The picture is a slow-burning but ultimately empowering drama that works despite a lack of the bigger, louder, more outwardly emotional moments it could have succumbed to.

A very entertaining film, stuffed with colorful idiots and serves-you-right twists. Silly in ways that reflect poorly of the filmmaker's taste but will endear it to many viewers, it's a true-crime tale that has much to do with Major League Baseball but requires no interest in the sport to enjoy.

Even those unfamiliar with the tale will find it charming and moving, and, as is so often the case with Australian films, the scenery can't be beat.

To say that thespians live for opportunities such as this is an understatement, and Schull, whose restrained underplaying only makes the material more powerful, makes the most of it.

Viewers may worry that Bazawule's starkly gorgeous pictures aren't going to add up to anything, but Burial satisfies in prosaic as well as poetic terms, supplying an end that makes sense of its beginning. It will leave many who see it eager for the young filmmaker's next fable.

A charmer with strong appeal for video release, it is lively enough to merit a niche theatrical run beforehand.

As with any vérité portrait, there are many things that go unexplained. But the images tell us what we need to know: The unforced choreography between Hatidze and the bees.

The doc's a delight for six-string gearheads and a reverie for those who still treasure what remains of pre-Bloomberg, pre-Giuliani New York.

While the film doesn't break any new ground either in terms of substance or style, it packs a quiet punch.

The lush production design by Raymond Chan, Joyce Chan’s swanky ’60s costuming and some astoundingly clever set pieces — a duel between Tin-chi and one of Kit’s thugs atop of a strip of neon signs, a brilliantly old-school four-way fight at Cheung Kok’s offices, a whiskey glass tango with Yeoh — more than make up for any plot flaws, with the exception of the shameful underuse of Tony Jaa as a mysterious assassin.

Cinematically modest but full of social and political urgency.

Among the film's most visually dazzling sections are a series of extremely sensual black-and-white photographs of the dancer shot by Richard Avedon, who famously commented of his subject, "His whole body was responding to a kind of wonder at himself. A narcissistic orgy of some kind...an orgy of one."

This atmospheric, expertly crafted little New England noir has droll dialogue, a female empowerment theme and a sly use of crime elements.

An impressive film ... Alternately disturbing and inspiring, it manages to capture the diversity of America in a tight 73 minutes.

A drama with dazzling visuals, subtle performances and deft nods to classics like Days of Heaven and Bonnie and Clyde. ... While Dreamland doesn’t entirely overcome its familiar trajectory, the film is so stunning in every other way that its narrative shortcoming hardly matters.

[A] fascinatingly oddball story.

Sensitive, keenly observed and unflinchingly honest. ... House of Hummingbird can be a little too deliberate in its contemplations and contextualizing Eunhee in her solitude and search for intimacy can be bloated at times, but ultimately it's an assured and affecting portrait of teenaged uncertainty and insecurity.

Fiske and Hallin show, over the course of their very affecting movie, how this naive analogy both complements and conflicts with the ups-and-downs of Gemma's reality.

Considering that it was filmed in bits and pieces over two decades, it's not surprising that 17 Blocks is disjointed in its storytelling, nor that its technical elements are ragged (subtitles are frequently employed due to poor sound quality). But it nonetheless packs a potent emotional punch.

Though difficult to watch, it's a film that helps outsiders confront the horrifying ways such events can cause damage for decades after the fact.

There is no big redemptive payoff here, just a few small victories and hopeful pointers to the future. The struggle continues. But this is still a very necessary story, delivered with rigor and conviction.

Provides a compelling history of a company that created a groundbreaking product that was unfortunately ahead of its time.

It cannily draws its various strands together into a visually striking piece of rare immediacy and power.

Rich with revealing observations and engaging anecdotes, Slater’s documentary skirts the nostalgia trap by entertainingly connecting with an impressive lineup of contemporary singer-songwriters referencing the influential '60s pop style with their own releases.

Q Ball delivers a stirring and moving portrait of a program that provides inmates an opportunity to channel their energy in non-violent fashion.

Fascinating and insightful if also (perhaps necessarily) somewhat checkered.

A lot of ideas about class, post-imperialism and spiritual values peek up out of the surface of the text, but they're not developed with much rigor compared to what Diop conjured with more intensity and less time in A Thousand Suns. All the same, this is a striking work.

Filmmaker and actor Elia Suleiman uses his own face and body to express the soul of Palestine in his films, and nowhere more so than in his droll new comedy, It Must Be Heaven.

A film that doesn’t hit you like a tidal wave as much as it gradually washes over you, leaving in its wake a series of memorable set-pieces and a dense, dark web of violence and fatality.

With great delicacy, [Maryam Touzani] shows how Moroccan society censures a woman who gives birth outside marriage — not a terribly original theme, but here it is made heartrending by the superb performances of Lubna Azabal and Nisrin Erradi in the lead roles.

It’s a demanding sit, a film both rigorous and indulgent, rewarding and aggravating.

The script intelligently dishes out key information in each vignette, with the scenes separated by major narrative ellipses that force the viewer to work a little in order to figure things out.

The movie delivers its share of shudders, along with fabulous arias of anger, wrath and disgust from both actors as the power dynamic bounces back and forth.

In and of itself, it is a mournfully intelligent, poetic documentary that once more seeks to link the vastness, grandeur and indifference of nature with the human horrors that Chileans have lived through. The search for meaning is so personal here (Guzman narrates most of the film in the first person) and so difficult that it is often heart-rending.

An infectiously enjoyable slice of knockabout nostalgia that wears its Trainspotting heritage proudly on its rough-edged tartan sleeve.

Miki Wecel's film will prove fascinating not only to animation and Vincent Van Gogh buffs, but to anyone interested in how the creative sausage is made.

Whatever else it may turn out to be, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is certainly one of the most fascinating and unusual cinema items of the year, and one that will capture a huge amount of publicity and comment.

James Whale has done a great job in his direction. This is not an easy thing to direct — just how far to go in playing upon an audience's credulity, it's sympathy, it's nerves. Whale seems to have gone far enough, but not too far.

The documentary's talking heads include Rubin's aunt and cousin as well as artists, friends and critics — notably Amy Taubin, whose personal recollections are particularly incisive. Even with this mix of voices, Smith doesn't try to fill in the many gaps in Rubin's story but to honor them, along with her creative and spiritual impulses.

A relaxed, warmly sensual coming-of-age drama so steeped in ripe South of France flavor — sun, sea, lots of skin and a bit of bling — that you practically want to eat it by the spoonful.

Ben Foster goes through more than one striking transformation here, changing body and soul while neither shying away from nor overdramatizing the uglier aspects of the man’s life.

A mournful but clear-eyed look at one of the many governments on the planet currently either going to or simmering in Hell, Petra Costa's The Edge of Democracy is as much essay film as a primer on Brazil's recent history.

As the story grows increasingly bleak, it feels not only increasingly depressing but also more miserably authentic.

A winning combination of thoughtfulness and exuberance.

Though the subject is a largely familiar one, this is a work of considerable tonal complexity, as it stirs moments of pitch-black humor and short and violent reveries into an otherwise austerely told tale of spousal strife that wants to smash the patriarchy with feats of cinematic derring-do.

Examining the idea of paranoia as an engineered reaction, a tool of control that inhibits potential activism and self-expression, it's more than a lesson in living history. It's a powerful argument for how necessary it is to watch the watchers.

Smart, good-looking and buzzing with edginess, Sama's fourth feature has been made with a love and care that's palpable in every frame, allowing us to forgive its occasional, inevitable brushes with cliche.

This is at once an accessible art house drama about Lola’s emotionally frayed sisterly and amorous ties and a clinically observed portrait of a 21st-century woman trying to stay afloat in a ruthlessly profit-oriented economy where feelings are the enemy of efficiency.

I Do Not Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians is a mature, ambitious work from a spirited auteur who has mastered the cinematic rules well enough to break them with confidence.

Though it takes a little while for the film to find its footing, this is an ambitious and, finally, also touching new work from Pinoy Sunday director Ho Wi Ding.

The film is an empathy generator, an antidote to compassion fatigue.

An effective exercise in stylistic pastiche that has more to offer than its eerie retro mood, Tilman Singer's Luz presents a refreshing take on demonic possession in which the usual fright-flick cliches are nowhere to be found.

Laurents' screenplay has a shocking sense of character truth, and The Way We Were says things that no one else has dared to say in a major Hollywood movie.

Part workplace dramedy, part revenge fantasy, the film weaves together a series of satisfying, organic-feeling turns.

A rich reminiscence of a gifted actor who died far too young.

Director Marie Losier ... chronicles the wrestler’s twilight years with affection, humor and gravitas.

Whether the narrative is in amped-up overdrive or idling, the director and her magnetic cast keep us fully invested in their cautious reconnection and their ability to survive a series of life-threatening encounters.

Aquarela takes a deep dive into watery realms around the world, offering up an experience that can truly be described as immersive.

End of the Century is at its best whenever Castro keeps things thematically and temperamentally woozy.

As quiet and thoughtfully composed as a Dutch master's painting, Ordinary Love uses clean lines and well observed tiny details to build up a deeply moving, nuanced portrait of a marriage under strain after a cancer diagnosis.

It’s perhaps less flamboyantly enjoyable than Finley’s first feature, but it also digs deeper into the souls of its characters, asking how a few people meant to ensure the pedagogy of hundreds of children could flunk out so badly.

As fun as a night in the mosh pit with your best mate ... Directed by Coky Giedroyc with a fizzy vibrancy and supercharged by Feldstein's intense charisma, this crowd-pleasing comedy has smart things to say about class, sex and female identity.

Malgorzata’s command of her medium makes the film a pleasure to watch.

As in the book, the shock effect of coldly detailed incest, bestiality and sexual abuse, beatings, killings and mutilation is furiously nonstop in a film of nearly three hours. Rather than numbing the viewer, however, the parade of evil is presented in a dismaying crescendo of horror that offers no escape.

The documentary makes a persuasive case as to why this show — grounded very specifically in the lives of a persecuted Jewish shtetl community in 1905 Imperial Russia — continues to connect deeply with audiences across vast divides of religion, race, generation, personal experience and sexuality. Its layers of meaning to anyone who has ever felt ostracized alone have cemented its eternal relevance.

By leaning into the character-driven nature of the story and a remarkably yoked ensemble cast, Before You Know It becomes something much more than a “chick flick”: It's a nuanced treatment of how the dynamics that bond a family together can also tear it apart.

The luminous Kristen Stewart keeps you glued throughout, giving a coolly compelling performance that becomes steadily more poignant as the subject unravels.

Director Lopez offers no more lightheartedness than the film absolutely needs to show that their spirits haven't been crushed by squalor; meanwhile, her effects artists use mostly excellent CG to slowly hint at how interested the world of the dead is in Estrella's predicament.

The documentary rarely presses its larger points. But it calmly reveals how much journalism has changed since Ivins started out in the late 1960s, yet how relevant her observations about the blight of corporate money in politics and threats to the First Amendment remain today.

Although it eventually settles into familiar genre tropes, for much of its running time Daniel Isn't Real proves a genuinely provocative shocker.

The cast commit enthusiastically to the material, walking that fine line between comic exaggeration and an almost earnest dramatic sincerity.

Affleck gives the impression of intimate familiarity with the anguish and self-disgust that dominate Jack’s life; this character and project clearly meant something important to him, as the title bluntly suggests, and he gives it his all without overdoing the melodrama.

It is the closest the sound film has come to recapturing the genius of the silent movie chase comedy.

It’s impossible for Wakanda Forever to match the breakthrough impact of its predecessor, but in terms of continuing the saga while paving the way for future installments, it’s amply satisfying.

Successfully restraining himself throughout from getting fancy or experimental, Haynes has intently devoted himself to the story and his actors, with strong, unshowy work that ideally serves the tale being told.

This is a large-canvas treatment both epic and intimate in scale.

A highly original and rather touching account of loss, both physical and emotional.

An undeniably demanding but cumulatively rewarding mood piece.

Jenkin's heavily stylized debut is a disorienting experience at first, but it ultimately creates a boldly Expressionistic mood of uncanny beauty and mesmerizing otherness.

This superbly crafted yet intimate family drama is so realistic in terms of its setting and technical specificity, it sometimes feels like a documentary. ... It’s perhaps a tad deliberate in spots, hitting its central theme too heavily on the nose, but Proxima pulls off an impressive balancing act between the personal and the astronomical.

This potent work about stolen childhood deserves attention because of the freshness of the cast and because it confirms that Gavron is a director to watch.

A moving and powerful portrait of trauma and recovery, Cracked Up will likely prove as therapeutic for many viewers as it clearly is for Hammond himself.

A film about the sudden onset of deafness that is too attentive to specifics of character and setting to ever feel like a rote disability drama.

[A] striking and auspicious feature debut ... Saint Maud seeds the clouds with an eclectic mix of influences, but it works, creating a film with its own strange weather.

How this outspoken film, Bustamante’s most gripping to date, will fare domestically is an open question (it has not come out yet in Guatemala). It had a blazing bow in the Venice Days sidebar (Giornate degli Autori), where it easily grabbed the best film prize.

The real strength of Bozek's film is how much of Cunningham's own voice it gives us.

This is a tumultuous muse story in which the artist and his inspiration just happen to be blood relations.

A cracking little one-hander (mostly) that rations glimpses of its well-designed beastie expertly, the picture will please genre fans who don’t mind long stretches with no dialogue.

Celebration ultimately resembles more of a snapshot than a fleshed-out portrait, but it's one that's likely to linger in your memory for a long time afterwards.

It’s Hauser who carries the film in a rare and unlikely role, that of a presumed loser in life (the man did die just a few years later, at 44) who suffered very unwanted attention — but who, when he needed to, found a way to rise to the occasion.

While there are a lot of names, facts and intriguing assertions to absorb here, Gibney and editor Michael Palmer weave the dense narrative into a brisk, gripping and fascinatingly detailed thriller, enhanced by Robert Logan and Ivor Guest's suspenseful score.

This remarkable true story is a finely crafted exercise in slow-building suspense, though it works better as a gripping mood piece than as journalistic investigation, its raw confessional style slightly compromised by niggling narrative gaps and dramatic contrivances.

The actors throw themselves into their roles with terrific zeal, enlivened by the often blunt dialogue and the issues at stake.

There’s barely any let-up in tension throughout the film, even during interviews with subjects who could either be concealing murderous personal histories or potential victims risking their lives to disclose the excesses of law enforcement.

Sorkin has made a movie that's gripping, illuminating and trenchant, as erudite as his best work and always grounded first and foremost in story and character.

Wendy in every way feels like a handmade, one-of-a-kind, exceptionally fresh and — one hesitates to use the word — organic piece of work that quite quickly imparts a desire to see it again.

Before it turns intense, the film gently captures the flavor of life in a place where locals play a part in their own law enforcement and it takes a bit of walking even to get to a road and hitchhike.

There's a new bogeyman in town, and he makes all other pretenders to the terror throne look like a bunch of cuddly Disney characters.