted to being the best at what he did.

To resort to strictly ethnocentric references, Fanaa is equal parts MGM extravaganza, Shakespeare lite and James Bond. In their heart of hearts, isn't that what movie audiences really want?

If you believe that the much-loved, much-banned Judy Blume has corrupted several decades of impressionable youth, Judy Blume Forever is probably not the film for you—it’s a salute, celebration and round of applause all rolled into one.

As directed by Celia Aniskovich and Jennifer Brea, Call Me Miss Cleo is an affectionate portrait of a fringe character who was more a tool than a beneficiary of PRN’s seamy efforts.

Penguin Bloom is alternately despairing and inspiring—more of the former than the latter, I found, simply because of the production’s honesty, and the lifetime of difficulty the Blooms’ story suggests.

Joy may not be sweeping the nation portrayed in Our Towns, exactly. But a certain amount of happiness abounds.

Sleepwalk With Me makes the subject palatable, funny and maybe even touching.

The trick is getting from a conclusion made five minutes into a movie to an ending 90 minutes away. It can be a scary prospect. In The Sweetest Thing it is mostly a hoot.

All in all, Mr. Papadimitropoulos maintains a delicate balance between the wryly hilarious and the heartbreaking, and sometimes the high wire trembles. But danger is intoxicating, and Chloe and Mickey—along with their audience—spend much of “Monday” delightfully drunk.