Loaded with action and satisfying in the ways its loyal audience wants it to be, writer-director Rian Johnson's plunge into George Lucas' universe is generally pleasing even as it sometimes strains to find useful and/or interesting things for some of its characters to do.

What makes the movie work are the lively performances, both from the supporting cast and from Cranston, who sheds the mimicry and pontificating of earlier scenes to turn Trumbo into a wry, self-deprecating and somewhat cheeky older man, even if he continued to stand up for what was right.

Metalhead is uninterested in caricature or easy laughs, and its embodiment of guitar-hero obsession is one much more closely resembling someone you knew in high school, albeit someone who's had an exceptionally hard time dealing with childhood trauma.

The film never quite registers with the desired emotional impact, having the feel of an ambiguous short story rather than a fully-fleshed out drama. But the evocative imagery and subtly piercing performances provide a vivid portrait of lives of quiet desperation.

It's a thrill, and one that seriously rewards big-screen viewing.

Both actors stay sharp through some pretty degrading moments, and if Palmer and screenwriter Tess Morris are bent on serious button-pushing in the closing scenes, at least they garnish it with playfulness and wit.

Full of touching moments even if its emotional rewards remain somewhat muted, 52 Tuesdays feels highly personal and is never less than absorbing or sincere in its depiction of a non-traditional family navigating difficult changes.

A determined focus on tight plotting and engaging character development not only helps keep the budget in check, but also necessitates an economy of style that heightens the impact of the film’s numerous plot twists.

This polished, comprehensive-feeling film makes clear how much of the work was done by our neighbors to the north.

The surprise of Suffragette is how much anger and urgency it contains, and how much new material it unearths.

The Sisterhood of Night doesn't fully live up to its promise, with its themes never quite coming into focus. But along the way it presents a vivid depiction of teen angst that feels far realer than the usual exploitive Hollywood treatment.

Like the director’s previous feature, Jo for Jonathan, this is a minutely observed story of great modesty that thrives on transformations so tiny, the film deserves to be seen on the big screen.

Dior and I is a fashion doc with both a sense of history and a feel for the energy of a work in progress.

Coon and Skousen supply just enough information about the boys' post-Raiders lives to satisfy our curiosity.

The film provides a vivid reminder that even undocumented workers deserve fair compensation from their employers.

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.

A thoroughly entertaining doc that serves also as a primer on Brand's shockingly successful comedy career and an introduction to his singular personality.

The world of In Country may sound like a joke to outsiders, and may well be a misguided hobby for some of its subjects. But the film suggests we'd make a big mistake to write it all off as foolish fantasy.

Crucially, though all the characters get a little eccentric at times and some of their antics seem to have been imported from boulevard comedies rather than inspired by real life, in the overall scheme of things, the ensemble remains grounded in a recognizable reality.

[A] likeably modest study of veteran, well-traveled American musicologist Louis Sarno.

Director Brett Haley’s second feature has a disarming lightness of touch that keeps the proceedings buoyant, even when they inevitably brush up against mortality.

Gibney is convincing on every front. And while Apple (big surprise) refused to cooperate — meaning that key players like Jony Ive and Tim Cook are all but invisible in this story — he gets enough of Jobs' collaborators on camera to lend emotional color to the portrait.

It doesn't shy away from pointing out the many inconveniences suffered along the way. But it also vividly illustrates that as we sit in our too cramped coach seats, attempting to pass the time with various diversions, that we are also taking part in a modern miracle about which our ancestors could never have dreamed.

Byington's two-chuckle-a-minute script is mostly interested in Larry's constant, evasive patter, which continues whether the target of his words appears to care what he's saying or not.

All Things Must Pass approaches its sad subject with a well-balanced mixture of dispassion and sympathy.

Simplicity and maturity of vision are the virtues here, good qualities but perhaps a little too understated for major attention-grabbing.

A valuable if fairly esoteric addition to the music documentary genre.

A compact, nicely twisting script, classy performances and quality visuals are the hallmarks of a film which, though short on psychological nuance, over-long and lacking in the directorial distinctiveness that might have made it really special, still delivers in all the key departments.

An absorbing character study, even if it's ultimately not one that justifies its much-vaunted technological advances.

Although there is still much to enjoy here, this DC Comics-fueled Lego adventure fails to clear the creative bar so energetically raised by co-directors and writers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller back in 2014.

It's undeniably moving at times.

The film is not always subtle in its portrayal of a family ripped apart by tragedy, but remains captivating as a pure procedural that raises questions about the Paris police's handling of such situations, as well as about the state of race relations in contemporary France.

Heaven Knows What is a strange film, at once distancing and transfixing. If it's not as impactful as it might have been considering the experiences portrayed, it has potent atmosphere and an admirable refusal to put any kind of gloss on the bleak reality of its limbo world.

Moviegoers may expect something sexier than what they get here, but Neil LaBute's focus on just-talk between Broderick and co-star Alice Eve, funny but never uproarious, provides its own modest rewards.

As pure entertainment it certainly does the job, although much of the text's existential weight is lost in the process.

Based on a true story that's perhaps less famous than some others but just as intriguing, this serious-minded — no Helen Keller jokes, please — period film is nonetheless quite entertaining and, finally, moving.

With a style characterized by strong visual storytelling and a seamless rapport with actors both young and old, Bradley guides the cast with a gentle hand and a well-defined vision.

Grimy and sad but not sensationalistic, the debut feature is like Drugstore Cowboy drained of its hipness and sex appeal.

While the onscreen debate about the issues occasionally proves a bit dry, there's no denying the inherent twisted power of the films themselves.

Digging around in the crannies of his highly unusual home but never becoming intrusive, the doc feels like it was made by a friend, in a good way.

The film is focused enough on relationships not to sound preachy.

We Are Your Friends is predictable, sometimes tacky, but the energy is unflagging, the eye candy plentiful and writer-director Max Joseph (making his feature debut after hosting MTV’s Catfish) brings sincerity and a skillfully modulated sweetness to the material.

He Named Me Malala retells that story in a deft and affecting way. Director Davis Guggenheim, who made the Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth and the controversial Waiting for Superman, does some of his most heartfelt work in this tribute to Malala and her entire family.

It’s a timely topic shot around picnic tables with friends and tramping through vineyards from Tuscany to Piedmont, as thought-provoking as it is informal.

Barbershop: The Next Cut, the third installment in the film series, brings the laughs while injecting a serious topical theme that gives it a welcome edge.

Though the film stretches out long enough to impress us with the difficulty of their journey, the four actors ensure that the two hours or so we spend in their company aren't dull.

Hitchcock/Truffaut is a resourceful, illuminating and very welcome documentation both of filmmaking and the making of film history.

The film largely succeeds in achieving its modest goals, delivering a feel-good, real-life inspirational story in a mostly engaging fashion.

Both an engaging character study and a useful introduction to issues surrounding biodiversity.

Love at First Fight is overflowing with relentlessly acerbic humor that shapes the way the film's two young protagonists contend with not just each other, but also with the uncertainties of the world they're emerging into as adults.

A bit of community spirit and camaraderie, it seems, can go a very long way, and sequences of spectacularly dystopian-apocalyptic, third-world bleakness are leavened by moments of incongruous beauty, even grace.

As action, it's niftily executed, the suspense neatly built, and the shocks expectedly surprising.

Highlighted by an all-consuming lead performance from Lindon – surrounded here by an excellent cast of non-pros – this third collaboration strays further into Dardennes Bros. territory than previous efforts, although its depiction of an Average Joe scraping by in contemporary France features its own unique voice.

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.

A very fine if not exactly groundbreaking film about, as the title hints, perspective and distance.

While Chronic is a depressing sit, it's a sobering window into the self-sacrifice and psychological strain of the caregiver, as well as a provocative contribution to the ongoing debate about humane assisted suicide.

Acevedo deserves credit for crafting something so audacious – along with the photography, the sound design by Felipe Rayo is also boldly conceived – though there are moments when the style really dominates the subject matter, in a film that’s a pleasure to watch but not always one to follow.

Has its pacing problems, and the special effects are strictly of the cheesy variety, but it provides enough genuine scares to make it thoroughly enjoyable, especially if seen at a drive-in on a hot summer night.

First-timers Sean Mewshaw and Desi Van Til show no evidence of inexperience in this sturdy and crowd-pleasing picture.

Mullins knows just how much plot this enterprise requires (answer: not a lot), avoiding boredom by giving the quartet reasons to leave houses behind and, eventually, to fracture.

Despite a low-rent aesthetic that (like Grant's all-caps-happy website) doesn't sufficiently distance it from the tinfoil-hat world, Soaked presents evidence one has a hard time dismissing.

Using Walter Hill's cult classic film "The Warriors" as a cultural touchstone, Shan Nicholson's documentary Rubble Kings recounts their stories in breathlessly paced, vivid fashion.

It’s Kateb -- a rising star with three films in Cannes this year -- who steals the show, portraying a man whose professionalism and humanity are constantly thwarted by the other staff members, especially the Gallic natives that don't have to jump through the same hoops he does.

Radivojevic's film is a valiant call for a new way of thinking about the impact of immigration on abstract notions of nationhood.

[A] tender but unsentimental take on a story that benefits from finesse.

A pitch-perfect pastiche that never mocks its inspirations, the picture is silly fun to warm the hearts of aging fanboys and delight hipsters who weren't yet born the first time Mel Gibson donned Max's leathers.

The film’s ambition and dexterity is somewhat of a mixed blessing, with, for example, character motivations given short shrift in the sprint to the finish line.

Hit man thrillers are a dime a dozen, but director Dru Brown's Aussie variation on the familiar genre takes some seriously clever, nasty turns.

Using a wide-ranging color palette that shifts from the warmer hues of the Sahara desert to the colder, sadder blues and grays of old-time Paris, Lie and his team provide a pared-down animation technique that recalls classic Disney, albeit with a rougher, at times abstract touch.

Despite the intermittent lags, the production proves to be more than a salvage operation thanks mainly to those engagingly choreographed performances, led by an irresistibly charismatic title turn from Alden Ehrenreich who ultimately claims Solo as his own even if he doesn’t entirely manage to convince us he’s Harrison Ford.

There are definitely more worthy endeavors than circling the globe in search of the perfect cut of meat, but French producer-director Franck Ribiere nonetheless delivers an absorbing, and often enlightening, quest for the world’s greatest sirloin in his exhaustive food documentary, Steak (R)evolution.

Meet the Patels is home movie-style filmmaking at its most boisterously entertaining.

Even if the now-veteran director lays everything on a bit thick, repeatedly makes many of the same points and lets things go on too long, he's still found a lively and legitimate way to tackle urgent subject matter that other filmmakers have found excuses to avoid.

It’s a unique take on what could otherwise be a morbidly depressing tale of loss and grief, dishing out tons of energy and spats of devilish humor, though not always fitting its numerous parts into a succinct whole.

The Amina Profile is an absorbing, artfully assembled and timely reconstruction of a fascinating digital-age hoax.

With its secret gadgets, poison pills and furtive assignations in snowy graveyards, it is also an enjoyable throwback to the cloak-and-dagger heroics of classic Cold War cinema.

Bayona not only nods to the histories of classic monster movies and the legacy of original Jurassic helmer Steven Spielberg; he brings his own experience to bear, treating monsters like actual characters and trapping us in a vast mansion that's as full of secrets as the site of his breakthrough 2007 film The Orphanage.

Leacock proves to be charming company, sprinkling sometimes hilarious personal anecdotes among the high points of his career.

Overall, it’s a decent shot at a tall target, but real credit is due the lead actors, with Larson expanding beyond the already considerable range she’s previously shown with an exceedingly dimensional performance in a role that calls for running the gamut, and Tremblay always convincing without ever becoming cloying.

Argento seems to have learned from the experience of her overwrought first features, or maybe from life itself, that there is more to childhood than Gothic horror, and the mischievous moments of being a kid captured in Misunderstood show a filmmaker who is maturing in the direction of audience appeal.

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.

The film's main appeal is in watching familiar actors pretend to be ordinary kids grappling with their new selves.

Barbie is driven by jokes — sometimes laugh-out-loud, always chuckle-worthy — that poke light fun at Mattel, prod the ridiculousness of the doll’s lore and gesture at the contradictions of our sexist society.

Even if de Jong's command of the shifting styles is inconsistent, the movie has a quirky spirit that makes it easy to enjoy.

What begins as a friendly trip grows increasingly tense as the men visit sites of mass murder.

A winning film about reconciling one's self-image with reality.

A convincing and refreshingly indirect examination of handed-down emotional flaws.

The dynamics among the Mystery Inc. team members remain fairly intact however, with the female roles in particular registering more clearly and confidently than in past iterations. In part that’s due to more dimensional scripting, as well as on-point performances from the voice cast, with Rodriguez rocking Velma’s unapologetic geek streak and Seyfried embodying a smoothly cool Daphne.

Filled with strong performances and numerous twists that keep the tension high, even if the plot gets tied up a tad too neatly.

Knowing and funny without straining to be clever, the found-footage-style pic works better than the Duplass Brothers' 2008 Baghead, with which it has some elements in common.

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

[Hardy] proves himself both a gifted visual stylist and an assured storyteller with a wicked grasp of sustained dread.

Despite the more forced and obvious aspects of the story, Barrial taps into the everyday reality of his characters’ New York with an impressive immediacy, abetted by especially fine contributions from cinematographer Luca Del Puppo and composers Lili Haydn and Christopher Westlake.

Though in several ways related to the previous Heimat films, this beautifully shot black-and-white feature is accessible even for those unfamiliar with Reitz’s previous work.

The Beauty Inside works for the fantastical, soft focus romance it is.

Funny and always on-topic without going overboard, it’s an engaging film.

There's a ton of great material here and a nonstop flow of expertly chosen clips.

Hardcore blasts along like a supercharged computer-game shoot-em-up, bursting with sick humor and splatterpunk violence.