Sheila O'Malley

City of Joy is devastating and enraging, but the strength of the women profiled, their will to survive, to lay claim to their own bodies, is inspiring, although that's not quite the right word. It would have been better if they had not been brutalized at all.

The film feels like a first draft. But then there is the music to celebrate.

Gottlieb (the director) uses a very light touch throughout. This is a family affair.

A lot of thrillers are exciting but empty. “In Cold Light” is thrilling but very full in unexpected and complicated ways.

Something in the Dirt has the gritty DIY-vibe of the no-budget world from which it sprang, and is both thought-provoking and crazy-making, just like the mood it presents.

A mostly satisfying entry in the art heist genre.

Palo Alto is a very strong first feature, prioritizing mood over message. Coppola does not diagnose underlying societal problems; she does not make assumptions about the cultural void in which the kids live.

In its style, “Magpie” is a marital thriller with noir trappings galore, including an almost ridiculously convoluted (yet satisfying) conclusion. Still, it’s most effective as the study of an angry wife’s chaotic psychological state.

A refreshing anomaly: a coming-of-age masturbation comedy about a teenage girl.

Headey starred in "Game of Thrones," but also works with the International Rescue Committee as a human rights activist. She executive produced The Flood, and it is clearly an issue important to her. Her performance is quiet and controlled.

In less deft hands, the film could have been a clichéd affair, featuring Amanda delivering an impassioned courtroom speech that brings the judge to tears and the onlookers to a burst of applause. “Tow”’s distinct tone avoids these clichés—the film is often quite funny—turning the expected into the unexpected.

Dolphin Tale 2 tries to do too much, with too many stories shoehorned in, but the overall effect is emotional and sweet.

Nappily Ever After is as much a polemic as it is anything else. In a confrontation with Clint, Violet says she is sick of how much brainspace is taken up with her hair. "It's like having a second full-time job," she exclaims, exhausted.

This is what movies can do, at their best, draw you out of yourself in spite of yourself.

The film has more in common with 1930s screwball (films filled with obvious coincidences) than the more clunky, often-humorless films that pass for "rom-coms" today.

Our Friend is very good where it really counts and that's on the small details, the everyday life aspect of doing errands, cooking dinner, while your family is going through this harrowing ordeal. Cancer consumes the patient, but it also ravages the family.

A sweet film with a purity of purpose and intent, elevating it above other films portraying similar struggles.

The rhythm is slow. You really get the sense that when you walk through the doors of Carmine Street Guitars, you step outside of time.

The film Shackleton wanted to make clearly wasn’t a passion project coming from his deepest soul. It’s not like he’s Orson Welles yearning for the unfairly butchered “Magnificent Ambersons.” “Zodiac Killer Project” is fairly thin in both conception and execution, but it is very much “my kind of thing,” particularly his dry, humorous tone. He makes a good and entertaining guide.

The golf cart scene is an excellent example of what Greener Grass is attacking, and it's a sharp and subversive critique: it would be great to live in a more civil world, but too much civility leads to golf carts stalled at a four-way intersection.

A movie like Make Your Move rests on the success of its various dance sequences, not its plot. And the dancing here is exciting, innovative, and specific.

Cyrano gets the big things right, and Dinklage embodies it all.

The film doesn't burden pinball machines with more meaning than they can stand. Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game is strictly low stakes. This is part of its knowing charm.

Private Violence is extremely sad, but it has a lot of hope.

With a screenplay by Brian Sacca, who grew up in the Buffalo area, Buffaloed is a showcase for the mega-talented Deutch, who tosses herself into the role like a maniacal fidget-spinner, all flash and charm.

The backstage scenes are almost as entertaining as the mayhem of the campaign.

The entire documentary is unnerving. Focusing on four separate rape cases with eerie similarities, Audrie & Daisy is a stark portrait of a problem which is not in any way local, aberrant, or random. The problem is systemic.

I Was at Home, But... creates a space where questions are asked, but rarely answered, where things are suggested and never underlined, and every element — camera placement, music, blocking, sound design — is so deliberate that it pulls you into its vortex, and it makes you submit to its severe rhythms.