It was likely from Mikhanovsky’s own experience driving a medical transport van that he was able to tap into the complexity and full humanity of the different characters and thus, manifest a greater truth.

Medem's film is a bleached-out beauty, hitting our most commanding human emotions -- lust to love to grief to rage and back again -- while only occasionally striking a wrong chord.

Cronos is a thoughtful, intelligent film, and as a horror movie (which is, I think, its main mission in life) it's genuinely disquieting.

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

As the falsehoods stack up and fall away, My Old School will increasingly leave you slack-jawed.

The layers constructed between author and art, emotional manipulation and terrorism as coping methods are dense and dizzying. This is film as therapy, and Triet appears to be the one on the couch.

By the end, I was moved. Not floored, but moved.

Bizarre, even darkly comic at times. But it's also elegant and mannered.

Allen (Raiders of the Lost Ark) is ideally cast as the mom, and as the step-dad, Leary gets a break from his bad boy of MTV image. The Sandlot is truly one about the boys of summer.

This solid if predictable courtroom drama is elevated by a terrific cast and impassioned subject matter.

One of the freshest and most original movies around right now, though caveat emptor: This may not be enough to make it likable.

Howard's snappy-smooth performance, unsurprisingly, is what elevates Fighting from its hoary genre predecessors.

Like a time capsule from another era of journalism, The September Issue chronicles a distant past that flourished not but two years ago.

What holds the film together before that nerve-jangling sequence is Ivenko as the young genius.

6:45 is a deliberately uncomfortable watch, a loveless romance that’s left to bleed out again and again.

What keeps Outside In interesting throughout is the nuanced work of its so very watchable leads – especially Duplass, who spent the first half of his career behind the camera writing, directing, and producing film and TV with his brother Mark.

Again, Hill gives us a world filled with morally complex characters, but that just may be this film's undoing.

Packed with an equal amount of fart gags and jokes about the modern state of superhero films, Teen Titans is a perfect bit of escapism for families suffering from superhero fatigue.

Torn isn't really about growing up in the shadow of a legend. It's about growing up without a father, about finding your way through the grief of your other family members, and how processing that experience never really stops.

A remarkable documentary in its own right.

Observation is not always enough, and that seems true with the perfectly presented but oddly hollow Showing Up. Set in the world of small-time artists in Portland, it functions as a well-crafted portrait, but leaves wide open the question of why Reichardt chose this particular subject matter.

It's all a bit much, yes, a bit exhausting, that's true, but then why on earth would anyone expect otherwise?

By necessity, Black Mass begins in a hole it can never dig out of. It’s the portrait of a monster told in a flat line.

The movie makes us all want to stand up and cheer, “Shine on, Tina. Shine on.”

By telling a Mexican story, Lorentzen arguably speaks more directly to an American audience.

Home Alone is the apex, the pinnacle, the culmination of every bad bit Hughes has ever written or directed. It overflows with primitive, disastrously unfunny sight gags and neo-hateful familial humor.

Feels not only like a movie from another culture but from another world.

His effort to cram in every aspect of the history of late Medieval witch fever, from repression of women to fear of the outsider to mushroom trips, becomes a chore, and a grisly twist in the final chapter, fire, just feels shocking for shock's sake. A historical psychological study like this doesn't deserve a stomach-churning moment like that, especially when all it does is push Albrun even further away.