It's a deeply empathetic film that displays an ability to balance the lyrical and the genuine while telling the story of a young man trying to figure himself out through two very different male role models in his life.

The film does not offer excuses for violence, and neither should we; instead, it prompts reflection on where compassion and control are needed and where the pursuit of them falters.

The visuals here are interesting because Adela is a circus clown and we get see a lot of the colorful life around her performances.

While the on-the-nose title suggests each individual is an isolated entity...the character construction and how their respective desires intersect with one another, in tandem with an effectively dizzying atmosphere, render it more original than expected.

What the movie is very good at revealing and expanding upon is how this reluctant actor became such a masterful one.

Misshapen parts and all, “Fortune Favors” fulfills its purpose as a joyfully eccentric tribute to personal authenticity.

It’s almost more like a companion to some of the most popular books of all time—not an explainer or even piece of historical trivia about their execution. Instead, this documentary reveals how even the most complex spy fiction can have a foundation in the relationship between a son and his father.

The kind of meandering apathy that Reichardt is going for in River of Grass can be tough to connect to as a viewer, and it’s interesting that her films became more resonant when they switched from what is kind of a comedy to drama.

Funan is structured as a series of carefully choreographed set pieces in which things go from bad to worse to unimaginably awful.

Black Box is a little wobbly in balancing its science-fiction logic and some wholesale horror thrills, but to the credit of debut director Osei-Kuffour Jr., both genre elements have their place.

You’ll be able to figure out where Run is headed pretty quickly, but that doesn’t detract from the precise thrills and campy fun along the way.

Can you recommend a horror movie based on its impressive meanness? Meet Nicolas Pesce’s new and improved take on The Grudge, which is often as nasty as you want it to be, its cheesy jump-scares and generic packaging be damned.

It is an entertaining, family-friendly romp with wish-fulfilling yeses, extended comic mayhem, and satisfying consequences.

Cézanne et Moi is at its most intoxicating whenever it looks and acts like a landscape painted by its title 19th-century French artist.

Genre fans ought to check it out post haste. I’m one myself, and my admiration for the superb conception and execution of the film goes hand in hand with disappointment and irritation.

Bride Hard makes it easy to grab your girls, some snacks (or drinks), and enjoy a little fluffy fun at the cinema.

Watching him regain his confidence, sense of self and the rebellious spirit that defined him gives "The Fake Case" an unexpected and exciting feeling of momentum and, eventually, tension.

In what may be his final film, nonagenarian auteur Clint Eastwood has crafted a solid, old-fashioned courtroom drama with “Juror #2.” Always known for his efficiency as a filmmaker, Eastwood brings that same brisk energy to this suspenseful piece of storytelling.

These ideas are presented by a cast of well-seasoned actors who help the film survive its occasionally clunky dialogue. In fact, one of the film’s bigger pleasures is listening to these thespians plow through their numerous monologues. Their performances are the film's saving grace.

Rasoulof’s story proceeds with the deliberate pace and simmering tension of a ‘70s political thriller.

The worst thing you can say about this movie, and maybe the highest compliment you can pay to it, is to say that it would be even more dazzling if it told a different story with different animals but with the same technology, and in the same style — and perhaps without songs, because you don't necessarily need them when you have images that sing.

A compelling and insightful examination of this strange story, and it utilizes the cooperation of Sandra Bagaria, the Canadian woman who had been in a long-distance romantic relationship with Amina (even though the two had never met.)

While the suspense that had carried the film for the first two-thirds of its brisk running time dips as it nears its conclusion, Cocaine Bear still emerges as a hell of a high.

A Five Star Life shows something not often seen in American cinema, at least in films that aren’t police procedurals: It shows an ordinary citizen doing her job.

The highlight of the film is the trial. Van Meegeren insists he was not collaborating with the Nazis; he was defrauding them. The film takes some significant, unnecessary, and distracting dramatic license and spends too much time on characters and relationships that are not as signifiant but these scenes are powerful.

Director and producer Robert Sarkies uses interesting, sometimes surreal, scenic transitions. So crisp and entrancing, these shots are artful, aesthetically pleasing, and even contemplative, but the color grading blankets the film with a drab tone. Yet the magnetic chemistry between Lynskey and Malcom, complemented by the lived-in, authentic costuming and production design bolster the movie overall.

Watching “Emilia Pérez” is akin to tasting a combination of substances that haven’t previously been put together, at first being taken aback by the bizarre taste but still going in for another sip.

Even if this movie doesn’t achieve a great epiphany at the end of the darkest route, it offers a great showcase for Gallner in particular.

With The Wild Goose Lake, Yinan signals the makings of a major filmmaker. Perhaps the world he creates is a bit too scattered for its own good, but you will still want to melt inside its stunning, riotous glow.

The Dead Don't Die is far from Jarmusch's best, but there's something to be said for its zonked-out acceptance of extinction.

What Skin optimistically suggests is that if someone so deeply entrenched in hatred can turn his life around, maybe there is indeed hope for others. It’s a nice idea.

The Drop is just how I like my Tom Hardy – in nearly every scene.

Where “Black Lives Matter” has become a rallying cry in the U.S., Jonas Carpignano’s sharply crafted Mediterranea voices a counterpart for African immigrants in southern Italy: “Stop shooting blacks!”

The best part of a documentary like Fiddler's Journey to the Big Screen is how it peeks into the thinking of those rare people who can piece together the impossible movie jigsaw puzzle, in order to show us our world, our community, our families, and ourselves.

Dreamin’ Wild is a rich and evocative portrait of the weight of broken dreams and the strength one can find in a family as unwaveringly supportive as the Emersons.

It’s a relatively concise, no-nonsense, short (100 minutes) comedy that reminds us that even when we think we’re playing the game, the opponent has a different rulebook.

One of Bress’ greatest strokes comes with casting — he’s collected five faces you might recognize from younger, more innocent roles, and who are compelling to see here as men who have matured rapidly due to the wartime experiences eating away at them.

Miller owns the material and single-handedly elevates it to something you can’t look away from, while reminding us the effortless appeal she brought into even her relatively thankless part in “American Sniper.”

The Mountain, with its long stretches of quiet, bleak subject matter, and Alverson's staunch refusal to let us in, or fill in the blanks, creates a genuinely unnerving mood.

It’s not just another ghost story; it’s a story of malevolence that happens to be told through home recordings, YouTube clips, and CCTV footage. Hall and Gandersman play a little fast and loose with their genre—as so many of these movies do—but it’s forgivable given the pace they maintain in their blissfully short film (under 90 minutes with credits).

My Old Lady is pretty compelling viewing, mostly thanks to Kline, who gives a career-high performance here.

We see politicians, lawyers, and doctors trying to find a better way, and we see those struggling with recovery. But it is not just the addicts who need to come clean; it is those profiting from the current system. The most deadly addiction is not drugs; it is money.

Simon has an exceptional eye for the small details that illuminate the quiet but devastating, literal life and death moments.

From its opening, there’s a distinct sense of unease shrouded over Miracle, the third feature written and directed by Romanian filmmaker Bogdan George Apetri.

It’s a cogent expression of the proper spirit of resistance—that it should be based in love, but expressed in action. Direct, effective action.

Unlike Hannah, this movie has a great relationship with its appendage—it knows when to use it for gross-out body horror humor or a bit of drama that cuts to the core.

This all sounds painfully glum and ultimately mawkish. But—like the active verbs that constitute its title — Run & Jump is surprisingly alive, full of jolts and unexpected bursts of humor and earned emotion.

Mike Wallace is Here, a documentary about the legendary and influential television interviewer who defined a particular kind of broadcast journalism, feels different from other documentaries about such figures, because it features no contemporary talking head interviews.

Borgman can sometimes frustrate but it is an accomplished piece of work, driven by a uniquely malevolent tonal balance and two fantastic central performances. It sometimes simmers when I wish it would boil over but damn if it isn’t fascinating to watch the water bubble.

Julia Jackman‘s beguiling feminist fairytale “100 Nights of Hero” is an enchanting tribute to the power of storytelling.

There is a warmth to this film, an easy charm, that comes from a script aware of the genre conventions with which it’s experimenting and from a cast willing to jump headfirst into whatever surrealism is required.

Make it through the first 10 minutes. It’s just the film warming up. The rest of it flows.

Knock Down the House prevails with albeit straight-forward intentions: to amplify the women who are both mad as hell and doing something about it.

In 1966, film critic Pauline Kael reviewed "Funny Girl," announcing: "Barbra Streisand arrives on the screen, in 'Funny Girl', when the movies are in desperate need of her." She could have been talking about Jessica Williams.

Witching and Bitching is accordingly overlong, and conceptually thin. But like most of de la Iglesia's films, it's also freakishly energetic, and often hysterical.

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women aims to shake you up, make you think and maybe even squirm a little. Make that a lot. This movie is sexy as hell, featuring several scenes of steamy three-ways and kinky S&M games.

Crater might be too dark on a thematic level for some tweens, but the light it brings into the genre makes Alvarez’s film a soul-stirring escapade, one that introduces young audiences to ways to reform the fractured world they call home.

Green continues to establish herself as an insightful chronicler of the minor yet devastating terrors of violent masculinity that many women endure everywhere they go.

Raiff offers some impressive tonal mixtures and narrative surprises along the way, and even though his third act sags a bit, the performances—particularly from an achingly melancholy Dakota Johnson— remain compelling until the end.

What makes Meeting Gorbachev most interesting is the way we see Herzog shape the narrative through his questions, narration, and filmmaking skills.

Bathed in darkness and warm tones, “The New Boy” feels like a classic melodrama with modern sensibilities.

Marvel movies are not concerned with altering your precious bodily fluids. This one is a slightly better than average example of the species. Watch it in good health.

This is a hypnotic, invigorating film, and a step up for the duo—much like the diamonds that shimmer so seductively through their frames, it has a cold, bright, gem-like brilliance.

Shortcomings is a wickedly funny, absorbing character study and solo feature directorial debut by actor Randall Park (“Fresh off the Boat”). In the hands of Park, Adrian Tomine's graphic novel (adapted here by Tomine) finds cutting new dimensions in the miserabilism of an unabashed assh*le.

CIVIL won’t change any minds about its subject, but it does a good job of delivering “fly on the wall” observations of the year it covers.

It's Glass who gives Visitors something like a structure, alternating between long, contemplative stretches and moments of ecstatic grandeur, like the crowd of sports fans who erupt in (extreme slow-motion) joy at some victory.

In Secret is a costume drama with a gigantic accent on the drama. It's my kind of crazy, and I was quite entertained. To borrow again from Shakespeare, "'Tis Madness, but there's method to't."

The Surrender accomplishes a lot with a sketch-sized story and matching compositional agility and precision. It’s short (less than 90 minutes!) and sweet and the best kind of upsetting.

It's not just a story of an incredible feat of survival. It's also a love story, presented with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

The weddings themselves are a hoot, shrewdly observed, witty, but genuine.

Its ending leaves the door open for interpretation and post-viewing discussion — just as the best sort of movie-going experiences often do.

Like a lot of films of this breed, Don’t Breathe gets a little less interesting as it proceeds to its inevitable conclusion, replacing tension with shock value, but it works so well up to that point that your heart will likely be beating too fast to care.

The filmmaker does a phenomenal job of setting up this world in a natural-seeming way, smuggling mountains of pertinent fact into conversations that pretend to be banal.

Loushy is resourceful, particularly as an editor, and the talking heads, even those not as internationally famous as the compassionate, articulate, and still-distressed Oz, are spectacularly compelling.

The film's main goal is to make us laugh and pull the rug out out from under us. But while there's a bit of pathos here and there, the movie doesn't add up to much in the end.

This American version of Park Chan-Wook's Korean thriller is Lee's most exciting movie since "Inside Man" — not a masterpiece by any stretch, but a lively commercial genre picture with a hypnotic, obsessive quality, and an utter indifference to being liked, much less approved of.

Gariépy reveals very little about her character’s state of mind in these moments, and this ambiguity is what makes “Red Rooms” so intriguing.

Lee's irrepressible joi de vivre and his recollections of the wild days shifting from story-first to pictures-first and fill-in-the-story-later are as much fun as he would have hoped.

When progress stops feeling like progress is what Da-Rin captures in The Fever, and fantastic lead actor Regis Myrupu is a conduit for a calamity that builds and builds.

In some moments, Gloria Bell is almost an exact recreation of the original, in shot construction and edit choices, even in dialogue (the script was co-written by Alice Johnson Boher and Lelio), but there's enough freshness in the approach that makes "Gloria" a unique experience, funny and a little bit messy. The mess feels real.

It's a study in deception, and as told by filmmaker Alex Gibney ("Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room"), it's a disturbing and sad one.

The film does a great job of contextualizing the phenom of Dr. Ruth.

While Stuber’s film acknowledges the soul-sucking nature of these colorless environs — at times, the enormous yet empty aisles resemble a ripe setting of an after-hours zombie apocalypse — the filmmaker loves his characters so much that he can’t help but prioritize their humanity that rises above the surface of it all.

It's sensitive, subtle, and restrained, and asks more of the audience than it's typically willing to give.

An efficient and pleasurable bad-man-tries-to-go-good exposition that gives Gibson ample opportunity to flex his now-somewhat-grizzled movie-star muscle.

Some composited landscapes and helicopters don't pass the believability test, and a few big camera moves that take us from outside to inside and vice-versa are too clever for their own good. But it's all so intricate and expertly timed that you still appreciate it, as one might a performance of a fiendishly difficult piano concerto where just hitting the notes is beyond most players' capabilities.

This may all sound too shameless and syrupy, but to its credit, A Dog’s Way Home scratches the surface of something I, as a pit bull obsessive, have never seen a “dog movie” do.

Even though half of her screen time consists of her being seen but not heard, Garner has a consistent crispness; her character is simultaneously transparent and slightly enigmatic.

The bad news is, there are about ten movies going on in Captain America: Civil War, which is at least seven too many. The good news is, most of them are fun, and there are enough rousing moments to elevate the movie to Marvel's top tier.

Scheinert smartly does not hammer home these themes, or sum things up with a monologue about what we've all learned. We haven't learned anything except ... if you find yourself in Zeke and Earl's situation, do exactly the opposite, start to finish.

While it doesn’t hit the highs of the very best movies based on the author’s works — those would be Steven Soderbergh’s “Out of Sight” and Quentin Tarantino’s “Jackie Brown,” two outstanding examples of American narrative cinema of the ‘90s—it’s also far less slick and ingratiating than the watchable but very Hollywood-processed likes of “Get Shorty” and “Be Cool.”

Director Andrew Ahn proficiently handles the numerous plot lines, character conflicts, and the tonal shifts between raunch and sweetness.

If you’re not enraptured with the work of Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata and the rest of the artists at Ghibli, it may not be precisely what you’re looking for, but Sanada captures something poetic about art and creativity that could speak to anyone, animation fan or otherwise.

End of Sentence, a road trip film that starts in Alabama and ends in Ireland, is another performance to place in Hawkes' "All Time Best" file, a drawer so stuffed by this point that you can barely get the damned thing closed.

Once the viewer finds him or herself comfortable with the idea that it’s going for mildly-spine-tingling rather than gut-punching and eyeball-violating, all holy hell breaks loose. Which in this case turns out to be a pretty hellishly good thing.

There are points early in this documentary where you might wonder if it really needed to be a feature (one can imagine a cut-down "60 Minutes" piece doing the job just as effectively) but when Lane gets away from the man himself and focuses on the details of the business of music, a new frontier of understanding opens up.

Science Fair melts your heart almost as soon as it begins, with an emotional clip that went viral of a young winner who is so overjoyed, he cries on stage while holding his award.

A charming, informative and funny documentary.