Don’t Sleep practically begs audiences to defy its ill-chosen title.

Nowlin’s performance...is a marvel of inner turmoil and physical exertion.

Despite poignant moments, particularly in the performances of Steve Carell and Laurence Fishburne, the weave of somber introspection, rueful reminiscence, irreverent comedy and sociopolitical commentary feels effortful, placing the movie among the less memorable entries in Linklater's canon.

Sensitive performances from the young cast ensure that the story ultimately acquires poignancy, and the arresting physical setting helps disguise the familiarity of some of its coming-of-age signposts.

This is a wondrous and moving account of a remarkable life that puts us right there with Goodall to share directly in her discoveries.

Questions of musical taste (as opposed to hit-savvy reading of the zeitgeist) aside, Soundtrack of Our Lives does offer an informative primer for anyone unfamiliar with the scope of this truly impressive career.

Neatly divided into seven discrete chapters plus prologue and epilogue, it's a necessarily repetitive but engrossing and ultimately optimistic glimpse into a troubled situation entering belated turnaround.

This is certainly an entertaining-enough watch, even for those without much rooting interest in Gaga.

This stylish chamber piece plays like a cross between Ex Machina and The Tree of Life, mixing a cleverly conceived biotechnical fable with sun-dappled sentimentalism that doesn’t always resonate like it should.

Although visually stylish and imaginative — the short bits of animation on display wouldn’t be out of place in a Tim Burton film — Friend Request gets less interesting the more it goes on.

Exhibiting all of the same weaknesses as its predecessor, as well as a fatal lack of originality, this iteration will probably mean the nail in the coffin for this smugly self-regarding series, at least on the theatrical circuit.

Terrifically effective when vividly illustrating the emergency medical procedures necessary to keep a gun victim alive, Shot falls short in terms of narrative. But it will certainly resonate for anyone who’s ever been rushed to a hospital.

Using her own experience with the syndrome as a springboard, Brea offers an affecting film.

By focusing his camera on those “half-men, completely broken” by Habre’s reign and allowing them to tell their stories, Haroun is helping his country to finally mourn its own tragedy, while his warm and understanding approach offers up what feels like a path toward appeasement.

ever Here wears the outer clothes of a crime thriller to cloak a more haunting, disturbing, open-ended rumination on voyeurism and identity.

Despite Anna Schafer’s gripping performance in the lead role, this deeply personal effort is too narratively sluggish to sustain attention.

It's the chemistry between Domhnall Gleeson and newcomer Will Tilston, as the awkwardly matched father and son, that makes the movie more than a mélange of inept parenting and Tigger too.

A perfectly adequate family film for kids who love watching things they've seen many times before (which is to say, most kids), it offers plenty of chuckles for their parents but nothing approaching the glee of that first Lego Movie.

This fleet-footed, glibly imaginative international romp stays on its toes and keeps its wits about it most of the time, with entertaining and pointedly U.S.-friendly cast additions.

Though undistinguished as a piece of moviemaking (its aesthetic is best suited to educational settings), the doc benefits from the spectrum of talent on display.

Both Redford and Fonda are charming, delicate and convincing as Addie Moore and Louis Waters, the couple who find each other at the tail end of their lives. They are directed with sophistication and without a drop of melodrama or sentimentality by Ritesh Batra

A road movie short on comedy and drama should at least offer a keen level of observation, but here insight is scarce and emotional resonance is faint.

Fine performances from a cast of pros generally win out over the story's more formulaic aspects.

The pairing of Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart in the lead roles pays off big time, with more laugh-out-loud moments than the original and some particularly hilarious work from Hart, who steps up his game after his fun if broad-minded performances in Get Hard and the Ride Along movies.

While the more enigmatic supernatural elements at times veer close to formulaic Hollywood horror tropes, the movie maintains a compelling seriousness, particularly in its consideration of the conflict between sexuality and repression.

Perhaps the most striking thing about David Gordon Green’s Stronger is how it refuses to turn its subject into a hero or even a small-time symbol of courage, as one might legitimately expect of a survivor story, even while the world is clamoring to put him on a pedestal.

Unfortunately, something at the center just doesn’t hold, and it flies apart over the course of 133 minutes into confusing shards of plot, legalese-heavy monologues and, perhaps most surprising of all given Gilroy’s bona fides, a touch of soggy sentimentality in the home stretch.

Many rough edges are smoothed by the strong acting and well-done tech work.

What really helps Mountain overcome its far-fetched scenario is the pairing of Winslet and Elba, who know how to turn up the charm tenfold yet make Alex and Ben seem (mostly) like real people.

Sorkin both entertains and makes you lean in to absorb every detail of this wild tale, which boasts a stellar cast to help tell it.

Sharp dramatization and direct performances suffice to put the story's themes across more urgently than expected.

The sad truth is that we’ve heard countless harrowing stories of the Holocaust, and this one, for the most part, isn’t presented in a way that makes it indelible or urgent.

Failing to provide any backstory or psychological motivation for the killer’s actions, the film essentially devolves into torture porn.

It's a role very well suited to Liam Neeson, whose righteousness fills the screen and sometimes seems all the movie can offer.

In addition to its unconvincing, cliché-ridden storyline, Alina takes itself too seriously.

An affectionate and sometimes vibrantly imaginative biographical sketch, Manolo: The Boy Who Made Shoes for Lizards could have used more shoes and fewer people.

Although chances are good that something called This Is Your Death is not going to be admirably restrained in the subtlety department, there was at least the hope that this grotesque thriller wouldn’t have kept pivoting uneasily between audacious social satire and mawkish moralizing.

Depicting the very long, violence-filled night that ensues after a group of young people trespass in a creepy, abandoned prison, Against the Night proves as generic as its title.

Infusing her portrayal with equal measures of steeliness, vulnerability, sexiness and sly humor, Dhavernas bares herself both physically and soulfully in a magnetic performance that anchors the film.

Della Valle’s screenplay features the sort of artificial-sounding, hard-boiled dialogue uttered by characters who know they’re in a movie, and it’s woefully thin on storytelling coherence. Still, Akinnuoye-Agbaje looks great, and suitably haunted, walking on deserted beaches clad in a trench coat, and his co-stars prove equally compelling.

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.

Breathe is clearly aiming for the same heart-wrenching emotional heights as James Marsh’s Oscar-winning Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything. But this is very much a crude copy, its noble intentions hobbled by a trite script, flat characters and a relentlessly saccharine tone that eventually starts to grate.

It takes skill to successfully handle heavy issues with a light touch, but that's what German-born, Argentina-based writer-director Nele Wohlatz pulls off with her delightfully original documentary/fiction hybrid.

What the film doesn’t have is the visceral impact that would take it from a well-intentioned treatise to a searing work of art.

Built for action, like its title character, the movie packs a muscular, bloody punch, but mainly it’s a well-oiled diversion.

An excellent blend of musical behind-the-scenes, open-hearted interviews, and performance.

Side-stepping what could have been a cheap, morbid peek into the lives of two beautiful teenagers who were born joined at the hip, Indivisible strikes out on its own path, sounding an exhilarating note of freedom for its protags.

Where the final minutes of the movie suffer from clumsy storytelling, most of what precedes them sits well within the romantic finding-oneself comfort zone, and Solo, while not able to imbue her character with Amelie-like spark, helps keep things from getting treacly.

The main problem is that the directors often struggle to assign meaning to their images that helps advance either the narrative or illuminate the emotional state of their main character.

Brad's Status is good enough to make you wish it were even better: tighter, bolder, sharper. But it's a droll, affecting movie — and, in its exploration of a man's fantasies of success and fears of failure, his trudge through the weeds of pessimism toward optimism, a distinctly American one.

Never talking down to his audience, he rather pulls them up to an intellectual level where other filmmakers fear to go.

Just about everything about this film is winning and gratifying.

While the film continues almost throughout to generate great whoops of shocking laughter, it's the notes of genuine sorrow, compassion and contrition that resonate.

Intending to shed insight on the philosophies that led them to their victories Winning too often feels like an intertwined series of inspirational television newsmagazine segments.

Shot in 23 countries, the film has an amazing breadth and a relentless moral drive that will make it a reference point for this subject, whatever the audience response may be.

The resulting effort proves so exploitative that its end credits' dedication to the victims and first responders feels tawdry. 9/11 represents a cheapo disaster movie wrapping itself in the piety of one of the nation’s most tragic events.

The film abounds with pinpoint insights into its mildly rebellious heroine's hunger to shed the restraints of home and Catholic school and bust into an independent life, and does so with a wealth of keenly observed detail.

Diffuse and rambling, the documentary offers plenty of fascinating historical tidbits but lacks the breadth and depth to do justice to its complicated narrative.

The film ultimately becomes bogged down by its meandering dialogue, generic characterizations and such mild attempts at suspense as one of the quintet worrying about a brother in New York City.

A giant thud of a film that makes one doubt the fact that West ever directed a proper Hollywood movie.

An unlikely romantic comedy concerning a young parish priest struggling to discover the true scope of his religious calling, The Good Catholic doesn't so much challenge conventions as reinforce them.

David Harewood and Edwina Findley, the only trained actors in a compelling cast of non-pros, deliver harrowing performances as a self-styled healer and the desperate mother who seeks his help for her tormented son.

The women of Motherland emerge as an entirely different class of heroines, demonstrating Diaz’s insight and compassion in documenting their experiences without judgment or condescension and allowing them to convey their own individual perspectives.

Joan’s story unfolds all too neatly, but in Allen’s spark and grace there’s a real sense of discovery.

As the script and performances dive inward, exploring David's ability to endure while sending Cal into memories of hunting trips with his own father (Bill Pullman), the movie uses Todd McMullen's fine scenic photography to show how stranded they are.

Given the public's undying curiosity about the literary star who rejected fame, it's surprising he hasn't been the subject of more films. Rebel in the Rye shows how hard it is to satisfyingly pull that enigmatic man out of his hiding place.

Despite its obviously strong philosophical and emotional interest in the nature of memory, the picture is most satisfying as a whodunit, observing Dinklage's deeply empathetic interviews with those who've been wounded, not helped, by a procedure that was meant to be therapeutic.

Though the script is pretty good on depicting the broken dreams that strew the path of the wannabe actor, its scope reaches wider, making it a timely portrayal (immigration, Brexit) on the multiple frustrations of being a stranger in a strange land, even when that stranger is as bourgeois as they come.

The elegiac Spettacolo is in some ways a familiar story, revolving around the universal tug of war between time and tradition.

Trophy isn't as good at drawing moral conclusions as it is at laying out the difficult issues around hunting, conservationism and the trade in animal parts. But the film will be involving for those on all sides of animal-welfare debates.

Boasting impressive visuals and special effects, Anti Matter overcomes its familiar narrative aspects with an imaginative style that fully draws us into its complex storyline. The film proves that sophisticated sci-fi can be terrifying without relying on cheap jump scares.

It is a solid thriller that works best when it is most involved in its adolescent heroes' non-monster-related concerns. It will prove much more satisfying to King's legion of fans than "Dark Tower" did. But it falls well short of the King-derived film it clearly wants to evoke, "Stand By Me"; and newcomers who were spoiled by the eight richly developed hours of Stranger Things may wonder what the big deal is supposed to be.

Movies like Company Town are most useful when they can be shown to the unconvinced and cut through the arguments of self-interested parties.

Kamiyama, a vet of the Ghost in the Shell franchise, brings plenty of sci-fi genre ingredients to what at times might look like a Miyazaki coming-of-age adventure. Though occasionally lopsided, the mix works well.

Flatly staged, patchily acted and hobbled by a script (by Meyers-Shyer) that substitutes strained cuteness for wit and texture, Home Again is like a feature-length sitcom sans laughs.

This is a tale that, like any number of fanciful genre outings, both pulls you in with its intriguing central dramatic situation and pushes you out with some mightily far-fetched plot contrivances.

Suburbicon is just too obvious in its satirical depiction of the dubious morality and social inequality behind the squeaky-clean façade of postwar American life, though it's watchable enough, and a distinct improvement for Clooney on his last directorial outing.

McCarten’s scene writing is tart and efficient and Wright infuses the drama with unquestioned energy. But this is a film in which every point and meaning is hit directly on the nose.

Solemn, searching and at times even poetic in its indignation, this is a sensitively crafted contemplation of corrosive grief, even if the unanswerable questions surrounding the case keep the film somewhat emotionally muted.

It arrives not as a lusty tale in full bloom but as a tastefully arranged still life, in search of an animating spark.

There's a nicely rendered sense of aesthetics, whether it’s in the safe pastel shades which fill Bea’s bedroom and which contrast with the high, sharp tones of the fantasy scenes.

Bratt certainly illuminates the uncertainty of her quest: the early dawns of heading out to rally strangers and the turmoil of a life fighting against superior, institutional forces.

The normally charismatic cast doesn’t get much to chew on and thus can’t really lift the film beyond its modest, self-aware station.

The gory carnage is sparingly but vividly staged, the suspense-driven plot twisty enough to tax the brain.

Its run-of-the-mill standoff may appease some hardcore horror buffs, but it offers nothing to the rest of us and will likely be forgotten before the blood on the ground dries.

Temple comes off as more of a half-hearted attempt at exploiting typical J-horror themes than an actual homage to the Japanese genre.

While general audiences may wish for a bit more technical information about how Turner keeps track of cards without being able to see them, Korem understandably seizes on the emotional arc before him, following Turner's late-middle-age crisis through to its happy resolution.

The movie devotes an inexcusably short time to the many years Ronson worked after the Spiders from Mars disbanded — and, Hunter aside, talks to nearly nobody from that time.

A Very Sordid Wedding offers some undeniably entertaining moments, and its talented ensemble, clearly encouraged to pull out all the stops, delivers their comic shtick with admirable gusto.

Though not as fresh or funny as its predecessor, this feature directing debut for actor Jay Baruchel stays true to its spirit and will please its most enthusiastic fans.

This meticulously crafted jewel is del Toro's most satisfying work since Pan's Labyrinth.

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

Captivating, funny and possessed of a surprise-filled zig-zag structure that makes it impossible to anticipate where it's headed, this is a deeply humane film that, like the best Hollywood classics, feels both entirely of its moment and timeless.

Though somewhat slow out of the starting blocks, this finally caustic drama, set in early 1980s Bratislava (then in Czechoslovakia), accumulates power and insight as it builds over the course of a tense parents-teachers conference, punctuated with the necessary flashbacks.

It looks better than many of its peers, with only one or two lapses of taste in production design, FX and costumes. (The cutesy CG sidekick of our main hero is the biggest sore thumb.) Diverting but hardly novel enough to win over Stateside viewers outside the circle of hardcore Asian film buffs.

What distinguishes Bushwick from your standard-issue, boneheaded video game is its cheeky cerebral wit.

By avoiding excessive proselytizing and instead simply and effectively relating its moving tale, All Saints proves stirring in a way many of its cinematic brethren do not.

A discordantly derivative attempt at amalgamating divergent horror cliches and unrelated cultural traditions.