An endlessly intriguing documentary.

There's a lot going on in The Willoughbys, yet if you can get on board with its manic energy and accelerated plotting, the Netflix animated family comedy-adventure has an oddball charm that works surprisingly well.

Though it drags in spots and doesn’t convince on all fronts, Bliss is nonetheless a worthy minor addition to a canon of homefront films.

With so many ingredients to stir into this overflowing pot, you have to hand it to the two experienced teams of Marvel collaborators who had a feel for how to pull this magnum opus off.

A Vigilante offers some grim, imaginary satisfactions in support of real survivors who need whatever help we can give.

Cronenberg assumes a distinctly clinical approach to the emotional, social and business shenanigans on display here, a perspective that has brilliantly served some of his overtly psychological, horror and sci-fi pieces but gives this one a brittle and airless feel.

If at times the dramatic balance feels off, or the passion exasperating in particularly Gallic ways (l’amour!), Desplechin and his superb cast convincingly bring the angsty emotions to a place of unexpected brightness and clarity.

Admittedly, the storyline weaves all over the place, but no matter — Chase's performance and a plethora of daft and witty situations carry it past some structural rough spots.

A tough sell theatrically despite its merits, the film will rely on Jones' name to reach viewers via home-video outlets.

Of course, there are some unrealistic elements in F1, moments that might have sticklers raising an eyebrow, but the film doesn’t feel any less dramatic than the real thing.

Distilling a couple of decades of stunt work and second-unit directing experience into 96 minutes of runtime, Stahelski and Leitch expertly deliver one action highlight after another in a near-nonstop thrill ride.

The movie, in which Shenk and Cohen (makers of the standout eco-doc The Island President) take the reins ably from Davis Guggenheim, hardly can hope to create the sensation of its Oscar-winning predecessor. But it finds plenty to add, both in cementing the urgency of Gore's message and in finding cause for hope.

Despite the familiarity of this setup, Way Back is a charmer, putting refreshingly little emphasis on Duncan's romantic needs and allowing family melodrama to erupt and simmer down without pat resolution.

The spareness of both the physical and emotional landscapes yields something quite delicate in a film with the grace and economy of a satisfying short story.

Sometimes I Think About Dying, then, is a graceful treatise on how challenging — but liberating — it can be to make connections.

The easygoing comedy keeps a familiar story going despite minor plot hiccups.

In retelling the still-astonishing story of the political career of Eliot Spitzer, a shooting star whose spectacular crash might forever obscure his accomplishments, Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney has all the ingredients for a potboiler: greed, corruption, sex, power, overweening ambition and jaw-dropping hubris.

More impressionistic than enlightening, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's Detropia introduces us to some interesting citizens of Detroit and gives them a welcome opportunity to speak for themselves, but reveals little we don't already know.

If the title MS Slavic 7 fails to ring a bell, its abstractness conveys the industrious intellectual labor demanded by this witty one-hour Canadian film.

House of Wax is great entertainment, an exciting, diverting thriller.

One wishes the script might have shared the degree of precision that has obviously been applied to the technical side of the production, which is resplendent in visual dazzle from the smallest beads of sweat on a character’s forehead to the vintage knit fabrics to those sprawling exotic vistas.

Like horse racing, filmmaking is a high-risk gamblers' game, but the team behind Dream Horse, the resulting dramatization of the Vokes' story, have surely bred a winner with this endearing, determinedly crowd-pleasing adaptation.

Friedkin Uncut is at its most gripping when it discusses two early hits, The French Connection and The Exorcist, in which the theme of goodness struggling with the dark side explodes.

This beautifully made film (which won the best director award at last year's Venice Film Festival) is the very definition of an art house movie with limited appeal, but its political import gives it added talking points that will draw attention.

Will undoubtedly mean a great deal to Romanians who struggled during this dark period, but not much to anyone else.

This intelligent and comprehensive documentary not only conveys the genuine nature of Hill herself, but also recreates the national sensibility of the time, an era when sexual harassment in the workplace was not yet a national concern.

Active Measures delivers a well-researched and smartly laid-out cinematic thesis that connects the myriad dots in skillful fashion.

The production comes by its authenticity naturally -- and not only because several of the cast members (fascinating faces all) happen to be related.

Journey to the West may not rank among Chow’s classics, but it’s a crowd-pleaser that also serves as a reminder of what the director can accomplish when he’s on his game.

The director, her co-screenwriter Etienne Comar and the exceptional cast led by Emmanuelle Bercot and Vincent Cassel have an acute enough eye for the manners and mores of these archetypes to make the material feel consistently fresh and alive.

Propelled by a steady heartbeat of low-level dread, McNaughton’s classy comeback is a superior genre movie but also a refreshingly old-school, character-driven nerve-jangler with no need for paranormal monsters or flashy special effects.

Newcomer Van Acken is a phenomenal find and she’s never less than believably torn between doing the right thing and being her own person.

Strong action, special effects and by far the most credible ape "performances" yet seen will spell box office to inspire chest-thumping in all markets.

Should be mandatory viewing for those interested in the dominant intersection between religion and politics.

A valuable cautionary tale that serves as a handy correlative to the many fictional films in which the biggest problems depicted about the music biz are the pitfalls of having too much drugs and sex.

Much has been made of supermodel Gemma Ward's doll-like features, but there's nothing plastic about her debut performance in the charming Australian indie The Black Balloon.

Made with the intelligence and good taste one expects from Ejiofor, the involving film cares about much more than the sweeping images of triumph with which it inevitably closes.

As a whole, the picture is, frustratingly, always much more about structure than substance.

A pitch-perfect ensemble comedy that burrows deep into the mind-set of white, upper middle-class Angelenos, anxious to strike the right balance among career, family, love life and money but never quite pulling it off.

It successfully imagines a place for its heroine in Holmes' world, then convinces young viewers that Enola needn't be constrained by that world's borders.

In its fusion of craft and narrative, My Friend Dahmer is exquisite. In its portrayal of Jeff's agonies, it can be excruciating.

Strip away the Middle East backdrop and Bethlehem is a fairly routine thriller about good cops, corrupt bureaucrats and armed criminal gangs.

Often shown in dark, flat and agitated closeups, Goic and Duran are both compelling performers.

Baloji has constructed four fascinating characters, played persuasively by these performers, but trying to figure out where their arcs overlap, even faintly, too often distracts from the beauty before us.

The sophomore writer-director adapts to the requirements of the genre, expertly sustaining tension, peppering big scares throughout and earning our emotional investment in the key characters. Plus a cat.

Ultimately, Crime 101 feels too contrived and artificial to be convincing. But there’s plenty to appreciate along the way, especially the extensive cinematic craftsmanship that’s gone into it.

My Cousin Vinny is a terrific variation on the fish-out-of-water/man-from-Mars story formula. Starring Joe Pesci as a slicker in the land of grits, My Cousin Vinny should tickle funny bones in every region and ring out a green spring for 20th Century Fox at the box office.

Suffers from the same occasionally heavy-handed style as its predecessors, it offers a credible indictment against the large corporations currently enjoying windfall profits thanks to the Iraq war.

Smart, funny and ultimately over-the-top spoof is more often than not, spot on.

Directed by Brian Vincent, the documentary situates its subject within the context of more familiar characters and tries to understand why Brzezinski, a charmingly aloof painter, is not readily considered among this cohort. The answer to this question is less interesting than the shocking journey it takes Vincent on.

"Paranormal" ultimately does deliver in a way that "Blair Witch" never did, but its achingly slow buildup is a test not just of an audience's patience but the power of hype surrounding the latest alternative scary movie.

The film doesn’t fully succeed in elucidating its complex issues. But the wide-spread problem it explores is clearly undeniable, and at the very least this rough-hewn but provocative documentary will hopefully inspire further discussion.

It may not rank up there with Skyfall, but it’s a moving valedictory salute to the actor who has left arguably the most indelible mark on the character since Connery.

By keeping his (Daly) focus on the two remarkable youngsters without an ounce of sentimentality he succeeds in making something true and satisfying.

His heart -- and musical soul -- is in the right place, but the film makes you at times uncomfortable with black and Southern stereotypes that may hinder some from fully enjoying an otherwise benign and cheerful tall tale of the Saturday night when rock came to rural Alabama.

The sequel is certainly a stupendous achievement in terms of its animation, and clearly has great cultural resonance in its native country. But those looking for coherent storytelling or emotional depth will have to wait for the next Pixar offering (not that the company has been distinguishing itself lately).

The heavily stylized film further demonstrates the actor's ability to create self-contained worlds behind the camera.

The strength of the film is its appealing characters brought to life by strong actresses.

Kikuchi manages to make Kumiko interesting company no matter how far the character recedes into herself, using subtly expressive body language that would have been at home in silent movies to create a very strange self-imposed social outcast.

Its simplistic observation of romantic love in its purest form colliding with political, religious, familial and societal intolerance seems designed to speak clearly to teenage audiences experiencing similar struggles between identity and oppression. Those well-meaning intentions only take the film so far, however, and mature audiences will be left wishing for greater narrative complexity.

This quirky documentary about a group of American hairdressers who establish exactly that shows that the power of hair salons should never be underestimated.

What distinguishes it are its intelligent, unsentimental screenplay, which only occasionally lapses into emotional manipulation; the assured direction by Yukihiko Tsutsumi; and the superb acting.

What makes it truly compelling, however, is its willingness to step outside that perspective and reconsider the phenomenon from a broader context with the wisdom of age.

The end result is a nifty ethical puzzle about balancing the needs of individuals versus those of the community. Still, it’s best not to take the plot too seriously given the wild implausibilities that come into play in the third act.

A straightforward biopic ... The film's edge is somewhat dulled by respect for its subject, who's drawn here as more hero than man.

Cianfrance generally shows again that he knows how to build immersive characterizations with his actors. And while this sorrowful triptych is uneven and perhaps overly ambitious, the director displays a cool mastery of atmospherics and tone.

Raw, intriguing and energetic despite its flaws, the film fades in dramatic power over its final stretch and doesn’t always do justice to the the potential richness of its subject, but until then, it makes for an authentic, distinctive and watchable blend of the tough and the tender.

It gives the feature doc treatment to a topic TV journalists (and news-comedy hero John Oliver) have looked at over the decades — showing the slimy ways that reforms prompted by public outrage have been neutered by politicians on both sides of the aisle.

Graf has spent most of his long career as a director of TV series and movies, and much of the staging lacks great originality. But this is made up for, in part, by the striking way the story of Jakob and his friends is told mixing the narrative drama with now old-fashioned “modernist” tech devices borrowed from the past.

The atmosphere, the buddy stuff and the flashy setting don't make up for the fact that the main story is too distanced throughout much of the movie. Further diluting the film's intensity is the scene structuring; far too often lame expository scenes serve to advance the plot or explain the backstory.

Though sympathetic to a woman they have known for over 30 years, Mark and Bell make no positive or negative judgments about her life.

Mysius goes all out here, but her film overshoots its target by a few miles, even if the mise-en-scène is inspired and lead Adèle Exarchopoulos excellent as always.

At the end of the documentary, Richard O’Brien reflects on his realization over the years that Rocky Horror hasn’t truly belonged to him for years. It belongs, he says, to the fans, and Strange Journey is a record they’ll be pleased to have.

Understanding the life and work of Luis Valdez is a way to broaden one’s understanding of what it means to be American, perhaps now more than ever. Watching this enlightening and entertaining documentary is a good way to start.

This bloated finale (running almost 2 hours long) perfunctorily ties up the narrative loose ends with little finesse or energy — a shame because the earlier two entries, chock full of pop culture references and subversive thematic underpinnings, had immense potential.

Documentarian Morgan Neville has fashioned a spirited riposte to the groundless cliche that Los Angeles is a cultural wasteland.

A little more subtlety and a more nuanced approach to the dynamics of this culture clash would have made the film that little bit more effective.

The final episode of George Lucas' cinematic epic "Star Wars" ends the six-movie series on such a high note that one feels like yelling out, "Rewind!" Yes, rewind through more than 13 hours of bravery, treachery, new worlds, odd creatures and human frailty.

Paris is a bittersweet film containing rare moments of comedy.

Fierce and tragic tale of lost hope.

What matters most is that the movie is fun, pacy and enjoyable, a breath of fresh air sweetened by a deep affection for the material and boosted by a winning trio of leads.

This fascinating relationship gets smothered in pointlessly long takes, repetitive scenes, grim Western landscapes and mumbled, heavily accented dialogue.

The movie entertains, but it's a shallow entertainment where you have no rooting interest in the outcome.

Yojiro Takita, who directed enduring commercial hits like "The Ying Yang Master" and "The Yen Family," has made a popular gem -- thematically respectable, technically hard to fault, artfully scripted to entertain and touch.

Even if he's never able to mount a full-scale return to the happy depravity of his youth, Waters is one of bad behavior's most likable champions.

Utterly and passionately hagiographic, the documentary Seeing Allred presents 96 minutes of reasons to stand and cheer for celebrated feminist lawyer Gloria Allred. That means, of course, that for ultra-conservative lovers of Netflix documentaries, it's doubtful that Seeing Allred is going to dramatically change any opinions about her.

Despite its missteps and occasional pretensions, Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent provides a compelling portrait of the chef as tortured artist.

Policy wonk Robert Reich’s analysis of today’s parallels to the Great Depression is both statistics-driven and impassioned.

Ghost Stories is a witty and well-crafted love letter to old-school horror tropes.

The opportunity to see the stunning footage on the big screen is not to be missed, and the narration by Daniel Craig, delivered with James Bond-style drollness, makes it as much fun to listen to as to watch.

Santoalla isn't without its longueurs, even at 83 minutes, and can veer into the repetitive at times. But it scores in its judicious combination of archival materials (some of it shot by camcorder-fan Verfondern himself) with the directors' own interview-based footage, taking that most ancient of squabbles — a feud between farmers — and turning it into a poignant elegy for tragically lost opportunities.

Francis Veber's latest offering, remains faithful to the formula -- broad farce leavened with witty dialogue -- that has made him France's most bankable comedy writer-director and a surefire hit with international audiences.

Buoyed by enjoyable performances by character actors like Paul Ben-Victor, the picture is slight but likeable, especially for fans of its younger leads.

The film, which feels attenuated despite its brief running time, doesn’t dig deep enough to provide more than an impressionistic portrait.

A superb, comically gifted cast helps writer-director Jim Strouse lift this quite a few cuts above his previous work as well as above the general run of films about modern life and relationships.

Awesome will please fans of the band, but expect little crossover to nonfans. No new ground is broken here. From a cinematic point of view, Awesome represents simply a monumental postproduction salvaging effort.

Less giddy and more cohesive than the original, the film doesn't waste time, plunging almost directly into a spectacular heist.

The film is an initially insightful portrait of modern corporate society that unfortunately lapses into melodrama.