This is a more-than-promising directorial debut, well worth seeking by adventurous moviegoers.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Selma seems to understand King best when he's behind a podium or at the head of a march. After all, that public Martin Luther King, Jr. is the one engrained in our collective memory, representing the kind of person we all should be so lucky to aspire to be.

A tragic romance of identity embedded in a voluptuous atmosphere, Moonlight flirts with visual and thematic excess. But the emotional integrity of its characters, seamlessly maintained from one set of actors to the next, who so desperately want to love, pulls it back from the brink.

It’s a perfect pairing of sensibilities; Jenkins and Baldwin share a nuanced, lyrical style that conveys the beauty and hope in even the most despairing of situations, with a focus on the emotional truths of their characters. Like the novel, the film is a love story, as well as a powerful indictment of systemic racism and the criminal-justice system.

Never Look Away, a cohesively integrated collage of many genres (history, war, crime, medical drama with romance and spectacle), is also a feast of fine acting and magnificent visuals. But with so much going on, viewers, as if confronting impressionistic paintings or pixel-based photorealistic portraitures, need to step away to get a better picture.

Compositionally often quite gorgeous and filmed largely in luminous, at times otherwordly black-and-white, The Great Buddha is compelling due to its mordant wit, authentically observed performances and distinctive cynical/lyrical outlook.

Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone and particularly an astonishing Olivia Colman find a perfectly pitched acid tone in harmony with the director's edgy vision.

Their most potent commentary is often their silence, their wordless responses to those questions that are unanswerable. Their restraint and dignity are an emotional sucker punch.

Jordan really commits, and his scenes with Thompson have genuine warmth and intimacy.

Not only do the Coens remember and reproduce it well, so does their French cinematographer, Bruno Delbonnel

Under the Wirecements Colvin’s legacy as it illustrates the value of getting to the truth and making it public. In Martin’s hands, Conroy’s story is no less compelling.

Schnabel's film is not so much about the artist as a journey into his inner being, so we experience the world in much the same blissed-out, tormented and chaotic way he himself did.

There is nothing grand about Anchor and Hope. It is only that which is extraordinarily difficult to make: a simply well-executed film.

Welcome Home also features surprisingly strong performances from Ratajkowski, Scamarcio and Paul (“Breaking Bad”) and ends with a nifty little parting shot whose implicit condemnation of mindlessly consuming the lives of others should give audiences a little chill.

The smartest kind of sequel, Ralph Breaks the Internet remembers what you liked about the first film. And then, not only gives you more of the same, but something different.

This exquisitely mounted sequel to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) skims past any narrative shortcomings through the complete and convincing totality of the wizarding world it creates, drawing you into another reality with perhaps more verisimilitude than any film in the Harry Potter canon.

The switch between moods—obvious comedy and sermonizing message—comes often, and clumsily.

As it is, it’s a bit of a slog. A well-crafted slog. But a slog nonetheless.

There’s something almost inevitable about these real-life characters getting a feature showcase, so unusual, engaging and inspiring is their journey from antagonism to deep friendship.

Unfortunately, a solid premise can only carry a film so far, and Goldhaber fails to deliver on Cam’s potential.

With heavy-hitters like Melissa Leo and a particularly terrific John Hawkes backing up a magnetic deGuzman, the slight, 80-minute movie makes for strange and surprising entertainment.

Even middling Welles is better than none, and it's a treat to see his longtime collaborators like Paul Stewart and Mercedes McCambridge performing as brilliantly as ever. John Huston is a special delight.

A Private War certainly gets viewers to care about Colvin. The screenplay, by Arash Amel, drops Marie (and viewers) into several war zones where she reports about various horrors. Heineman wisely does not shy away from showing some of the blood and the carnage, lest anyone forget the very real human stories that Colvin reported.

They'll Love Me When I'm Dead gives a rich, flavorful account of a self-destructive genius on one of his last creative benders.

Daughters of the Sexual Revolution: The Untold Story of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders is a truly engrossing film, one that balances the big picture and the small one.

What might be considered devastating or dead funny here will be highly subjective, but none of it captures the wit of producer Eminem’s “Slim Shady,” which rolls under the closing credits.

Weightless is a bleak slice-of-life movie that’s tightly focused and stylistically cohesive. The narrative is not without interest and the film’s atmospheric mood is effective. But ultimately its slow pacing (unremittingly so) grows tedious and the ending is a non-ending.

Ultimately, Speed Kills feels startlingly like a 1990s direct-to-video action movie with an inexplicably inflated budget.

It’s only when River Runs Red gets to about the hour mark that a story begins to cohere. Up until that point, it had taken the most perfunctory of stabs at being a ripped-from-the-headlines drama about police shootings.

Narcissister boldly skirts convention personally and artistically, and so does the film, by assembling a cogent narrative from acutely disparate parts, to explore her mother as the primary relationship of her life and inspiration for her art.

Some of the visual compositions are impressive to look at, but the overall self-consciousness of the enterprise, paltry attempts at wit such as describing Bacon as “a screaming queen who painted the screaming Pope,” and basic thinness of this wistfully wish-fulfilment material make it hard for a viewer to stay involved.

The biggest flaw in Mackenzie’s film is that it is so focused on plot and action, there is all too little emotion, save that surge of rage for (or in) battle.

The filmmakers believe they have better emotional beats at the end than what that hack Dr. Seuss came up with—and in the process make the Grinch pathetic and practically groveling.

Overlord, produced and presumably overseen by J.J. Abrams, is good, bloody fun, with all the polish and production value that come with not being a low-budget exploitation movie.

The Front Runner works hard to accommodate all points of view.

In the end, perhaps, von Trotta’s search for Bergman never quite finds him. But did he ever quite find himself? All he knew was that he was an artist.

The contrast between young and old, life ending, life continuing, is leaned on too heavily.

Joel Edgerton produced, directed and adapted the film—much too gingerly and gently to have the powerful impact that it should.

Foy and Alvarez have still spun the old and new elements together in an effective web. If this is a trap, it’s one you won’t hurry to escape from—or even fear being caught in again.

A movie that should be seen on the big screen, in order to fully appreciate its special effects, this Disney production will likely enchant lots of little girls and boys while also tugging at the heartstrings of grown-up sons and daughters who still value all that was given to them by their departed parents

Ultimately, then, for all its attention to historical detail, not to mention pictorial splendor, Goyo: The Boy General offers American audiences a puzzling, inconstant vision of the past.

Don’t Go is sufficiently subtle that some viewers will find it dull and lacking in traditionally “scary” moments. But others will appreciate the care with which it walks the line between supernatural and psychological horror.

Comprised entirely of the diva’s own words, whether filmed or transcribed from her various writings, letters and reminiscences, the film offers the definitive portrait of a woman who rose from obscurity in her native Queens, NY, born Greek, to become a true citizen of the world and queen of an art form.

Above all, this is Sarandon’s picture and maybe her best film work in many years.

Trading “Dueling Banjos” and gut-wrenching tension for haphazard plotting and an impromptu group singalong of an original folk tune, the results are disappointing on a number of levels.

For fans of this goofy sort of comedy, or of Atkinson’s similarly loopy “Mr. Bean,” it may be a gentle treat.

Much of the film’s success is due to the work of a better-than-average ensemble.

Deftly tweaking the tropes of rock biopics, this drama of singer Freddie Mercury and British hitmakers Queen dazzlingly captures an era, a man and the universal quest for identity.

The Super is well written and acted—two things that should be givens but often aren’t, especially in genre films

Wildlife offers a fresh glimpse of lower-class anomie and the rhythms of life in a simpler time and place.

Character development and backstory needed more work and would have added to better, more engaged storytelling.

Although no one dies from Lou Gehrig’s disease or gives a heart-rending baseball retirement speech, Late Life is possibly the most purely moving batter-up film since every dad’s favorite male weepie, The Pride of the Yankees.

The film’s disparate elements add up to less than the sum of its parts, and this would-be fiery take on the failures of the American higher-education system never really ignites.

This is a movie that ripples with sublimated fury well before the bloody and shocking long take that ends everything without much of an answer. But it is also a movie that leaves too much unsaid and takes too long to end up nowhere.

Duncan’s film is at once obvious and repetitive, ably depicting the in-depth study required to be a doctor and yet failing to convey anything that isn’t readily apparent–including the sheer unpleasantness of seeing deceased men and women carved up for scientific inquiry.

If there is any "message" to Monrovia, Indiana, it may be that we all share the same fate.

Although the film hits all the time-marks of cinematic storytelling, the characters are broad, the music intrusive, and the dialogue made-for-TV-movie-esque. Just because the plot is swift does not mean the story compels.

Part One, subtitled For the Sake of Gold, is original and intriguing.

Part Two, Walk With Me Awhile, is overstated and adds nothing story-wise short a few snippets that could have been incorporated into its predecessor.

Anyone happening to come across Silencio should just as well move on: There’s nothing to see here.

The stories are all heartfelt. Epstein wants Weed the People to provide folks with hope. It may jerk tears when one subject encounters a setback, or another patient loses their battle with cancer, but there will also be tears of joy with the film’s multiple success stories.

It’s a smart reimagining, but not a particularly compelling one, which is the problem overall.

There's something for everybody in The Lost Village, but it's like a beef-casserole milkshake.

Bombach’s respectful distance from her subject allows the audience to see in a way that one does watching a Robert Bresson film; in the slowly unfolding narrative, stripped of drama but not of emotion, Nadia’s spirit emerges.

The first-time filmmakers have little idea of pace, or imagery. Flatly lit, squarely staged, the scenes just plod on.

The dominant performance throughout remains Forster’s. He’s such a hard-charging engine that he reduces everyone within his earshot to a reactive mode.

Better than mid90s’ treatment of adults is its evocation of the euphoria that comes from discovering one’s place in the world, and confidence—highlighted by Stevie’s nerve-wracked first sexual experience—as well as the way skating provides a liberating release, and a surrogate family, for these unruly teens.

Laurent’s film is gripping throughout. The filmmaker shrewdly frames each scene to convey the characters’ loneliness and isolation without being too obvious.

No one-dimensional, stone-cold badass here—this version of Laurie Strode is among the most nuanced horror heroines presented onscreen over the last handful of years.

McCarthy has found the right creative partner in Heller, who treads unchartered territory with a character like Israel: unfashionable, unfamiliar and unappealing to most viewers.

While she is a fascinating contemporary performer—one who certainly merits introducing, as many dance aficionados don’t even know who she is—this extended cinematic look at Molina might have been more effective as a documentary short.

Griffiths never quite manages to convincingly shoehorn her loftier themes into the modest narrative, resulting in some disconcerting tonal dissonances.

The Kindergarten Teacher is a flawed movie, but it presents an onscreen character original enough to be worth knowing.

The true star of the movie is its structure. By cleaving the action in two, both the development of Elliott and Mia’s relationship and what happens after its peak are given their just due. It’s certainly something to make someone who is sure she already knows where the story is going think: Who cares? I’m with these characters, anyway.

There are no surprises, and the addition of a supposedly mysterious killer fails to add any mystery.

This is a riveting, important story in which the personal can’t help but be political.

The level of internal anger in this flick obliterates all semblance of tone. Its wafting from giddy to gritty and back is unnerving, when not downright annoying.

The performances in Beautiful Boy are superb, and overall this intense father-son drama, helmed by Belgian directorFelix Van Groeningen (The Broken Circle Breakdown), has the ring of authenticity.

It’s a completely new crew, on both sides of the camera, dispensing warmed-over chills.

Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary finally tells its full story, and an enthralling, sometimes absurd, sometimes very sad and at times almost unbelievable story it is.

Working with Keaton’s own material, Bodganovich is too busy praising the artist to bother saying anything novel about him.

Why is she attracted to him? For that matter, why are we watching?

The film’s pleasures are small ones, but they’re perfectly pitched and anyone who’s ever collected anything will empathize with the depth of Alan and Paul’s passion, if not their actions.

Night School pushes no buttons nor breaks new boundaries, but it pleases and entertains enough to get a diploma for good effort.

On the strength of its authentic storytelling voice and galvanizing lead performance, The Hate U Give delivers a powerful message that all the rallying and rioting and impassioned pleas in the world won’t change anything if they fall upon deaf ears.

The direction by Ruben Fleischer (Zomebieland, Gangster Squad) is oddly slapdash, and hardly does justice to the skills of his cast or his own chops as a comedic filmmaker. Hardy squeezes some baffled comedy out of his schizoid shtick, but there just isn’t much here for him to work with.

A Crooked Somebody (the title derives from pastor Sam’s unheeded advice that “it’s better to be an honest nobody…”) is a meticulously balanced blend of character-based drama and genre conventions.

The Old Man & the Gun is never less than pleasant, and Redford's fans might even find it resonant. Others may think it's cute but underwhelming, sweet-natured but forgettable. There are worse ways to spend your time.

This is a simple, macho morality tale—of the oppressors and the oppressed, of good and evil, and of the one man who sets out to settle the scales of justice. And the level on which it works is primal—and frighteningly effective.

although it’s far too fannish—this is not a movie that wants to dig deep into anything uncomfortable—it does give the rocker her props, while reminding fans of some modern rock history.

while All About Nina does not add anything new to this genre, writer-director Eva Vives’ film does benefit from the female perspective. It also showcases a fearless performance from Winstead.

Beautiful is the apt description for this hilarious masterpiece that embraces reason, celebrates truth and ultimately believes we're civilized enough to accept both.

It is a tremendous disappointment to find such estimable folk meandering in an only intermittently amusing story of no clear point or theme.

Knightley shines in period films (Anna Karenina, Pride & Prejudice) and here inflects Colette with a boldness and forthrightness that create a bridge between Belle Epoque Paris and today's zeitgeist.

From the get-go, Levinson makes every wrongheaded directorial decision imaginable in an apparent effort to make one loathe Assassination Nation—and his success in that regard proves this teensploitation schlock’s lone triumph.

Should there not be enough travail or unhappiness in your life, this dud’s for you.

Even if you disagree with Moore, it’s hard not to admire his bravura filmmaking.

A few minutes into The House with a Clock in Its Walls, you realize Eli Roth knows what he’s doing—and that means carefully mixing the scares and stillness for a horror comedy that’s made-to-order for certain monster-loving 10-year-olds.