More violent than anything Wood ever did, Automatons nevertheless has the kitschy feel and look of something he might have concocted. And I mean that as a compliment.

Credit Sissako for entertainingly blending serious international issues with the daily comings and goings of village life. A bit more Glover wouldn't have hurt - but you can't have everything.

Tai Chi Zero is loads of fun to watch, especially a battle in which watermelons, bananas and other fruits and veggies serve as flying weapons.

So unsparingly honest in the way it treats human cruelty and resilience that it makes fashionably bleak films like "In the Company of Men" and even "Boys Don't Cry" seem unforgivably trite or exploitative.

Pablo Larraín and Alfredo Castro - the director and star, respectively, of the acclaimed Chilean black comedy "Tony Manero" (2008) - reunite in the chilling Post Mortem.

It might not have as many gut-busting laughs as "Bridesmaids,'' but there are still plenty - and for once in Apatow's phallocentric universe, most of them don't come at the expense of female characters.

Swift and often compelling, it’s also blessedly unbiased.

This British sci-fi thriller is like the violent offspring of “Black Mirror.”

Like a lesser Python entry ("The Meaning of Life"?), it's alternately brilliant and frustrating.

Holland has said that she wanted her harrowing and rewarding epic to run long so it would make viewers feel that they're in the sewers as well. In this, she succeeds.

Django Unchained might have been a revelation in 2005. But after Quentin Tarantino and others have spent years spoofing '60s and '70s genre movies, this mock spaghetti Western tastes like it came out of the microwave.

Campbell is a sweet presence and a capable dancer, featured in a theatrical pas de deux on an open-air stage during a wild thunderstorm that is one of the film's visual highlights.

There are no talking heads, but lots of singing heads and sexy dancing bodies, many of them belonging to stars in Spain. In total, there are more than a dozen performance pieces, all stylishly lensed.

Kaili Blues has the kitchen-sink feel of a new director eager to try every art-film technique in the book, but the film’s beauty and inventiveness are riveting.

A fluffy and fun coming-of-age-in-Rome comedy, with a sparkling turn by its 16-year-old star, Alice Teghil.

It isn't particularly subtle or original. But it's a good-natured late-summer romp fueled by Lawrence's manic shtick.

Entertaining particulars aside, this trope is pretty well-worn — the game everyman who finds making illegal money easy and fun, until it isn’t.

Brooklyn Castle is an engaging tale, and the principal is wrong: These kids are much more lovable than the Yankees.

The conceit is slight, but Hong's playful structure conceals sharp observations about fantasies, communication, and how foreigners and natives interact.

Jeffrey Schwarz’s documentary is a fine, touching tribute to John Waters’ larger-than-life drag diva, Divine.

Thick-necked, booze-loving and angry men beat each other with their naked fists: so far, so Irish. But the feuding clans in the documentary Knuckle actually think their habits of antagonizing one another can be fixed by just one more problem-solving brawl.

Dan Stevens (“Downton Abbey”), as the Beast, has the heaviest lift. He’s emoting through a CGI veil that never quite feels real. But his cranky character is more engaging this time around.

Fans of deadpan comic fantasy writers like Douglas Adams and Kurt Vonnegut are likely to be intrigued by this lively little packet of weird -- then dive like a dolphin into Keret's loopy story volumes.

Essentially amounts to an extended interview with a psycho, fleshed out with background material that, while suitably shocking, is not always illuminating or even frank. The film is curiously shy about calling Varg what he is: a Nazi.

Laden with witty ironies, the film by Anne Fontaine suggests men may not play exactly the roles they think they do in women’s lives.

A highly entertaining first-person documentary .

The 25-year-old filmmaker takes no sides himself. Wisely, he allows folks of all opinions to put their feet in their mouths all by themselves.

Well worth seeing for the terrific performances.