Writer-director Frank Berry’s film never devolves into melodrama – if anything, it may be understated to a fault – but he grounds her plight in an authentic mixture of daily frustrations and sporadic joys.

Whenever Spontaneous starts to run out of imaginative juice, it turns a tonal corner and either puts a smile on your face or wipes it off.

The resulting feeling of outrage will spur viewers into action.

Despite the tragedy, Revoir Paris is a hopeful film about the healing power of human connection and mutual comfort. It’s the kind of movie that lingers in the mind long after the credits roll.

Yan’s debut as a writer/director is a mostly sturdily constructed, and deftly edited, series of “meanwhiles,” a sprawling narrative of loosely and closely connected people whose lives intertwine in a variety of ways.

The atrocity of Newtown is twofold: the fact that it happened and the fact that the government did absolutely nothing to prevent it from happening again. Snyder and Kramer’s films aren’t politicized because they don’t have to be.

The film's plot is articulated cleanly, if a bit too plainly at times, but as is so often the case in Sayles' movies, that's not where the director's interest lies. Go for Sisters lacks the epic quilt qualities of such sprawling Sayles pictures as "Lone Star" or "City of Hope," but this seems more a matter of intent than evidence of any sort of failure of vision.

If the boozy epic confrontations of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" or "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" are your definition of a good time, then this is the place to be.

It has a beautiful, low-key approach that earns its cheers and tears without resorting to the manipulative or dramatic tricks of a typical feature film.

All in all, it’s heartening to hear a major figure in American political history talking about the future as if it might actually happen.

In its lumpy-porridge way, this film makes a better case than any other Marvel picture for the notion that quarter-billion-dollar-budgeted, CGI-festooned slabs of multimedia synergy can be art, too, provided they're made by an artist with a vision, and said artist appears to be in control of at least part of the production.

With a knowing smile, she revisits her memories in one-on-one style interviews, looking directly at the camera—at us—to tell her story. A chorus of scholars, critics and friends join her to sing praises for her work that she’s too modest to bring up herself.

While A Master Builder never really catches fire as a film, it is still more or less worth watching.

A lot of thrillers are exciting but empty. “In Cold Light” is thrilling but very full in unexpected and complicated ways.

It’s one of those rare horror movies to leave you with good holiday cheer.

The physical or visceral aspects of the movie might sink into your brain and change how you look at these creatures. It had that effect on me.

The action's top-notch, the songs are good, and with the above-mentioned assets, "Gunday" is an unqualified success on its own terms: a solidly entertaining pop movie.

It is an efficient thrill ride, running about 90 minutes, with every moment used as effectively as possible.

It’s a meticulously crafted, albeit not totally original critique of internet culture, bursting with color and melodramatic teen angst.

The Artist and the Model is a simple, straightforward film about the wonder and awe that the natural world inspires in us.

This has to be an intentional wink from Stallone and his contemporaries. They know their days are not only numbered as action stars, but probably should have ended long ago.

A very unusual and rare kind of movie: one that is good in spite of itself. Which isn’t to say that the movie’s director and co-producer Tony Stone doesn’t make some provocative, interesting choices.

While this film is often funny, its ultimate bit of wisdom, from the New Testament, is dark and undeniable: “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

If you’re not too conversant with the regions or works under consideration, the viewer has a choice of laboring to connect the dots unassisted, or just kicking back and letting the people and their recollections and philosophical reflections wash over you, like the sea of the movie’s title.

If Zootopia were a bit vaguer, or perhaps dumber and less pleased with itself, it might have been a classic, albeit of a very different, less reputable sort. As-is, it's a goodhearted, handsomely executed film that doesn't add up in the way it wants to.

Ned Rifle, the final chapter in a strange trilogy with “Henry Fool” and “Fay Grim”, is a movie about damaged people coming to terms with their damage by turning to others. And it’s Hal Hartley’s best movie in years.

The subject is one of the most innovative and influential composers of all time but the documentary that tells his story is very conventional, with chronological archival footage and talking head interviews given by the composer and his co-workers.

Early on, Alex Brendemuhl gives a quietly unnerving performance as Mengele, a polite and meticulously dressed gentleman living in 1960 Patagonia.