For a Woman, Diane Kurys' semi-autobiographical film, benefits greatly from its intimate nature, in which a woman discovers secrets from her family's past.

The plain facts, presented without commentary, are an effective plea for a more compassionate immigration policy.

The story has something of a flow, but the film feels more like someone dropping in on the characters' lives. It's more about observation than connecting dots. This isn't a detriment, particularly with strong performances to carry things along.

It is a brutal, beautifully shot movie that starts out to be about revenge but then becomes something more, something even more primal and disturbing.

Jolie's performance so overshadows the rest of the cast (and the rest of the movie) that you sometimes feel as if the other characters are, like us, just standing around watching her. This is not, however, the fault of the other actors. It's the fault of screenwriter Linda Woolverton, who doesn't give them much to do that's challenging or interesting.

MacFarlane's film is too broad, too dumb, too offensive to justify the meager laughs it generates.

Spare, haunting and in its own way beautiful, Ida is an absorbing film about discovering the truth, and the attendant price we pay to learn it.

There's nothing particularly off-putting about the movie. It's all right. But neither is there anything especially compelling. In the context of this cast, another descriptive word comes to mind: disappointing.

The Hornet's Nest serves as a somewhat effective bonding exercise for father and son. But the best of what it has to offer moves beyond that, and puts us alongside the people fighting a daily battle and, sometimes, heartbreakingly, losing the fight.

The Immigrant is not exactly the feel-good hit of the summer, but it is a compelling tale of what, in the end, can only be called survival.

Blended is an Adam Sandler movie that isn't as bad as you feared it would be.

This is a smart movie, a treat for fans of the comics and the franchise. And it's a lot of fun.

The directors include interviews with descendants of the original settlers and with later arrivals — too much so, actually, as the lengthy scenes interrupt the flow of the mystery. But they don't derail it. The story is too lurid, too rich, too compelling.

Although it contains some interesting characters, God's Pocket, like the neighborhood it depicts, is the kind of place you can't wait to escape, even if its inhabitants cannot.

It's all very pleasant, very inspiring, just not very surprising.

How many times have we complained that summer blockbusters are all about the action, at the expense of niceties like character development? Well, Edwards has gone in another direction, one that's more intriguing in theory than on the screen.

Blue Ruin is a movie about revenge, but it reaches far past the bottom-shelf titillations of fantasy to tell a richer, character-driven story with a protagonist who's less avenging angel than ghost.

The premise wears thin after a while and the humor is hit-and-miss, but when it's on its game The Wedding Video can be laugh-out-loud funny.

Documented is obviously a bit of advocacy filmmaking, which is fine, but most of the time it's not compelling enough to reach beyond the converted.

Bright Days Ahead offers an interesting twist on the May-December romance.

Belle is a beautiful period piece, but it's also something more: a study of racism, classism and sexism in 18th-century England.

Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return lacks any sense of magic.

Neighbors is not the classic raunchy comedy it wants to be, but it certainly isn't for lack of trying. And when it's funny, it's really funny. Just not as often as one might hope.

This is a film that finds horror not in the extreme, but in the mundane. That alone makes it a worthwhile entry in a genre that it both inhabits and rises above.

It is exceptional acting, and Locke is a tremendous piece of filmmaking.

Although the visuals are spectacular — a barren Colorado River looks like a landscape from a science-fiction epic — there's not much else here to grab on.

Because the film is unable to settle on a tone, it's hard to get invested in much of anything.

The acting is naturalistic, with a lived-in feel. These are familiar people, it seems like, made so by performances that never drift into lazy melodrama.