Stephen Holden

About Elly is gorgeous to look at. The ever-changing sky and sea lend it a moodiness so palpable that the climate itself seems a major character dictating the course of events; the weather rules.

It is up to its fine cast to build what little sense of mystery is conjured and to bring a sense of coherence to a narrative mishmash that is all smirking attitude with no subtext. Think of it as a goof.

Apart from Ms. Mirren’s performance, Woman in Gold smugly and shamelessly pushes familiar buttons.

Lone Scherfig (“An Education”), the Danish filmmaker who directed the movie from a screenplay by Ms. Wade, has coaxed wonderfully nasty performances from a young cast.

Man From Reno fascinates. It invites you to go back, decipher its clues and discern a grand design, if there is one.

As a piece of storytelling, A Wolf at the Door may be a tawdry little shocker. But on a visceral level, it is a knife to the gut.

Mr. Jacobs and Mr. Grodsky have an extraordinary ear for the rhythms and nuances of everyday speech, as voices overlap, conversations take random directions, and casual remarks carry loaded subtexts.

She’s Lost Control sustains a mood of deepening alienation, but the attitude of the movie is too detached for it to be emotionally gripping, and its ending is botched.

What authenticity Mr. Cannavale and Ms. Bening bring to their roles is the sense of groundedness and integrity for one-note characters in a movie whose screenplay is little more than an efficiently executed outline.

The screenplay relies on so many mechanical contrivances to make the story gripping that you can hear the rusty machinery clanking.

It Follows recycles familiar teenage horror tropes — a girl alone in a house, evil forces banging on a door — but its mood is dreamy. Seldom do you feel manipulated by exploitative formulas. The violence, when it comes, is sudden, and the camera doesn’t linger over the gore.

With its casual deadpan attitude, Buzzard offers a nightmare portrait of arrested development and anomie for the age of inequality.

In aggressively sunny picker-uppers like the Marigold movies, there is a thin line between adorable and insufferable. And in the second “Marigold,” Mr. Patel has succumbed to his tendency toward cuteness.

Explores interlocking themes of sexuality, immigration and power dynamics with a cleareyed sensitivity and refuses to demonize even its shadiest characters.

On one level, Bluebird is a bitter slice of life about hardy, stoic New Englanders battling the elements and a crumbling regional economy. On another, it’s a poetic meditation on the human struggle to make sense of a cruel and indifferent universe.

Whether something did or didn’t happen, and the comic confusion as the future bumps into the past: those are the smart parts of a movie that is not as idiotic as it pretends to be.

In Mr. Jordan’s portrayal of Jamie, this handsome talented musical theater performer (“Newsies”) goes for the jugular in taking down his character and making him insufferable.

That Mr. Grant can bring Keith back from the edge more or less persuasively is a testament to his ability to convey genuine humility without mawkishness, once he sees the light.

Ms. Hamilton’s straightforward documentary skillfully interweaves reminiscences by members of the group with re-enactments of the burglary.

Mike Binder’s steady, well-intentioned exploration of the racial tensions affecting two branches of a Southern California family, is notable for what it doesn’t try to do.

My Name Is Hmmm ... has its magical moments, but they are sabotaged by the director’s showy, ham-handed technique applied to a frustratingly threadbare screenplay that leaves you wanting more.

The movie is too shrewd to qualify as a jeremiad, but underneath the comedy are boiling undercurrents of anger and despair.

Son of a Gun adds to the mystique that Australian crime films are meaner, nastier and more brutish than their American counterparts. But it changes style roughly every half-hour. And behind its macho preening is a preposterous, routinely executed story.

What a frantically dull spectacle this vanity project is.

The story loses credibility as it goes along, as the body count escalates, and Robinson’s solutions to life-and-death crises grow increasingly far-fetched.

As the pace picks up, whatever spell the movie cast is shattered, and Still Life melts into a heap of sentimental slush.

For all its disorganization and lack of an ending or even a sense of direction, Appropriate Behavior is alive. The screenplay is packed with smart remarks, clever and unpredictable turns of phrase that knock you off balance.

Valley of Saints finds a poignant humanity in this chaste romance, which awakens in Gulzar a wondrous sense of possibility, along with a new awareness of the world’s complexity.