Stephen Farber

Beyond its visual splendors, however, the film achieves searing moral power.

There is no simple answer to the questions this film poses, but it makes us think about the complexities of an issue that has been muddied by tough-on-crime politicians.

The picture doesn’t fully succeed, but it showcases strong performances.

This material would never have attracted a major studio, so Christy Walton — heir to the Wal-Mart fortune — financed the picture herself, not because of any desire to become a movie mogul but simply because of her passion for the novel. She allowed the filmmakers to work without major stars or obvious commercial hooks added to the story. Although the film doesn’t always sustain dramatic impact, its fidelity to the spirit of the novel is impressive.

Although the film recounts an intriguing slice of social history, it is too haphazard and repetitive to be truly memorable.

Skillfully edited and energetically paced, Smiling Through provides a memorable time capsule for those who miss the smart magazines that will never return.

There is no denying the emotional force that this film develops, and for that, we can credit talented filmmakers and two stars working at the height of their powers.

The film never quite clarifies its own attitude toward Hart. It simply doesn’t spend enough time with him to allow the audience to decide whether he was a truly transformative politician undone by tabloid reporters or just another slick operator. This robs the film of a tragic dimension that it might have achieved.

The stunt work is amazing, and the pace is breathless enough to keep one watching right up to the somewhat ambiguous conclusion.

Honeymoon is a microbudgeted horror movie that achieves some genuinely shivery moments.

Palmer keeps his focus tightly on the families, which makes the movie admirably unpretentious but also incomplete. Nevertheless, the picture has a vibrant central character in James McDonagh, the leading fighter in the clan who begins to question the rites of violence.

The surprise of Suffragette is how much anger and urgency it contains, and how much new material it unearths.

Handsomely mounted and well acted, the film breaks no new ground but remains engrossing.

Cooper seizes control of the movie when he’s onscreen, but the two young leads are also enormously appealing.

While the movie’s theme is familiar, even a little stale, the vivid details help to freshen the story, and the actors sock the movie home.

The film is very well designed by directors Rohrbaugh and Powell, the musical interludes really sing and the actors make for scintillating company.

The title may sound incendiary, something left over from the Russ Meyer era, but Danny Wolf’s Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies turns out to be informative and even-handed as well as entertaining.

Young viewers looking for unbridled raunch will be sadly disappointed, and so will other moviegoers expecting more than a few wan chuckles. This picture is like a brightly colored balloon with all the comic air seeping out.

The subject is a rich one, but the film simply isn’t incisive enough.

It is a tribute to Bening’s performance that she keeps us mesmerized by Nyad even at her most stubbornly pigheaded.

Cumberbatch and Foy play beautifully together; the chemistry is palpable, and both performers know how to charm audiences without overselling the romance.

It is a pleasure to watch the present-day Francis interact with people all over the world and articulate his hopes for improving the lot of the poor. The film is humane and unobjectionable, but in the end, it isn’t pointed enough to seize the attention of skeptics in the audience.

The horrors of recent decades deserve the thoughtful, impassioned analysis that Moreh provides.

Nine Muses is clearly the work of a talented filmmaker, and there are many moments to beguile the ears as well as the eyes. Yet it's a long slog through a few thousand years of myth and history, and most viewers are likely to grow impatient during the journey.

This film will not resolve the question of whether technological “progress” represents an advance or a decline in civilization, but it certainly will provoke conversations about that issue. And the focus on a real person over a period of years certainly adds pungency to the debate.

The film evolves into an unconventional road movie that turns out to be quietly affecting.

The two superb performances and the tactful hand of a gifted new director ensures that the audience will still be thinking about these people long after the journey ends.

He Named Me Malala retells that story in a deft and affecting way. Director Davis Guggenheim, who made the Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth and the controversial Waiting for Superman, does some of his most heartfelt work in this tribute to Malala and her entire family.