Sheri Linden

Sadwith, whose TV credits include the miniseries “Sinatra,” conjures a few memorable moments in his big-screen debut. But the most stirring moment belongs to Cooper, who turns a barely audible, exasperated sigh into a complicated life story.

Gathering new interviews and a fine selection of archival material, British documentarian Leslie Woodhead tells Fitzgerald's story with a sure feel for the joyous swing and sultry depths of that voice, and a sensitive eye on the complexities of life as a self-made Black woman in 20th century America.

Circumstances that might have been static in less skilled hands are given tantalizing life by Young, the actors and the deft camerawork of cinematographer Ryan Balas.

To the unlikely role of a Bogart-esque reluctant hero, Leonardo DiCaprio brings an intensity that compels even when the script falters.

Written by Amy Lowe Starbin and directed by Jen McGowan, both first-timers, the feature is alive with interactions that feel spontaneous.

[Gibney's] chronicle informs rather than inspires, but it's a solid introduction to a fascinating figure.

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.

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

Distractingly lovely to look at, the film can't make Sangaile's struggles or triumphs matter. Its soaring conclusion feels anticlimactic, the story drifting off into air.

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.

As a portrait of children who are wanted and loved, it's intimate and often delightful.

The knack for biting dialogue that Mills brought to Guidance is still evident, although his new effort can’t match the bracing sting of his wickedly funny debut.

Taking satiric aim at a familiar target, conformity, Australian playwright Tony McNamara's film debut is by turns incisive and broad.

One of his most piercing inquiries yet. ... Herzog is the clear-eyed student — at times amazed and delighted, and, at others, skeptical and alarmed. Amid the cryostats and nanoparticles and fiber optics, the clunky gadgets and impenetrable-to-the-layperson diagrams, he summons a wry and lyrical mix of awe and foreboding.

There's enough dark sizzle between leads Rachel Weisz and Sam Claflin to keep the audience involved through the underpowered middle stretches before the film regains its footing, delivering a disquieting shiver of a conclusion.

Hall and Brown are a glorious kick to watch, their physicality at times bordering on slapstick.

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

Francisca Gavilán's lead performance burns with a dark radiance that's anything but self-congratulatory.

The drama works only in fits and starts. The vague danger that shapes it, and the narrative's underlying emotional intricacies, are too often explained rather than felt.

Wavers between would-be satire and romantic drama, inhabiting neither mode convincingly.

The film flirts with upper-class stereotypes, but in the nuanced writing and the work of the strong cast, led by a terrific Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, it goes far deeper.

A story that might have been alive with messy complexity is instead genial and polite.

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.

There will be blood, yes, but mainly there’s a well-written and beautifully performed investigation of yearning and the mysterious realm that apps and algorithms can only profess to quantify.

Keener's performance riveting.

Offers solid, kid-friendly storytelling.

The romance at the movie’s core doesn’t deliver the intended emotional impact, but there’s a tender, potent resonance to other aspects of the story.

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

The huge political and social divide is in full evidence, but the strength of the doc is that it shows that those sides aren't as monolithic as the red and blue blocks on electoral maps suggest.

Loveling wisely avoids easy answers, and its deft mix of humor and melancholy never falters.

We know the achievements and victories of the era Nagy depicts, and yet, because she and her fine cast bring the story to such vivid, immediate life, the final moments of Call Jane are powerful with unanticipated joy.

Ben Hania lights a connective fuse between documentary and drama.

There are big questions churning beneath the story, yet even Hildy’s personal turmoil feels somehow too neat. In the film’s sharp comic observations, though, and especially its two fine leads, something real and messy sparks to life.

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

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.

A fascinating glimpse of kids' role in the evangelical movement's political agenda.

Dunne creates a full-blooded character. The film around him, unfortunately, takes low-key to the realm of tepid.

Delivering visual drama and understated character study, sometimes in disappointingly formulaic fashion, the feature has its incisive moments but falls short as both epic and intimate portrait.

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.

The setting abounds in beauty, and the storytelling abounds in obvious cues that mute the intended suspense, if not the horror.

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.

Thomas’ direction, especially of the villainous roles, gives a lot of the action a self-conscious, not-quite-real quality. Some aspects of the movie’s intentional artifice work better than others.

The central drama never fully engages, but the jolts that Banshee delivers are check-the-locks scary.

Amid the not-so-troubling setbacks, unbelievable triumphs and perpetual spring break, the movie takes one or two nice twists.

Shepard’s reach might exceed her grasp, but there’s no question that she takes risks and is a filmmaker of notable promise.

Wonderfully weird and wistful adventure-comedy about a fish-out-of-water oceanographer.

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.

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.

Through an affecting mix of comedy, romance and drama, A Radiant Girl sounds a warning about the perils of not looking directly at tough realities. And yet it’s so alive from moment to moment, so finely attuned to the emotional lives of its characters, that it never feels like a history lesson dressed up as narrative.

Fine performances and bristling language compel in this overlong, often off-putting but well-observed New York story.

Without a drop of self-congratulatory "enlightenment," Land occupies a wild terrain of ineffable tenderness.

A shiver of cosmic comedy runs through the film's tragic turns.

Two Lovers and a Bear is above all thrillingly cinematic, even when its elements of lived-in intensity and jokey fantasy refuse to coalesce.

The decidedly irreverent nature of much of the proceedings will be a turnoff to some viewers, a tonic to others.

As its title suggests, the movie embraces generic types, but smart writing, unforced direction and a superb cast give the sentimental-but-not-gushy comic drama the messy specifics and narrative friction to lift it well beyond been-there-done-that.

The feature spikes its lonesome mood with shots of dry humor, animated sequences and flashbacks — at times overplaying its hand, even as Emile Hirsch and Stephen Dorff wordlessly convey all that needs to be said.

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

Through its droll combo of stillness and churning dysfunction, perfectly embodied by Drakopoulos, Pity deconstructs the artifice of feeling and, most wickedly, movie sentimentality.

It's an adrenaline rush of a film.

But for all its vividly detailed eccentricity, the movie, like Abby, connects the dots rather too easily. As Clifton Hill digs deeper into exceedingly sordid stuff, it doesn't dish up the kind of aha moments or chilling frissons that would lift the story from clever contrivance — until a final, delicious twist pulls the rug out from under this richly atmospheric but not always convincing tale.

Ultimately Fear X feels more like an intellectual exercise than a convincing drama.

As repellent as Lucy's story can be, its mystery has a seductive sway, and it does add up to more than the sum of its insistently elliptical parts.

Its restraint is its strength. The focus on a woman's passionate hard work without need of marital-status back story is refreshing.

With its assortment of mouthwatering ingredients and dishes, In Search of Israeli Cuisine is an unadulterated foodie delight. But much more than that, Roger Sherman’s documentary offers fascinating insights into a little-understood country, using the culinary prism to illuminate a complex, still-young culture.

The story itself finally feels lost beneath the levels of artifice rather than heightened by it.

It’s the glimmers of penetrating observation that make the overload of clichés so frustrating in Onah’s first feature, and suggest better things for his second.

Bahrani sometimes pushes too hard as he reaches for big drama. But when the story works, it has a dark power that draws shrewdly upon his two leads' screen charisma.

In Hilma, Hallström delves into the fiery and sometimes messy personal story as well as celebrating, in fittingly enthralled, immersive fashion, the singular fusion of nature and spiritual mystery that drove her.

Director Matthew Vaughn strikes an energetic balance between cartoonish action and character-driven drama... The mix grows less seamless and the story loses oomph as it barrels toward its doomsday countdown, but the cast’s dash and humor never flag.

Genesis 2.0 is a double-stranded helix of a real-life thriller, chilling and unforgettable. An inquiry into the brave new world of "synthetic biology," it moves between two filmmakers in very different locations. Their twinned subjects, whose connections are gradually revealed, are past and future, superstition and logic, a hunter and his scientist brother.

There isn’t a predictable moment, and Cotillard (who last worked with Desplechin on Ismael’s Ghosts) and Poupaud (who played a far more even-keeled Vuillard in A Christmas Tale) inhabit their roles with bracing fearlessness.

White's film is a love letter not just to Kelly and the Beatles, but also to postwar working-class Liverpool.

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

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.

It’s Wang’s eye for social realities, brought to life by her cast, that gives her film its edge.

It's great to look at, nearly giddy with pop-culture love, and its particulars are intriguing. But those pieces — by turns weird, soulful and exhilarating — merely accumulate, when they should be generating magic.

Well-told and charming, debuting writer-helmer Georgia Lee's comedy-drama Red Doors is big on heart but never sappy. Without overdoing the quirk factor or the melodrama, Lee shows a sure feel for family dynamics, and her light touch brings out the best in the ensemble's lovely, understated performances.

Despite effective moments, VanAlkemade's film is too diffuse. He gives us snippets of the group's spirited performances, but their effect on audiences remains unclear.

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

At its strongest, Dark Night taps into the emptiness, hurt and longing beneath the pings and swipes of our "connected" world. But for all its artfulness, the film doesn’t shed light so much as push buttons.

Magic Farm features a stupendous cast fully in sync with Ulman’s deadpan absurdity. The actors effortlessly entwine the droll and the ingenuous, but as Ulman juggles more characters and more plot angles than in her first movie, there isn’t necessarily more payoff.

In Ashok's reunion with the love of his life (Mary Steenburgen) — the chance to see her after many years is the true reason for his trip — the film taps into a tender wistfulness, Steenburgen making her character's every glance and hesitation resonate with emotion.

Huang has made an eye-opening capsule history that will resonate most keenly with Vice fans. But there’s something more widely instructive, too, in his portrait of a culture clash that turned into an unlikely courtship: ragtag punks and the investment bankers eager to hit the “millennial sweet spot.”

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.

For all its winking jabs, this blend of giddy bits and teachable moments eventually follows the same old playbook.

If director Emmanuelle Bercot's feature isn't always dramatically satisfying, it is fueled by the fine, flinty chemistry of Catherine Deneuve, Benoît Magimel and newcomer Rod Paradot.

The movie both embraces and questions the romance of heroism, a provocative paradox that would have had more dramatic oomph if the screenplay were less staid, the characters more fully fleshed.

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.