Ultimately, "Bloodlight and Bami" is a rich, delicate tapestry of a life, where each thread is lovingly woven together to create a full picture.

The cast, including Victoria Carmen Sonne, as the object of both Emil and Johan’s affections, and Lars Mikkelsen, as the quarry boss, is uniformly strong and singular.

Although this quietly daring, decidedly nonjudgmental film doesn’t ask or answer a lot of questions, it paints a cumulatively vivid portrait of young love and early motherhood.

Producer-director Kenneth A. Carlson (a teammate of Catena's at Brown) absorbingly, unfussily captures Catena's daily challenges and feats while also painting a vivid, often heartbreaking portrait of a forgotten people trapped in an underreported sociopolitical nightmare.

An idiosyncratic, metaphysical meditation on tennis, cinema, human behavior, maybe even life itself, "Perfection" at times risks being too pleased with itself for its own good, but its one-of-a-kind credentials are never in doubt.

It's all strangely wonderful, and it will take your breath away if you give it the chance.

It's a rare delight to spend so much time with the inimitable André. This revealing documentary shows the playful, loving and vulnerable side to this towering figure of taste.

Nothing prepares us adequately for the cool of his screenwriter, 29-year-old Hanif Kureishi, nor for the audacity, complexity and depth of his themes.

This Is Our Land emerges as a vital portrait of political machination, human duality, the power of fear-mongering and how people can reflexively divide into "us and them."

A bracingly outrageous portrait of the playwright, his free-ranging life and remarkably constricted times. It is directed by Stephen Frears and stunningly well played by Gary Oldman, that slight chameleon who was Sid in Sid and Nancy; by Vanessa Redgrave, as Orton's agent and confidante, Peggy Ramsey, and by Alfred Molina as the lugubrious zombie Halliwell.

The Monster Squad is such fun, it makes you wish you were a kid again.

Sollers Point boasts a cool, classically observational tone marked by Sabier Kirchner’s invitingly elegant cinematography that eschews the vogue for artificial shaky-cam edginess, and the naturalistic detail of a lived-in neighborhood populated by at least a dozen instantly memorable characters — by turns stressed, satisfied, curious, weird and sad — just doing their thing.

A side benefit of seeing The Judge is that it reveals the rarely seen everyday side of Palestinian society, where ordinary people just want to have a good life and be treated fairly by their family. People who need a fair-minded adjudicator like Kholoud Al-Faqih and are fortunate to have her.

Everything about Executive Decision is familiar except how crisply its conventional story is executed. Since most action thrillers think blowing things up is enough to attract an audience, it's a nice surprise to come across a savvy piece of work that relies on suspense and is as professional as the elite anti-terrorist unit it celebrates.

The 12th Man is a polished crowd-pleaser, with a timeless message: Nazis suck.

This film — which follows the process as a litter of puppies make their way through training to become guide dogs for the blind — shows us the best in humanity, as well as the best in dogs.

Basquiat's energetic brilliance is mourned as much as revered in "Boom for Real," which ends with his cannon shot into the money-mad, drug-fueled '80s. What lingers, though, is a heartfelt reminiscence for what's memorable about emergent talent, the spark that precipitates the well-fanned blaze.

Both bleakly humorous and laugh out loud funny, the brilliant All About Nina is a powerful film about the importance of women’s voices, and the change that can come from telling your story.

Combined with the forces of anti-regulation in government and profit-driven companies who know how to market to doctors and cover up their mistakes, the movie lays bare a blueprint for countless suffering.

The triumph of Diane is that the movie, no less than its heroine, refuses to be diminished. What looks at first like a solid, well-carpentered exercise in downbeat indie realism ends up, by dint of its unexpected tonal and temporal leaps and sudden formal ruptures, in less easily definable territory.

A stirring valentine of a documentary.

Gillan, returning to her Highlands roots to spotlight a depressingly high suicide rate there among young people, has not only given herself an expectedly meaty role that walks a fine line between sad and bitterly funny, but she’s proven to be a director with a keen eye for expressive visuals.

The Castle of Cagliostro is thematically slim compared to some of Miyazaki’s later works, but it’s still a fun and visually stunning adventure that rebukes both personal greed and political corruption. [4K Restoration]

The Desert Bride is nothing complicated, but in its unforced humanity, visually poetic landscapes and agreeably metaphoric storytelling suggests the intimate pleasures of a well-turned short story.

It’s a humane, compassionate film, simultaneously full of beauty, sadness and struggle.

Equal parts sweet and tart, director Andrew Fleming’s “Ideal Home” is the cinematic equivalent of Sour Patch Kids.

Stupnitsky and Eisenberg have deftly mined this space for laughs, and the seasoned comedy vets (“The Office,” “Year One,” “Bad Teacher”) deliver a joke-dense and highly original coming-of-age tale that’s sweet and sour in all the best ways.

Sketches a provocative portrait of the prolific, trenchantly talented artist and satirist.