Luck’s sweetness comes from the details of Sam’s story and subsequent adventure.

Speaking with a number of the women who broke the law in the name of justice, and others who were involved in their underground network, The Janes directors Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes have made an urgent and thoroughly engaging group portrait.

Writer and director Andrew Semans puts Hall in every scene of this modest but effective thriller, and she comes through with a stunning, charismatic performance.

It’s a good story and Bahrani has made a good film, albeit one with a tremendous closing twist that I felt pointed to what could instead have been a great film.

This is an incredibly charismatic man with a finely honed sense of his public image, but Roher is also able to capture how prickly he is.

This is a bittersweet comedy-drama that manages to be hilarious in one scene and extremely touching in the next.

Director Tarik Saleh, whose previous feature was the excellent Cairo-set neo-noir The Nile Hilton Incident, stages the shoot-’em-ups and explosions effectively, but it’s the film’s quiet exchanges that carry the most visceral punch.

The deadpan edge of much of the film’s 90 minutes of prattle conceals thoughts on the insularity of creative communities, the ticking clock of an artist’s life and the importance of remaining open to finding truth even in what appear to be random connections.

The storytelling moves along at a steady hum, maintaining intrigue as different pieces of the puzzle come together.

Although the focus is on one particular nightclub and its owner, the film acts as an accessible slice of jazz history that might usefully entice viewers to learn more.

If nothing else, the period picture represents an impressive change of pace from Ostrochovsky’s hard-knock feature directorial debut.

Gently funny and much more forgiving than viewers might expect, the picture plays to Oswalt’s strengths and may resonate uncomfortably for parents worried about protecting their digital-native children without suffocating them or, worse, creating entirely new problems.

While its ambition and immediacy occasionally lead to some uneven patches, its insight nevertheless makes it a worthy addition to the growing library of films grappling with what just happened.

Amusing but the most lightweight of the five diverse features he’s made so far, it finds other members of the Baena gang (Aubrey Plaza, Molly Shannon) fleshing out an eccentric ensemble, many playing characters as unpredictable as Brie’s is straight-laced.

More Than Robots’ honeyed narrative is troubled by a tension between Jacobs’ interest in her subjects’ individual experiences and the doc’s broader obligations to advertising FIRST.

Energetic performances and technical precision come together to glorious effect in Prince-Bythewood’s rousing action film. It’s a lush, prime piece of entertainment in many respects.

Till is more effective as an intimate portrait of devastating loss than a chronicle of the making of an activist. But the film has a powerful weapon in its arsenal in Danielle Deadwyler’s transfixing performance as a broken woman who finds formidable strength within herself.

The film — based on their book of the same title — is sensible, dutiful and, thanks to key performances, more engaging than the average newsroom procedural.

For those who prefer their gingerbread soaked in booze and their tinsel splattered with gore, Violent Night might be exactly what the season calls for.

Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon is a fun, frisky R&B/pop musical with touches of such recent hits as Purple Rain and The Karate Kid, but heavily sugar-coated with the glossy style of video music-movies like Flashdance and Footloose.

The script is programmatic to the point that its final shot is fully predictable. But that doesn’t take away from the ending’s earned poignancy, nor the freshness of everything that came before.

Halftime includes moments of disarming sincerity, when it seems like the doc and its subject, despite their cautiousness, are genuinely reaching for the truth.

Directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, creators of the Teen Titans Go! series, deliver a reasonably faithful big screen adaptation that, while it features plenty of juvenile humor, wisely doesn’t lean toward broad satire.

A rambunctious, strange and occasionally humorous action-thriller-comedy.

Persuasion is sufficiently bold and consistent with its flagrant liberties to get away with them. It also helps that the novel’s long-suffering protagonist, Anne Elliot, has been given irrepressible spirit and an irreverent sense of irony in Dakota Johnson’s incandescent performance.

It’s a thriller at times, but also a wickedly funny dark comedy. And it features a nostalgia-inducing yacht rock soundtrack that slyly comments on the action.

Without sensationalism, Wuhan Wuhan makes its quiet mark through its natural approach to a culture where people appear not to rebel against the strict government lockdown.

Thankfully, there’s more than enough fascinating material — as well as choice archival footage and photographs — to build a robust narrative.

The evocative sense of a place frozen in time and the raw feelings behind the family dynamic ultimately carry the film

The latter half of Chevalier obediently fills the holes of its familiar puzzle. The cast — a wonderful bunch — sustain our interest with their congenial performances. Harrison is especially spry as he balances Saint-Georges’ confidence, jovial comportment and rumored temper.

Clever and giddily entertaining ... Hazanavicius is smart enough to apply an if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it approach, keeping nearly everything intact except for the language and cast.

Recycled plot points, jaunts down memory lane and knowing winks at the broader fandom are rolled into the type of sleek CGI package that’s typical of Disney offerings these days. The result is a thin but satisfactory piece of entertainment.

It’s a slow-burning film, one that pulls you in with its steady observations of the minor triumphs and major pitfalls [of its two protagonists].

It’s a familiar template, and Saleh’s direction can veer toward the heavy-handed in places, but it’s also an intriguingly damning portrait of the corruption currently hitting Egypt on all levels.

With a formidable cast, assured direction and skillful camerawork, Nostalgia proves to be a surprisingly absorbing film.

There are times when A Magnificent Life gets too heavily into the weeds, attempting to cover so many biographical bases that it loses narrative momentum. But the stylistic imagination and beautiful, hand-drawn animation on display more than make up for its awkward storytelling, and it ultimately emerges as a loving tribute to an important figure in French culture

If it weren’t directed by Coen ... Trouble would merit a debut at a less showy festival than Cannes, where reviews would boil down to “damn, they sure dug up a lotta great clips!”

Silence is Atef’s strength. The director impressively uses quiet moments to great effect.

Paris Memories is a mystery movie, with Mia, like Guy Pearce’s character in Memento, following various leads and fractured memories to get to the truth. It’s also a story of emotional renewal, chronicling the phases of recovery that follow in the wake of a major catastrophe, with all the ups and downs that entails.

A favorable flop of the ears to director Kevin Lima for the film's overall winning tone. [07 Apr 1995]

It’s frequently funny and occasionally savage in its commentary on the changed terrain. But in proving that Beavis and Butt-Head absolutely have a place in the contemporary world, it suggests that there’s a limit to how deeply we probably want to interrogate that place.

Even if Being BeBe doesn’t often go deep, the candor and infectious humor of Ngwa make it a satisfying watch — particularly for fans who have made RuPaul’s Drag Race its own vibrant chapter in contemporary queer pop-culture history.

A tense, occasionally terrifying thriller that’s hard to look away from, though what it’s ultimately trying to accomplish with all that energy isn’t always so clear.

Where the drama is headed is never in doubt, and the steps it takes to get there are often familiar. Yet by this time we are sufficiently invested in the couple to care deeply. If anything, the intrusion of mortality makes the relationship more believable as both Parsons and Aldridge (Epix’s Pennyworth) imbue their scenes with warmth and heart, regret and exquisite sadness.

It’s a concert film wrapped in biography and an appreciation for a sacred and beguiling genre. The power of gospel music comes alive here, and the doc’s subjects, the practitioners of this fervent form, keep it engaging.

Champions, feels overly familiar. But that doesn’t make this sure-to-be crowd-pleaser any less winning, especially with the endlessly likable Harrelson at its center.

A documentary that starts out odd and ends up oddly sweet.

For better or worse, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is the most overtly sci-fi film in the series, and on that level, it succeeds very well.

As a cleverly packaged pandemic production with narrative echoes of that global anxiety, it’s at the very least something fresh. A gruesome portrait of another young woman hungering for a life greater than the fate she’s been handed, it makes an amusing companion piece to X.

While a handful of the characters and the actors playing them have appeared in previous entries, there’s a disarming freshness to this first-time assembly, not to mention something even more unexpected: heart. That’s due to an appealing ensemble cast but also to the new blood of a creative team with a distinctive take on the genre.

In the case of Yusra and Sara Mardini’s remarkable survival story, their empowering journey ultimately proves more rewarding than the conventional destination.

Free Chol Soo Lee vibrates with this broader understanding of incarceration.

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

It’s an ambitious and auspicious debut, even though not all of its frayed edges seem to be intentional.

The balance between detail and momentum can at times be off, and the helmer doesn’t entirely avoid generic tropes of the legal drama. But he conveys the enormity of the undertaking at the film’s center — the first major war crimes trial since Nuremberg — and it’s felt in every moment of Darín’s compelling portrayal.

Turner Feature Animation dishes out some fancy footwork with "Cats Don't Dance," a delightful animated musical that conjures up a blend of those all-singin', all-dancin' vintage Hollywood extravaganzas and those deftly satirical Looney Tunes installments of the '30s and '40s. [21 Mar 1997]

Reginald Hudlin’s documentary about Sidney Poitier should be considered the beginning, not the end, of appraising the prolific actor’s career.

Mary Harron’s Dalíland revolves around the titular Surrealist, played with restraint and dignity by Ben Kingsley, while gently nudging the spotlight in the direction of his complicated wife/muse Gala, a role in which Barbara Sukowa more than earns the movie’s attention.

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.

Nothing in the film has a fraction of the dramatic impact of the emotional roller-coaster Colman’s performance embodies.

Fans will be relieved to know that this Hellraiser definitely doesn’t skimp on the gore, providing enough viscera and flayed skin to satisfy the most bloodthirsty viewers.

If Porcupine doesn’t cut as deeply as it could, it’s still an intriguing window into the lives of two characters who, thanks to Cahill’s precision, feel almost not like characters at all.

The film flaunts the talents of its promising director, while playing plenty of homage to the predecessors. Gore, blood, jittery perspectives and strong performances from Alyssa Sutherland and Lily Sullivan make this film a worthy franchise entry.

Although Hill certainly puts in a few sly tips of the hat to canonical and cult favorites and is clearly enjoying exploiting the audience’s expectations of the genre, Dead for a Dollar isn’t an empty nostalgia exercise. Nor is it a revisionist postmodern deconstruction. It’s somewhere between the two, built on a narrative architecture as classical in its vernacular as Doric columns on a bank, but with details that will surely remind audiences of the future that it was made in the 2020s.

It’s a visceral experience, albeit a less punishing one than some other modern war films.

In the end, it plays a little too often like an academic pastiche of horror tropes even though its emotional core rings with resonance.

The philosophical and sometimes faith-steeped bent of the women’s discussion might put off audiences not willing to go there. For those ready to take the leap, the thoughtful and beautifully lensed feature is a rewarding exploration that addresses not just the characters’ predicament but the existential questions that face any contemporary woman navigating patriarchal setups.

A delightful experience for jazz buffs and more than an eye-opener for any youngsters who barely know who Armstrong was, it’s worth applauding just for its belief that it can meaningfully touch on private life, public persona, musical legacy and everything else — even if, on each front, it leaves one wanting more.

Wanting more is a criticism, but it’s a luxury criticism. This documentary builds a world you want to explore further.

What’s Love Got To Do With It? serves as a master class in how to adhere faithfully to the classic romantic-comedy template and yet still emerge with something that delivers delightfully on both sides of the hyphen.

Unlike other music documentaries (a popular format, as of late, for recalibrating celebrity images), Gomez’s project operates at a rawer, grittier register. It’s textured by the 30-year-old star’s relative youth and her attempts to communicate honestly, instead of perfectly.

It’s a breezy charmer — the kind of movie these obits have been mourning over the years. The film returns to the genre’s blueprint and sticks with it. There are a couple of instances of subversion, moments when Your Place or Mine winks and pokes fun at itself. But for the most part it doesn’t want to surprise or be more clever than the viewer; it aims to please, and in doing so helps re-energize the romantic comedy.

Peter Godfrey paces the picture at a fast clip and the writing is laden with fun stuff.

The Last Out is a moving reminder of how hard it is to make it to the big leagues.

It’s not groundbreaking stuff, but Marcello has a talent for making such material come alive through his inventive direction, whisking us away to a time and place that we experience as if we were actually there. It’s not enough to make Scarlet a great movie, but it’s one that manages to puts us in its shoes the way few films nowadays do.

In short, this film leaves us moved and provoked — and impressed with its technical accomplishments — even if it isn’t a perfect distillation of our ongoing national nightmare.

Assembled with seemingly deliberate disjointed editing that scrambles the time line, and shot through with unsettling shock cuts backed by Oliver Coates discordant, droning minimalist score, The Stranger definitely feels like an elevated genre exercise — more challenging than the average crime drama but also more interesting.

Although A Man Called Otto never fully rises above its obvious plot machinations, director Forster thankfully applies a fairly restrained, subtle approach. The result is a film to which you ultimately find yourself succumbing even though you never stop being aware that your heartstrings are being shamelessly pulled.

It’s a hoot with a bit of heart, and if you can accept that the main character’s actions ultimately hurt nobody — with the possible exception of a few Pez executives — its fizzy pleasures and compact running time are easy to enjoy.

Due to the fact that the canvas is broader this time around — and the subjects Lears has chosen to focus on don’t have four discreet, parallel narratives that we can see through to the end — there’s inevitably less coherence to this film strictly in terms of storytelling. Instead, each of these women is trying to make a difference in the climate crisis in very specific ways, but for all of them history keeps interfering.

Despite its uneven patches, this absorbing experimental film (which includes documentary elements toward the end) seemingly conjures the voice of its deceased subject to tell a gripping and painful story of dislocation and belonging.

Even when the ambitious film overshoots, you can’t wait to see what happens next.

The day-to-day takes on an understated eeriness that matches the unarticulated ache of the bereaved.

There’s so much potency in Heineman’s snapshot of sadness, disappointment and resignation, that I frequently and ultimately found myself wishing it could be the full tapestry that a six-part miniseries might have allowed.

A neat and efficient globe-trotting journey, full of insightful trivia and fun details, driven by impeccably selected main characters, who either go through interesting personal arcs in just 87 minutes or, like Raden, unleash a nonstop torrent of cleverness.

I found A House Made of Splinters to be more heartbreaking than hopeful, but I admired the moments of beauty that Wilmont delivers in a film that isn’t quite consistent enough in its storytelling approach.

The horrors of recent decades deserve the thoughtful, impassioned analysis that Moreh provides.

There's a playful exuberance on display in Better Than Chocolate, a bright, funny and sexy romp set in the heart of Vancouver's vibrant lesbian community. Although it has a little trouble deciding what it wants to be when it grows up - romantic comedy or full-throttle farce - the picture's tonal ambiguity also happens to be part of its unpredictable charm. [12 Aug 1999]

Throwing verbal spears, constantly working themselves into a frenzy and then backing off, Davis and Spacey use their talents as serious actors to enhance what could have turned into a repetitive and unsatisfying curse-fest. [07 Mar 1994]

Fortunately for moviegoers, the veteran Scottish actor is an engaging, charismatic presence, and Plane is the sort of breathlessly paced suspenser that barely leaves a moment for audiences to stop suspending their disbelief.

Directed by Brian Vincent, the documentary situates its subject within the context of more familiar characters and tries to understand why Brzezinski, a charmingly aloof painter, is not readily considered among this cohort. The answer to this question is less interesting than the shocking journey it takes Vincent on.

It definitely delivers the goods, making it fairly obvious that DCI John Luther isn’t going away anytime soon.

It is an engaging and often touching comic drama that builds power as it moves toward its immensely satisfying conclusion.

A hair-raising third act adds an unusual coda — one that I, after only one viewing, am still processing. The relief, however, is in the filmmakers’ approach to these tense scenes: Fogel and Ashford loosen their grip, at last trusting us to sit in our discomfort, draw our own conclusions and sharpen our tools for the discourse.

This movie’s dazzle is all about the chemistry of its powerhouse quartet and the potential for comic sparks, and on that front, the starry huddle of Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Rita Moreno and Sally Field delivers.

It’s an all-in performance for the ages, layered with as much vulnerability as anger, and it’s to Majors’ credit that our hearts ache for Killian even — or perhaps especially — when he’s out of control.

Guggenheim’s particular approach here leaves lots of room for the next documentarian who wants to celebrate Fox’s life, but with its tight focus and distinctive style, it delivers an essence of Fox’s energy and generation-spanning appeal.