It's refreshing to see a portrayal of socially engaged Americans who think not according to the divide between red and blue, but rather in terms of what's good for their families, their long-range livelihoods and the natural world on which they depend.

As it sheds light on these women’s experiences and the larger issue of homelessness among female vets, the film grows deeply engaging.

Self-consciously button-pushing pictures like this one usually leaven their transgressions with at least a bit of winking irony, but no humor is to be found here, from the opening frames (slo-mo shots of pro-life and pro-choice factions shouting at each other) to the last.

Rather than relying on amplifying typical genre conventions, Wingard methodically lays the foundation to set up this particular Death Note adaptation for a potential sequel, but the outcome is more deliberate than inspired.

Mark Gill's feature debut England Is Mine struggles to evoke the atmosphere of its setting — Manchester, 1976-1982 — and to bring its tantalizingly enigmatic subject into satisfying focus.

Nichol has created a loving valentine to all the iconoclasts who resist what the rest of the world defines as progress.

More of a challenge to the eyes and ears than most pics of its ilk, it invests slightly more in its characters than usual, but not enough to make us care if they live or die.

A meandering journey, too tepid to stir up the feelings of yearning and rebellion that it aims to evoke.

The film should prove catnip to music lovers, especially blues fans.

One of the most unsettling things about Queen is how awkwardly it tackles all this painful, historical material: it’s as though Trueba’s script knows that homage must be paid to it, but it feels shoehorned in.

It intends to introduce novelty to its overfamiliar setup, but uneven casting and a very thin script get in the way.

This is yet another hyper-competent, boyishly devil-may-care character that offers Cruise, famous for his derring-do on set, a chance to do his own stunts and fly a plane; it’s not a role all that far out of the ageing megastar’s wheelhouse.

The sadistic horror comedy Safe Neighborhood is the kind of film that’s tough to categorize but easy to enjoy, especially if you like watching teenagers do some very twisted things for the holiday season.

Pilgrimage alternates long stretches of tedium with ultra-violent sequences that have the feel of medieval torture porn.

The intriguingly bonkers premise rests somewhat soundly on matters of climate change, overpopulation and genetic engineering, but its most burning question is “Are seven Noomi Rapaces better than one?” To which the answer is a resounding “Sure, why not?”

Its central conceit is so nonsensical that even devoted horror buffs may balk.

The question mark at the end of the title becomes the most salient issue that the film considers, but don’t expect the Dalai Lama to provide a simplistic resolution. Although as warm and compassionate as ever, his quiet wisdom reminds us that there are still some mysteries that most of us remain unprepared to contemplate.

Sadly, the ambitious film never approaches the gravitas that helped the Lord of the Rings films involve us in their mythology.

In unexpected and wonderfully satisfying ways, A Taxi Driver taps into the symbiotic relationship between foreign correspondents and locals, particularly in times of crisis.

Heartfelt, if not entirely satisfying, Walk With Me provides an up-close glimpse of the life of devotion, focusing on the monks and nuns who live at a rural monastery led by Zen Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh.

Untaxing as drama, thin as entertainment, but modestly enjoyable as a revved-up caper movie, Overdrive is pure escapist fluff with a light French accent. Which still makes it smarter, leaner and cooler than any of the Fast and the Furious films it shamelessly mimics.

Dead air left in conversations may be meant to unnerve viewers, but is more likely to bore them.

Wildly inventive on a micro-budget scale, actor Bill Watterson’s shift to directing is an impressively crafted feature that’s full of frequent surprises.

While Burdge's dogged commitment to the role commands admiration, Gina's obtuse, masochistic behavior keeps us from investing in her as a character spiraling out of control.

The painstaking work done by Kobiela and Welchman to turn some of the artist’s most prized canvases into animated scenes can be impressive to behold.

While that let’s-band-together-and-save-the-park setup clearly isn’t the freshest acorn on the tree, director and co-writer Cal Brunker (2013’s Escape From Planet Earth) at least manages to keep all the ensuing chaos at a reasonably brisk clip. Drawing similarly energetic performances from his voice cast is another matter.

Hitman's Bodyguard offers more than enough shoot-'em-up to keep multiplex auds munching their popcorn, but sharper talents behind the camera might have made it considerably more enjoyable.

The Farthest ultimately proves a welcome and invaluable reminder, in these budget-challenged times, that space exploration is of boundless importance.

The Nile Hilton Incident represents the type of penetrating filmmaking that only a writer-director intimately familiar with Egyptian culture but possessing an outsider’s perspective could convincingly accomplish.

Showing levels of controlled concentration and unfussy flair far beyond what may be expected from a "student film," Machines powerfully evokes the sights and sounds — and almost even the smells — of a sprawling, stygian textiles plant south of India's eighth-largest (but very seldom filmed) city, Surat.

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.

Even while gesturing toward a redemptive sacred altar, a default mode for parenthood in many mainstream movies, the director lets the messy realities stand. And his fine cast makes them ring true — the selfishness and neglect, the confrontations brutal and tender, the pained silences and, not least, the gusts of pure, jagged joy.

An affecting debut for anyone who has dwelled on the far outskirts of adolescent social life, Ian MacAllister McDonald's Some Freaks captures high school/college agony without transmuting it into thank-God-we-survived-it nostalgia.

While The Only Living Boy in New York looks nice (it was shot on film by veteran DP Stuart Dryburgh), it's an unabashed fake — glib and movie-ish in a grating way, with lots of prefab "soulfulness" and none of the texture or rough edges of life.

Salty, sweet and fun to chew over — sort of like taffy, but not so hard on the dental work — Fun Mom Dinner is a palatable addition to that growing subgenre of bawdy, female-centric comedies.

The film wastes several talented performers with its low-key, rambling humor and one-dimensional characters.

If there was a shred of life in the movie's performances (Snipes is joined in his phone-it-in appearance by Anne Heche and the obligatory pro wrestler Seth Rollins), or in Stockwell's direction, some in the audience might actually make that rarely true claim, "This is so bad it's good." They'd probably still be wrong.

It is Gubler’s appealing performance that anchors the proceedings.

Shot Caller may cover little new ground but navigates familiar terrain with considerable skill.

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.

Though satisfying enough to please many casual moviegoers drawn in by King's name and stars Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, it will likely disappoint many serious fans and leave other newbies underwhelmed.

Gook rises above message-movie mediocrity, enjoying its characters too much to use them as political mouthpieces.

With a slick, outsider’s perspective on the City of Angels and some interesting possibilities that are set up early on, this Message gets off to a great start. But the screenplay becomes a muddle and then a mess in its second half.

Four Days in France is certainly not a character- or narrative-driven drama, an impression reinforced by understated acting of the cast. What the film does offer is gorgeous shots of the French countryside and an idea of how different gay men navigate present-day life in France, especially away from large urban centers.

It's Not Yet Dark is a heartfelt and stirring documentary

A soft-spoken and perceptive film set in the Modernist small-town marvel that is Columbus, Indiana, this is a specialized art house treat that announces the arrival of a new director who combines small-scale, Ozu-like humanism with an impressive command of the formalist possibilities of film.

The movie’s shifts in tone and focus can occasionally be distracting, but through it all Jungermann maintains a suitably dark undercurrent with an impressively light touch.

Sensitive readers should be informed that Kuso is not for you; even those with a strong tolerance for monster-movie gore are far from guaranteed to accept its warm, clumpy bath of repugnant ickiness.

Far too broad to be deep in any respect, the lightweight documentary benefits from access to plenty of top-shelf interviewees but plays like a back-patting muddle.

Drew Stone's Who the F**ck is That Guy shows how total, unabashed music fandom took a nobody from New York City's far reaches to the heart of the music business.

Often lapsing into attempts at broad comedy that don’t quite come off, the tonally wobbly The Conway Curve is most notable for the appealing lead performance by Veronica Wylie.

Wolf Warrior 2 is even bigger and bolder than its predecessor, which doesn’t always work in its favor. But genre fans will definitely relish the near-constant barrage of elaborate set pieces that are choreographed and filmed for maximum impact.

If not always imaginative or digestible, the look of the settings and characters should keep kids awake for 86 minutes; and if the trick that eventually saves the day makes very little sense to critical moviegoers, at least it's cutely frantic eye candy.

While Imperfections lives up to its name with its too clever by half plotline and failure to find a coherent tone, the indie film features enough enjoyable moments to overcome its flaws.

Jason Zeldes, an editor on Twenty Feet from Stardom, makes an accomplished debut as director here, delivering a film whose polished aesthetic matches its social import and potent emotions.

This tale of a young linguist seeking to keep a dying language alive is thought-provoking, visually compelling, and hopefully will help to raise awareness about this indirect form of cultural destruction. But its themes are subordinated to surprisingly bland treatment

As Catherine Bainbridge and Alfonso Maiorana’s astoundingly rich and resonant music documentary makes abundantly clear, American popular music – and the history of rock and roll itself – wouldn’t be the same without the contributions of Native American performers.

A loathsome redemption tale that rings false on every front except when depicting capitalistic assholery (and sometimes fails to convince us even then), Williams' directing debut The Headhunter's Calling (from a script by former corporate headhunter Bill Dubuque) not only expects us to root for its unlovable protagonist, but expects us to do so when that man is played by Gerard Butler.

Working with a script by first-time writer Rebecca Blunt, Soderbergh has made the sort of breezy, unpretentious, just-for-fun film that scarcely exists anymore, one almost anyone could enjoy.

Intense and physically powerful in the way it conveys its atrocious events, the film nonetheless remains short on complexity, as if it were enough simply to provoke and outrage the audience. It's a grim tale with no catharsis.

The film is a blunt, brutally effective survival tale distinguished by the parallel suspense tracks of its non-chronological structure.

Composed of broad, colorful brushstrokes and minimalist figuration, this seldom-told story can be a bit slow on the plot side but makes up for it with exquisite artistry and a welcome sense of gloom.

Barbet Schroeder offers up a touching look at unrequited love and neglected memory with the simpatico two-hander, Amnesia.

Sussman ultimately portrays Hayes as a man with a good heart who did not necessarily realize how his own story would wreak collateral damage upon an entire people, while the filmmakers — especially Parker — are shown to be less remorseful about the whole experience.

It’s all pretty tedious, with Miller failing to infuse the proceedings with the stylistic flair necessary to compensate for the cliché-ridden plotline, whose twists can be seen a mile away.

Despite occasionally shaky storytelling, the doc sticks to its mission even as the most fundamental obstacles arise, producing a dramatic account that will make all do-gooders think twice about how they spend their charitable dollars.

So formulaic and unoriginal that its poster should accompany the dictionary definition of derivative, The Gracefield Incident degenerates into endless scenes of people running around in the woods breathlessly shouting horror film cliches while being photographed in shaky-cam fashion.

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.

A useful primer for those who haven't paid enough attention and a synthesis for those who've been overwhelmed by years of upsetting news reports, the film explains cause-and-effect relationships that, while hardly unexplored, merit continued attention.

Dunkirk is an impressionist masterpiece. These are not the first words you expect to see applied to a giant-budgeted summer entertainment made by one of the industry's most dependably commercial big-name directors. But this is a war film like few others, one that may employ a large and expensive canvas but that conveys the whole through isolated, brilliantly realized, often private moments more than via sheer spectacle, although that is here too.

Lemon represents a feature debut of unusual assurance and control with a style all its own.

More convincing in its outrage and inspiring in its show of what the people’s will can do as long as the masses protest and demand to be heard, than as a rigorous historical analysis.

Writer-directors Calori and Testut have selected a significant challenge for their first feature, which succeeds more on its charm and determination than the classic attributes of movie musicals.

Goss, who by any standard is the real star of the film, displays charismatic intensity and impressive physicality.

Lacking objectivity and the necessary contextual information and commentary that would provide a balanced examination of its subject matter, Hare Krishna! mostly preaches to its robe-wearing choir.

Much of the film’s effectiveness can be credited to King, who makes Shannon appealing even when acting selfishly. It’s also refreshing to see a teen character portrayed by an actual teenager as opposed to the usual twentysomething.

The progression from raunchy, raucous laughs into dramatic conflict and then out the other side into the uplifting empowerment of sisterhood and self-worth isn't entirely seamless, but there's too much dizzy pleasure here to get hung up on the flaws.

At no point along the way does the film provide a reason to invest your interest in any of this.

Almost Sunrise makes for powerful viewing.

There’s absolutely nothing memorable about the film.... But it boasts plenty of gritty period atmosphere and earns points for its lack of pretension.

The doc’s personal portraits of the work required to forge an independent life should connect with and inspire parents and educators.

Treating the subject of creative exploitation not with overheated moralism but as a year-in-the-life social chronicle, the picture makes a solid, if very tardy, follow-up to the director's 1999 breakout Jesus' Son.

Mainly of interest for the latest impressive turn from British national treasure Timothy Spall — snorting and blustering his way through the plum role of Protestant uber-firebrand Ian Paisley — deficiencies in script and direction render the vehicle less than road-worthy.

The Incomparable Rose Hartman doesn’t quite make the case for lengthily profiling its irascible and not particularly interesting subject.

Beyond the handful of obligatory escapades, gunfights and images of martyrdom, the film reveals itself as less a drama about extraordinary heroes than an illustration of life in a fallen city.

Dawson City: Frozen Time could have benefited from judicious trimming of its two-hour running time, and there are times when its wandering focus proves irritating. But, at its best, the film represents a captivating time capsule that delivers a poignant paean to a long-gone cinematic era.

Very funny people are running around onscreen doing very unfunny things.

Sticking mostly to one corner of the turf Berry has staked out, this unusual and quite beautiful documentary seeks to connect with him by getting to know the land and those who work it near the author's Kentucky home.

The question of decades-old torture is an important one, of course, but hardly makes this a must-see doc when there are so many present-tense stories of police misconduct to investigate.

Competent on all fronts but never dazzling, it should please genre devotees.

Where Garfield's Peter Parker displayed a believable 21st-century angst, we return largely to the character's wide-eyed roots with Tom Holland, whose performance is thoroughly winning even when the script isn't helping him.

Tedious, visually unsatisfying, poorly acted and narratively disjointed, Area 51 is a textbook example of directorial sophomore slump.

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.

Where director Yamada excels is in depicting the interior worlds of the two main characters, paying particular attention to details, whether visual or sonic, that seem to place a constant divide between Shoya and Shoko.

This film, looking so little like its indie contemporaries, nurtures our appreciation of small details, emotional accomplishments most films would breeze right past or bring too sharply into focus.

The fact that a genre entry of this nature, with no intrinsic need of being philosophically nuanced, goes out of its way to endow even its ostensible villains with comprehensible motives rates as a notable achievement.

The genial, relentlessly curious Sharif proves an excellent guide as the security situation spirals from instability into nightmare and the so-called Islamic State (aka ISIS or Daesh) advances inexorably advances towards Jalawla.

In Transit is a pure dose of the humanism that helped establish Albert Maysles as one of nonfiction film's key voices.