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

At any moment, We the Animals might look and sound gorgeous—yet the film unfolds with a naturalistic pace that plods like a too-lazy summer day. This gorgeous view demands ample, ample patience.

Nyoni’s title articulates her uncompromising, feminist stance, and her characterizations of Mr. Banda and the male villagers explain how patriarchy plays out in Zambia, but it is in her sublime direction—lengthy close-ups, clever tableaux and skillful scoring—that the writer-director accomplishes a social critique so cinematic as to defy description.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Although hardly conceived or executed on the scale of his work, Proust kept popping into my mind as I watched this disarming film, with its meditative accretion of the fascinating little details that comprise a life.

A film of mounting artistic imagination, Sorry to Bother You spirals into a type of mind-bending madness that is both persistently fun and one-of-a-kind.

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.

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.

The Wife is an astute character study thanks in large part to Jane Anderson’s winning screenplay.

Credit director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire and Cole for an impressive achievement that takes viewers on an intense journey.

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.

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

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.

Languid, associative, at times dragging, at other moments deeply affecting, thanks to a song and a trick of the light, Ethan Hawke’s Blaze is difficult to define.

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.

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.

Dyrholm fully immerses herself in the iconic legend that was Nico, at the same time investing her with so much desperately pulsing life—a true artist portraying another—that it uplifts what could have been a very dreary slog of a movie.

Casal and Diggs have both lived these roles for years, so it’s not surprising that they never deliver a false moment.

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.

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.

Sharply argued, indignantly one-sided and stylistically monotonous The Bleeding Edge sometimes seems closer to angry PSA than documentary. But that may not be a distinction that matters.

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.

Chu is definitely not an actor’s director, being far more concerned with splashy spectacle than intimate human emotions, and often you can feel scenes go slightly dead, with his performers likely called upon to improv their lines and motivation as best they can.