Rush, a film about two real-life titans of Formula One racing in the Seventies, splits its narrative between these oil-and-water personalities, which feels about right: It's only half of a good movie.

Like a kindler, gentler "Bully," Mean Creek hinges on the bullied fighting back against the aggressor, but offers a more expansive examination of aggression and, even more significantly, passivity.

The basic outline was adapted from Kurosawa's classic Seven Samurai and made into an American Western by one of the great innovators of the genre, John Sturges. The film led the way for other all-star cast outings.

By the time the film's abrupt conclusion arrives, you realize you've been watching a love story and not, as some might hope, "The Lord of the Rings: The Asian Edition."

For a film focusing on such a rich emotional tapestry, Kundun is strangely lacking in its emotional core.

Winnie the Pooh doesn't reinvent the wheel, just gives it an affectionate spin, and that is no more and no less than what one would hope from a family reunion.

All the film’s accoutrements are note-perfect from the costuming to the music, performances, and set design. Messy family life and moral ideals perfuse the film’s landscape but the film shows how these things can become the foundational elements of an individual’s life.

For those who only recall Bana from his bland showing as Ang Lee's super-thyroidial meltdown monster, his performance here is a revelation.

The film animates a number of Escher’s creations, smoothly explaining his methodologies.

Thelma is a beautiful and heartbreaking film that is an impressive addition to the coming-of-age story. A lady bird, indeed.

Colette is a good primer for a wonderful author, and a reflection on how your life will never turn out as you think.

With new animated feature Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, Nickelodeon proves that this franchise has not lost any flexibility with age.

It's childhood done just right: part cotton candy angels, part gurning adult frighteners, and all wide-eyed kidhood bravado.

All three principal actors – Weisz, McAdams, and Nivola – give effectively constrained performances. They work as a team here, consistent with the delicate balance in their characters’ complicated relationships with one another.

A gorgeously crafted love poem.

A pleasure to watch for the cast alone and their accomplishments should not be obscured by underwritten characters and overwritten jokey set-pieces.

The film delivers some of the most spectacular and intricately choreographed martial arts fighting ever seen on film.

Though this capable documentary is comprehensively informative in so many ways (perhaps to a fault), the one thing it doesn’t quite convey is the wonder and marvel of the undersea world of Cousteau, which continued to move him until his death at age 87.

This is a guy who marched to the beat of his own drum, even one that’s got two spoked wheels and some handlebars.

In the Line of Fire is a terrific action movie with good performances and a smart script that occasionally falters for trying too hard but, on the whole, takes us on psychological journeys that few of us have had opportunities to experience.

To be crystal clear: Comedian and actress Gilda Radner was a genius. Her humor and her life were an impeccable combination of a love of life and precise comic timing. There are beings that light this planet, shining brightly. And Radner shined. It is impossible for me to think of a world without her, and Lisa Dapolito’s documentary goes above and beyond in marking this person’s life.

While Hidden Figures is likable and illuminating, it is, nevertheless, routine and predictable.

Fascinating as the The Infiltrators is, it remains a beginner’s primer to the for-profit immigration system with an oddly jaunty narrative over the top. Like the NIYA activists, its heart may be bigger than its head sometimes, but that’s not the world’s biggest sin.

A Woman in Berlin is like a tour through the blast-cratered psyche of two colliding cultures, each with its own nightmarish tales to tell or acts of violence to experience.

So much of the credit must be laid at the feet of Ian McKellen, whose portrait of Whale is a study in acting excellence.

Higher Ground may not be a true revelation, but it does show a viable path an actor might take to shape intelligent material on her own terms.

Despite the hardships depicted, Golden Door is a sweet film at heart, playing witness to the birth pangs of modern America with both due respect and the occasional comic grace note, but not, oddly, one single shot of the Statue of Liberty.

There are good guys we don't care much about and bad guys that we do and even badder guys we're supposed to hate. But on the sliding scale of culpability, everybody's just a few clicks away from the next guy.

The balance between the slight, near-mythic narrative and the eye-wateringly beautiful cinematography (courtesy of Bradford Young), as well as the aching, spare score by Daniel Hart, create a movie that’s a more lovingly crafted tone poem than anything you’re likely to see on Texas screens this summer.

Based on actual events, this claustrophobic epic is as emotional as they come: a Holocaust story shot through with a layer of darkness both literal and figurative

Cyrus is very funny, and Keener's supporting work as John's divorced ex also amuses. A pat conclusion nevertheless negates the strength of the restive narrative that precedes it.

Should be required viewing for prospective parents still sitting on the spermatazoan fence; after all, you're going to need a good sense of humor, aren't you?

One need not necessarily appreciate Darger's art to enjoy Yu's sympathetic, intimate, and often breathtaking journey into the workings of his mind.

As he did with his previous doc, 2018’s John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection, Faraut finds and obsesses over the rhythm of bodies in motion, using repetition and cross-cuts of the team’s training footage and gameplay with anime sequences and textile manufacturing. These collisions, set to music from Portishead and Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle, are the heart of Witches, hypnotic patterns of serene velocity.

As a first-time feature filmmaker, Beecroft’s storytelling technique could stand greater development, but her sense of place and mood is spot-on. Her film will definitely make you want to scrape the mud off your boots before you leave the theatre.

With the documentary Ballet 422, Lipes’ first return to dance after notable narrative cinematography work (on TV’s Girls and the upcoming Trainwreck, among other projects), he’s somewhat boxed himself into a corner with the cinema verité directive to capture the moment and keep out of the way.

The issue of late-term abortions tends to inspire polemics from both sides of the debate; Shane and Wilson’s approach – sensitive, measured, workmanlike – is a welcome one.

A drop-dead gorgeous period noir, rife with paranoia, femmes fatales, and good men inexorably sinking into the bloody mire and opaque texture of life (and death) during wartime.

Eastwood keeps his direction lean and mean. There’s not an ounce of wasted screen time in Sully’s 96 minutes, but the story, an example of “truth is stranger than fiction,” has all the thrust it needs, and then some.

Relentless and mercurial, this new outing by "Swingers" director Liman takes off somewhere around Mach 3 and never lets up, leaving you with either a pounding headache or a wicked grin, or perhaps both.

Herzog, ever the eccentric filmmaker on a mission, may have met his match in this man of the cloth.

Interstellar is riddled with ridiculisms; the but how comes … never stop. And yet: Nolan, a notoriously chilly filmmaker who’s never shown much faculty with matters of the heart, is pinning that heart squarely on his sleeve.

When the special effects aren’t getting in the way, the kids’ imaginary scenes have a hazy, shimmering quality, as if the potential of a long afternoon with no homework could be measured in waves.

At its best when making the political personal, the film’s exposure of a husband’s enduring mystery about his wife’s motivations has a universal appeal.

It's a good bet for youth audiences (the PG-13 rating is for one instance of language) and finds plenty of thought-provoking subject matter courtside.

Although slowly paced, it is always stunning to look at -- decadent and perverse in that certain Eurotrashy way.

It’s not that Happy People is uninteresting – its presentation of previously unknown, distant lives is full of lots of interesting tidbits. It’s just that the one sensibility of which we were previously aware – that of Herzog’s – is indiscernible, as if frozen beneath all this movie’s ice.

Duris and Demoustier are excellent in a pair of exceedingly complex and emotionally fractious roles, and Ozon’s supremely confident directorial hand and clear affection for these characters transforms The New Girlfriend from a could’ve-been psycho-thriller into a smart, humanistic examination of identity reshaped in the shadow of grief.

Enemies of the State fumbles along like a bad thriller, with shocking turns that land with a dull thud.

Utterly charming.

Feels overlong and underscripted.

Propper’s greatest success is that she doesn’t overdramatize tragedy and trauma. Awful things do occur, but in an organic way, so that the inevitable reaction is a sense of stunned shock. That’s why there’s no sense of judgement: Instead, there is just Propper’s overwhelming sense of empathy for what it is to be young right now.

Joy Ride slides comfortably into the tradition of hard-R road-trip movies while also demonstrating that American culture still has many areas to open up in terms of representation.

Po (Black) may be an animated panda bear, but make no mistake: Deep down he's really just a nerd with a pop-culture obsession.

Wu quite simply is a stunner. Best known for playing the tough-love matriarch from ABC’s "Fresh off the Boat," she betters the book version of Rachel by making her earthier, steelier, and more playful.

The Duke may superficially seem like old hat, but in its comfortable ways there’s still a strong message.

Neither talking down to children nor pandering to their parents, The Secret Garden functions something like a fairy tale in the way in which we all can latch onto different aspects of meaning during different stages of our lives and also in the way in which primordial and psychosexual concerns are made palpable in narratively distanced and socially acceptable terms.

Clearly, the filmmakers did manage to capture some measure of lightning in a bottle.

The cast is nothing short of sensational (especially Woods, who gives us the most memorable and oddly likeable villain since Cruella DeVil) and the animators wisely imbue their drawings with the actors' attributes -- right down to Hermes' (Shaffer's) shades. All the cast members seem to relish their roles and their zest is infectious.

The elliptical narrative also recalls Fernando Meirelles' somewhat similarly themed "The Constant Gardener," a film ultimately more heartfelt and accessible to mainstream audiences because its maker is unafraid of grief and explores it more deeply.

Breakdown further illustrates the axiom that every truly original movie must be remade again and again until it achieves a state of sublime, all-encompassing idiocy.

There are plenty of great things to say about director Janice Engel’s portrait of the late, legendary Ivins, but maybe the best is that after watching Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins, you'll immediately want to go back and re-read all her books.

The film provides a window into the conversations and debates that occurred among soldiers on military bases and while in country, opinions shaped and altered by first-hand experiences and knowledge.

It's a performance that ranks with some of Cage's best, a mix of Pig's earnestness and Adaptation's idiosyncrasies.

What's most fascinating is that there's no self-indulgence on Medak's behalf. It's a filmmaker coming to terms with a deep bruise in his life, and the realization that time may heal all wounds, but will still leave a scar.

The film, for all its archness and theatricality, is essentially a warm and welcome love story of two people, navigating a world that really doesn’t know what to do with them. It’s new. It’s old. It’s the same old tale of love versus oppression, but through the wonderful performances and the gloriously erudite script, Wild Nights hums along in the manner of the best of Dickinson’s work. This film is alive.

When Deneuve is not onscreen, the film is never denuff.

Narratively, we all know where the trajectory of the story is headed, thus the culminating match (nearly 20 minutes) takes up too much screen time without adding anything new to the drama.

Another friggin’ superhero story that acknowledges comic-book tropes while rarely subverting them, Big Hero 6 is powered nonetheless by its witty charms, lively animation, and swift pace.

Harper and Will both come off like good eggs, and the tears wept on both sides – about the decades of deep pain Harper felt denying her true identity, and the terrible realization for Will that he was blind to that pain – are liable to goose sincere tears of your own.

Depp, as the the fragile but irresistibily fabulous title character, is a delight.

Other than the unsatisfactory ending, however, there's much that is commendable in the The Italian, not the least of which are its social criticisms of the buying and selling of children through the adoption businesses currently thriving in Russia and neighboring eastern European countries. In some respects, unfortunately, not much has changed since the world was introduced to little Oliver Twist nearly two centuries ago.

Mommy bursts with so much frenzied, turbulent energy that it really only makes sense when looked at as the fifth feature film by a 25-year-old moviemaker. Québécois Xavier Dolan is one of those enfants terribles of the cinema, making and sometimes acting in films that court attention.

Lee makes the material his own, for better and for worse.

Balibar and Depardieu make a compelling duo who exude an animal magnetism that's undeniable.

My conclusion is that exploitation of a child for the sake of one's career is a shameful act.

Two Lovers is an intensely felt, character-driven film, and there's no stronger character onscreen – not even Leonard – than Leonard's wise, Jewish mother, Ruth, played with effortless, pure perfection by Rossellini.

Sharp scripting, note-perfect performances, and nimble direction and technical execution combine to make Wag the Dog one of the wittiest and most mordant political satires to come along in quite some time.

The destination may seem inevitable, but the twists, turns, and merciless bloodshed make Kill a trip well worth taking.

Honestly, this ultra-noir adaptation of Frank Miller's black-and-white cult comic series is a visual feast ripped straight from the original medium's blood-soaked pages.

I’m not sure tick, tick…Boom! is for everyone. People who like Rent/Larson and musical fans in general will love it.

Even the most ardent of neoconservatives might find this intimate and nuanced documentary about life in occupied Iraq difficult to shake – all politics aside, it is the human element that ultimately defines a nation as a people.

White brings an incredible freshness to the well-trodden postapocalyptic genre. Starfish flips from introspective drama to Lovecraftian creature feature to pastel-tinged animation without ever losing coherence.

She Is Conann is a politically charged, blood-, sex-, and tears-soaked sword, carving through the helpless arteries to the heart of cinematic mediocrity, and it is Mandico’s strongest vision yet.

She Said is a respectful, serious-minded effort that works so hard not to sensationalize the material, it works against its dramatic impact.

Monster is, at its best, simply a chronicle of people trying to get along, which makes it compelling viewing indeed.

Above all, it's a satisfying, almost restful work, as welcome in this less-than-thrilling cinematic summer as a cool soak on a hot summer's day.

It's not nearly as complex and eerily existential as the director's debut, "Moon," but in its own way it's an even more satisfying time slice of identity-scrambled sci-fi.

The relationship has the air of a reckless teen romance, but this is no Romeo and Juliet story. This is more like Snow White running off with one of the huntsmen. Although fairy tales abide by a strict sense of good vs. evil, what we have here is a configuration that’s a bit more muddled.

A thriller wants to entertain you. Little Woods wants you to think, and feel. I did both.

As for the Austin-based Green, the director’s characteristically understated style is well-suited to this material. Joe recalls, in many ways, the filmmaker’s earliest features – "George Washington," "All the Real Girls," and "Undertow" – not to mention his heavily wooded last feature, "Prince Avalanche," films that capture a poetic sense of bewildered young people in the rural South.

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is a frustratingly brilliant (and brilliantly frustrating) experience that formally doesn’t really have a contemporary cinematic referent, an eyeball-slicing polemic by a bomb-throwing provocateur.

Witty, astute, perfectly absurd in a plausibly grounded way, and political without feeling like a polemic, Hutton' quiet satire is merciless about life in the daily hustle - and a lesson about the power of the worker.

Makino finds a way to uplift the young women she writes without any cloying girlboss idealism, and that level of nuance is what these Texan teens deserve.

Despite the notable camp value of Blanchett channeling Gloria Swanson, Cruella de Vil, and an extraterrestrial succulent plant, the doomy villain thing is rote.

Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down is a film about grit. It’s a film about feminism, change-making, and defying adversity.

Narco Cultura smartly and movingly focuses on the cultural cycle of violence, beginning with a young, Los Angeles-based rapper, Edgar Quintero, whose main job is penning lyrics celebrating the orgiastically violent lifestyles of the drug thugs for his band Buknas de Culiacán.

Teacher’s Pet feels more like Ren & Stimpy's John Kricfalusi on a mild dose of Prozac, and I mean that in the very best way.