Tirdad Derakhshani

Iglesia's riotous film is crammed with comedic chaos.

The weight of the picture's moral and political message rests on Ice Cube's Calvin. A decent, honest man with a well-developed sense of responsibility and a passion for social justice, he's an iconic American type - the reluctant hero. He'd rather tend to his own garden, but when called to duty, he's all in.

The animated French family film April and the Extraordinary World will have your imagination doing somersaults and cartwheels.

Never again let it be said that an action movie is just like a video game. Hardcore Henry, a frenetic, dizzying, and ultraviolent actioner from Russian rocker-turned-director Ilya Naishuller is one - a first-person shooter writ large for the big screen.

Giannoli's riotously funny and heartbreaking film follows Marguerite's attempt to stage a solo recital in a grand theater in Paris.

Predictable, tired, formulaic, it makes up for its lack of originality with a bigger budget, louder jokes, louder costumes, and louder music.

The Confirmation is a powerful directorial debut from 59-year-old writer Bob Nelson, who received an Oscar nomination for his first screenplay, Nebraska.

While it hits some of the usual sci-fi tropes, Creative Control's center of gravity isn't tech itself, but the relationships of those who use it.

Well-intentioned if cloying, Miracles from Heaven has an appealing cast and an accessible take on spirituality.

A thrilling, gorgeous actioner about a massive tsunami that wipes a tourist town off the map.

Emotionally engaging and unhampered by dialogue, Boy & the World will appeal to children with its deceptively simple story and its visual splendor.

A triumphant, feel-good, laugh-out-loud, sports biopic.

Lindholm's mastery of film form is matched by his willingness to engage with some of the most intractable moral quandaries that haunt contemporary life.

While it descends too often into the melodramatic, it's a solid, smart picture and a welcome addition to the genre.

We can't but enjoy the movie and its oddball characters - which makes us somehow complicit in their crimes.

The film delivers what it promises - an education and a thrill.

Deadpool is, on the whole, a big bowl of fun filled with great stunts, gory fight scenes, and sexy poses.

It's not a critique but a rather graceful, witty, and stylish film that offers possible solutions to the problems Moore believes plague the United States.

It's easy to mistake the simplicity of plot and theme here for simple-mindedness - this isn't Pynchon or Proust. Kung Fu Panda 3 has the economy of a Zen koan, not to mention its inner harmony and wisdom.

Despite its formulaic structure, The Abandoned has a lot going for it. It eschews cheap scares, bloodletting, and gore. Instead, it works the audience with good, old-fashioned suspense. And it has heart.

Partridge portrays David with immaculate timing and meticulous attention to detail. We feel for the character's pain, but never quite trust him.

It would better to call it Two Actors in Search of a Story.

For all its grand promises, Ip Man 3 teeters uneasily among B-movie clichés.

It's grown-up, deadly serious, and free of the ham-handed romantic subplots that mire so many films from the region in ick stew.

A small, intimate micro-budget effort, Altered Minds boasts terrific production values, pitch-perfect performances, and an eerie soundscape of found noises that evoke the feel of a surreal nightmare.

It's refreshing to see an actor tell his own story with some real honesty. Overall, however, Tab Hunter Confidential is too much like every other Hollywood True Story out there.

Amid all the horror and the black ooze, there emerges a deeply touching story about the power of love.

Despite its terrific performances and its great use of locations, Shelter doesn't have enough substance to hold your attention or linger in the mind for long.

Despite its visual beauty and Rahim's extraordinary, and silent, performance, the film never quite manages to connect on an emotional level.

While its message is a little simplistic, Knock Knock is shot through with a brilliant, gleefully anarchic dark humor that's equally fun and disturbing.

Velásquez is a remarkable individual, and her message should not go unheeded.

Overall, the effect is closer to a Monty Python skit or a Village People music vid than a serious film about civil rights.

Exceptionally graceful and accomplished, Ozon's film challenges our received notions of normalcy, intimacy, and love.

Wolf Totem has some of the most exciting, mind-blowing scenes of nature I've ever seen.

Phase II has some nice comic touches, but it's a forgettable B-movie.

Unsullied was made by a director with real promise. It's a shame Rice picked this turkey to shoot as his first

The intention is clear: Garneau wants to make his points as persuasive and accessible as possible. Yet, the truths That Sugar Film contains were already obvious decades ago. It's sad that we need reminding.

The chemistry between Smulders and Bean is simply terrific. Their performances almost save the film from its earnest, if bumbling, attempts to make a statement about the social, economic, and racial differences that divide the two characters.

A stunning examination of teenage cruelty, exploitation, and crime that refuses to give us the satisfaction of identifying with the characters.

Williams does a terrific job portraying Nolan's ambivalence, the mix of fear, guilt, and excitement that grips him and the gradual change he undergoes in the ensuing weeks.

While it has considerable charms, Hippocrates is just too predictable.

Aloupis is not untalented as writer or helmer. But his first outing is an unsurprising, paint-by-the-numbers picture.

A breathtaking, disturbing look at urban angst and the emptiness of youth culture.

Winterbottom's films never bore. They do sometimes frustrate, provoke - even anger. That's the case with his entry in the true-story genre, The Face of an Angel.

Funny, wry, tragic, and deeply moving.

Messy and confused, the film is a mishmash of tropes from Shakespeare, heist movies, family melodrama, and romance novels hastily thrown together.

A schmaltzy, deeply sentimentalized drama about American slavery and the rise of the Underground Railroad.

One of the most insightful films about the War on Terror since 9/11.

A fascinating, suspenseful story about obsessive love, money, the Mafia, and murder.

At turns horribly funny and simply horrific, Piven's film suggests our therapeutic age has reduced us all to psychic cripples who resort to emotional exhibitionism in lieu of honest self-examination and self-expression.

Always, murmuring just beneath the surface, there's a political undercurrent to Farhadi's films, a gentle whisper of a critique aimed at the weight of Iran's combined cultural and political intransigence.

5 Flights Up is a sweet film with a few nicely turned lines, some good jokes, and some very lovely dialogue. But it's not much more than fluff and air.

Sadly, director Lee Toland Krieger's offering, a weak wanna-be Jean Cocteau-esque fable with magical realist pretensions, does great disservice to Lively and her remarkably accomplished costars.

A horror pic with a new gimmick that likely will spawn an entire subgenre of more substandard rubbish.

But there's not much here: The characters are paper-thin, and the action is slow, at times agonizingly so.

A somber piece of film poetry about men so invested in a rigid notion of honor and revenge they become trapped in an endless loop of violence.

It leaves behind a nagging feeling, a suggestion there's more to the story than its story.

Not a great film. Or particularly good. In fact, it's fairly bad as B-movies go.

The Salt of the Earth, has the power to draw you into its world, transfix, and perhaps eventually transform you.

It's refreshing to see a film set amid the daily life of an impoverished, rural immigrant community. It's a shame the only aspect of the social world that is explored is the sexual exploits of a few teens.

An ambitious, if wildly uneven, character study that relies on a taut script, snappy dialogue, and a few well-placed plot twists, The Barber boasts a fine turn by Scott Glenn as an aging serial killer.

You'll need a strong stomach for some of the scenes in A Girl Like Her, one of the most moving and intelligent of the recent glut of films and TV specials about teenage bullying.

One of the most uncinematic pieces crafted by an otherwise fine stylist, Cymbeline befuddles with its ineffective blocking and lack of art direction.

Road Hard, partly funded through crowd-sourcing, is an enjoyable picture. It's sure to appeal to Man Show fans, though it withers when compared to another recent film about a has-been comic directed by its star, Chris Rock's remarkable Top Five.

A superbly researched and edited documentary about the women's movement in the 1960s.

A delightful, sharp dramedy that skewers the topic from every angle imaginable.

Mildly enjoyable despite its basic mediocrity.

A transcendent political poem as intellectually rigorous as it is beautiful.

It falls short of the mark, even as it hits every one of the genre's conventions.

A deeply disturbing, intimate, and not unsuccessful look at 10 years in the life of a young boy, Harlon, who grows up to become a Columbine-style killer.

On many levels, Kingsman has the makings of a sure-fire hit. Yet, this is one spy story even the most dedicated addicts of the genre would do well to miss.

A transcendent work from Ireland's Cartoon Saloon studio that's almost wasted on kids.

Song One burns with genuine sentiment, charismatic actors, and good music. One wishes it were held together by something more than a series of moods.

Paddington is perfect for today's audiences, so long overfed on comic-book fodder. The bear's impeccable manners, perfect diction, and earnestness make him the ultimate anti-Bart Simpson.

At times, Spare Parts sails perilously close to the saccharine. But the film is a fine example of a message movie that does justice both to its important subject matter and to its characters' inner lives.

Eloquent, moving, and deeply troubling, Little Accidents is a true contemporary tragedy.

Crazy funny.

If Mark Wahlberg's new pic, The Gambler, feels like a stale rehash of existential tropes, that's because it is.

We know how the story ends: Nordling persuades Choltitz to back down. Yet, the film somehow maintains a razor-sharp sense of suspense throughout. And it ends with a delicious plot twist that makes one rethink Nordling's moral superiority.

A truly refreshing break from the Hollywood humdrum, the film is a perfect vehicle for Rock's range of talents, giving him plenty of breathing space to launch into his trademark stand-up riffs while grounding him in a story as moving as it is funny.

Those who give into its spell will find this a gentle, moving, and deeply intelligent portrait of the awkward, fumbling steps teens make into adulthood, and the promise of first love that draws them on.

An ineffective, derivative, and awkwardly executed mash-up of ghost flicks and voodoo movies.

The filmmakers don't bother hammering home a backstory or explaining why David is crazy. They just throw us in the deep end and dazzle us with a series of violent encounters that ends with a deadly chase in a surreal fun house maze of mirrors.

Firth is brilliant as a preternaturally patient man - every day he has to tell her the same exact story. But he has a creepy way about him. Is it love that drives him, or something darker?

Araki's films have never been known for their subtlety. Think Douglas-Sirk-meets-Johnny-Rotten. He tries to rein in his tendency for the baroque in White Bird in a Blizzard, but he pushes the story too far in the direction of the grotesque.

Adapted from the devilishly clever 1955 novel by master crime author Georges Simenon, The Blue Room is a dazzling deconstruction of the mystery genre that turns its conventions on their heads.

Yet, despite a mesmerizing performance by Gyllenhaal - he's as transfixing as a cobra in a snake charmer's dance - and a terrific turn by Riz Ahmed as an unskilled homeless kid Louis hires as his assistant, Nightcrawler doesn't quite have the satirical smarts that made "Network" a classic.

The Best of Me is neither worse than his other films nor particularly better. At 118 minutes, it is, however, one of the longest. Interminably long, dragging out its molasses heart through what seem like three different endings.

Hong, who makes his feature debut here, has a masterful command of rhythm, beautifully weaving each strand of the narrative around that momentous opening scene.

It hobbles its otherwise fascinating premise by descending into hagiography. Webb's story is a tragedy, to be sure, but portraying him as a saint and martyr does little to advance the truth.

A weak "Toy Story"-esque animated film for preschool kids made with little imagination, little art, and even less soul.

Sadly, Annabelle, a cheap, sleazy, low-budget prequel meant to explain the origins of that particular doll, is as undistinguished, uninteresting, and unscary as the worst of the Chucky films.

Identity theft and credit-card fraud never looked as exciting or sexy as in Plastic, a frothy little heist movie from Britain that starts off with great promise, only to devolve midway into an empty derivative shell of a film.

A bleak, despairing testament to the cruelty of war, and how it mangles and defaces everyone it touches.

Filled with embarrassing gosh-golly moments about non-Western cultures, it's a staggering, and insulting, example of cultural myopia.

Two Night Stand, is a clever, if uneven, romcom about Generation Y's conflicted, paradoxical views of sex and love. Featuring strong dialogue and terrific performances, the film has moments of near-brilliance, but falls apart with a lame, conventional ending.

The Green Prince is an extraordinary achievement. It has all the suspense of a great espionage yarn, but it's also a powerful moral document that calls into question the tactics of terrorism.

Some viewers will dismiss Autumn Blood as a pretentious Euro-art iteration of Straw Dogs. For those willing to be open to its experimentation and more charitable about its many faults, the film can provide a powerful experience and serve as an fascinating testament to the tenuous nature of the social contract.