Sheri Linden

Having made a number of well-regarded, female-focused short films, the Icelandic director graduates to features with a sure grasp of naturalistic performance and an eye for character-shaping landscape.

The screenplay by Amy Fox is mechanical, the plot more contrived than charged under Meera Menon’s lackluster direction. But as a study of endurance and self-preservation in the face of persistent double standards, the movie clicks.

[An] incisive and absorbing documentary.

Uplifting without a drop of sap, the tale of a boy's obsession with a glittering swimming pool and how it changes four lives offers numerous pleasures and one of the most satisfying and resonant conclusions to be seen in recent cinema.

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.

Rachel Lang’s first feature isn’t about placing Ana on the road to her life’s purpose; it’s a serpentine trip through impetuous leaps forward and messy retreats.

Within the culinary world and beyond, the honors and accolades have been plentiful for Kennedy, who's been compared to Julia Child, Mick Jagger and Indiana Jones. Whomever her extraordinary life might bring to mind, this grande dame of gastronomy has lived it on her own terms.

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.

Clear-eyed and urgent.

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

Ladkani's Sea of Shadows is a stirring adventure — inspiring and heartbreaking in equal measure.

Matching the screenplay’s lack of nuance, Campbell (Casino Royale, The Protégé) orchestrates the proceedings with a flat efficacy, stringing together familiar action beats and churning up little that rings true.

Nothing in the film has a fraction of the dramatic impact of the emotional roller-coaster Colman’s performance embodies.

Set in a rural village and cast with nonactors, led by a feral performance from dancer Wendy Chinchilla Araya, the drama occupies its own territory, tinged with magical realism and deeply immersed in the sensory world. It’s also a vivid reminder that even a matriarchy can be paternalistic.

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.

A well-told tale, and though its compact running time makes it a fine TV fit, its visual poetry is worth a big-screen look.

What sets Code Black apart is that the filmmaker is himself a physician. His extraordinary access to life-and-death moments and his illuminating perspective on the medical system make for a powerful viewing experience.

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

The elegiac Spettacolo is in some ways a familiar story, revolving around the universal tug of war between time and tradition.

Fueling the drama is the quiet ferocity of Zar Amir Ebrahimi’s performance and her tender chemistry with Selina Zahednia as 6-year-old Mona.

There isn’t a predictable or hackneyed exchange in the drama, which understands not just the immense challenges its characters face but also the throwaway humor that can be essential to a family’s connective tissue.

These are people at the frontline of idealism in action, working to alleviate suffering, one patient at a time, in some of the most devastated places on Earth.

Director Roger Gual presents little in the way of tantalizing culinary visuals, and that leaves the paper-thin characters as the main course.

Beyond her tenacious and intimate reporting, director and cinematographer Polak has made a work of powerful images — heart-rending, elegiac, charged with hope.

The film's concerns are profoundly therapeutic, but it nimbly avoids every therapy-drama cliché.

An Honest Liar isn't simply a career recap or a fond portrait; the movie takes exhilarating turns as directors Justin Weinstein and Tyler Measom follow present-day developments in Randi's personal life.

An intellectual inquiry with burning present-day resonance, The Meaning of Hitler is also a road trip through some of the darkest chapters of European history.

Its perspective is entirely fresh, eschewing the standard, and more readily engrossing, nonfiction custom of first-person testimony and faces in dramatic close-up. Peering into the liminal place where history’s ghosts linger, McQueen stirs up something more complex than emotion.