It is, in effect, a scrambled history of San Francisco told through moving pictures, a record of the social and architectural changes the city has endured over more than a century.

It’s odd how effectively the movie winds up accomplishing what some of the best sermons do — heightening our compassion, stirring our emotions and intermittently earning our awe.

In a crisp, authoritative, sometimes startlingly vulnerable performance that never lapses into dragon-lady stereotype, Yeoh brilliantly articulates the unique relationship between Asian parents and their children, the intricate chain of love, guilt, devotion and sacrifice that binds them for eternity.

If it lacks its predecessor’s bracing sense of emotional discovery, it nonetheless understands and impressively re-creates the chief source of that movie’s delight: a group of characters who, for all their stresses and struggles, were a warm, easygoing pleasure to spend time with.

Grimly powerful and intersectionally acute, Thomas' serious, haunted period saga is a portrait of colonial rot and patriarchal cruelty as experienced by characters inextricably linked — male and female, free and chained, native and not, even sane and otherwise — in one remote outpost.

Van Sant pays tribute to the restorative power of faith, discipline and perseverance, but he also resists the temptation to follow these themes into an overly pat or complacent groove.

Neville's goal here is not so much to tell the story of Rogers' personal life, though that does get some play, but rather to detail the how and why of his success, to show the way someone whose formidable task was, in his own words, "to make goodness attractive" was able to make it happen.

[A] delightfully voluble new comedy.

Denis’ coolly appalling vision gets an infusion of warmth from [Robert] Pattinson, an actor of brooding intelligence and remarkable physical grace.

Inevitably violent (though a disemboweling still seems excessive), as edited by Jake Roberts Outlaw King now moves along at a satisfyingly brisk pace. While we likely have not seen the end of Robert the Bruce on film, this for sure is a worthy addition to the canon.

Transit touchingly illuminates the close bonds that can form within migrant communities, even as it refuses to harbor any illusions about how easily those bonds can be broken.

With an affection for nerd culture that is inversely proportional to its budget, this lo-fi sci-fi comedy is destined for laugh-filled late-night viewing.

Swimming With Sharks, the latest Tinseltown dig at Tinseltown, is being advertised as a jokey spoof, but it's something quite different: a dark slice of retribution that recalls Stephen King in his Misery mode.

What ultimately stands is a portrait of a woman for whom the term "cultural ambassador" was meant, whose dynamic range and earth-wide smile made the words and sounds pouring from her like a hand extended, a heart exposed, a story of the world made achingly real.

American Animals is not like other criminal stories and the differences make it one of the summer's freshest, most entertaining films.

By the end, as you dry your eyes, it’s their futures you want them to win — as scientists, optimists and change agents — not just a science fair prize.

It’s a film of decided care and forethought.

The Kindergarten Teacher may offer a less audacious, more stylistically muted version of its predecessor, but by the time its quietly perfect final shot arrives, the movie has reached the same provocative conclusion. It’s not poetry, exactly, but it’s pretty shattering prose.

Westmoreland means to celebrate Colette the literary titan and bisexual pioneer, and to dissolve your initial outrage at her mistreatment in a warm bath of feel-good satisfaction. But he also wants to paint a lively, credible portrait of a genuinely complicated marital arrangement and to show how one woman’s genius could flourish even amid so much oppression and compromise.

The result, while fragmented by design, is a politically astute, emotionally layered examination of a violent death and its lingering psychic residue.

Neither long nor dumb, Hannah Fidell’s The Long Dumb Road is in reality a terrifically entertaining odd couple road comedy expertly navigated by costars Tony Revolori and Jason Mantzoukas.

The tricky, twisty structure of this documentary, a scientific and philosophical inquiry by way of a detective story, suggests a joyous earthquake followed by a series of grim, unsettling aftershocks. It careens wildly from near-comic disbelief to unspeakable tragedy, dragging a trail of intense, contradictory emotions in its wake.

In addition to leaving a question mark around the issue of Delbert's guilt or innocence, Brother's Keeper, which Berlinger co-directed with Bruce Sinofsky, opens up several complex areas of debate. Among them: the differing codes of behavior governing city and country life; the inaccurate, stereotyped beliefs each realm has about the other; community loyalty; incest; the socializing effects of media and the manner in which we acquire language.

A plethora of pleasures are hidden under the deceptively mundane title of The Opera House. Nominally a documentary about the creation of New York's half-century-old Metropolitan Opera House, it turns out to be a charming and convivial celebration of not just the building but also opera in general and creativity across the board.

Make no mistake about it, this woman is a force, and the great service this clear-eyed and admiring documentary provides is to emphasize not just Ginsburg's work on the court but how extraordinarily influential she was before she even got there.

Hopefully, Nwandu's compact tale, so rich with jarring authenticity and boldly configured social commentary, can now reach a wide and appreciative audience via Lee's provocative, propulsive film.

As a portrait of a marriage forged in respect, love and companionship, Itzhak is in its casually wonderful way proof that life is rarely lived as a virtuosic solo.

The film rarely feels static or stagy. It's a fine and memorable effort.