Director Michael Tyburski and co-writer Ben Nabors' lyrical character study ... deftly balances the cerebral with the soulful in a story of transfixing originality.

An eye-opener about what it's like to live with a variety of mental illnesses, including obsessive-compulsive disorder -- and, however tenuously, to recover from them.

The Zellners’ fondness for wacky scenarios, the film’s unexpected turns and its deep appreciation for the natural world culminate in a project at once committed to a comedic bit that overstays its welcome and a somewhat poignant narrative competing for space and attention.

Susanne Wolff, who impressed critics last year in Wolfgang Fischer's "Styx," makes another strong turn here, grounding what could have become a merely lurid tale of dissipation, danger and sex work.

While it's way behind the "Pulp Fiction" curve, Seven Psychopaths can be terrifically entertaining.

There's still much to admire about this carefully drawn but concise character sketch, especially the strong performances and a unique, affectingly ominous score by folk-rock-gospel outfit Bruce Peninsula.

The selection of Oscar-nominated animated feature film director Travis Knight (Kubo and the Two Strings) to helm the prequel turns out to be spot-on, as he exhibits an instinctual sense for the film’s requisite action quotient while attentively crafting the central characters’ emotional arcs.

It’s far from subtle filmmaking, but Holy Spider is equal parts gripping and disturbing, and not always for the squeamish.

Willfully provocative, much like a small child performing outrageous acts just to get some attention.

It's a roller-coaster action film that thunders along with top-notch set pieces and studiously researched period settings. The only letdown is that the focus on action drowns out any character development.

Like other recent French cartoons — ranging from Persopolis to the Kirikou series — this one manages to maintain something personal within a broadly appealing framework: it doesn’t shy away from the dark side of life, and in the end, even allows us to enjoy it.

In American Me, Edward James Olmos has achieved several important goals, but one outweighs the rest: he has made a film that will scare the hell out of any inner-city youth not already lost to the hopelessness of gangs, drugs and prison. [9 Mar 1992]

By remaining purposely vague, whether about locations or the real-world stakes at hand, this modern-day political parable doesn’t hit you in the gut the way it’s meant to.

This is a genial, humane project with obvious fan appeal. But for anyone expecting a definitive behind-the-scenes film about the making of Star Wars, this is not the documentary you have been looking for.

Fly Away is an affecting portrait of a single mother and her severely autistic daughter.

While Atwater exerted notable influence on contemporary politics, this account of his career doesn't make for particularly absorbing viewing.

Bringing their real-life story to the screen, director Gabriela Cowperthwaite has made a movie about soldiers that's not, strictly speaking, a war film. She's made a love story, one that's all the more heartstring-tugging for its cogent restraint.

Coppola’s attitude toward her subject seems equivocal, uncertain; there is perhaps a smidgen of social commentary, but she seems far too at home in the world she depicts to offer a rewarding critique of it.

Engaging characters and the persistent appeal of dinosaurs benefit the doc, whose Byzantine legal content might otherwise be off-putting.

Audaciously cerebral and unabashedly granular, writer-director Scott Z. Burns' political thriller The Report, a dramatization of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee's 2014 probe into the CIA's use of torture in the wake of 9/11, is practically pornography for policy wonks.

A tale of long-simmering grudges and shocking violence in a small town, Paul Solet's Tread is a smartly structured doc with a finale so extravagant you could build an exploitation film around it.

It’s a small-scale film that many might call unambitious, favoring delicate observation over big emotional payoff.

McHale has been shrewd in declining to offer a definitive verdict on the movie, instead giving equal time to both negative and positive responses.

Even if the air fizzles out a bit during the denouement, the film still accomplishes what it set out to do, with both Kahn and Bejo aptly shouldering all the narrative weight until the final scene.

It’s definitely treacly in places and not exactly reinventing the wheel, but the two fine performances at its heart are more than worth it.

Idiocracy, is often stingingly funny -- and an undeserving resident of the summer's-end movie dumping ground.

The whole film, a comedy about crime and mental illness, seems at war with itself.

The gifted fantasy/sci-fi/horror specialist has made a film that's very bloody, and bloody stylish at that, one that's certainly unequaled in its field for the beauty of its camerawork, sets, costumes and effects. But it's also conventionally plotted and not surprising or scary at all, as it resurrects hoary horror tropes from decades ago to utilize them in conventional, rather than fresh or subversive ways

The important point is that the charm and poignancy of the original text survive. And Wright’s technical achievements are worth saluting.

On his first trip behind the camera, the British-Iranian Amini shows his skill at working with actors and sensing the way they can fill out literary characters. His screenplay generally feels more naturalistic than Highsmith, the dialogue less spare.

In every sense, The Great Museum (Das grosse Museum) imparts a feeling of privilege — privilege on the part of those (the Hapsburgs) who built and opened Vienna's extraordinary Kunsthistorisches Museum in 1891, privilege among those lucky enough to work at such a rarified establishment and privilege on the part of any viewer of Johannes Holzhausen's wonderfully evocative and droll documentary.

It's chiefly notable for Cara Seymour's nuanced supporting turn as Anna's sometime best friend, Kate.

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."

The film represents the director in a more pensive, even philosophical vein, less interested in propulsive cinema and more reflective about what would seem to mean the most to him—dreams, and the ability to make them come true. This is what The BFG is about but, unfortunately, that is basically all it’s about and by a considerable measure too explicitly and single-mindedly so.

The action is lively and quick-paced, and then suddenly over — at which point the film gets to hammer down some of its more wholesome messages.

If Shaft were indeed a hard-hitting, fast-paced, action-packed detective thriller, as it was meant to be, then it would be an acceptable entertainment. But it isn't.

This isn't a deep dive into what makes one man tick, but a multilayered exploration of the love and devotion that animals inspire, whether the critter is your companion or your patient. Contained within the stories in Dog Doc is a visionary approach to caring for animals and ourselves, a way of more truly sharing the planet rather than trying to control it.

Poetic, painterly work Users looks and sounds stunning, but remains thematically a little too diffuse for its own good as it meditates on our children and the future they will inhabit, where perfect machines replace imperfect parents.

Even if you watch it alone on a laptop with a bottle of cheap beer and a dried-up turkey sandwich, Audrey is a pleasure. That's mostly due to the still-incandescent star power of its subject.

If the movie remains safe, there's no questioning its integrity, or the balance of porcelain vulnerability and strength that Eddie Redmayne brings to the lead role.

There are chuckles here and there, but a striking absence of belly laughs; Girls Trip it’s decidedly not.

The result is that rare thing in cinema -- an intellectually-stimulating crowd-pleaser.

Crude, repetitive and rigorously single-minded, the popular actor’s writing and directing debut lays it all on a bit thick, as the few points the film has to make are underscored time and time again.

The surprising lack of humor in So Close, and long, trying stretches between combat sequences aren't likely to attract new converts to the genre.

In a season of proliferating issue-oriented documentaries, Voices of Iraq stands out by the sheer nature of its provenance: Iraqis themselves filmed the footage during a six-month period this year.

Episodic in its storytelling, the film never really achieves any true narrative momentum. But individual scenes do register strongly.

[A] comprehensive documentary adding context and a modern-day update to the tale.

Haunting feature that crafts fiction from the inspiration of real-life Kurdish-Iranian poet Sadegh Kamangar. Co-star Monica Bellucci may attract much of the attention Stateside, but the film's ravishing aesthetic and multiple points of political interest will make it fascinating to many cineastes.

Audiences might enjoy this cinematic sleight of hand, but the key characters are such single-minded, calculating individuals that the real magic would be to find any heart in this tale.

Sadly, this film's POV conceit -- in which all scenes are shot by the characters, whether they have a plausible reason to hold the camera up or not -- quickly becomes as grating as Kelly herself.

If we take a step back, we can see the faint outlines of another, more urgent, narrative thread in Kaepernick & America — one that encourages an all too rare kind of integrity and commitment to creating a more just world.

Despite its many ominous implications, Grimonprez also infuses Double Take with sly wit, inserting scenes from the TV program showcasing Hitchcock's wry sense of humor and the exaggerated domesticity of commercials sponsored by Folgers Coffee.

So don't tell Spurlock he can't have his cake and eat it too. In Greatest Movie, he gleefully accepts his sponsorships on camera just to show you how wrong this all is.

Judy is three-quarters of a good movie that would have been even better if it trusted the urgency of the last act of Garland’s life — and the brilliance of Zellweger’s performance.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die doesn’t quite deliver on the sardonic promise of its catchy title, but its appealing cast and Verbinski’s flair for kinetic action set pieces make it a reasonably entertaining entry in the canon of gonzo sci-fi comedies fueled by existential dread about the dystopian techno-dominant reality we’re already trapped in.

Young audiences may well be enchanted, but I’m sad to report I found the whole confection sickly sweet and hopelessly twee.

The sort of film that would be best appreciated in the '70s-era grindhouses that sadly no longer exist, Kung Fu Killer is delicious popcorn fare.

An insightful film about the creative talents that have made hip-hop an original, enduring American musical tradition.

306 Hollywood is a personal essay! It's a tone poem! It's a biographical collage! It's an embrace of the banal kitschy! It's magic realism! It's such a little story you may wonder why it's being told at all, except that it's a story likely to touch anybody who has ever lost a loved one, which makes it a very big story.

Blanchett gives this dynamo of intelligence and doggedness a real human dimension that allows the propulsive drama to breathe; it’s another stellar performance that rates among her best.

The sensitive macho Schoenaerts is pretty much center-screen throughout this sleekly made suspense piece based on a script more loaded with holes than the numerous bad guys he either shoots or stabs to death.

A meticulously observed story about fathers and sons within the Argentine Jewish community...What the film desperately lacks, however, is any meaningful conflict. Thus, there is little story here.

Cruz's performance deserves to be seen widely, and it should place her again in line for prizes, but the story's pretensions and downbeat mood will not endear the film to audiences.

The good-looking, easygoing doc settles in with its two subjects, offering not just an intimate perspective on the playwright's biography but some touching reflections on the comforts and perils of long-term friendship.

The splashy animation is well-executed but again a bit monotonous for a full-length feature.

The film feels a little too eulogistic, too reliant on hyperbole and too in love with its own gimmicks to make it more than just a serviceable crowd-pleaser.

Family dysfunction has proved a rich resource for documentary filmmakers in recent years, but "October" lacks the narrative drive and emotional resonance of such examples of the genre as "Tarnation" and "Capturing the Friedmans."

A compact, effective thriller set in way-rural Ireland, Jeremy Lovering's In Fear makes the most of three actors, a car and a network of narrow roads winding through the woods.

Punishing for some, it could be just the cup of tea for the young male demographic.

Buoyed by Gyllenhaal's hauntingly complex portrait of the vivacious but addictive Sherry, the film is no mere by-the-numbers chronology of addiction. Gyllenhaal's sympathetic and charismatic performance binds us to the horror of Sherry's personal demons.

The farcical elements in the plot take far too long to gel, and Robespierre and company push too hard at mixing sad, silly and sweet.

Diverting and pleasurable to watch, Stardust, a tongue-in-cheek sword-and-sorcerers romp bolstered by a top-flight cast, is most adroit when it plays the fantasy straight rather than sending up the genre.

From its pitch-perfect title through just about every detail, this sendup of sports-triumph movies maintains the right parodic pitch, if not always the highest mph on the laugh speedometer.

Director Abhinay Deo and producer Aamir Khan's gleeful experiment in "Hangover"-caliber humor delivers the laughs, and its young stars, including Khan's nephew, A-lister Imran Khan, rise to the challenge.

This is clearly not a film made for everyone, but for a fortunate few, it will feel like a cleansing in nature.

Though Whelan's debut filmmaking effort wears some of its homemade characteristics proudly, it wrangles more than enough credible interviewees to make its points.

In his first narrative feature, documentarian Nitzan Gilady demonstrates an assured grasp of visual storytelling, using a stunningly rugged desert setting that’s as much a character as the film’s perpetually sunny, intellectually challenged 24-year-old and her world-weary mother.

A documentary composed entirely of vintage source material, letting the era speak for itself and the "Great Communicator" show, oddly, both more and less of himself than intended.

Suspenseful and funny, occasionally poignant and often nearly unbelievable, it captures a certain sociological flavor while remaining universally accessible.

Russell Mulcahy's In Like Flynn triumphs as a disgracefully entertaining romp that packs an unexpected emotional wallop.

It’s a comedy and a tragedy, though the people involved aren’t necessarily on rigid opposite sides. Better to say that everyone has some level of fluidity, not just in terms of personal belief, though they’ll speak their dogmatic minds if the occasion demands it.

Both the racial motivations behind the crime and the community's startling reaction make this tragedy especially worth remembering; when it is shown nationwide on the shooting's fourth anniversary, June 17 (with an encore on June 19), it will leave few viewers unmoved.

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.

A charming piece of Japanese anime that could well serve as the basis for a stateside live-action remake, “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time” boasts an entertaining storyline to match its well-drawn visuals.

Perpetrator may be silly and over-the-top, but inside of it lies a beating heart — quite literally, you will see — that yearns to express itself.

While not a typical teen comedy, Mustache approaches the genre from a perspective that’s gently humorous and refreshingly clever, even if it’s quite a bit tamer than mainstream fare.

The story of a young singer-songwriter who’s stuck in a nowhere loop until she takes an impulsive leap, the feature is sometimes clunky but often quietly transporting.

Director John Curran has masterfully managed to convey flesh and blood within the permutations of the sometimes clinical story. Enhancing the people-next-door nature of this saga were the film's smart technical contributions.

Those with the stomach for a forcefully acted representation of the gut-wrenching impact and long-range after-effects of sudden infant death will be rewarded with moments both powerful and affecting.

Lennie’s is not the only growth rippling beneath the surface of The Sky Is Everywhere. Although the film contains elements of Decker’s signature directorial style, it also reflects her attempts to evolve on a slightly different path. She’s having fun, and it shows.

For all of its access and exposure, American Teen seems skin-deep. It's well shot, with good production values and lots of cool music. But it's fun and facile in much the same way reality TV is.

More weirdly fascinating than genuinely good, this beautifully made, bracingly eccentric and often arch film will generate a measure of strong support but will bewilder more.

It didn't seem possible, but Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, Wee Man and company might just have cooked up a sequel that's even wilder, funnier, extra-depraved and more gag-inducing than the seemingly incomparable "Jackass the Movie."

Noah Baumbach has followed up his acclaimed 2005 breakthrough "The Squid and the Whale" with another wryly observed, giddily cringe-inducing, bracingly original winner.

While the film feels slightly padded and might have been sharper in a tight, hourlong format, it's impossible not to be seduced by the joie de vivre of its subjects.

There’s much to appreciate in Noah Baumbach’s alternately exhilarating and enervating attempt to tame Don DeLillo’s comedy of death, White Noise, not least the daredevil spirit and ambition with which the writer-director and his cast plunge into the tricky material. But little in this episodic freakout hits the target quite so well as the wild end credits sequence.

Pelican Dreams will give you a new appreciation for these creatures sometimes referred to as "flying dinosaurs."

At its most powerful, the film movingly illustrates the myriad ways in which the past haunts the present and the healing power of communication.