While it remains a fascinating character study driven by Cummings’ striking delivery, it also falls back on conventional twists. The resulting drama showcases a remarkably strong vision in the confines of more familiar story beats, but it’s a testament to Cummings’ maniacal performance that he manages to keep us engaged.

So deeply rooted in metaphor and allegory that it might as well be called “father!,” Alex and Andrew Smith’s Walking Out is a strong coming-of-age adventure that buries its vaguely biblical underpinnings beneath the heavy snows of a Jack London epic.

Although most of Endless Cookie is cheerfully comedic, it also very much lives up to the “political” descriptor Seth aimed for in the opening.

A quiet work with major ambitions, The Assistant is a significant cultural statement in cinematic form.

Splitting the difference between silent cinema slapstick and the cartoon roguishness of Benny Hill, this is still the kind of old-fashioned, all-ages entertainment that Hollywood doesn’t make anymore.

It speaks to the masses with some treats for the discerning types in the back.

Smith’s music and photography instincts carry the film cinematically, but the real stars of Kokomo City are its honest and dynamic subjects.

[Wilder] delivered one of the finest critiques of a pre-war, isolationist U.S. committed to “America First.”

For all its touchy subjects and ambiguous answers, “Hustlers” is never anything less than energetic, freight-train-fast, and impeccably plotted.

As slinky as the reflection of a neon sign trailing across the hood of a black sedan, this is a slight movie, shot on a whim just a few months before its world premiere, and it feels cobbled together in its search for some kind of meaning.

In its finer moments, however, Lee translates the book's wondrous prose into grand visual conceits meant for the big screen. Posited as a story that "will make you believe in god," instead it has the power to confirm one's faith in the cinematic experience.

Washington, Henderson, Davis, and Hornsby are each “holy shit” great in their own ways, the four of them deepening the dynamics they forged together during their time on stage.

The sheer banality of Angela’s cat-and-mouse game against the corporate assassins on her trail is chilling enough to compensate for the movie’s limited scope, and Soderbergh creates such a vivid sense of plein air claustrophobia — of being caught in a net as wide as a wifi signal — that he can stage an intense action set piece in a public/private space as small as the back seat of a van.

Although The Witness functions just fine as a true crime documentary in the vein of such en vogue offerings as “Serial” and “Making a Murderer,” the film makes its mark when it leans in on the deeply personal connection between its subject and its storyteller.

No matter how muddled it gets by the end, One Second also boasts something that even Zhang’s best movies haven’t always been afforded: A delicious and deeply layered sense of irony.

Twinless mines a steady drumbeat of solid laughs from the mismatched energy of its co-leads, and the Pinter-like precision of Sweeney’s dialogue is especially well-suited to the scenes where Dennis and Roman are talking at each other on completely different wavelengths.

In each tense moment, Miss Bala has a lot to say in a few words.

Conclave is far too entertaining to dismiss in a puff of white smoke, even if the film might be a bit too convinced of its own dramatic import.

Sachs skillfully explores dangerous extremes -- not only drug addiction, but the slipperiness of attraction.

By positioning Shakespeare within a chatty tale of young adulthood — and giving it a feminist slant — Piñeiro proves the vitality of the material without becoming subservient to it.

With Bitterbrush, Mahdavian announces herself as a filmmaker with a keen eye for capturing the contradictions and complexities of outsider women’s lives.

Shiva Baby blends a claustrophobic Jewish humor with a sexy premise to deliver a lively debut.

For a quarter of a century -- unbeknownst to most Americans, including Rodriguez's original producers -- the singer landed a massive following in the country where his humanitarian outlook provided an escape for many disgruntled youth struggling under apartheid, elevating him to the stature of a "South African Elvis."

Sing Street is a winsomely entertaining musical tribute to how passion can pave the way towards a better life.

Brawl in Cell Block 99 unleashes a fascinating gamble, blending the grimy aesthetic of a one-note action movie with undercurrents of blue-collar frustration. It doesn’t quite succeed at fusing those two elements, but it’s further proof of a filmmaking sensibility willing to push beyond the presumed barriers of formula.

Seeing Cruz and Banderas show off their comedic chops is definitely a pleasure, and the farcical final scenes will leave viewers on a high. But this film won’t win many competitions, official or otherwise.

What comes through most by the time Bread & Roses wraps up is that our responsibility now is not to ourselves, but to future generations, to ready them to face down their aggressors instead of merely accepting their will.

There’s something quite moving about watching Matlin tell her own story, on her own terms.