Deliberately paced but shot with a quiet magnetism and close-in immediacy,The Citizen benefits in comparison to other immigrant dramas because even though this is a story suffused with empathy, it doesn’t center on either a good deed being done by a white Westerner for a helpless dark-skinned foreigner or that foreigner’s two-dimensional pluck.

Despite its novel plot, and some lovely music and incidental artwork—the title fireworks, the rugged seaside and that glittery magic ball are all beautifully rendered—the film quickly drags.

The film does mix up the formula in some ways. Unfortunately, these changes are by and large for the worse. It edges away from horror and more towards action, favoring shootouts to scares. The latter are in short supply.

You come away from the film feeling that Cecil Beaton represented the very essence of the fashion business, which continues to celebrate, be inspired by and imitate his huge legacy: absolutely exquisite and impeccable on the surface, often hiding a much darker and uglier reality.

Custody embodies Legrand’s attention to detail, reverence for gripping storytelling, command of tension and, above all, direction of finely etched performances for characters major and minor. It is simmering entertainment that amounts to required viewing.

McCabe stands apart not just for the impressive technical virtuosity of his filmmaking or his unblinking focus on the tragedy of the Congo, but for his refusal to chalk it up to generalized Third World chaos. Things happen for a reason, this devoutly humane but studious documentary argues, and until those reasons are dealt with, they will continue.

In their trailer, the gift of the religious do-gooder who owns the farm, the exigencies of survival subside, and the quiet brilliance of Foster and McKenzie’s performances surface.

Rather than working so hard to steer viewers’ emotional reactions, Wardle could have trusted in the provocativeness of his material and endeavored to provide broader context for this entrancing tale.

It’s a bit self-glorifying, but you can’t deny that Garcia’s story of job-hopping and success won on charm, passion and hard work is compelling.

As much as you might want to look away from Dark River, you can’t. The direction is assured, inventive, precise. The performances are compelling. And while the writing is often a little too deliberately obscure, once it becomes clear where the story is heading, it moves forward with the force of classic tragedy.

Sibling filmmakers Jeff and Michael Zimbalist’s riveting Nossa Chape (Our Team) reveals at first a team and a town that have been utterly destroyed by the unimaginable. Then, with the tension of a well-plotted sports drama, the documentary tracks the team’s rise from the ashes of grief back to something like normal.

The action scenes are complex masterpieces of speed and stunts that combine physical bits with fresh, exciting 3D effects.

There is only so much a director can do to bring surprise to certain stock elements—it would be refreshing to just once see a convoy survive a movie without being ambushed—but Sollima knits together big, sweeping aerial shots and tight-in, juddering angles that work each nerve not already done to pieces by all the automatic weapons fire and exploding vehicles.

Spiral is a classic example of diffuse, all-over-the-map storytelling that avoids addressing its fraught subject in any fresh way; indeed, the core topic often disappears from the narrative altogether.

The King tries to reclaim Presley by untangling the myths surrounding him. But with its dubious assertions and utter lack of empathy for its subject and his milieu, all The King ends up doing is further cloud our understanding of the musician.

Although uneven, both its conclusion and its hero make Izzy Gets The F*ck Across Town a journey worth taking.

Damsel is a worthwhile effort gleefully carried out by a dedicated ensemble—including the impossibly charming Butterscotch (Daisy in real life), who steals the screen one miniature step at a time.

The game plan seems to be to make the film as impenetrable as possible so no one will notice it is actually flatlining over pretty familiar turf.

Araby stays so grounded in acutely observed behavior, while still sufficiently elliptical in its storytelling methods, that it successfully avoids getting up on any particular soapbox.

Bayona fights against the script’s weaknesses to craft a movie that, against all odds, feels fresh, fun and even a bit vital. A lot of it’s dumb, and the human characters haven’t gotten any more compelling than they were in Jurassic World, but dammit, everything involving dinosaurs is top-notch.

If it were half an hour shorter, China Salesman (released overseas as Deadly Contract, the epitome of generic titling) might be a candidate for “so bad it’s good (or at least kind of fun)” status. But it’s not.

It's a slick, beautifully designed movie with no soul and very little subtext. If Animal, always mercifully succinct, were doing this review, he might have written: 'Snore!' Then he'd stick his head in the toilet bowl and flush.