Sheri Linden

Where Band Aid excels is in its mix of blisteringly understated comedy with a compassionate view of the ways we can let our lives drift away from us. There’s something bracingly fresh in the way Lister-Jones and Pally combine blind spots and vulnerabilities with a particularly secular-Jewish self-consciousness.

It’s tricky, to put it mildly, to use suicidal impulses as a story engine for a comedy, and director Rob Spera and screenwriter Jared Rappaport don’t quite pull it off as they navigate the middle ground between dark humor and emotional catharsis.

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 drama’s power may dwindle, yet its end-of-the-world scenario remains oddly recognizable.

I Am Another You offers further evidence of this young director’s investigative energy and eye for cinematic poetry without the slightest preciousness.

Putting the viewer into a men’s circle like no other, The Work is a remarkable piece of reportage.

Working from a snappy but never snarky screenplay by first-timer Shelby Farrell, helmer Freeland (Drunktown’s Finest) maintains a strain-free upbeat energy yet keeps the action rooted in a strong sense of place and class.

John Trengove’s first feature takes real chances, delivering a troubling portrait of the collision between communal and personal identity.

However heroic a figure Fanning’s Liz may be, however much this fine actress makes us feel her terror and determination, any sense of triumph is steadily, grindingly undone.

The by-the-numbers story never achieves its aimed-for grandeur or intensity, and the striking Turkish locations prove far more interesting than the characters.

However universal the perennial questions and struggles that The Shack illuminates, under Stuart Hazeldine’s plodding direction, its faith-based brand of self-help feels like being trapped in someone else’s spiritual retreat — in real time.

Though the engaging documentary treads through unavoidably familiar territory — the loneliness of the road, the anguish of bombing — its chorus of testifiers often find sharp new angles of approach.

Given the scope of the early-1930s atrocity, the most shocking thing about director George Mendeluk’s new dramatization is how utterly devoid of emotional impact it is.

Gael Garcia Bernal’s effortless magnetism is the complicating factor — and the only compelling one — in You’re Killing Me Susana.

Seamlessly melding Marvel mythology with Western mythology, James Mangold has crafted an affectingly stripped-down stand-alone feature, one that draws its strength from Hugh Jackman’s nuanced turn as a reluctant, all but dissipated hero.

Whatever license the word “fable” grants Hamilton, it doesn’t redeem the narrative muddle. But there’s an undeniable gutsiness to her filmmaking. The American dreamscape she creates is memorably unsettling.

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

Mary Mazzio’s eye-opening documentary reveals that the buying and selling of tweens and teens, long recognized as a plight in some developing nations, is also very much a domestic problem.

Kedi eloquently taps into the mutual attraction between the cats and their people, as well as the animals’ complexity and resilience.

The talking-head commentary, however firsthand, personal and eloquent, can be repetitious, while the filmmaker leaves unnecessary basic information gaps in the story he’s telling. But Midsummer in Newtown is nonetheless an affecting chronicle.

With its uneven performances and purposeful touches of theatrical artifice, Alligator Girl is finally more distancing than involving.

A seemingly tourist-bureau-sanctioned travelogue posing as a romantic drama.

There’s a clumsy, soapy tepidness to the procession of plot points, but within individual scenes, the actors pierce the genteel surface.

Loneliness, alienation, the ache of nostalgia and the everyday absurdity of life infuse every encounter in the unconventional road trip.

Christopher Smith’s self-consciously stylish genre homage finally feels like a baby film noir, playacting without the requisite bone-deep dread.

Writer-director Simon Aboud doesn’t push the quirk factor; even when the narrative is at its most playful, he keeps it rooted to a lived-in reality. Mining familiar territory with an earnest clarity, he shapes a mild yet winning fantasy about hearts opening and friendships blooming.

A drama that struggles to breathe life into its death-themed narrative.

You don’t have to be a follower of Eagles of Death Metal, or even glancingly familiar with their music, to appreciate the emotional power of Hanks’ deeply felt film.