Jan Hřebejk’s The Teacher is a sardonic, richly seriocomic morality play that uses a delicate touch to explore why communism never seems to work out in the long run.

Red Christmas rarely deals in gore for gore’s sake in its early going. By the end, however, it becomes such an exercise in sensibility-testing brutality that any message about the fragility of the family unit is as murky as the cinematography.

Equal parts journalistic investigation and family portrait, Ford’s delicate project transforms the source of his frustrations into an absorbing cinematic elegy.

A handsome little biopic that’s sopping wet with the same clichés that its whiny hero so adamantly disavows, Mark Gill’s England Is Mine distills the early days of one Steven Patrick Morrissey into an anonymous coming-of-age story that — if not for its keen sense of place — could really be about any mopey white boy whose talents are dulled by torpor.

The only reason to take such a uniquely Japanese story and transplant it to Seattle is to explore how its thorny moral questions might inspire different answers in an American context, so for this retread to all but reduce America to its whiteness indicates an absence of context more than anything else. It’s the most glaring symptom of a film that utterly fails to investigate its premise.

Raw and compelling from its poetic opening shot to its gut-punch finale, Gook doesn’t always find the best way to express itself, but it knows what needs to be said, and it knows that words can lose their meaning in a conversation where so many people are denied their own voice.

The film has just about enough going on around its anti-hero to sustain the interest and land its punchline, and there are signs Liman (a Cruise veteran since “Edge of Tomorrow”) is solving the enduring problem of making a Cruise film that’s not wholly about its leading man.

The plot ends in a place that feels honest and true, but it gets lost in a kind of narrative no-man’s land on its way there.

A half-assed action-comedy that lacks the courage to commit to its own premise.

A spare and unflinching documentary about the true cost of cheap textiles, Machines doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know about the inhumane work conditions in countries like India, but it forces us to become palpably familiar with the awful facts of the matter.

Both introspective and entertaining, Betts never forgets that her young nuns are still teenage girls, and Novitiate rings as true as any other film about coming of age.

While shoving big messages inside animated offerings isn’t a new concept by any stretch of the imagination, The Nut Job 2 is uncomfortable with its most ambitious concepts, bookending them with gross-out nonsense that doesn’t seem engineered to appeal to anyone.

Annabelle: Creation does offer several shocking moments, and manages to deliver some truly eerie imagery. Even when you can spot the gimmicks from a mile away, Annabelle: Creation hits the horror notes it’s aiming for.

Sunao Katabuchi’s In this Corner of the World is scattered and emotionally disjointed from start to finish, but few films have done so much to convey the everyday heroism of getting out of bed in the morning — not just surviving in the shadow of death, but living in it as well.

Wirkola, who’s best known for his two “Dead Snow” zombie movies, struggles to tackle a more serious-minded tone this time around.

Even when accounting for its forced and uncertain finale, this is the most poignant and perceptive thing that LaFosse has ever made, and therefore also the most painful.

Even when the the music swells and people talk through their problems to reach unremarkable conclusions, there’s an undercurrent of emotional authenticity.

Song reference or not, the title alone should be a major red flag, but there’s no way to fully prepare yourself for the navel-gazing narcissism to come during the film itself.

While Amanda Lipitz’s film doesn’t quite reinvent the narrative, Step tells a story that highlights the intertwining values of hope and education, and never loses sight of the idea that much more lies ahead.

Columbus is a feast for the eyes, but its more lasting impression is on the heart.

Creepy is both a return home and a return to form.

The Emoji Movie might have been a boring and brazenly cynical piece of corporate propaganda, but at least it had the courtesy to be offensive. Kidnap, on the other hand, doesn’t have the the courtesy to be much of anything.

King’s Dark Tower universe is rich with cultural reference points and is always totally unpredictable, but in cutting it down to consolidate its highlights, The Dark Tower can’t even shoot the most necessary bullets straight.

It’s the questions that Fenton can’t answer — maybe even the questions he doesn’t mean to ask — that make It’s Not Yet Dark such an illuminating experience.

Offers a wry snapshot of self-involved New York lesbians that’s both enjoyably smarmy and unsettling in equal doses.

The most distressing aspect about The Emoji Movie is that a spectacle this self-evidently soulless no longer feels like a new low. It doesn’t even leave a dent.

Escapes prefers to approach its star in a roundabout fashion, immediately launching into one of Fancher’s slippery and rambling monologues about his wandering days as a charmed lothario.

The film is at its best when Dieckmann slows down the action and revelations for its real charm: two ladies, on the road, talking.