Do I Sound Gay? gets into the mysteries of homosexual attraction and eroticism, and suggests that if Thorpe wants the kind of long-term relationship that Takei, Sedaris, and Savage have, he’ll have to get over his fetishization of the macho and learn to accept himself. That’s a poignant, powerful conclusion, all from asking one question.

Everything about the way this story is rendered makes it feel much bigger than the characters and their limited travails can make it.

The film lacks the narrative tightness, stark beauty, and gripping intensity of Granik’s feature-film work. But it has much of the nuance, and the emotional impact.

Though Cartel Land isn’t interested in making fact-filled statements about the drug war, Heineman’s ingenious conceit gets at the difficulty ordinary people have in doing something about it.

She was, the documentary argues, a complex artist, one of awe-inspiring talent and many frustrating contradictions, and one who deserved better than to become just another punchline on her way to the grave. Kapadia provides a heartbreaking reminder of what we lost when we lost her.

After spending time with all nine of these sometimes-gutsy, sometimes-conflicted women and men, it’s impossible not to feel a deeper appreciation for their struggle to feel like the skin they live in is genuinely their home.

A Poem Is A Naked Person is littered with striking moments that fit casually into Blank’s study of fame and aspiration.

More than the first Magic Mike, XXL is a loose, shambling party bus—or party organic fro-yo food truck, to be more exact—and everyone’s having a great time. These are entertainment professionals, after all, and the audience is in good hands.

The director’s observant approach to the material helps pave over the frustrations.

Batkid’s story is fun in part because it’s so joyously frivolous. He’s cute because he’s a tiny version of a big thing. Trying to blow him up into something bigger than he is spoils some of what makes him special.

Most of the time, the way to hit the big target is to aim as precisely as possible at the small one. That’s what Noah Buschel does so well in his new film Glass Chin.

A prime example of how to deliver a film on an urgent topic that doesn’t feel like medicine.

Vikander is the main event here, and if Testament Of Youth is a testament to anything, it’s to her ability to embody great women with grace and battle-ready precision.

Culkin’s terrifically effective performance and Howe’s pitch-perfect writing and directing make Gabriel the kind of insightful, empathetic project that makes cineastes feel good about feeling bad.

It’s easier to tell the story of a smashing success or an utter failure, because there’s drama inherent to either scenario, but what Hansen-Løve accomplishes with Eden is trickier, a feeling of being adrift in a scene where people are already invited to lose themselves to dance.

The movie’s only real drawback is that its singleminded approach sometimes omits crucial information.

Inside Out has a rich, unpackable story. But like all Pixar’s best films, it’s fleet and accessible, trusting the audience to keep up with an adventure that unfolds at a breakneck pace.

If there’s anything worth extrapolating from The Tribe, it isn’t the deaf experience so much as recognizing our own tendencies to conform to certain unspoken laws. The more insular a society, the more severe the consequences of rebellion.

It’s an unusual but surprisingly effective mix of outrageousness and sincerity, in which the four anxious revelers somehow function both as broad caricatures and as real, complex human beings.

For all its rough, unfinished edges, The Wolfpack is absolutely mesmerizing.

The characters occupy homes where nothing is ever out of order, but Barthes creates a sense of unease that never lets up, and a suggestion of chaos underlying all the neatly arranged possessions in the Bovary home.

For a film so slight, Doomsdays makes a strong impression.

Charlie’s Country is sincere at the expense of nuance, and tragic at the expense of variety: It tends to hit its points over and over, with blunt, on-the-nose sincerity. But Gulpilil’s performance keeps it from crossing too far into hand-wringing preachiness.

With The Nightmare, Ascher abandons the strictures of a conventional documentary to frolic in the terrifying netherworlds of human consciousness. It’s not enough for Ascher, a sufferer himself, to tell his audience about sleep paralysis—they have to feel it, too.

The first-time feature director still has some growing up to do—the glaring genuflections to his influences betray his rookie status—but Patch Town has just enough laughs, imagination, and sincerity to follow through on its naked bids for cult adoration.

Spy never lets its genre conceit get in the way of its comedy, which delivers more laugh-out-loud moments than any other mainstream comedy so far this year.

An earnest attempt to convey the essential truth of Wilson’s extraordinary career and difficult life animates both halves of the film, and both performances.

Despite a too-neat resolution, the characters in Results haven’t figured themselves out, much less their relationships, and Bujalski is perfectly comfortable sorting through their confusion.