Serena Donadoni

Guzmán and Cárdenas present this tropical island as both Anne's romantic refuge and Noelí's exploitative landscape, a beautiful, enchanting — and realistic — Eden where snakes are merely snakes.

Making Rounds demonstrates the real value of medicine with a human touch.

The director is all at sea with the choppy Manhattan Romance, finding nothing new in New York while self-consciously making a blander version of a Woody Allen romantic comedy.

Heady and rigorous, The Creeping Garden is an illuminating science documentary that tickles the imagination.

Yudin's surface-level portrait looks for deeper truths, but finds them in unexpected ways.

This lovely debut film contains all the ingredients of a culture-clash drama, which Lucero handles with a light touch.

Ozon sacrifices his sharp portrayal of grief and rebirth to clumsy convention.

Even the gravitas of Merkerson and Duncan can't save this flimsy construct of boxing-movie clichés. Moran casts himself as a cinematic upstart with The Challenger, but he's punching above his weight.

Bühler and Mariani make their process part of the narrative, deconstructing the documentary form while delving into Kirk's copious digital life.

Even with the dramatic buildup, Mikati hesitates to make Return to Sender an all-out revenge fantasy, and the characters are too sketchy for an effective psychological thriller.

Tixier never strays far from a worshipful view of André and her sanctuary, but the film evolves into an interesting primer on the differences between life in captivity and the wild.

Extraordinary ordinariness is Two Step's saving grace.

The biggest problem in Lipsky's scattershot narrative is situational ethics.

There's a great deal of rhetoric about revolution and radical art, but Chagall-Malevich is staid and conventional.

Hungry Hearts owes much to early Polanski (especially Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby), but Costanzo prizes ambiguity over tension.

The bigger problem: Quincy Rose, the opaque actor in nearly every scene, and the writer, director, and editor who doesn't distinguish between cinematic intimacy and revealing a character's inner life.

Holzhausen is respectful but not reverential, portraying the museum as a living thing that's being cared for with meticulous diligence.

The restrained performances of Dubreuil and Yaron (Fill the Void) gradually reveal the flaws and strengths of this fragile couple, while Twersky is quietly devastating as an abandoned husband who fully understands devotion and sacrifice.

What Woman in Gold has over nonfiction portrayals is emotion, and director Simon Curtis (My Week With Marilyn) milks every scene for its heart-tugging potential.

Without his usual tics, Malkovich is a wonder, quietly transforming an unassuming town fixture into Cut Bank's conscience. But the revelatory performance is Michael Stuhlbarg (A Serious Man) as Derby Milton.

Screenwriter Christopher Kyle touches on hot-button issues of class conflict, land use, and no-holds-barred capitalism. He also strips Serena of moral ambiguity, turning deeply twisted relationships into a doomed romance where transgressors punish themselves.

This musical comedy is sugary and sincere.

The seriocomic Growing Up and Other Lies, written and directed by Jacobs and Darren Grodsky (Humboldt County), offers strained male bonding from a quartet sorely out of tune.

A staid rock 'n' roll museum piece.

The performances in October Gale subvert genre expectations: Clarkson displays toughness and resolve without turning into Liam Neeson, and the distressed Speedman is as vulnerable as he is determined.

Josue tries to reclaim his narrative with this intimate, positive portrait, but while Shepard's brave and resourceful parents encourage her, they realized long ago that his death means he no longer belongs solely to them.

A hodgepodge of artistic gestures grafted onto a traditional narrative, neither fully linear nor experimental.

Valley of Saints is a marvel of neorealism, with nonprofessional actors facing the same hurdles as their characters and writer/director Syeed improvising in shifting circumstances.

The title indicates a major transition, but despite assertions that the dissolution of a marriage is a life-altering event, divorce doesn't change Otto as much as rouse him from stupefaction, and Schneider deftly balances bewilderment with resolve.

Too much of Isn't It Delicious is either sketchy or hokey, trading an honest exploration of Joan's destructive self-absorption for a family finding peace through dispassionate compassion.

As a performer, he's best at the lectern and interacting with students who share his love of ancient Rome. But as a filmmaker, Doleac can't reconcile all his story lines.

Murder of a Cat has an off-kilter charm, with Greene prizing humor over menace, and Clinton's maturity over plot resolution

Brahmin Bulls focuses on the individual choices made by Ashok and Sid, but just as Gingger Shankar subtly weaves traditional Indian instrumentation throughout her lovely score, Pailoor touches upon how cultural expectations inform their relationship.

Beneath the rom-com pacing and peppy underscoring of a Lifetime movie, Delusions of Guinevere is a surprisingly dark satire of modern celebrity.

Holmes and Dale are ideal together, turning a polite courtship and charged relationship (including a sex scene that's both giddy and profound) into a twisted, compelling expression of unconditional love.

Schwochow's intimate, handheld camerawork often feels like surveillance, which transforms mundane events into the menacing moments of a psychological thriller.

O'Connor tries mightily to contextualize the suffering of the Peaceful brothers at home and abroad, making a better case for the British class system's demise than for their survival.

Arestrup and Dussollier originated these roles on stage, but Schlöndorff (who directed the Hoffman/Malkovich Death of a Salesman) gives it the immediacy of a life-and-death encounter.

Acher adroitly juggles all the gimmickry, using it to comment on Holly and Guy's burgeoning relationship.

In this unhurried full version, Benson allows grief to transform his characters, with few guarantees and plenty of regrets.

In this unhurried full version, Benson allows grief to transform his characters, with few guarantees and plenty of regrets.

[An] exquisitely beautiful feature debut.

At 92 minutes, Days and Nights feels choppy and hurried, pushing the narrative toward inevitable tragedy rather than exploring how these dispirited people got there.

The structure of Autumn Blood and its metaphors are obvious, but what makes it engaging, even haunting, are the messy flesh-and-blood characters.

Take Me to the River takes a while to find its groove and capture what Charlie Musselwhite calls "that secret, Southern, Memphis ingredient."

Amy Lowe Starbin's script offers a welcome directness and some sly observations about acceptance and compromise.

Browning captures Eve's weariness and enthusiasm, and her lovely voice and crisp delivery gives Murdoch's labored lyrics a vulnerable immediacy.

Last Weekend is too enamored of this nouveau riche household to be satirical, instead offering unexpected moments of genuine warmth as a calling card for goodness.

Jackson and co-screenwriter Kristin Gore prize ambiguity, allowing for cathartic revelations but no easy resolutions.

Everyone needs nourishment, and Itami found humor and poignancy in how it’s provided and received.

Key to Giant‘s enduring appeal is the meshing of outsize stars with Ferber’s characters: Closeted sex symbol Hudson’s towering Bick fills the big boots of his ranching family while struggling with the demands of traditional masculine authority. The taboo-breaking Taylor is the seductive, whip-smart Leslie, an assured reformer who views the injustices visited upon the ranch’s Mexican workers with maternal concern...And then there’s Dean’s most mannered, complex performance: Jett is at once transparent and enigmatic, hardening with age while the other characters mature. The actor’s death — a year before release — adds a keen poignancy to the character’s lost potential.

Funny and smart, full of biting humor and astute observations about identity and history, Cheryl Dunye's audacious, joyous debut feature captures the process of falling hopelessly in love with the movies.

Casablanca was filmed in the safety of the Warner Bros. lot, but the cast of immigrants and exiles who had fled the Third Reich conveyed their visceral fear. While the future was uncertain, the resolute characters of this exquisite wartime drama found peace through love and resistance.

The makers of Trafficked walk a fine line, embedding their advocacy in an action film and conveying the horror of sexual slavery without edging into exploitation.