Sheri Linden

Combining guardedness and openheartedness in unpredictable ways, Kronerova and Novy deliver exceptional performances, turning the crystal-clear metaphor of ice swimming into a full-blooded emotional experience.

From its pitch-perfect title through just about every detail, this sendup of sports-triumph movies maintains the right parodic pitch, if not always the highest mph on the laugh speedometer.

A delightfully unforced comedy with a sure grasp of character and setting.

Audiences will find themselves face to face with their own prejudices, assumptions and, perhaps, squeamishness.

Strong performances by Scott Mechlowicz as Millman and Nick Nolte as the mysterious mechanic who changes his life ground the film in effective drama.

Hicks' unabashed love letter is, above all, a stirring picture of communion between artists.

A true gift to fans of this important musician.

Whether as a constructor of large-scale enchantments or a notorious conceptualist, he emerges in this portrait as sincerely searching.

Built for action, like its title character, the movie packs a muscular, bloody punch, but mainly it’s a well-oiled diversion.

The familiar suburban terrain is enriched by Holofcener's knack for turning offhand moments into piercing ones and, especially, by a magnificently off-center Ben Mendelsohn.

Although much of the plot defies credulity, Richard Donner directs the odd-couple action drama with a nimble facility that draws viewers in.

It's a film with a cause, but it's also brimming with drama in the midst of jaw-dropping landscapes.

Marshall's predilection for romantic fairy tales is much in evidence, though the comedy registers in a lower key than it did in such hits as "Pretty Woman" and "Runaway Bride."

A quietly celebratory film about music and human kindness.

With a loose-limbed naturalness, she conveys naiveté, intellectual curiosity and romantic yearning, and shows the unassuming Ana’s newfound thrill at being seen, however complicated the man holding her in his admiring gaze. She’s open and vulnerable but no fool. Best of all, Johnson and her director embrace Ana’s paradox: She snickers at Christian’s predilections, but they also turn her on.

Though the film, which lapses at times into repetitiousness, could have been trimmer and sleeker, even non-aficionados will be swept up by its dynamic look at the creative process.

For all the horror and despair of its subject, Leslee Udwin’s documentary about the December 2012 crime is in many ways a hopeful portrait, focusing not just on the attack but on the ensuing protests and policy changes.

The writing and direction of Public Schooled put a bright spin on high-school antics, and the ace cast makes the grade, led by Judy Greer's long-proven down-to-earth magic and the deft physical comedy of Daniel Doheny.

For Westerners, Lemelson offers an eye-opening look behind Bali's profile as a tourist Shangri-la. The documentary's ultimate value, though, may be in local education.

Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point can feel like a party that refuses to end, one that could have used some judicious streamlining. But it’s a memorably adventurous party, fueled by intense hopefulness, and Taormina’s fondness for the characters is the movie’s beating heart.

With artistic flourishes, N.C. Heikin’s documentary portrait fits the exceptional life story into a biographical boilerplate that covers the general trajectory and turning points.

Rooney Mara and Theo James deliver their most richly nuanced screen work to date in the drama, a memory piece whose true subject is Ireland’s tangled, bloody history and the Church’s toxic paternalism toward women.

Though its mix of the loopy, the broad and the deadpan is uneven, its story of American business designs on a tiny Polynesian nation still has satirical bite.

The impact of the quietly observant film builds until the unlikeliest of elements - an old Broadway tune, an empty garage, a conversation about fenders - detonate with long-buried emotion, anguished and tender.

With charm to spare, Valentin fuses nostalgia and humor in an episodic story whose ultimate focus is the birth of a writer.

Despite some choppy transitions and a few melodramatic moments that don't work, the film casts an effective, deepening chill.

To the filmmakers' credit, and even though they don't entirely avoid the clunky factoid-itis that often plagues the genre, this is a biopic that favors sensory experience over exposition. It understands what pure, electrifying fun rock 'n' roll can be.

In the charming comedy-parable Ushpizin, religious orthodoxy inspires not unbending dogma but humble, sometimes baffled spiritual striving by its embraceable, flawed characters.

Clunky elements aside, the film's distillation of firsthand testimony and archival material has haunting implications.

Writer-director Gray's handsomely crafted planet-hopping drama is by turns vividly eventful and deliberate in its uneventfulness, and it feels caught, somewhat awkwardly, between stark simplicity and violent leaps into hyperdrive.

Like the heroic Bostonians it celebrates, civilians and law enforcement both, Peter Berg’s Patriots Day gets the job done.

The comedy star's legions of fans will welcome the cheerfully crude proceedings as a return to silliness after several earnest, lower-key character turns. The melange of Middle East diplomacy, action absurdity, sexual healing and, when in doubt, hummus, wavers between muscular and middling. It's a surefire hit.

The Fabulous Four aims past the formula trappings and, though its misses might be evident, it also hits the bull’s-eye.

The balance between detail and momentum can at times be off, and the helmer doesn’t entirely avoid generic tropes of the legal drama. But he conveys the enormity of the undertaking at the film’s center — the first major war crimes trial since Nuremberg — and it’s felt in every moment of Darín’s compelling portrayal.

It's the loosely connected encounters of the early sequences that are remarkable in their poignancy and humor.

The story of a young singer-songwriter who’s stuck in a nowhere loop until she takes an impulsive leap, the feature is sometimes clunky but often quietly transporting.

Directors Menachem Daum and Oren Rudavsky may not solve Israeli-Palestinian animosities, but they find illuminating angles of exploration for one of the world’s most intractable conflicts.

Whether viewers accept the spiritual terms of the conversation or not, the unlikely allies shine a burning light on questions that go to the essence of who we are and what it means to value life.

Though the comic confection's clunky moments keep it from achieving soufflé delicacy, its bright zingers and seamless fantasy sequences amp the playfulness, and the mostly unforced performances complement the production's cartoonish exuberance.

The faux press conferences and perverse inventions (SurvivaBall, anyone?) that are included here highlight corporate greed and governmental shortsightedness as shrewdly as ever.

Director Martha Stephens' atmospheric period piece is in many ways its own planet: The world it conjures is a woman's world — not a world that women created or rule, but one where their longings, dissatisfactions and sorrows are center stage, and most of the story's men and boys look on from the periphery, when they're not lashing out.

Its sentimentality is tempered by the elegant restraint of the fine lead performances.

For those willing to put aside reality for 90 minutes, as Unfrosted does with gusto, the Netflix movie whips up a frothy sendup of storytelling tropes and clichés.

This culture-clash romantic comedy, scripted by Elizabeth Hunter and Saladin K. Patterson, goes exactly where you'd expect, but helmer Lynn, a comedy vet, gets it there with such infectious energy that you don't much mind the story's predictability.

An intensely realized, beautifully shot drama.

None of it is earth-shattering, but Goodman gives it muscle and makes it work. And with their synapse-firing performances, Banderas and Rhys Meyers keep the viewer at arm’s length and guessing — through, and even past, fade-out.

If this adulatory “American Masters” production elides certain chapters of Angelou’s biography, it nonetheless offers ample evidence of her commanding intensity and of her importance as an unwavering voice of the black experience.

This tale of a lovable jerk who learns the meaning of sacrifice should capitalize on its star's sitcom popularity to hit one out of the park.

There's no denying the beauty of the film's imagery, violent and tender, or the emotional power of the final moment in the boy-and-his-dog love story.

The doc’s stunning slo-mo footage of midair locomotion emphasizes these messengers’ grace and mystery.

Though the story’s early stretches feel slender and repetitive, Cheung gathers the undertow of atmosphere and emotion for a beautifully realized final half-hour, matching the striking visuals with involving, unpredictable interactions.

Jolts of humor and fantasy bring welcome texture to the romance-novel sleekness, as do the leads, who both have an uncommon, idiosyncratic allure.

The low gore quotient and emphasis on young love might disappoint genre purists, but for those open to the idea of a gently goofy mash-up, the film is strong on atmosphere and offers likably low-key, if somewhat bland, charms.

Avoids easy shtick and saccharine conclusions, opting instead for character dynamics that the two leads deliver with consummate skill.

There’s nothing particularly cinematic about the well-crafted film, but it’s a compelling piece of advocacy journalism, one that looks beyond the sloganeering on all sides of the debate.

This Isn’t Funny is insightful and quick-witted, a romance that take chances while its lovers learn to do the same.

Actor-turned-helmer Bill Paxton has fashioned solid family entertainment in this well-cast feature.

Navigating a complex narrative line, Nabulsi doesn’t always achieve the nuance or the propulsive tension the material requires, but she has a sure grasp of emotional give-and-take and day-to-day realities.

Rampling, a Modigliani of long-limbed litheness with a face built for sorrow, inhabits the role and the visual compositions so deeply that the character resonates long after the film has ended.

The drama around them too often lands rather neatly on the surface, saying exactly what it means, but through the unpredictability of its two leads, Keener especially, and in the knotty connection between their characters, the movie gets under the skin and goes beyond the bromide-laden playbook.

Shevtsova, until recently a dancer with the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, doesn’t quite pierce the narrative’s two-dimensionality. Through Preljocaj’s ecstatic choreography, though, she goes deep, and Polina’s story finds its language and its pulse.

For the movie’s young women — brought to gutsy life by a terrific quartet of dancer-actors — soca is a language of sisterhood yet one that’s hardly free from the controlling power of men with money.

Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal tackle a tricky balancing act in their new feature, celebrating the intoxicating lilt of the bossa nova and also investigating the devastating brutality of state terrorism. It’s a testament to their talent as filmmakers that, for the most part, they manage to pull it off.

Unfocused lapses aside, though, the film is intriguing and discomforting in equal measure, using its brief running time to frame thoughtful, boundary-pushing questions.

As a depiction of youthful resilience, the film works, but Max's trials and tribulations might have had more dramatic impact with a trained actor in the role.

Adapting the novel by Zhivko Chingo, director Trajkov and his co-scripter, Vladimir Blazevski, have created a searing memory piece. Suki Medencevic's widescreen cinematography illuminates a shadow realm halfway between heaven and hell.

A tender take on life after stardom.

Hoover doesn’t get into the nitty-gritty of the kids’ detox and rehabilitation, but Mokhnenko’s compassion is as evident as his self-regard, and inextricable from his sense of a moral imperative.

Solid family fare. Like its source material, the Missouri-shot Saving Shiloh is down-home country without condescending to hicks from the sticks.

There’s no overarching life-story chronology; biographical details emerge in bits and pieces. The director doesn’t wring maudlin tears from her subject’s ordeal, in part because Jones never asks for pity.

Idiocracy, is often stingingly funny -- and an undeserving resident of the summer's-end movie dumping ground.

Documentarian Morgan Neville has fashioned a spirited riposte to the groundless cliche that Los Angeles is a cultural wasteland.

Among the willing cast, only Jacinda Barrett and topliners Josh Lucas, Kurt Russell and Richard Dreyfuss manage, just barely, to suggest a third dimension to the script's cursory character sketches. But that won't matter to audiences craving a disaster thrill ride.

If its summary approach is less than penetrating, its underlying message of tolerance and open-mindedness is commendable.

Awash in nostalgia, "Lions" combines a gentle coming-of-age story with swashbuckling fantasy. While it lacks a necessary tension in its establishing scenes and might be too soft for those who prefer grittier fare.

The film is, at its strongest, an inspiring sensory immersion in that performance, one in which the (mostly unidentified) plants are the stars. A complex, dimensional portrait of Oudolf never quite emerges, though, and the brief doc, however lovely, lacks an essential dynamism that would make it truly compelling.

Wonder is a story of connection, not suffering. Dramatizing one boy's effect on the people around him, it invites the viewer into that fold.

Until the lean script by Baier and Laurent Guido takes some unconvincing turns in the late going, the film is a credible portrait of alienation.

Posing serious questions about violence and vigilantism while reveling in both, Captain America: Civil War is overlong but surprisingly light on its feet. It builds upon the plotlines of previous Avengers outings, bringing together known marquee quantities and introducing the Black Panther and a new Spidey in winning fashion.

Their personal story is no less fascinating than their experiences working on hundreds of movies, together and separately.

Ambitious and intricately plotted — at times distractingly so — the bilingual feature is an uneven genre ride, but its appealing cast and multicultural twist on a familiar format help to smooth the rough spots and keep things engaging, if not entirely satisfying.

The collision of adolescent hormones and parental folly, hardly new cinematic territory, gets a bracing absurdist slant in Youth in Revolt.

Beyond explanation is the art itself. Animating Van Gogh’s bold impasto, already kinetic on the canvas, could have been merely superfluous. As moving pictures, though, the brushstrokes have an unexpected pull in this uneven but deeply felt homage.

Yakin and his terpsichorean cast take exhilarating chances of the sort all too seldom seen on screens these days.

Madsen brings our collective sense of identity into sharp relief through the lens of what could be called a first date with mysterious beings.

Captures a reunion between them that speaks volumes about the intense connections, complicated and big-hearted, that have fueled an extraordinary musical collaboration.

The spotlight illuminates a well-chosen quintet of subjects, all wholesomely passionate practitioners of a readily dissed form of entertainment and each at a different point in their career.

Though the shifts can be abrupt, the film provides an overview of a huge topic with admirable concision.

The actors wrestle passionately with compelling questions about attraction and love.

Like the young social activists at its center, the documentary Radicalized is propelled by a ragged energy, a fuel that's equal parts outrage and idealism.

This isn't a deep dive into what makes one man tick, but a multilayered exploration of the love and devotion that animals inspire, whether the critter is your companion or your patient. Contained within the stories in Dog Doc is a visionary approach to caring for animals and ourselves, a way of more truly sharing the planet rather than trying to control it.

Falco, involving as ever, might not be engaged in a wild gamble here, but there’s a certain risk in the ways that she and the movie circle a neat conclusion. And there’s wisdom in the way they wind up somewhere far messier, sweeter and more satisfying.

For all their layered complexity, the songs can slip into a musical and rhetorical sameness. But the concert's aesthetic power is undeniable. The swirl of sound and motion burns with a bright intensity, not unlike like the onstage Tesla coils that have been reconfigured as instruments.

More than the story of an individual, the film is a stirring tribute to endangered folk traditions.

Those not in the smackdown frame of mind will find an overabundance of head-butts, body slams and pounding aural effects -- this is a definite contender for loudest film of the year -- but also will discover instances of innovative, spectacular stuntwork and, though the comic interplay often falls flat, a story with heart.

The day-to-day takes on an understated eeriness that matches the unarticulated ache of the bereaved.

Even when the story feels strained, the chemistry among the performers has oomph as their characters taunt one another, celebrate big wins, ride out setbacks and mastermind double-crosses. And the uneven shenanigans sail home smoothly with an exhilarating and ultra-satisfying switcheroo.

Australian writer-director Kim Mordaunt doesn't always succeed at balancing the sentimental, the political and the ethnographic, but at its strongest the story is a seamless melding of history's dark undertow and a child's indefatigable optimism.