The whole point of Lives Well Lived is to showcase inspiring individuals, and in that regard it succeeds handsomely. Director Bergman effectively alleviates the visual tedium of a series of talking heads by including plenty of home movies, vintage photographs and archival footage of historical events that figure in the commentary.

A good-looking debut that's as obsessive as it sounds, Koki Shigeno's Ramen Heads celebrates those for whom Japan's famous dish is anything but a simple bowl of noodles and broth.

In jettisoning the focus on family of the previous films, it gives us characters whose interactions with each other feel less than detailed, and who are more archetypal than real. But it’s good clean fun nevertheless, and the set pieces expertly supply the tension-and-release satisfactions of the genre.

A film that’s an emotional rollercoaster and socio-political tract rolled into one.

Juggernaut accumulates an undeniable raw power thanks to such elements as its bleak setting, evocatively captured in Patrick Scola's dark-hued cinematography; the jittery, strings and percussion-heavy musical score by Michelle Osis; and the excellent performances.

A diverting if unimaginatively named little doc.

Is it possible for a viewer to be touched by a character’s predicament and despair when every element of their life is so strikingly arranged? Because Pfeiffer disappears into her role and plays it small, and because Dosunmu’s modus operandi privileges visuals and the unspoken over dialogue and facile melodrama, the film sort of gets away with it, if just barely.

Quite enjoyable even if it leaves viewers hardly feeling they understand the enigmatic man at its heart, George will play well to lovers of esoteric art.

Davis seems to be down for whatever develops...playing Izzy with energetic animation as she bounces from one manic situation to the next. Osment and Shawkat make the most of their brief, amusingly awkward scenes, while Coon's attempts to behave like an actual adult are skillfully undone by Izzy's determined disorderliness.

Pyewacket is a slow-burn chiller that is all the more impressive for its subtlety.

The tense triangle among the girl and her two moms unfolds against an interesting backdrop: a stark setting in rural Sardinia, where tall cliffs and dirt roads criss-cross a shrub-infested desert. Its general wildness is underlined in the first scene at a local bronco-busting rodeo.

Kim’s Areum is edgy, multi-layered and far from docile.

Minor-key and subdued to a fault, the drama nonetheless builds emotional involvement by infinitesimal degrees through its acute observation of characters and social context and its ultra-naturalistic performances.

This study in weathering adversity and adjusting to what life hands you makes some worthy points about human and institutional callousness.

[A] forceful presentation of an ever-timely topic.

McKenzie deserves credit for revealing such a troubling facet of her homeland, and even if the shallow focus — both literal and figurative — of her movie can be frustrating at times, she bravely never turns away.

The dominant note is the warm but quotidian realism of Giant rather than the experimental daring of Arbor, yet Dark River yields a perceptive study of family dynamics, unfolding in a changing landscape as prey to economic forces and demographic shifts as any urban center.

England steers his talented young cast in the right direction despite some snafus in his story, and the fine acting is what ultimately brings 1:54 to the finish line.

To prepare himself for the big leap back onstage, DiMaggio talks to friends from the New York comedy scene of the ’80s, many of them now household names. Their conversations, filled with smart and spirited observations about showbiz and the business of life, are the heart of this engaging film, and a delight.

This Seagull proves a worthy if hardly definitive adaptation of the classic drama.

Despite the often skewed story, performances under Joel Schumacher's intelligent direction are spirited and on-the-mark, most notably that of Lowe as the caddish pretty boy and Moore as the frazzled coker. The other leads: Estevez, McCarthy, Sheedy, Winningham and Nelson all deserve plaudits for their credible contributions.

Buoyed by a reliably appealing star turn from James, this handsome tearjerker mostly sidesteps the tweeness of its title to become, somehow, both an old-fashioned romance and a detective story trumpeting gender equality.

Augie relates his inspiring tale in deeply personal, moving terms.

Built around an impressive performance by relative newcomer Elvire Emanuelle, the drama recalls Karyn Kusama's Girlfight, though in that case the parental dynamics ran the opposite direction.

The real horror in Veronica is not in the CGI visuals, or in Pablo Rosso's frantic cinematography, or in the aural bombardment of sound effects and music; it’s in the relationship between the children.

Tan's screenplay — from a story he developed with his mononymous producer, cinematographer and co-editor, HutcH — doesn't entirely avoid cliche. But the integrity of the performances, the believability of the relationships and the authenticity of the milieu keep it from spilling over into mawkishness.

While this twisty tale of an "evil miracle" connected to a self-exiled former priest ultimately withholds too much to resolve all of its enigmas, the atmospheric mood and persuasive performances keep you watching.

Enjoyable despite its familiarity.

Although live-streaming entertainment may convey the impression of a rather creatively and intellectually impoverished subculture, it’s one that provides comfort and camaraderie for millions who already feel ignored and isolated by China’s rapidly evolving standards of status and wealth.

Tagging along with the now octogenarian Jean Vanier and meeting some members of his surrogate family, Randall Wright's Summer in the Forest champions his vision by quietly watching it in harmonious action.

The emotional moments that push her life in new directions must be colored in by the audience. Though that never feels like much of an intellectual challenge, and the 127-minute film is in no hurry to paint its picture, something about Milla's ordinariness makes her worth getting to know.

If Catena has any faults, they're not on display in this documentary. But it hardly matters, considering the importance of the work that he's done and continues to do.

Spry and playful at times, pedantic and ponderously repetitive at others, the film is French down to its sweaty tennis socks and ultimately a touch too self-satisfied in its clever unconventionality.

As a family film in that vein it largely succeeds, buoyed by Black’s typical exuberance, Blanchett’s typical slyness and a richly evocative rendering of a Rockwellian suburb sprinkled with goofer dust. Less interesting, as is the way with many audience-avatar YA protagonists (sorry, Harry), is the main character, and Vaccaro’s rather hyper-articulated performance doesn’t help.

Isaac and Kingsley bring quite a bit to Orton's dialogue, sometimes seeming to mean it at face value and sometimes inviting skepticism.

Pairing some of the spirit of schlocky Nazisploitation fare with a top-flight young cast and better-than-solid filmmaking, the movie is more mainstream that the midnight fare it sounds like on paper, if only by a bit. Horror fans should cheer.

For all its cumbersome scope (realized on a shimmeringly large scale by Lawrence of Arabia cinematographer Freddie Francis), the film remains an intensely personal epic, Lynch's uncommon emphasis on characters rather than effects lending his exposition a rather remarkable lucidity.

Ava’s rebellion is against more than her parents’ mistrust; it’s about the cage of societal norms in Iran that stifles female creativity and self-expression.

Infusing its familiar dystopian sci-fi tropes with stylishly gonzo, low-budget filmmaking and inventive narrative flourishes, Upgrade proves far more entertaining than it has a right to be.

The film strongly argues against the use of elephants for such things as giving rides to tourists and performing in circuses. What gives those arguments their moral force is the animals themselves, demonstrating intelligence, sociability and emotion.

The doc's poignant heart is in observing how ACORN's most dedicated members have pushed to continue doing good after it was forced to close its doors.

There is no denying the visceral power of Wang’s insistence on looking encroaching death, as it were, in the eye and the filmmaker exercises appropriate restraint when the final moment does come.

Greyhound is a taut action thriller that exerts a sustained grip.

Though it shows some strain in containing the topic's inherent sprawl, the doc is more thoughtful than some of its predecessors, and benefits from interviews with newsmakers like Elon Musk and, even better, Westworld co-creator Jonathan Nolan.

Through it all, Ellington's performance remains effortlessly subtle and lived-in, bringing unexpected depth to the quiet play of emotion on the character's face and giving this loopy episodic tale its heart.

Ultimately, even if some secondary characters and plotlines are underserved, the strength of the story and the emotional range of the experiences depicted prevail.

Little Pink House brings urgency to a fascinating, underexplored theme.

The sort of suspenseful, old-fashioned war movie that should particularly appealing to older viewers, provided they don't mind reading subtitles.

The film fails to provide many practical solutions to the problems it identifies. Still, it’s an effective piece of agitprop suffused with sadness over the decline of a rich part of the American heritage.

Though Cordula Kablitz-Post's feature debut Lou Andreas-Salome, The Audacity to be Free views this very unconventional woman through the conventions of the biopic, its drama benefits from a viewer's ignorance of her story.

Nachman and Hardy have produced another winning and relatable doc combining emotive storytelling with concisely focused filmmaking that's sure to charm viewers well beyond a sizable audience of dog lovers.

Overflowing with wholesome vibes yet not sappy, the film provokes warm feelings, even if its subject doesn't really demand feature-length treatment.

Paradise is predictably problematic for the protagonists of Jet Trash, a flashily seductive and darkly comic crime-thriller that sidewinds between grimy London and the sun-kissed coasts of Goa.

Nana proves another valuable addition to the Holocaust documentary canon, exploring Maryla's important legacy in devoting much of her later years to educating people about the horrors she experienced and witnessed.

Its elegant subtlety feels refreshing in this era of over-the-top horror films.

Though its production is humble and its account full of images many won't want to see, the case represents crucial knowledge for Americans concerned with the boundaries of the First Amendment.

The Bleeding Edge is a terrifying eye-opener.

It's certainly never boring, and Maringouin makes the madness feel queasily real.

The debut feature succeeds thanks to a credibly bifurcated performance by star Ansel Elgort.

A warm if not quite comprehensive-feeling biography of a performer who, even for a celebrity, elicited an unusually strong personal affection from fans, Lisa D'Apolito's Love, Gilda tells the far too short story of Gilda Radner.

Stockholm, which gently massages actual events to serve as a fine vehicle for Noomi Rapace and Ethan Hawke, is far from the first movie to believably show a crime victim coming to sympathize with a criminal. But it's a funny and agile one.

A human/robot love story that is less deeply imaginative than Spike Jonze's Her and less heartbreaking than Doremus' own Like Crazy, the picture is nevertheless a beautifully acted, affecting drama that teases some questions society may need to answer sooner than we expect.

The doc's heart is with ordinary people who have no show-business ambitions.

Nonetheless, Island of the Hungry Ghosts casts an undeniably hypnotic spell. The documentary also serves as an important reminder that the United States is far from alone in mistreating its would-be immigrants.

The resolution seems honest and mature, and a brief epilogue is so powerful that it makes us forget some of the film’s earlier lapses. The emotionally devastating last line socks the whole movie home.

The doc—which is sure to stir conversation as well as emotion when it screens at other festivals—will open audience’s eyes to larger problems of child abuse and exploitation that pervade too many countries around the globe.

It's a tour-de-force for an actor who's more than willing to be loathsome and will be welcomed by both Baker's fans and those of writer/director/provocateur Onur Tukel. But casual moviegoers may not find it as revelatory as comparisons to early Neil LaBute films suggest.

The first hour is the strongest, graced as it is by Estiano's nuanced performance as a conventional-seeming young woman who gradually and very sympathetically reveals her inner self after welcoming Clara into her life.

Moussaoui captures the drama with a simple style that can seem a bit lackluster at times, although he makes good use of the Algerian locations and coaxes compelling performances from his cast. In the end, his narrative's three-pronged structure is perhaps the film's strongest asset.

The film has a hard time shaking a feeling of filmed theater, particularly with the tight restriction of time and place. But the drama is brightly acted by a competent cast, of whom Jadidi and Izadyar, as the married couple, are the most acidic, while Abar and Alvand are given the most range.

The two leads' highly competitive shtick is more amusing than not — the insults fly hot and heavy — as are the outrageously adverse predicaments over which they invariably manage to gain an upper hand. Director Leitch figuratively winks at the audience and elbows it in the ribs as he has his characters break the laws of physics time and time again as they confront a thoroughly preposterous lineup of physical dilemmas one after another.

Dean Parisot's Bill & Ted Face the Music is almost exactly as good as its two big-screen predecessors — make of that statement what you will — while cleaning up some, but not all, of the things that might make an old fan of those films cringe today.

While so many recent renditions of the rom-com have tried to upgrade the genre — usually by going the raunchy route — Set It Up feels so purposefully classic and familiar that it plays right into that nostalgic feel-good spot.

DP Eric Dumont captures the action as if he were shooting events as they unfold in real time. Along with the supporting nonpro cast and all the news footage, this makes At War feel much closer to documentary than fiction — and the movie itself less like a workplace drama than the chronicle of a soldier in the heat of battle.

Ultimately, Loznitsa builds up a portrait of a bitter clockwork world where the faces of the doomed are above all part of a landscape.

This intriguing debut feature from Flemish director Lukas Dhont, in a completely natural mix of Dutch and French, looks terrific, is not afraid to tackle a number of difficult subjects and features a star-making performance from acting and dancing talent Victor Polster.

At heart, it's more concerned with capturing the feel of the early '80s, the paranoia but also spirit of communal life in crowded apartment blocks.

Sauvage has its longueurs, at times seeming stuck in a circuitous groove with too little forward momentum. However, the movie is never banal. It's a fully inhabited world that pulls us in.

As a timely yarn about the mistreatment of minorities, both in Sweden and worldwide, Border is rich in allegorical layers. But as a thriller at least partially rooted in supernatural genre conventions, its relentlessly dour Nordic glumness drags a little. Social realism and magical realism make uneasy bedfellows.

The film becomes somewhat overplotted and a tad too clever for its own good as the frantic, farcical complications continue to pile up. But the cast across the board is engaging, mirroring the loose, limber touch of director Salvadori as he establishes order out of chaos and smoothes all the rough edges into a harmonious ending for everyone.

Although the narrative is structured through a highly unbelievable instigating conceit — Zain is trying to sue his own parents in court for giving him life in the first place — Labaki lures such outstanding performances out of the almost entirely non-professional cast and sketches such a credible view of this wretchedly poor milieu that the flaws are mostly forgivable.

Dvortsevoy deserves praise for making a film willing to show a woman ready to do anything she can to live, unafraid if those choices make her character unsympathetic.

Newton’s storytelling is skittish and a bit too on the nose at times, but his palpable generosity toward his cast is rewarded with committed, passionate turns from the ensemble. However, Nicholson, a performer all-too seldom given a chance to lead, is the big door prize here, offering an intricately layered performance that lifts the whole film up a notch.

This is a compelling drama with real-world concerns that shouldn't be ignored, and it deserves better than to be the victim of an actor's offscreen sins.

Deneuve's slyly self-satirizing performance ... ensures that The Truth remains a pleasurable entertainment.

This is clearly not a tell-all autobiography, but the story of a wildly successful career as seen through the protagonist's own eyes.

As a fantasia on the making of Elton John, Rocketman at the very least commits wholeheartedly to its flashy eccentricity, and for many, that will be more than fun enough.

The book's creepy premise justifies this modern second look, which proves to be a solid if not earthshaking horror pic built around notably good performances.

The movie falls short of greatness, but it compares more than favorably not only with the usual concert film (good as a few of them are) but also with the current love stories on film.

The film is, at its strongest, an inspiring sensory immersion in that performance, one in which the (mostly unidentified) plants are the stars. A complex, dimensional portrait of Oudolf never quite emerges, though, and the brief doc, however lovely, lacks an essential dynamism that would make it truly compelling.

Vreeland’s willingness to include painful as well as flattering details is what gives Love, Cecil its punch.

Though stylish in its way and steeped in shadows (director/writer/editor Gregory Bayne also supplied attractive B&W cinematography), the enjoyable 6 Dynamic Laws for Success (in Life, Love & Money) embraces an oddly chipper spirit as its sad-sack protagonist competes with savvier bad guys to find the loot from a long-ago bank robbery.

Viewers who've actually been in the protest trenches may long for a grittier take. But in sanitizing some aspects of this experience, The Hate U Give brings the world of protest and agitation a little closer to those whose privilege has made it relatively easy to ignore.

A densely packed documentary that earnestly and obsessively addresses campaign finance reform, its history and vital importance.

The multiple targets and multiple threads which weave in and out of Fahrenheit 11/9 make it feel jumpy at times.... Nonetheless, there is much food for thought in the film, shot with the director’s characteristic passion, flair, wicked sense of humor and willingness to push the envelope.

Based on real-life events, The Lighthouse depicts its dramatic situations in credible and compelling fashion. But its single, cramped setting and leisurely pacing could definitely tax the patience of horror fans looking for a more visceral, scare-laden experience.

There’s enough drama and jeopardy on the business side of Albert’s endeavors to keep an audience focused, however, and he proves to be a thoughtful and engaging personality who’s thoroughly immersed in the exotic world of international haute cuisine.

Accessible, informative and wryly humorous, the film uses Srbijanka's tastefully decorated residence as a prism through which to view the woman, her turbulent times and the complicated history of the former Yugoslavia.