The Israeli comedy Ushpizin begins something like Guy Ritchie's "Snatch" and ends like the Coen brothers' "Raising Arizona" – in between it's a wholly original movie.

Yet, like it or not, the MPAA ratings is a system in which we all participate – which makes this film important to see if anything is ever going to change.

It's a knockout, sucker punch of a performance, and although it doesn't completely erase the memory of Rapace (and why should it?), Mara's doomy gaze cuts through the hype and bores straight into your soul.

The film is a sharp and keenly etched study of a man who would be the sidekick to kings.

Luce’s power is that it refuses to ever pander to absolutes. Its commitment to ambiguity, to complexity, is defining.

An unnerving descent into the extreme, anxious corners of a mother’s relationship to and comprehension of her 9-year-old twin sons – and vice versa – gone weirdly haywire, Goodnight Mommy is required viewing for both lovers of neo-gothic paranoia and mommy-haters everywhere.

Torres mixes in everything that makes his specific brand of comedy unique into Problemista: Alejandro's toy pitches are obscurely sassy, his imaginative use of CGI and costuming is fantastical, and his dry delivery is the perfect juxtaposition to the film's outlandish absurdity.

It recommends itself best to viewers who can appreciate its novelty and roll with the risks it takes.

A disarmingly enjoyable film.

A standard setup for a horror film, but filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun (who, among other projects, was ringleader/executive producer for the equally slippery SXSW 2016 feature collective:unconscious) has not made a horror film, but a fractured portrait of teenage malaise, of deceptions (both of self and others), and of the awkward probing of a cocoon’s inner shell.

Chi-Raq constantly shifts tones from comedy to drama and back again, while most of its dialogue is delivered in rhyming couplets. The transitions can sometimes be bumpy, but never when Samuel L. Jackson pops up as nattily dressed and off-color one-man Greek chorus.

McKay has made a protest film, plainly seething – a primal howl from a guy who used to just goose howls of laughter.

It's definitely quite the spectacle as directed by the modern-day king of epics, David Lean. The movie is something that should be experienced by everyone at least once in a lifetime.

Director Howard, his actors, and indeed the entire salty sweep of the film are all aided tremendously by visual-effects supervisor Jody Johnson and his team’s spectacular combination of live action and flawless, awe-inspiring CGI creations, chief among them the great, white whale.

With very little dialogue and no cookie-cutter story beats, this fraught family life is vividly, tenderly rendered by Romvari and her naturalistic cast.

Smith gives the appearance of wanting to provoke, but along with his smuttiness, he wears his heart on his sleeve.

From the pure entertainment standpoint, ABL's nonstop action helps it avoid the slack moments that marred “Antz”. The dialogue, kiddie-accessible though it is, is plenty intelligent for adult enjoyment.

Shaw works mostly because Samantha Montgomery is such a compelling and likable character, that you want – nay need – her to succeed, and that is Haar’s ace in the hole.

It’s an understated performance in many ways, but in those quiet moments, whether it be a new haircut or a tapping foot, Ebrahimi provides an astonishing education of what it means to be a woman fleeing an abusive relationship.

This is a lovingly rendered, feel-bad chamber piece chock-full of elliptical psychodrama.

Offers more questions than answers. Even the Kurds, who seem the closest thing to a success story, long for a unified Iraq.

An unrelenting throwback to a gleefully caustic view of America's capacity for untrammeled nastiness.

The film is also comic, mysterious, and structurally ambitious, while offering numerous points of entry and perspective.

Despite its reliance on some overworked symbolism, the screenplay by David Tranter and Steven McGregor is smart. However, the intercut flash-forwards and flashbacks do little to aid our understanding or appreciation of the story, and seem like artistic frippery.

A staggering document of the lengths parents will go to for the sake of their child.

While the movie’s nonlinear construction is its selling point, at least for those moviegoers who prefer a bit of a challenge, an underlying vibe of melancholy gives Mothering Sunday thematic weight.

Like the doomed vessel from which it takes its tale, Cameron's film is a behemoth, svelte, streamlined, and not the least bit ponderous.

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.