Sheri Linden

At its most hopeful, the film traces a story of medical diplomacy, involving a young Gaza boy's life-saving surgery by an Israeli doctor. At its most searing, it illuminates the seeds of hatred and the depths of suffering and mistrust.

Mistaking provocation for insight, and failing to sell the presumed heroism of its cunning central character, the movie grows less involving with each step. It can't make Erica Vandross' fate matter, but in Deutch it gives us a motor-mouthed wonder who commands attention.

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.

Honoring the primacy of language for his characters, Levine deftly reveals the ways they wield it to seduce, attack, manipulate, repress and, occasionally, to communicate.

To prepare himself for the big leap back onstage, DiMaggio talks to friends from the New York comedy scene of the ’80s, many of them now household names. Their conversations, filled with smart and spirited observations about showbiz and the business of life, are the heart of this engaging film, and a delight.

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.

This folk tale braids together the primordial and the divine in endlessly surprising ways.

A lyrical work that’s as bright and captivating as it is poignant.

The handsomely downbeat atmospherics overwhelm its themes of love, parenthood, crime and punishment. The narrative doesn't quite coalesce, and except for a few late-in-the-proceedings moments, it doesn't deliver the grim, indelible shivers of the best noir.

As the film moves elegantly between past and present, Brooks proves a keen observer of behavior and the pitfalls of overthinking. Finding complex beauty in what would be merely obvious in a lesser work, her delightful feature taps into a rarely broached, generally female coming-of-age dilemma: the fear of losing yourself before you know who you are.

As the writer-director's sly gaze shifts into an insistently upbeat appeal for female empowerment, the movie loses its comic steam.

The actors can't turn the strained stabs at poetry into the affecting meditation that was clearly intended.

Adding wrestling to the rom-com mix doesn't quite disguise how by-the-numbers this girl-meets-girl story is. But with its likable characters, local color and cross-cultural sparks, "Signature Move" has unsentimental sweetness and pluck.

Amid the verisimilitude of location shooting and a cast of mostly nonprofessionals playing fictionalized versions of themselves, Carpignano inserts poetic touches.

Montiel treats his story's happily unsung oddballs with sincere affection. He doesn't hold them up to ridicule, or insist that they snap out of their quirkiness and conform. But he doesn't quite know what to do with them.

At first, the writer-director’s onscreen presence feels like an unnecessary distraction, and it could certainly be pared down. But as his interviews push deeper into the situation — and its overlap with the water crisis in Flint, Michigan — his investigative methods and congenial manner of confrontation prove productive, the results compelling and revelatory.

However pointed the drama's lessons, they're never simplistic and always involving, pulsing with compassion and urgency as Hamoud's vivid characters defy the rules.

The ace cast provides delicious moments, to be sure, but mainly they're playing caricatures in search of a compelling plot.

Characters say precisely what they mean in the film, its flat dialogue a shortcoming not countered by the bland central performances of Juan Riedinger (Narcos) and Julie Lynn Mortensen, in her feature debut.

However nuanced and artful, the nightmarish unease is laid on so thick that, in combination with the cryptic narrative, it gradually turns to murk.

Whatever affection the filmmaker might have for her characters, she does her actors no favors, leaving newcomers as well as seasoned talents flailing.

Though its dark riches can at moments feel like overload, and its narrative thrust occasionally grows diffuse, the story casts an undeniable spell.

Olshefski excerpts and shapes the passing years with a fluent intimacy that makes the calamitous intrusion of random gun violence, and its lasting effect on the Raineys’ daughter, PJ, all the more shocking.

Soufra's lasting impression is one of empowerment and the energizing sense of purpose and community that the women derive from the enterprise along with their incomes.

The starry chemistry of leads Ansel Elgort and Chloë Grace Moretz injects a modicum of energy into the coming-of-age drama, whose elements of romance, crime and smart-kid angst never coalesce.

Above all, it’s the warm, searching conversations between father and daughter, whether they’re seated side by side or she’s questioning him from behind the camera, that give the documentary its poignant immediacy.

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

The clunky organization and very basic production values give way to something inspiring.