Serena Donadoni

Director Dan Harris (Imaginary Heroes) structures Speech & Debate like a musical comedy that's building up to a cathartic final number, but scene after scene just falls flat.

The dancers in Alive and Kicking all share a rapturous expression, and Glatzer makes the case for this Depression-era diversion as a modern tonic for isolation.

In her directorial debut, Susan Johnson balances the character's haughty brilliance and aimless privilege with an underlying vulnerability.

The Most Hated Woman in America suffers from tonal whiplash.

P.S. Jerusalem is as modest as a home movie but profoundly captures the conflict between individual conscience and national identity.

His interviews are informative and captivating, but the film’s gut-punch immediacy comes from the astounding visuals caught by participants on digital cameras and cellphones, including shocking images of Assad’s torturers at work.

Gass-Donnelly (The Last Exorcism Part II) blends supernatural elements into a psychological thriller for a kind of spectral therapy, but his experimentation ultimately conforms to genre conventions.

In a bitterly funny performance, Avedisian lets Donald's freak flag fly, a big-toothed grin lighting up his face, framed by a shaggy haircut not deliberate enough to be a mullet.

Constructed as a mystery, As You Are offers glimpses into intense adolescent bonds, just enough to remind baffled onlookers that they don't have a clue.

My Name Is Emily gets lighter as it goes along, releasing tension and pretension for a pleasant, routine ride.

An anguished and compassionate chronicle of Schein and Vishner's relationship.

Greenwald and cinematographer Wolfgang Held linger on the idyllic beauty of the salt marsh and trees draped with Spanish moss, using the vivid cerulean of native blue crabs to link her characters.

Reset often seems like Demaizière and Teurlai's attempt to indoctrinate a new generation. Their glorious recruitment film espouses individual expression and athletic grace, while also pinpointing the limits of star power.

Illingworth aims to capture a vital relationship at a crucial turning point, but Between Us fails because Dianne is half-formed. She's just another projection of male desire and fear, easily led and passive-aggressive, everything but a woman who knows her own mind.

The film’s haphazard episodic structure never coheres.

Bates (Suburban Gothic) plays with horror tropes, juggling black comedy and suspense in scenes that tease a gory release but ultimately only emphasize how much members of the creative class can underestimate their backward kin.

Lehmann shot Blue Jay in a gorgeous black-and-white that looks like silver gelatin prints (a photographic process that captures boundless gradations of gray), which complements the story's heartfelt simplicity.

The engaging Harry & Snowman shows the impact of a rescue animal on the man who saw his neglected qualities. It's also a succinct demonstration of the difference between a livelihood and a life's work.

As much as this latest installment draws on affection for the snappy first film, it's the differences that make Bridget Jones's Baby the warmest and most satisfying of the series.

By focusing on his subject's unwavering moral certainty, Kraume denies his ethical complexity and diminishes the difficulties of his challenging stance to educate the society that wanted him dead.

What do you do with a loathsome hero? Noah Pritzker isn't sure. His aimless first feature (co-written with Ben Tarnoff) is built around slippery teenage manipulator Clark Rayman (Ben Konigsberg), who goes from a little Machiavellian to big-time creepy with no rhyme or reason.

The philosophical underpinnings of Swiss director Pierre Morath's well-paced documentary about the evolution of long-distance running evoke the motto of neighboring France: liberté, égalite, fraternité.

The Phenom unfolds as a series of quiet, incisive conversations that showcase subtle, insightful performances.

In their equanimous portrait of an Indian religious community, Jillian Elizabeth and Neil Dalal contemplate enlightenment through an earthly source. They capture the quiet activity of Arsha Vidya Gurukulam, an ashram in the lush hills of Tamil Nadu, with an observational documentary style that trades dispassionate distance for sympathetic immersion.

Cash Only features many familiar action movie markers, but it's distinguished by a raw energy and strong sense of place.

Writer-director Joseph Graham isn't solely interested in hookups, and he uses the encounters between these men (both carnal and cerebral) to construct a compassionate romantic drama.

Foster makes it deeper, using an observational style to reveal the intricacies of a progressive disease and candid interviews with Andy and Vashti to strip away the veneer of celebrity implacability.

Franco seems the ideal interpreter of The Adderall Diaries, but he's reduced the memoirist's tough introspection to misery porn.