The end result is a sturdy and frequently dazzling version of the material that should leave audiences swooning with delight.

A frustrating missed opportunity, The Lovers and the Despot takes a fascinating story about filmmaking, politics, kidnapping and propaganda and gives us almost no insight into the work of its two main characters, a director and his actress wife.

Tim Roth gives a career-high performance in this meticulous, disturbing film written and directed by Michel Franco.

Kroll and Slate, though, give performances that have the opposite effect. They aren't the best people, but the relative goodness of their intentions is never in doubt. My Blind Brother puts these characters through the comic wringer, but the humor is founded on the characters and their flaws, not the circumstances.

I can’t say this is the best film you will see all year, but I can assure you won’t see another one like it again for a long time.

The film's hazing scenes evoke the boot camp sequences in "Full Metal Jacket" but without the merciless coldness, because the film's hero, Brad (newcomer Ben Schnetzer, in a career-making star turn) desperately wants to belong to the organization.

Zippy and zany, cute and cuddly, Storks manages to balance wild humor with winning heart—for the most part.

Seeing how freakishly gifted he is and watching his ascendance is a thrill, and Cantor keeps the pacing moving crisply.

Southwest of Salem has an investigative questioning bent, but it is always clear in its attitudes about the four co-defendants. It is a powerful act of advocacy. It's hard to look at these events in any light other than that a terrible miscarriage of justice has taken place.

At least with its wide scope, Maya Angelou and Still I Rise shows that her time on Earth was about more than being an author, poet, civil rights activist, a mother, a dancer, a singer, a film director, producer, journalist and much more. Her life was poetry itself.

A low-key and intelligent character study, Miss Stevens doesn’t escape from its indie-film commonplaces often enough to become really distinctive, but it has enough conscientiousness about its people that it doesn’t let the commonplaces fester into movie-sinking clichés.

You know you're in trouble with a film when you're so bored by it that you wind up asking why things seem so implausible.

In focusing on the years when the band became the first ever to mount several world-spanning tours, it offers two things at once: a history of the Beatles during the years of their initial success; and a tribute to the group’s powers as a live act.

There is a welcome sense of familiarity in Bridget Jones's Baby — but also of the fresh and au courant.

Gosling and Stone get these characters, finding grace in their movement but emotional depth in their arcs; Stone has never been better.

As is often the case with Berg’s films, it’s technically accomplished, but it’s lacking the depth of a project that comes from a creative spark. Everything here feels routine—more like an inevitability than a work of art or even a piece of entertainment.

If you ever wanted to see a wartime movie that feels directed by a kinder, gentler Michael Bay, Come What May is right up your alley. It plays like a more cultured — and very French — version of “Pearl Harbor," complete with bad CGI battle sequences, jaw-dropping plot coincidences, over-the-top nationalistic gestures and dialogue that often sounds swiped from a soap opera.

You’ve seen this movie before. You’ve seen it in the past month, actually: It was called “The Hollars,” directed by and starring John Krasinski. But while that film hit every clichéd note you’d expect, despite its good intentions and great ensemble cast, Other People breathes new life into the formulaic, dark comedy about death.

It seems unlikely that Phiona Mutesi ever imagined her life would one day be the subject of a Disney film. But she certainly learned that life is full of surprises. When it comes to movie surprises, Queen of Katwe is a truly pleasant one.

Despite my issues with the structure of Snowden, there are numerous accomplished scenes and the film is carried throughout by Gordon-Levitt.

What’s scarier—someone yelling boo or the sound of someone, or something, whispering it in the distance? Blair Witch has plenty of yelling, but not nearly enough that gets under your skin.

Moonlight is a film that is both lyrical and deeply grounded in its character work, a balancing act that’s breathtaking to behold. It is one of those rare pieces of filmmaking that stays completely focused on its characters while also feeling like it’s dealing with universal themes about identity, sexuality, family, and, most of all, masculinity.

What’s most important to Nichols’ vision is how much trust he has in his two leads, and what they give back to him in exchange for that trust.

It’s a movie designed to simultaneously challenge viewers, move them and get them talking. For the most part, it succeeds.

While empathy is first to go in the tasteless When the Bough Breaks, there is nothing good in its place.

More than just catnip for Trekkies. It’s also an often painful examination of the rocky father/son relationship that existed between filmmaker Adam Nimoy and his famous father, Leonard.

Curiously, there’s virtually no mention of religion in the film. For that matter, politics creep into the tale only obliquely, and later. It appears we’re meant to understand that the band’s music and Farah’s lyrics have an edge of protest, but this is registered only as a very general sort of frustration and discontent.

The film tries to pack in a little bit too much in its running time, and there isn't a comedic moment until well into the film, a strange choice in a movie for kids, but The Wild Life has its moments of charm, hilarity, and slapstick that worked really well.