A biopic about Mother Teresa could have easily been a self-important slog, yet William Riead's The Letters proves a stirring and absorbing if not quite definitive drama.

Not particularly nuanced or fine-tuned, The Client, like its source material, is both gimmicky and involving, a fast-moving comic-book version of a comic-book novel. And while Schumacher has not been known as an actor's director, The Client is beefed up by a pair of satisfying star performances.

For all its genuinely funny moments and its mix of outrageousness and insights, Down and Out remains curiously unsatisfying in the way it resolves the Nolte character.

Nothing in Common starts out like yet another yuppie Tom Hanks comedy--until it takes off in a surprising and unexpectedly rewarding direction. Never has Hanks or Jackie Gleason been better.

It's a zippy melodrama for small-town America and small-towners at heart: well-executed kitsch for audiences that will still be amused at the notion that the bugs are getting so big, they'll drag us all down.

The gory final act can't help but be an explanatory letdown after so much enigmatic fizz, but that's little bother when the rest of "Honeymoon" delivers a steady dose of newlywed nightmare.

The admittedly simple premise — that El Libertador fought the good fight, for a worthy cause — is refreshingly escapist. By only briefly addressing the complications of Bolívar's later life as a ruler, it lets us revel in the antiquated notion, if only for a couple of hours, that there are some battles worth fighting.

[An] absorbing, well-crafted documentary.

Director Sean McNamara's film is impressively buoyed by a cast of young newcomers and seasoned pros.

The pieces don't always fit together as neatly as you might wish, but if you let it, The Good Lie's heartwarming soul will win you over.

Sure, there are lapses in logic. But nice messaging, some zippy dance moves and a great use of the classic tune "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours" end this charming, adult-friendly tale on a high note.

This is not great filmmaking, but their story is so involving that it doesn't matter as much as it might.

By its bittersweet end, Fifi Howls From Happiness has stayed almost entirely in one apartment and yet somehow unveiled both a life in full and a blank canvas.

[A] moving and insightful piece.

As things turn irrevocably supernatural, the movie's anything-goes quality ends up deepening instead of torpedoing the narrative, as can sometimes happen in horror flicks.

The Calling is an absorbing, solidly crafted procedural thriller with a terrific lead turn by Susan Sarandon.

The mishmash that results is by turns creepy, silly, inventive, darkly funny and, at one point, mind-blowingly bloody. Still, some smart streamlining would have sharpened the focus and amped up the power of this well-shot and edited spookfest.

When the plot circles back to those opening moments, the movie finds a momentum that ends spectacularly. And again: Benicio Del Toro is playing Pablo Escobar. What more do you need?

Keener's performance riveting.

There's goodwill to go around in Dabis' modestly engaging yarn, from its appealing performances to the times it zeroes in on the ways culture, tradition and individuality cause headaches and heartaches as much as comfort.

The film is a real "whew"-factor yarn, a hearty soup of thick accents, bold personalities and complicated motives, with an unmistakable taste of charismatic, ornery American hedonism.

There's just enough compelling reversals and anything-could-happen suspense to make this increasingly claustrophobic work effective.

Like a good prom date, a good high school movie just needs to keep you entertained and out of trouble for a couple hours. A great high school movie — "The Breakfast Club," "Rebel Without a Cause," "Boyz n the Hood" — will linger in your mind well into adulthood. Paper Towns...is only a good high school movie.

The abiding darkness and occasionally graphic visuals will likely reduce its appeal as talking-critter family fare — think growling nighttime campfire tale instead of sun-dappled spectacle — but it makes for a welcome swerve from the Mouse House’s fun-zone approach to these timeless stories.

The film takes such an emotionally based, non-wonky approach to its featured business, it should absorb gamers and non-gamers alike.

A welcome reminder that the art of animation is too protean to be limited to a single visual style, medium or point of view.

Though Mission Blue gets its title from Earle's nonprofit organization, the film rarely comes across as propaganda.

[An] engaging portrait of a complicated but vivid sports figure.

In all, writer-director Jennifer M. Kroot effectively jams in quite a lot about the super-busy Takei.

Winter in the Blood is a difficult film to get a handle on, not least because it often feels like it should be easier to dismiss. But then it locks onto a moment that is unexpectedly arresting and little jabs of poetic meaning or hard-earned truths reel a viewer back in.

Dougherty's effects team is top-notch, and the movie takes unexpected chances with the style and the storytelling — including a beautiful stop-motion interlude.

As bad-taste splatter comedies go, "Dead Snow 2" is one of the more charitably nutty ones, less about gorging on gore than reveling in how silly the whole genre can be.

Hicks' unabashed love letter is, above all, a stirring picture of communion between artists.

Written by Amy Lowe Starbin and directed by Jen McGowan, both first-timers, the feature is alive with interactions that feel spontaneous.

A canny combination of elements unites with an unlikely true story to make this more effective than you might be expecting.

The documentary Pay 2 Play lays out a compelling case against corporate personhood and money as free speech.

Teasing out the vagaries of language, how confusing communication can be, is such a good idea. Despite a strong start, the filmmaker doesn't exactly know where to go with it. Still, there are moments before things get away from him that are captivating to watch and lovely to listen to.

What Kaufman's blunt inquiry lacks in technical refinement, it makes up for in details — in interviewees' recollections and, most harrowing, in the box full of letters that sparked the project.

With a stacked cast and skillful filmmaking, Triple 9 proves to be a satisfying crooked-cop heist thriller, imbued with complicated topical issues that last long after the adrenaline rush.

More visually spectacular and emotionally resonant than the previous films.

Credible performances, effective visuals and tight pacing round out this chilling effort.

Magical Universe is a tender portrait of the artist as a weirdly gifted, wildly prolific and strange man.

Rocks in My Pockets is not an easy film to watch... But it serves as a striking reminder of the individuals who suffer similar pains in silence, and of the special power of animation to make the unseen visible.

he film, a largely point-and-shoot affair, is an enjoyable, lightly satirical glimpse at the uneasy intersection of marriage, showbiz and life in Los Angeles.

It's far from perfect, but The Rewrite is the kind of witty, enjoyable star vehicle in sadly short supply on screens these days.

That cost can be seen in the tight strain on Hawke's face. An actor with the gift of gab (most notably in his collaborations with Richard Linklater), Hawke here delivers a nuanced turn as a man on the threshold of emotional ruin.

The heartland drama Jackie & Ryan may prove too low-key and deliberately paced for less patient viewers, but distinct pleasures are to be had from this compactly shot film's easy rhythms, affecting tone and nicely modulated performances.

Ultimately, Ferrara makes a convincing case for being Pasolini’s biographical caretaker, one troublemaker looking after another’s legacy, albeit with a more serious, thoughtful approach than a transgressive one.

The film's straight-ahead approach matters less than the complete and utter strangeness of the true story it convincingly tells.

Elements of its plot have the standard quality of a Hallmark production, and the work of some of the film's costars is a bit too on the nose. But, with Moore and Stewart on the case, we feel the presence of something real here, something that can't be shrugged off or ignored.

When the writer-director is on his game, as he is in Ned Rifle, the effect is bizarre black comedy that is designed to set you thinking about what his satire is really saying.

The filmmaker and his on-screen proxies boldly go places our national discourse desperately needs to go, yet rarely does.

Though Hollidaysburg may not break tons of new ground, it's smart, warm and authentic — one of the better youth comedies of the last few years.

Ball and his cast overcome clichés with gusto.

The documentary style makes the proceedings all the more frightening.

For all their layered complexity, the songs can slip into a musical and rhetorical sameness. But the concert's aesthetic power is undeniable. The swirl of sound and motion burns with a bright intensity, not unlike like the onstage Tesla coils that have been reconfigured as instruments.

Filmmakers Luis Lopez and J. Clay Tweel achieve the fairness and balance so rarely seen in documentaries nowadays.

Sex Ed is a likable little comedy that features such a well-conceived and portrayed main character it makes up for the film's slender concept and leaps in logic.

For Westerners, Lemelson offers an eye-opening look behind Bali's profile as a tourist Shangri-la. The documentary's ultimate value, though, may be in local education.

Jude Law makes for an effective rogue submarine captain in "Black Sea," a fittingly immersive thriller, tautly directed by Kevin MacDonald.

Swift, no-nonsense and pummelingly intense, this is the big-budget Hollywood disaster flick on a CrossFit regimen and a Paleo diet — a hellish cataclysm that never risks overstaying its welcome.

Citizenfour is a formidable viewing experience, but it's not necessarily a problem-free film.

Engaging, naturalistic performances and nicely explored real-world issues add to this absorbing film's down-to-earth appeal.

In revisiting the pop rock quest of a multiracial group of adopted sisters in suburban California, Chu has made a stylish and self-aware musical fantasy for the YouTube generation.

Though it hasn't the sweep to be greater than the sum of its parts, the movie offers an absorbing mix of melodrama and historical detail.

This is a weirdly compelling look at a weirdly compelling auteur.

The film puts a brave, much-adored face on a disease that has touched so many families.

While this carnage is defensible in theory, and while the filmmakers have taken pains not to linger on the horrific brutality Logan and his terrible claws inflict, the gruesome situations presented, including more than one beheading, work at cross purposes with the film's more serious intent and reminds us that a scot-free escape from the strictures of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is not in the cards.

Notwithstanding the inevitable formulaic dialogue and a superabundance of boilerplate superhero action sequences, Aquaman turns out to be, almost despite itself, an engaging undersea extravaganza.

The compelling film, like its energetic young stars, is in constant motion. Although the nominally gritty tone occasionally gives way to the director's weakness for the theatrical, the film is rooted by that trio of engagingly authentic performances.

A curious documentary by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Marshall Curry that makes interesting observations about contemporary thrill seekers.

An offbeat rom-com that ventures down the film-noir path, Hit by Lightning manages to make dark comedy fresh by combining two formulas.

Director Anthony DiBlasi, working off an efficient script by Bruce Wood and Scott Poiley, skillfully tightens the screws on a story that leads to much collateral damage and an effective final showdown.

As inspirational pieces go, the journey taken by the affable Tubbs proves hard to resist, even as the film, in its hustle to get to the finish line, occasionally prevents viewers from feeling this underdog story's emotional victories.

Whatever else it may be — a culmination, an obligation, a staggering feat of crowd control, a truly epic tease — Avengers: Infinity War is a brisk, propulsive, occasionally rousing and borderline-gutsy continuation of a saga that finally and sensibly seems to be drawing to a close.

The inside jokes and fan-service digressions are blatant and relentless, but also pretty effective. The conflicting narrative priorities that often bedevil an epic series finale — how to tell a story that builds with inexorable momentum while also staging the mother of all cast reunions? — are cleverly and resourcefully reconciled.

This tale of nautical derring-do has several things going for it to counteract the inherent obviousness of the material. These include a director who knows his way around this kind of material, special effects work that makes the peril fearfully alive, and a pip of a true story of what is considered as daring a rescue mission as the U.S. Coast Guard ever attempted.

Through "Bhopal," the filmmaker argues that the promise of jobs and prosperity all too often trumps environmental and safety concerns, and it leads government to ignore corporate wrongdoing.

Though the film's second half could be tighter, the details and atmosphere ring true throughout, especially in the walking-wounded chemistry between Seimetz and Roberts' tentative dreamers.

Although the documentary can feel like a volunteer instructional video at times, the faces on those who have fallen through the cracks in the system speak volumes.

A poignant documentary about the transformative power of art.

Schwartz's first-person narrative proves moving. But given that the film is barely an hour long, one can't help but feel that parts could have been developed more — perhaps a deeper exploration of her gravitation toward one identity over another.

First-time director Girish Malik, who co-wrote with Rakesh Mishra, has crafted a starkly beautiful, at times dazzling, vision that reinforces water as our most valuable — and perhaps most vulnerable — commodity.

Clunky elements aside, the film's distillation of firsthand testimony and archival material has haunting implications.

Given what it attempts, Time Out of Mind should be considered a success. An attempt to use a movie star to shine a dramatic light on the intractable problem of urban homelessness, the film's tone of austerity helps it to avoid sentimentality and simplistic answers.

Though it's no surprise that Rowlands shines on both the comedic and dramatic fronts, the versatile Jackson is often equally impressive.

La Sagrada is always going to be a spectacular building, but cinematographer Patrick Lindenmaier does an especially fine job of showing us the play of light in the cathedral's enveloping interiors.

It's hardly essential viewing, but No Escape is a tense, at times riveting action-thriller about innocents abroad. Supersize your popcorn, check your logic at the door and settle in for a pretty good ride.

With The Intern, Meyers has made another bright, contemporary American comedy with a lot on its mind — and works hard to make it look effortless.

Like any well-researched piece worth its weight in MSG, the documentary uses food as an angle to something else: a look at immigration and at a melting pot stirred by prejudice and persecution, later seasoned with adaptation, innovation and acceptance.

One of Difret's strengths is the care it takes to present many of Ethiopia's traditions in a respectful way.

Akhavan's confidently off-kilter approach to basic human interaction makes for an authentically ironic, adorably wistful, smartly observed ride.

Although Quinn may strike some viewers as more annoying narcissist than self-deprecating charmer, he's a vivid creation.

Although formulaic to a fault, this French film directed by Nicolas Cuche packs a charming effervescence thanks to the easy chemistry of appealing leads Max Boublil and Aïssa Maïga.

The edgy coming-of-age tale Ask Me Anything begins with a snarky, bubble-gum vibe that gives way to something far deeper and meaningful.

Much to its credit, the documentary Deli Man wisely chooses not to bemoan the decline but to celebrate the robust survivors that remain as well as the culture they preserve.

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

Directors Kimo Stamboel and Timo Tjahjanto — collectively known as the Mo Brothers — skillfully handle the moral complexity of the script by Tjahjanto and Takuji Ushiyama. With some of its biggest twists happening out of focus and in the background, the film rewards the most observant viewers.