The sunny, soap-and-water characters and thoroughly upbeat message may not be the stuff great films are made of, but in Jackie & Ryan the modesty of the story, the simple story-telling and honest emotions all come together in a satisfying whole.

A classically helmed biopic that brings nothing new to the genre, but benefits from handsome craftmanship and solid performances by Tobey Maguire as the Brooklyn boy wonder, and Liev Schreiber as his longtime Russian nemesis, Boris Spassky.

Skillfully edited and energetically paced, Smiling Through provides a memorable time capsule for those who miss the smart magazines that will never return.

Black and White never panders too easily to sentiments, creating characters who are riddled with flaws but likeable all the same.

A modest film made with an authenticity that commands respect.

The film will appeal to art lovers, but some viewers who can hardly tell their Cezannes from Chagalls will find the story fascinating as well.

Cutter Hodierne's Fishing Without Nets is a tense drama with well-drawn characters and only as much action as its story requires.

Strickland and Fenton bring an extra layer of visual invention, smartly expanding on the show's pre-existing video elements and adding their own bespoke cinematic touches.

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.

The story of Mohamed, who leaves behind his normal life for the money and excitement of piracy, is illuminating, even if he is never a terribly sympathetic character that the viewer can warm up to.

Though it doesn't answer every question it raises and may occasionally confuse the uninitiated, the polished film easily stirs indignation.

A low-key verite charmer.

The film gives a lot of space to emotions, but Crowe reins in his outsized personality to contribute an affecting, understated performance and, as director, underplays the allegories, particularly the recurring water motif, so they seep through the narrative organically.

This juicy tale of a reckless robbery and its spiraling bloody aftermath is enjoyably overripe pulp, steeped in grubby textures and flavorful atmosphere.

You're Not You isn't entirely successful in avoiding a television movie-style predictability in its depiction of its central character's incapacitating illness. But its superb performances and emotional complexity ultimately elevate its familiar themes.

Life Partners boasts a sweetly relaxed vibe that makes it go down easily thanks to the witty screenplay by Fogel and Joni Lefkowitz and the highly appealing performances by Leighton Meester (Gossip Girl) and Gillian Jacobs (Community).

Botso is a deserving homage to a life well lived.

Although some of the film’s many twists are not that surprising, they’re satisfyingly delivered, and with a strong supporting cast ...plus striking dream imagery, this adds up to arguably the best in the franchise so far.

The film is a meditation on its themes, and as such is probably too amorphous for its own good. But Vanquishing nonetheless represents a typically audacious effort from an intriguing filmmaker whose work bears future attention.

It offers more than enough laughs to justify taking time out from TV marathons of A Christmas Story, and maybe enough, at least for younger audiences, to become a pinch-hitter each year when established classics like Elf grow too familiar.

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

As with all comics-based extravaganzas, brevity is anathema to the Patty Jenkins-directed Wonder Woman, and it doesn’t quite transcend the traits of franchise product as it checks off the list of action-fantasy requisites.

This long-gestating stand-alone showcase for the Fastest Man Alive is enjoyable entertainment, even if it spends more time spinning its wheels than reinventing them.

The tale is surprising, and directors Carlos Aguilo and Mandy Jacobson blaze right through it -- recounting ins and outs across an entire continent in ways that will challenge most viewers in the West.

Director Pat O'Connor (Dancing at Lughnasa) achieves a lot with a little... Adding greatly to the overall impact are the strong performances by the three leads.

Doyle overstuffs some of the content, jumping through dozens of interviews without allowing us enough time to process them. Still, the director and editor John Murphy manage to give all the material a solid through-line, making the many voices echo into one underlying argument: Showrunning sucks, but it may be the greatest job in entertainment today.

More than just a sip of fizzy fun, this 3-hour comedy is Jeroboam-sized. Farah Khan’s Happy New Year is an ambitious musical, a love story, an Oceans 11-style crime caper and an ensemble comedy.

Comic subplots are less zany than flatly hopeless, occasionally acting as deflating metaphors for army life.

While constantly eventful and a feast for the eyes, it's also notably more somber than its predecessors. But just when it might seem about to become too grim, Robert Downey Jr. rides to the rescue with an inspired serio-comic performance that reminds you how good he can be.

Arriving three decades after the fact, this docudrama doesn't quite do justice to its important subject.

An upbeat chronicle of very hard rock in a very hard place, Death Metal Angola is one of the livelier and more enticingly exotic additions to the ever-burgeoning music-documentary sub-genre.

We're treated to generous excerpts from the finished product, which is all the more resonant for the moving profiles that have preceded it.

Featuring generous amounts of haunting archival footage and photographs, the film is occasionally a bit diffuse in its narrative, straining to convey the complexities of its story with an overabundance of detail. But it ultimately succeeds.

It's a visually stunning experience. Even the shots of riders crashing, and there's enough of them here to fuel a dozen PSAs, achieve a haunting visual poetry.

The filmmakers get astonishing access, eventually earning enough trust that they get to visit Guzman's family home and interview his mother, who proudly recalls how fascinated he was with stacks of play money as a child.

A mixture of raw, first-hand footage, shot by protesters themselves, and more self-possessed interviewees ensures that the chaos and sometimes lethal risks of protesting come across as strongly as the pressing sociopolitical reasons behind them and the effects the events have had on the participants.

There isn’t a tremendous amount of new information in this generally well-crafted documentary. But it makes a potent, urgent case against the merchants of doubt who play games with the planet’s future.

A spare neorealist drama that holds attention and emotional involvement with its deft balance of toughness and sensitivity.

Even if it tells us nothing new, Pulp is still a handsome cinematic homage to a unique band, a proud city and the unifying power of pop music.

Stones in the Sun occasionally suffers from didactic excess but nonetheless offers an intriguing look at this underexposed community.

Inevitably harrowing and sickening in places, but with tender and uplifting moments, Night Will Fall is a somber treatment of a serious topic which earns its place in the broad pantheon of Holocaust-themed cinema. It is just a shame that Singer's worthy memorial feels a little too small for its world-shaking theme and world-famous cast list.

Paul Schneider shines in the role, stumbling through a dating world that has changed since his character got hitched, thanks mostly to social media.

There’s something strange, wonderful, troublesome, brave, bonkers and completely watchable about Predestination that separates it from the scores of other time travel adventures that have come down the pipe in the past few years.

The filmmakers prefer, smartly, to focus on the people in present-tense need, making them not statistics to be debated but human stories.

Subjects Bill Andrews and Aubrey de Grey are colorful in quite different but complementary ways.

A phantasmagorical vision of psychological purgatory, Horse Money (Cavalo dinheiro) will enrapture some while leaving others dangling in frustrated limbo.

To that end there are segments of Jal that just don’t work, but there are just as many that do, even when the film’s construction is occasionally boggling.

Southpaw sticks to tried-and-tested genre rules, yet an edgy cast — led by formidable leading man Jake Gyllenhaal — keeps the story in sharp focus.

Co-director Starzack was one of the guiding hands behind the series version of Shaun the Sheep, and that experience in the kind of brisk, skit-based comedy that makes the series so charming shows through here in stand-alone scenes.

A sober drama that makes class central to the story without ever sounding like it has an agenda.

Joe Lynch's determinedly B-movie exercise is strictly formulaic but should well please genre enthusiasts who will relish watching the sexiest female badass since Uma Thurman in "Kill Bill."

Chipper and fun if occasionally superficial, the doc finds its subject too large to address in a way that satisfies the most curious outsider or devoted fan. Everyone else will have a good time, though.

Spanish filmmaker Luis Prieto, who directed the 2012 remake of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher, adroitly leverages Berry’s familiar face and onscreen persona to consistently escalate tension, as DP Flavio Labiano and editor Avi Youabian construct their shots and action sequences to enable her to totally own the screen.

Even as the drama and its treatment become increasingly conventional and familiar as the film moves toward its patly (and arguably overly) audience-pleasing wrap-up, the exceptional visual quality and lifelike animal renditions remain stunning throughout.

There's no denying that this is a fascinating story, albeit one that raises far more questions than it answers.

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.

The third feature of Romanian auteur Corneliu Porumboiu that again takes a clichéd-seeming premise and carefully proceeds to turn it on its head through logic, absurd humor and the consumption of vast quantities of cigarettes.

Rossier strikes a delicate but credible balance between the former leader's unambiguous statements that he didn't know anything about assassinations and critics' insistence that, even if he didn't specifically give orders, he was "politically and morally responsible."

Up until a narratively implausible and logistically ridiculous climactic motorcycle chase through Vegas that feels like a sop to the Fast & Furious crowd, Jason Bourne is an engrossing re-immersion in the violent and mysterious world of Matt Damon's shadowy secret op.

While unlikely to change anyone's stances on the hot-button issue, the film emerges as a deeply moving portrait that makes palpably clear the desperation of women for whom attaining legal abortions is impossible.

A beautifully animated tale of the growing friendship and occasionally rather cloying emotional travails of two 12-year-old girls.

Above and Beyond pays well-deserved homage to these men who helped create the Israeli Air Force and ensured the survival of the burgeoning nation. It's a wonder that it took nearly seven decades for the story to be recounted in feature documentary form.

Having downplayed its love story at the start, the picture swells romantically in an unexpectedly pleasing way. It may not be enough to convince audiences that Starr should be Hollywood's next romantic lead, but for these two characters, the chemistry is just right.

Writer-director Robert Eggers' debut feature impresses on several fronts, notably in the performances, historical feel and visual precision, but the overall effect is relatively subdued and muted, probably too much so for mainstream scare fans.

This film is vital in uncovering a hazard that was kept hidden for far too long. At last the secret is out, and Landesman and his fine cast will help to keep the conversation going.

Bouncy, with snappy dialog to spare and a great young cast headed by breakout star Shameik Moore, this is a crowd-pleaser from start to finish.

The film has nothing if not great vitality and an active creative spirit, but it has all been channeled here in a way that comes off as erratic and sometimes ill-judged.

There’s a breezy spirit and an agreeable touch of tenderness to the movie that makes it hard not to like, even if it never accumulates much substance.

A perfectly chosen cast sells this unhurried comedy, which flows unconventionally but is still, by a long stretch, the most mainstream-friendly picture Bujalski has made.

Sleeping With Other People is a brittle, bawdy, frequently funny romcom that might be too smart for its own good.

Audley (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints), in practically every frame of the film, has to carry this feather-light narrative on his shoulders and does so with ease.

[An] accessible and informative close-up documentary.

More lightweight than its ample talk of weighty subjects suggests, the film is nevertheless enjoyable.

Awash with ripe, voluptuous summertime imagery and brimming with aborning adolescent female sexuality, The Summer of Sangaile is an appealingly simple, poetically conceived teen coming-of-age tale.

Swanberg and her co-writer Megan Mercier do an assured job of coaxing the minor-key humor and conflict gently from the naturalistic situations.

What Happened, Miss Simone does its job well, proving especially treasurable for its wealth of rare archive film footage and audio material that captures Simone’s fierce talent, fiery temperament and fragile mental health. But it is unlikely to be ranked up there with the best music-themed bio-docs.

Sumptuous and romantic in an attractively old-fashioned way despite a hitch designed to give some contemporary American idealists pause -- the writer's lover is married, with no interest in divorce -- the film satisfies in a wholly commercial way.

Sylvester Stallone doesn't get back in the ring in Creed, but he still comes away as a big winner in this far-fetched but likeable offshoot of the geriatric Rocky series.

Cheeky in its approach as well as spirited and good-natured, this enterprising adaptation of the author’s relatively unfamiliar early novella Lady Susan remains buoyant through most of its short running time but lacks the stirring emotional hooks found in the best Austen works, on the page as well as the screen.

This is a ruminative film of minor-key rewards, driven by an impeccably nuanced performance from McKellen as a solitary 93-year-old man enfeebled by age, yet still canny and even compassionate in ways that surprise and comfort him.

Hawke’s film is very well crafted, tightly edited and elegantly photographed. The acute musical selections only add to our appreciation of Seymour’s selfless devotion to his art.

Throughout the film Moss traverses an astonishing range of emotions, from bliss to complete mental disintegration. She is fascinating to watch even when the film turns into a frustrating head-scratcher.

Do not expect blazing emotional fireworks, just finely calibrated performances and deep reserves of inner torment.

Campillo thankfully refrains from offering on-the-nose explications for behavior and decisions, instead letting audiences infer psychology and motivation from on-screen behavior, with the entirely naturalistic performances of Raboudin and Emelyanov beautifully tuned in to each other and the material.

This film complements rather than duplicating the recent fest title "Butterfly Girl," which also refused to settle for generic notions of bravery and endurance to hone in on an individual teen's specific experience of illness.

Over the long haul, the Wolfe brother never quite provide enough psychological and emotional ballast to flesh out their complex, conflicted characters. But these are minor flaws in an otherwise confident, gripping, highly charged debut.

Bert Marcus offers more sociology than boxing fans may expect, using mean-streets origin stories not just for biographical intrigue but to comment on hardships his subjects faced later in life.

While most likely to appeal primarily to the comic's die-hard fans — and there are still plenty of them these days, thanks to his hugely popular podcast — Road Hard offers genuine laughs while displaying real heart along the way.

Solid performances from the small cast and robust visuals will be clear selling points with audiences seeking the raw excitement of an elemental survival film.

Eva is a provocative and engrossing effort that, although trafficking in familiar themes, is a notable addition to the timeworn genre.

The film is most successful when it concentrates on its subject’s personal life. His candor in discussing his sexuality and other subjects is endlessly refreshing in this era when politicians are mostly defined by their timidity.

Though heavy-handed in places, The Mafia Only Kills in Summer is a generally charming and engrossing debut feature.

Talky and cerebral, this theatrical drama juxtaposes space and light and explores ghosts from the past and love in the present.

An inspired comic thriller.

Ambitious and intricately plotted — at times distractingly so — the bilingual feature is an uneven genre ride, but its appealing cast and multicultural twist on a familiar format help to smooth the rough spots and keep things engaging, if not entirely satisfying.

The film navigates an abrupt turn when it explores an elaborate untruth in the subject's own life. But while that shift could have been smoother and its conclusions more coherent, this is nonetheless intriguing stuff.

It's Smith's eccentric oldster who is the film's driving force, and the 80-year-old actress doesn't disappoint.

It’s a solid genre outing with unsettling topical resonance.