Much like the father-son bond at its center, the comic drama is warmhearted but never cloying.

In the end, there’s no outrage in War Dogs — no lacerating insight, no gonzo satiric energy, nothing more than warmed-over cynicism and some mild titters at the spectacle of boys being boys under uniquely deadly circumstances.

A chilling, surprisingly effective crime thriller.

The film is not quite smart enough to overcome the clichés and stereotypes it acknowledges but can’t entirely dismantle. At the same time, it often isn’t quite outrageous enough, as if it should be more willing to be outright offensive.

Director Maurice Dekkers stops far short of shooting “food porn” here, instead deftly capturing the often spare beauty of Redzepi and company’s rarefied concoctions including, yes, ants on a shrimp.

Luckily for Gibson fans, the movie’s a small gem: a good old-fashioned chase picture, thickened with pulp.

The movie both embraces and questions the romance of heroism, a provocative paradox that would have had more dramatic oomph if the screenplay were less staid, the characters more fully fleshed.

Downriver is the kind of graceful provocation that slips around a corner before you can pinpoint its intentions, and that keeps it arresting as both an inquiry and a character study.

The cryptic and mysterious story is crammed with overwrought issues — cancer, divorce, fraud, war — which the characters then over-explain.

Matthiesen offers no easy answers, but The Model paints a decidedly unglamorous picture, while pulling back the curtain on the exploitative realities of the business.

The movie sports more personality than most low-budget thrillers, yet sometimes devolves into the kind of ponderousness that a collaborator might have second-guessed.

Ultimately, it’s a fascinating depiction of the way men do — or don’t — confront life’s tragedies and traumas.

If there is a through line that unites all the women in Abortion: Stories Women Tell, it’s that they take the potential responsibilities of parenthood very seriously. And no matter how tough and self-reliant they are, this decision is always an impossible one, and one that the outside world's unbending attitudes do not make any easier.

Experiencing Pete's Dragon is like seeing something thought to be extinct, a creation every bit as magical and mythical as the flying, fire-breathing beast its named after. That would be the straight ahead, unapologetic family film.

An intriguing casting gimmick can’t mask a story — and a relationship — that’s largely unremarkable.

Neither Heaven Nor Earth is a case of the inexplicable rendered without forced mysticism or explanation, but rather explored with a clinical dramatic focus that somehow boosts the eeriness.

A frostbitten B-movie can still provide a little welcome relief in the dead of summer. Edge of Winter suffices as a diverting breath of recycled cool air.

The Fight Within is too generic as a sports flick, and too pro forma as a tract. There’s more vitality and humanity in the closing-credits blooper reel than in anything in the actual picture.

[An] annoyingly oblique exercise in arty affectation.

Unfortunately, writer-director Ray Yeung leapfrogs over several key emotional beats and points of credibility. At the same time, he plies an ambitious slate of social, sexual and cultural messages, some more fully formed than others.

That Hell or High Water makes you empathize with and understand (though not excuse) each member of this disparate quartet is a tribute to the way Taylor Sheridan’s screenplay works equally well as a thriller, character study and pointed social commentary.

It’s a film that dares you to give it a bad review, simply so it can turn around and call you a bully who picks on the people who try. It invites you to giggle at Florence’s horrible singing and then promptly scolds you for laughing, creating a contradiction that goes unreconciled.

Ira Sachs’ beautifully observed Little Men zeros in on teen-spirit qualities that might, by conventional standards, be considered less cinematic: creativity and innocence, a tender spark brought to life by terrific newcomers Theo Taplitz and Michael Barbieri.

The most disappointing thing is that Nine Lives doesn’t even dare to be an audacious mess. It’s a Frankenstein’s monster of Hollywood’s worst instincts, a movie made with a math formula where its vision should have been.

The Tenth Man is a low-key charmer, an unlooked-for combination of Jane Austen and Isaac Bashevis Singer. With a twist of Buenos Aires thrown into the mix.

While one wishes Carré, who shares screenplay credit with Charles Spano, might have hung those stirring visuals on more involving plotting, Embers nevertheless makes a strong, not to mention timely, impression.

With a highly stylized form, and thick, syrupy ribbons of blood splashing everywhere, Sun Choke evokes a creepy, eerie vibe, but it’s difficult to muster more than a passing interest in the story, because we don’t know who this girl is, or why she does these things.

The film insistently asserts its autobiographical roots at the expense of sharper plotting and characterizations, not to mention more energetic pacing.

Begos gets the texture and atmosphere right, but there’s nothing beneath his cool ’80s fog.

Admirably imaginative but frustratingly clunky, the sci-fi thriller Let’s Be Evil is a technophobic cautionary tale that ironically demonstrates how fancy new digital filmmaking tools make a low-budget project look spiffy.

Deeper socio-historical context and a more electric approach could have helped us better appreciate the far-flung impact of this visionary artist.

The dreary postmortem drama Five Nights in Maine is barely kept afloat by the gravitas of dueling leads David Oyelowo and Dianne Wiest.

Lace Crater is a thoroughly modern ghost story that creeps into camp, testing the audience as it wavers between terrifying and deadpan funny.

Citizen Soldier makes for an honorable addition to the densely populated modern war film field.

There’s no overarching life-story chronology; biographical details emerge in bits and pieces. The director doesn’t wring maudlin tears from her subject’s ordeal, in part because Jones never asks for pity.

History is not neat and tidy, however much we wish it could be, and Olympic Pride, American Prejudice is more than adept at getting to the truth about perhaps the most mythologized event of the modern Olympic movement.

Although Mark Osborne’s new CG/stop-motion feature succeeds in bringing the essence of Saint-Exupéry to life in the lovely stop-motion sequences, there are only a few of these delightful moments in an otherwise muddled movie that feels like three films ineptly grafted together.

Suicide Squad is a concept in search of a story worth telling. Both energized and betrayed by its “Worst.Heroes.Ever” theme and writer-director David Ayer’s trademark visceral filmmaking, it ends up in a kind of limbo, not as strong as partisans will insist or as worthless as its weakest elements would have you believe.

Despite the melodrama, the connections these women forge are heartfelt and earned.

The clips Armstrong and her team have rounded up make us appreciate how, in a whole range of situations, costumes express character.

After a strong start, Shelley becomes frustratingly vague in the middle, before rebounding with a finale that makes the implicit menace more explicit.

The screenplay by Amy Fox is mechanical, the plot more contrived than charged under Meera Menon’s lackluster direction. But as a study of endurance and self-preservation in the face of persistent double standards, the movie clicks.

If this film portrait stirs deep emotions, they spring from a breathtakingly unsentimental embrace of life at its most challenging.

For a movie that involves creating laughs on the fly, the story is tightly told and acted, which adds to its buoyant pacing, astute observations and well-judged poignancy.

Against considerable odds, Wang managed to smuggle the various media out of China and back to her New York base where she adroitly edited it into a quietly powerful first feature about the untapped potential for bearing witness in our social media-driven society.

The film, narrated by comedian Christina Pazsitzky, raises some interesting observations about the climate on many of today’s college campuses, where the former havens for free speech (it’s noted that Bruce lectured at UCLA in 1966) have become especially vulnerable in regard to violated comfort zones.

The Childhood of a Leader is a chilly — and chilling — political thriller by way of a provocative domestic chamber piece. Strikingly mounted, lighted, shot and scored, this tense, decidedly arty film marks a bravura feature directing debut for young American actor Brady Corbet.

The Cleveland locations — along with some memorable visual flourishes via skateboard tricks — show that Caple has a unique eye and a strong sense of place. Here’s hoping that next time he applies them to a fresher story.

Rozema has a careful but unflinching eye when it comes to presenting the physical and emotional traumas the sisters experience. Even when some of the events escalate to operatic, nearly mystical levels, the direction feels assured and solidly rooted.

Indignation tells a very particular story, one that’s bittersweet, heartbreaking and bleakly comic all at once, and it gets it right.

Made with a palpable sense of urgency, this tense, propulsive motion picture is a model of what mainstream entertainment can be like when everything goes right.

Rather than being a film about an artist, it’s an attempt to show us what it's like to actually be an artist.

Like husbands who think that carrying in the groceries is really pitching in, Lucas and Moore have their hearts in the right place, but their efforts have little real insight or impact.

Although Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf says The President was inspired by the turbulent events of the Arab Spring, there’s also a timeless quality to this absorbing and powerful fable that provides added resonance.

Some legs of the journey are detours, and the film can feel overlong and diffuse, but as a capsule history it offers revelatory insights, particularly in its emphasis on the role of distance running in the women’s movement.

Like their Oscar-nominated “A Cat in Paris” (2010), Phantom Boy by Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gangol is a modest, engaging film that reminds viewers of the intimate pleasures of drawn animation in an era of CG blockbusters.

The key to the fun is that Yeon eschews lookie-loo gore for thrilling set pieces: his fleet, imaginative action scenes recall Brad Bird’s crisp transition to real people in peril when he made his “Mission Impossible” movie.

D’Souza might be preaching to the choir, but at least this voter recruitment tool could have aspired to something more challenging than an amateurishly slapped-together rehash.

Even as you recognize echoes of Woody Allen, Noah Baumbach and Todd Solondz here, Pritzker has a good ear for authenticity, and he draws terrific performances from a cast.

Artfully calculated and authentically felt, the unexpectedly effective Summertime combines the conventional structure of classic movie romance with a sensual same-sex frankness that couldn't be more up-to-date.

The emphasis on Blackout’s therapeutic qualities gets overly repetitive and banal — a little like listening to strangers analyze their dreams. But like Blackout itself, The Blackout Experiments is often chilling and hard to shake.

"Collision Course” is simply a perfunctory, watered-down entry in the series that feels like it should have been released on home video.

The whole thing has a very seedy, late-night cable feel, which is where you should catch this film — and only if you’re a die-hard UFC fan.

No matter which way you come down on the nuclear power issue, watching Indian Point will clarify your thinking.

Despite the tale’s potential for an overly broad and crass approach to its loaded setup, Branciforte’s sly, incisive writing and even-handed take on his authentic characters instead errs on the side of wit, candor and a kind of hip sophistication.

Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie is a raucously funny, often endearing, subversively feminist, bloody good time.

Bello gives a tremulous wacko-mom performance from which she has eliminated every whisper of camp. She’s both sympathetic and infuriating, and her scenes with her daughter hint at a more painful, complicated emotional history than the movie has time to explore, though it’s nice that it bothers to explore it at all.

Fun but in a careful way, the film lasts just two hours, but it can seem much longer than that.

The unfocused Undrafted ultimately possesses all the dramatic intrigue of an intentional walk.

An insightful and wildly entertaining look at the wrestlers who ply their trade south of the border.

One of the most fascinating things about Under the Sun is the contradictory thoughts it inspires.

It’s an inspiring portrait of a truly feminist mode of art.

While Mollner elicits some strong performances — especially from Francesca Eastwood as a vengeful farmer’s daughter — Outlaws and Angels can’t overcome its distractingly showy camera moves or its tendency toward scenes that drag on interminably.

For a movie about the creator of some of the most pointed, controversial comedies in television history, Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You has a curious habit of sidestepping some of the thornier and more interesting aspects of its subject’s life.

Men Go to Battle isn’t always effective, in that way DIY filmmaking sometimes irritates by deliberately avoiding “moments.” But as an offbeat lens through which to view an oft-mined era, it has a quiet pull.

Equals walls itself off from the suspense implicit in its scenario — it’s practically an anti-thriller — and barely flickers to life as a tale of forbidden desire.

Cafe Society is of course funny, but it also ends up, almost without our realizing it, trafficking in memory, regret and the fate of relationships in a world of romantic melancholy where, as someone says, "in matters of the heart, people do foolish things."

It’s Cranston’s most accomplished and subtly layered film performance to date.

A cheerful summer lark that briefly achieves comic liftoff but peters out well before its overblown Times Square climax, it proudly demonstrates that mediocrity — whether in the hunting of malevolent apparitions or the making of a mainstream comedy — is not, and never has been, an exclusively male pursuit.

There truly is no business like show business, and Ovation perfectly captures that.

At the Fork serves up an even-handed perspective on the subject of eating ethically.

The story, although intelligent, is not quite unique or essential enough to merit the film’s protracted running time.

The real skill in Lane’s colorful tale about self-made millionaire, “inventor” and maverick John R. Brinkley is that it revels in how fun it is to believe in the unbelievable, and how sinisterly effective the mixture of fact and fiction can be. That includes, Lane eventually reveals, documentaries themselves.

Most B-pictures imitate other movies, but writer-director Mickey Keating’s Carnage Park steals so freely that it almost becomes derivative in an original way.

King worked on the script for Cell, which isn’t that surprising given that many of the worst adaptations of his work have his name on them. It only proves how hard a job it is to adapt King. Even the author himself can’t ace it.

Although it contains its share of diverting shootouts, car crashes and explosions, this self-serious film mostly evokes a forgettable TV police procedural.

The film’s prevailing theme may be that nothing is black and white, but the execution, with its strident lobbyists, salt-of-the-earth farmers and onscreen admonition to “investigate before you donate,” proves spottier than a kennel full of caged Dalmatians.

No amount of star power can save the script by Brad Desche.

A delicate, unforced meditation on the bonds of family and the joys and wonders hidden in everyday life, this film is able to move audiences without apparent effort, and that must be experienced firsthand to be appreciated and understood.

On the wildly uneven rollercoaster that is Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, the lows far outweigh the highs.

Resisting the temptation to invest its characters and storytelling with any particularly winsome, distinctive qualities, the film quickly devolves into an infernally busy and overextended chase sequence crammed with desperately unfunny comic patter and noisy, pointless action.

Gibney’s film cuts across subjects and genres with its own fluid, quicksilver intelligence.

By the end, Ross’ initially disarming fusion of cleverness and whimsy has curdled into a dispiritingly familiar mix of sentimentality and self-satisfaction.

Had the film and its poky lead characters at least managed to pick up the sluggish pace, experiencing Buddymoon wouldn’t have felt like such a slog.

It’s competently made, well-acted and largely intelligent, so why isn’t the spy thriller Our Kind of Traitor more rewarding? Perhaps it’s the feeling that we’ve trod this kind of twisty treachery on screen ad infinitum since before the Cold War-era stylings of Alfred Hitchcock — and far more vividly.

Just when you thought you had seen every permutation of the “making of a band” documentary, along comes Breaking a Monster, a thoroughly engaging portrait of Unlocking the Truth, a heavy metal outfit composed of African American middle schoolers.

Roseanne for President can’t quite decide what it wants to be: a political farce underlined with John Philip Sousa-esque military marches, a deep dive into the electoral workings of various third parties like the Green Party and the Peace and Freedom Party or an intimate portrait of a fascinating, wild and influential cultural icon. It’s all of these things and therefore not quite enough of each of them.

I have only kind words for The Kind Words, an emotionally rich, beautifully textured family dramedy that touches on a wealth of interpersonal issues with buoyancy, charm and grace. It’s one of the best films so far this year.