If you are a fan of Gibran’s work, this film is recommended for those sections, just be prepared for some schmaltz to go along with the transcendentalist philosophy.

Mistress America is maybe Baumbach’s most probing consideration of the writer’s process and development, a continuing point of interest in his filmography, from "Kicking and Screaming" to "The Squid and the Whale" and "Margot at the Wedding."

For all its genuine thrill-ride gestalt, No Escape completely short-shrifts its Southeast Asian players. There’s exactly one Asian character of note, a Kenny Rogers-loving tuk-tuk driver (Boonthanakit). Everyone else is a nameless victim of the equally nameless mob.

Working from a well-worn template, Turbo Kid nonetheless delivers on all fronts. The one-note characters you’ve seen a million times still surprise with solid performances and refreshing eccentricities thrown in for good measure.

I lodge no complaint against the film’s emphasis on prayer, even if, dramatically, it’s not scintillating stuff to watch.

It keeps its distance in the emotional depiction of its relationships, particularly the friendships among the Valley Boy quartet.

Not half as terrifying as Norwegian black metal, but still one of the better found footage-gimmicked sequels in recent memory.

No talking heads here, just Marlon in all his magnificent complexity. For any cineaste, it’s a mind-blowing experience.

If nothing else, 6 Years is a testament to the cohesion of the Austin filmmaking community. You can barely round a corner without seeing a familiar face or production credit.

Gently funny and admirably, even unfashionably humane, People Places Things is at its best beat-to-beat.

Hitman: Agent 47 is a film that bears nothing but a passing resemblance to the game that spawned it, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone, as it’s all just a cash grab, anyway. No choice but to wash, rinse, repeat: cha-ching.

The details of what went down are fascinating, but the ultimate focus of Best of Enemies is television and this demonstration that it can be both eminently viewable and illuminating.

Junge’s ridiculously entertaining documentary includes a wealth of archival clips that still, after all these years, make you wince.

By turns sweet, sadistic, and silly, American Ultra will probably make a stronger impression if you watch it while high.

Predictable but never coy about it, After Words speaks to the fateful connection that sometimes occurs between two people under the most improbable circumstances.

Harrowing and important documentary.

Movies about writers can be notorious slogs but, amazingly, The End of the Tour is not one of those films. In fact, it is so much better than any movie based primarily on conversations has any right to be.

Director of photography Robert Murphy deserves a Spirit Award of his own for his breathtaking and evocative lensing of ever-cinematic Berlin and Montenegro, and Stephen Coates’ melancholic score is equally suited to the story at hand.

The not-so-fresh Prince charts a familiar cautionary tale about the bad choices economically disadvantaged young men sometimes make early in life, but to its credit, it seldom feels hackneyed or cliched.

Buoyed by a soundtrack that’ll have fortysomethings cracking open 40-ounces and recalling a marginally simpler, if still chaotic, time in their lives, Straight Outta Compton’s bark is just as snarly-cool as its bite. Take that, Tipper Gore.

The chemistry between the leads is nonexistent. Cavill unsuccessfully tries to channel Cary Grant, while Hammer’s Kuryakin has so much inner conflict, it becomes a joke that isn’t funny.

Steer clear, Friends of Ol’ Marvel!

In its inclusive attempt to be all things to all people, Samba ends up inadvertently trivializing the topics it’s trying to stand up for.

The music so wholly engulfs the second half of the film, there’s no room left to expand on characters that feel less than lived-in or on the film’s more ambitious ideas.

At one point, a rapt concertgoer enthuses about Russell, “The guy’s a gas!” So, too, is this thankfully restored film.

Woody Allen generates films with such rapidity and inconsistency that you can never be certain if this season’s offering will be a hit or a miss. I’m happy to report that Irrational Man is a delight.

The Gift, a psychological roller coaster on a doomed track, is one of the best directorial debuts in ages, hands down.

Director Watts has a background in comedy direction, and a thin, sticky stream of exceptionally dark humor flows through the otherwise gut-churning realism of Cop Car.

You’ll be the richer for spending time in Crimmins’ company, but the material seems better suited to the small screen.

What we witness onscreen is horrifying and deeply disturbing (as it should be), but a little more context might help us to not feel so marooned.

There’s something refreshing about the old-fashioned way in which it entertains, a mix of silly slapstick and sight gags combined with a gentle heart.

Even more extraordinary than the concept or its conceptualization is how intensely moving an experience it all amounts to.

One of the unfunniest comedies it’s ever been my misfortune to see.

Overall, Rogue Nation is a solid, mildly subversive entry into the series that will have you humming Lalo Schifrin’s indelible theme music for the rest of the week, but probably not lingering over the finer points of the plot.

If you ever thought "Footloose" might’ve been improved with an Irish brogue and a short pour of agitprop, then by all means look to this latest from Ken Loach, Britain’s elder statesman of cinema and its evergreen champion of the working class.

Dueñas and Lucas give knockout performances as two twisted souls seemingly locked in a match to the death to determine who is the madder one. I’ll call it a tie, and I’ll also say Alleluia is a grotesque masterpiece. L’amour fou, indeed.

It’s hard to completely accept the up-and-coming Wolff as a total geek with no social or love life. With those puppy-dog brown eyes and enticing grin, the guy exudes intelligence and charm from top to bottom of his lanky frame. Up until now, the actor has shined in secondary roles, but in Paper Towns he proves he may be the next prom king.

Movies like The Vatican Tapes are by nature sloppy and derivative, seeking to evoke a thrill that’s long gone.

The sharp performances and committed cinematography elevate this stock drama to something beyond routine.

Even though it’s fair to say that Pixels is on steadier ground than most of Sandler’s recent comedies, the film is nevertheless flat-footed and grows tedious after the first hour.

Tangerine’s greatest accomplishment, however, lies with director Baker, who filmed the movie using an iPhone 5S. It’s an amazing achievement – the fluidity of the camerawork is exhilarating at times, the intimacy of the close-ups sometimes unsettling.

It is a perfect instance of meta self-awareness that thankfully lets a little air out of this grand narrative pomposity. Ant-Man is infectious, silly entertainment, a popcorn flick that knows what it is and does what it does to an intoxicating degree.

Provocative though it is, Felt literally wears its ideas on its sleeves.

Oh, how I rued my failed foreign-language skills in the opening moments of Gemma Bovery. Who wants to read subtitles when a French baker is rolling out such pliant, such pokeable, such heavenly looking dough?

Although it’s a pleasant and handsome endeavor, Mr. Holmes hasn’t the consuming drive and sense of inexorability that marks the award-winning "Gods and Monsters."

Trainwreck can be furiously funny. It just goes down too easy. It’s scared of its own sharp edges. The sly raging against the machine of Inside Amy Schumer has gone missing. Here, the rage, curiously, is turned inward.

Just as you begin settling into these science-fiction parameters and start pondering the wisdom of humanity’s vain quest for immortality, Self/less switches gears, much to its detriment, and becomes a frenzied chase thriller and shoot-‘em-up.

Best yet, there’s a mid-film bedtime story, made to look like stop-motion, that’ll take your breath away.

With Infinitely Polar Bear, Forbes has created a warm family portrait, even though it sugarcoats the specter that mental illness casts on this group’s well-being.

The Gallows offers exactly none of the frisson or pleasure of a found-footage film done right.

If only Cartel Land were as rigorous in its thinking as it is in its filmmaking methods, the film might strike an even deeper blow than it presently does.

The gut-wrenching Amy is, in the end, as much an indictment of our celebrity-obsessed (global) pop culture as it is of the perils of rampant success arriving unexpectedly fast, tires squealing and driving a hearse.

Uncompromising and supremely controlled, it is a demanding film that will leave you shaken and shattered. How’s that for hyperbolic?

It’s muddy, bloody, and studded with amputated limbs, yet still rather generic-feeling; it lacks the visceral impact of Joe Wright’s version of Western Front atrocities in "Atonement."

When this stereotype masquerades as a storyline, it needs to have a unique spin or radical narrative disruption for it to stand out from all the other self-made movies about white male artists with girl problems and self-worth issues. In Stereo is not the movie that stands out from the rest.

While Manglehorn eschews the traditional third-act redemption you’ve seen ad nauseam in films that neatly wrap things up right before the end credits roll, it’s nevertheless refreshingly optimistic about people’s ability to change. For any of us entering life’s third act, hope springs eternal.

Magic Mike XXL isn’t really a movie. It’s a bachelorette party, or a book club, or any other safe space where women gather for some of that “you go, girl” good feeling. It’s an amusement-park ride. Fasten the safety belt, secure your purses, and get ready to scream.

Terminator: Genisys is a catastrophic misfire on nearly all counts. It’s only saving grace? 2015 Oscar winner J.K. Simmons (Whiplash) as a Mulder-gone-to-pot-esque cop who believes in these “goddamn time-traveling robots.”

This film is sweet and frequently very funny. It isn’t perfect. Some of those imperfections – or, more to the point, irritants, such as the twee chapter headings and college-essay framing device – are carryovers from the YA novel, written by Jesse Andrews, who also adapted the novel to screen.

The outcome is no great surprise, and plenty of the gags feel as though they were meant to be throwaways, but Ted 2, exactly like its predecessor, has plenty of heart, which makes all the rest of the black-dick jokes marginally more tolerable.

In the end, the preordained ménage à quatre that culminates the evening’s funny games titillates neither mentally nor erotically. Without any such catharsis, the whole thing feels like a big tease. No doubt what The Overnight could use at this point is another happy ending.

Aloft’s characters exude a certain impregnability, and the story’s structure only further distances us from them.

John Pirozzi purportedly spent nine years gathering material for the project, and the film spotlights musicians and performers who would have been completely forgotten if not for this enterprise.

By the time this harmless but possibly harmed pack of pups is seen approaching the Atlantic Ocean at Coney Island for the very first time – “Look at that, there’s people all over the beach,” one brother nervously mutters – it’s clear that there are second acts, and more, in American lives, even ones so borderline freakish as the ones presented here.

Messages about learning to be comfortable in one’s own skin and the hypocrisy of the ruling class are delivered with genial humor and mild pokes.

The jokes fly in the college intramural football comedy Balls Out like a fourth-down Hail Mary thrown deep toward the end zone: unpredictable, risky, and just a little desperate. But when they hit their marks – and make no mistake, the number of completed passes here is high – they score big laughs in the most unconventionally funny, weirdly absurd movie of the year.

Its audacity is entirely matched by its artistry.

Sunshine Superman is at times a bit too reverent with the material, and there are distracting reenactments (à la The Jinx and Man on Wire), some of which seem extraneous, but overall, the film is a sun-kissed tribute to a singular individual.

Size matters, too, in Live From New York!, a portrait of SNL at 40, but in inverse: 82 minutes isn’t nearly long enough to consider every angle – or even many angles – of a cultural institution.

Perhaps the film’s most telling moments, however, are wordless ones in which no actor appears. They’re the bird’s-eye views of American tableaux – suburban tract houses, elementary schools, interstate highways – that mimic similar sky-high perspectives just before a drone fires its missile.

Even if some of its history and buckles are askew, the film is still an original take on a Christian redemption story.

You have a horror movie with two strong female leads – no small thing. The movie, however, has little else going for it.

It’s all in good fun, and critic-proof to boot, but Jurassic World doesn’t even come close to that most intimate and dearly coveted “Gosh, wow” sense-of-wonder that the original film mustered so easily. Roar more, bite less.

Ultimately, all involved are cast in the shadow of Dano’s wide-ranging performance, capturing Wilson at his most ecstatic and his most hopeless. Already a well-established talent with remarkable turns in "There Will Be Blood" and "Little Miss Sunshine," the young actor has never demonstrated such profound sensitivity as he does here. Some might even say he’s been touched by greatness, or at least does a damn good impression of it.

This is, disappointingly, a long way from being a Studio Ghibli classic. The essential plot may be archetypal, but it’s no "Kiki’s Delivery Service."

This is a different sort of comedy that more or less succeeds on its own terms, despite that fact that you find yourself rooting for the post-Snowden CIA.

It is all very fanciful and droll, a mildly subversive and ramshackle Scandinavian version of the "Grumpy Old Men" on-the-road formula.

Danner’s even better on her own, as she honestly, even angrily, wrangles with not a paradox, per se, just the raw rub of life: that it sucks to be alone, and it’s scary to try not being alone. She’s exquisite.

For better or worse, the film plays like an extended TV episode, jumping from each character’s story arc to the next, rarely lingering longer than the time it takes to land a few low-bro love jabs before moving on to the next scene.

The entire movie has a creepy aura of self-consciousness. In addition to the aforementioned definitions of aloha, the word also doubles as a coming-and-going greeting in the Hawaiian vernacular. Here, it regrettably signifies the possible goodbye to a once-promising career of a filmmaker who had us at hello.

Surely the most unconventional romantic comedy of the summer, Results isn't anti-plot; it just moves in weird ways.

San Andreas, by its very nature, begs, borrows, and outright steals from other, occasionally better, disaster epics.

Bad writing, shoddy effects work, and Laser’s nonstop shouting of every single line of dialogue do not add up to a transgressive statement about the American for-profit prison system, but instead achieve the dubious honor of being the most annoyingly in-your-face horror flick of the year thus far.

That’s the problem with this well-meaning but ultimately hollow film romance: You don’t see it; you don’t get it.

A two-hour-plus cat-and-mouse game between the two heavyweight actors unfolds, and is enthusiastically filmed against a to-die-for soundtrack, detailing the exhaustive efforts on both sides to take the other down.

Terribly slight but not unpleasant, 5 Flights Up is hardly worth the climb.

Makes largely cosmetic changes to the material without offering much in the way of distinctive frights.

A folksy fable defined equally by its whimsy and wistfulness.

Saint Laurent gets across how isolating celebrity can be, how exhausting it is to keep a toehold on top of a mountain that keeps shifting underfoot. But the film is allergic to insight: It’s as numbed-out as its hero addict.

Unfortunately, the film is as bloodless as its purported crime. In the Name of My Daughter is presented dispassionately, and the performances neither intrigue nor captivate.

There’s much to applaud and much to knock in this Disney action adventure. Tomorrowland breaks the mold and becomes something quite original, while at the same time it ballyhoos its inspirational message to an extent that deadens the narrative.

All told, it’s a likably misfit little movie, even if you can imagine it better suited as a lengthy short film or as a superior installment on one of those midcentury television playhouse series.

Unstoppable and righteous, it roars across the no-lane hardpan like the four-iron horseman of the kinetic apocalypse, amped up on bathtub crank and undiluted movie love. Oh, what a movie. What a lovely movie!

Chris Dowling’s second feature at first seems anodyne enough, but once the plot mechanics kick into high gear, the film becomes as unsurprising as a prix fixe menu.

Mostly succeeds in spite of the apparent strain to serve the agendas of both its loyal audience and its fledgling stars.

At times, it’s a bit like being cornered and regaled by actor Bill Nighy’s aging rocker Billy Mack from "Love Actually," but certainly more interesting, and a rewarding and informative document of some unlikely visionaries of maximum rock & roll.

The cult of Iris caught like grassfire, and the film catches this nonagenarian nonpareil, ever in her defining owl glasses and heavy jewelry, at peak heat.

Nothing in the film remotely resembles any location between San Antonio and Dallas, the beginning and end points of its labored trajectory. For someone in Fresno or Akron, this may not be a big deal, but for those of us in these here parts, it’s a damned distraction.