Sheila O'Malley

Populated with totally naturalistic performances, and a stunningly observed relationship between mother and son (their scenes together are phenomenal), Bad Hair works by keeping its focus on the small details of everyday life and its rhythms.

The Homesman doesn't play things safe, and that's a welcome change.

At its best, The Tower shows what life felt like to those who lived at that singular time, to those who dozed "pitifully and apathetically" in an unchanging political system before the rules changed, seemingly overnight.

Steeped in Southern Gothic melodrama, Jessabelle is interesting in some of the small details, and in its strong sense of the Louisiana bayou atmosphere, and then it completely falls apart when it starts being a horror film.

The Great Invisible is strongest when it focuses on the micro rather than the macro. How the spill impacted individuals in the region is the real story of The Great Invisible.

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

Watchers of the Sky, an intricate and immensely powerful documentary, directed by Edet Belzberg, is both the story of Raphael Lemkin as well as a harrowing examination of genocide, past, recent, and ongoing.

Housebound is a standout, though, because of its satirical mood and its multiple scenes of almost screwball comedy.

Addicted is supposed to be erotica, so perhaps thinking about it too much is unfair, but the film is so uneven (it's both hot and preachy), as well as way too long, that thinking becomes inevitable.

Humorous and poignant. There are a couple of scenes that fall flat, losing the manic push of the rest of the story, but the mood is so screwball that the film hurtles past its own mistakes. It's good fun.

Even if you allow for the the fact that the film is geared towards the 5-year-old set, it's still a pretty dreary experience, made even more so by screamingly vivid colors, uninspiring animation and grating songs.

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

It's gloriously inventive, wonderfully funny, and gorgeous to look at, the screen filled with sometimes overwhelming detail.

It's "Eat, Pray, Love"-lite, and "Eat, Pray, Love" was already "lite."

The Guest takes its time revealing what is really going on, and has a lot of fun in that slow reveal process.

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

A successful franchise depends on the hero at its center. Is the hero's personality interesting enough to warrant more? Time will tell, but Falcon Rising is off to a good start.

One positive thing about The Identical is that it will make you want to bust out Elvis Presley's early Sun and RCA recordings, songs like "That's All Right," "Lawdy Miss Clawdy," "My Baby Left Me," or "Good Rockin'" just to remind you that no, it didn't happen the way it did in The Identical. Thank goodness.

Unabashedly entertaining at an efficient 91-minutes, The One I Love is an extremely confident first feature, with some really fun things to say about identity and relationship, connection and destiny.

At least in Sin City women are full-on goddesses: powerful and awful, with big needs, willing to go to the mat to get what they want. In other films, the flat portrayal of women seems like a failure of the imagination.

It's a courageous film that's willing to sit in those moments instead of underlining them or hurrying past them, hoping we get the shorthand. Love is Strange is a patient film. The emotions it unleashes are enormous.

Despite a truly pained performance from Jeff Bridges and a beautifully imagined, three-dimensional futuristic world, The Giver, in wanting to connect itself to more recent YA franchises, sacrifices subtlety, inference and power.

Strange and creepy and entertaining.

What a grim experience.

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.

Affluenza thinks it is deep when it is merely trite. It illuminates nothing.