Walter Addiego

It’s a master class with a director who profoundly loves the movies, and, in his best work, has shown dazzling skill at making them.

Presenting Princess Shaw looks and feels like a DIY project, which is fine because the documentary is really a hymn to self-reliance — although bolstered with a modest amount of plain old luck.

If you can live with its blemishes, The Lobster is a bracing experience.

Who can resist a good horse story? Simply and directly made, Dark Horse is a rousing documentary.

So there’s talent on view here, but in service of a questionable proposition, with the whole thing tiptoeing toward the exploitative. It would be nice to see Mascaro try his hand at less volatile material.

Math buffs will appreciate the inclusion of a brief and witty anecdote they may already know involving Ramanujan and the number 1,729. Well done.

This kind of psychological mystery, with its suggestion of fugue states, needs to work by hints and whispers, but Pali Road has pretty low expectations of its audience. It ought to be light on its feet, but it lumbers.

The director’s skill pushes what could have been the same old song into a likable testament to the saving powers of young love and rock ’n’ roll.

There’s nothing wrong with stretching audience credibility, but, to quote another movie that dabbles in the highly improbable, these things must be done delicately.

It may be as emotionally exhausting for the viewer as for the participants.

Creating this kind of otherworldly mood takes exceptional talent, and this is a film worth experiencing.

The film is well acted, with especially strong work by Alonso and Zegers. And director Larraín has a powerful knack for depicting human monsters. But he stacks the deck so heavily that at times the film can seem like simple-minded anti-clericalism, and at least some viewers are bound to resist.

The film is cleanly made and moves quickly, which enhances its effectiveness. It raises moral issues that simply can’t be addressed too often.

A melancholy Spanish drama that’s competently made and checks off all the boxes defining a contemporary art-house movie. But it lacks the spark that separates top-of-the-line films from the pack, and watching it becomes something of a slog.

To be sure, Censored Voices can hardly be seen as anything but a political document, one that shares Oz’s views.

This is history of a personalized and meditative sort, and you ought to give it a chance.

With more than a hint of the magazine’s trademark insouciance, the film gives us a close look at how the selection process works and introduces us a to a handful of younger artists, as well as such stalwarts as George Booth and Roz Chast.

In all, it’s a relaxed portrait of a likable fellow.

Hand it to directors Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K. Walker, who could have made the story into a black-hat/white-hat affair. Without soft-pedaling Cobb’s noxious ideology, they implicitly raise questions about how Leith responded to the perceived danger.

There are two main obstacles to enjoying The Last Witch Hunter. One is your ability to buy Vin Diesel as an immortal slayer of evildoers plying his trade in today’s Manhattan. You also have to swallow a by-the-numbers plot buried under an avalanche of fast-and-furious but underwhelming CGI effects.

He Named Me Malala gets good marks as a laudatory piece about a genuinely valiant young woman, but it could use a modest dose of objectivity.

There’s lots of eye candy, and the pace is fast, but somehow the movie falls short. You’re forgiven if you get the idea that “Scorch Trials” suffers from “middle movie” fatigue.

A gripping study of Bobby Fischer, perhaps the greatest chess player ever.

Strict plausibility isn’t necessary in these movies, and while No Escape doesn’t completely throw it out the window, it still inspires the occasional unintended giggle.

Offers some hit-and-miss pleasures, but may finally strike you as pedestrian.

The actor suffered deeply, and however much he’s responsible for that, it’s hard not to feel some compassion for a bright and sensitive artist who, at least early on, seemed full of life.

Like in so many silents, the plot is joyously minimal.

It’s a testimony to how much this is a live issue in Indonesia that some of the credits are listed simply as “anonymous.”