Sheila O'Malley

Kneecap is “about” a lot of things, and its pace makes it impossible to resist getting swept up in it.

Darren Lynn Bousman's St. Agatha goes so full-bore into the scary nun trope it's practically nunsploitation, and the mood he establishes — the look and feel of the claustrophobic "convent in the film — launches St. Agatha into a weirdo plane of phantasmagorical psychological and physical torment.

Hall's dialogue compels you to listen, to lean in, but Johnson and Penn draw us into their separate worlds and histories, each face telling a million stories.

Sew Torn marks an auspicious debut for MacDonald.

Anderson’s accomplishment here defies easy comparison. It’s not a comeback. It’s a beginning.

Jawline works gently, slowly, presenting its subject and sub-culture with not just affection but sympathy, a sympathy very close to tenderness.

Cusp, with its dreamy imagery of golden sunsets and thunder-y twilights, empty Dairy Queen parking lots, and birds taking flight, is a mood-driven piece of work, sensitive to landscape and environment, and the girls' casual comments about rape (just one example) stand in stark contrast.

There's something a little too neat about the structure of Showing Up, and the pigeon wears its symbolism on its broken wings. But the piercing specificity of Reichardt's vision, and her insights into the dynamics of an art scene like the one in Portland, are spot on.

The final sequences are the only "stock" moments in this very specific family drama, and something about the last scene left me cold. But the rest is so effective and emotional, a dedicated portrait of trauma passed down through generations, it doesn't matter.

As it is, Seriously Red sneaks up on you.

Where Maya Dardel really works is when it sticks to being a character study.

A tender and gentle coming-of-age story, as well as a meditation on grief and letting go. It is also that very rare thing, a movie about teenagers where the characters actually seem like real teenagers, as opposed to mini posing adults.

Xavier Giannoli's film adaptation of Balzac's book leans heavily on voiceover, so much so that some sequences are practically an audiobook with images attached. This could be seen as a negative, but in practice the voiceover-heavy sections are some of the film's most successful.

Rat Film is an odd and captivating experience, and its fluid style is its most distinguishing characteristic.

Yes. It is good. It is sincere, funny, thoughtful and spiritual, often poignant, and with a deep strain of existential worry running underneath the whole thing.

Man of Tai Chi is hugely entertaining.

Breezy, sleazy, and sometimes-intense, Rob the Mob depicts a very specific sliver of time in New York history, a time overrun by crack, graffiti, and omnipresent organized crime.

What works so well in Mandibles is how it's set up as a basic heist movie, using very familiar elements, so familiar they're almost tired cliches, before going completely off the rails into random demented territory.

Burns' filmmaking is confident and his attitude is anti-sentimental. He captures the atmosphere of a town where a person can leave for five years and come back to find that nothing much has changed. A visit to a local pub means you run into half your high school class. I grew up in a beach town like this. Burns gets it right.

In its best moments, Copenhagen, the debut feature of Mark Raso, who also wrote the script, takes place in that dream space.

Wicked Little Letters is a really effective British mystery, spiked with the comedy of a real caper, with sneaky people bicycling down lanes, or literally crouching in the bushes staring at a mailbox.

Miss Julie is a rather strange experience, with its consistently static medium shots of the three actors, as they roar their lines at one another. But it has an undeniable power.

White plays it straight, and deftly untangles the different webs of meaning and implication, political, social and otherwise, to draw us into Siti and Doan's worlds, to understand how the girls were tricked and used as pawns in a deadly North Korean family feud.

It's suspenseful, but also hilarious.

Guy Ritchie's The Gentlemen plays like a tall tale, a yarn heard at the corner pub, filled with exaggerations and embellishments, where the storyteller expects you to pay his bar tab at the end. And maybe you won't mind doing so.

Just the Two of Us is not clever, self-important, or stylistically overt. This is a story, well told.

A well-observed and patiently told story, with one good scene after another, featuring amazing performances across the board, but particularly from newcomer Josh Wiggins.

The Nightmare is more effective than the esoteric "Room 237" because it represents a full immersion into a common human experience. The re-enactments are superb.