The Look of Silence is perhaps even more riveting for focusing on one man’s personal search for answers as he bravely confronts his brother’s killers.

The film's exhilarating originality, black comedy and tone that is at once empathetic and acidic will surely strike a strong chord with audiences looking for something fresh that will take them somewhere they haven't been before.

The film is remarkably visceral. You can feel the stickiness of the tropics, the drench of perspiration, and the ever-present fear.

The foursome (most of whom will be in their 30s by the middle of 2015) have long since settled comfortably into their roles, and there's pleasure to be gleaned from the simple physical and verbal rough-housing of their interactions.

Obscure, lyrical and exhibiting a far more European sensibility than even many American indies, Tim Sutton’s second feature is suffused with deep thoughts and emotions, but demands patience.

Delicate and unhurried almost to a fault, though also hauntingly sexy and even humorous at times.

It’s a lovely piece of work.

What makes the film so accessible despite its controversial subject matter is Wnendt’s total command of tone, which is never vulgar or intentionally out to shock.

Wit is in short supply, but director Miller at least keeps things moving briskly throughout the relatively brief running time.

An aesthetically arresting hit man story that gets by more on its craftsmanship than on its minimalist, borderline ham-fisted narrative, Salvo nonetheless marks an impressive feature debut from Italian writing-directing duo Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza.

While its provocative themes certainly bear exploring in our sex-obsessed societal landscape, The Olivia Experiment is too superficial and cliche-ridden to make them resonate, and its attempts at humor fall thuddingly flat.

While there’s much to enjoy here – particularly in the touching performance of Hiam Abbass – there’s also plenty that is cliched and forced.

Kink is quite convincing in presenting this one workplace as a happy, sane environment where people respect each other and aren't manipulated into doing things they don't ultimately enjoy. But it leaves plenty of room to presume that Kink.com is an outlier in the industry.

The picture's first-person focus makes it surprisingly uninformative and occasionally annoying.

An account of one modern expedition that draws fruitfully upon the lore of another.

It's all largely incoherent, with the screenplay's twists and surprise revelations having an utterly artificial feel.

It’s too blandly acted and directed to make much of an impact.

The director-screenwriter does manage to invest the familiar proceedings with some quirky, original touches.

This low budget effort from director John Erick Dowdle and writer-producer-brother Drew Dowdle provides a few late scares after plenty of eye-rolling setup, with said scares due more to the heavy sound design than the action itself.

Ralph Ziman's Kite repackages an assortment of genre tropes into an instantly forgettable Luc Besson-aping slog that would be unneeded even if Besson hadn't just returned to big action flicks himself.

As an exercise in style, it's diverting enough, but these mean streets are so well traveled that it takes someone like Eva Green to make the detour through them worth the trip.

An obvious labor of love, this hand-crafted film is beautifully made – photographed, scored and edited with a grubby lyricism that makes its shortage of plot momentum all the more frustrating.

There is a clear sense here that Coixet is completely out of her depth in this genre exercise, which is all excessive surfaces and no tension, however hard the music and sound effects try to tell audiences otherwise.

To Be Takei follows multiple threads without pulling any one of them satisfyingly into focus, making it amusing and even poignant, though not quite the window into its subject's life that it might have been with a more penetrating observer.

Stacy Keach provides a bit of relief from all the oppressive earnestness in his brief appearance as Mia’s grandfather, evoking a depth of feeling otherwise missing here.

Although the pacing would have benefited from some judicious tightening, much of the film’s effectiveness is attributable to the lead actors’ well-modulated performances.

Visually ravishing, thought-provoking and benefitting from just enough playfulness to set it apart from the nature-doc herd, the film is eco-relevant without being at all dominated by climate change, which is only one of many subjects discussed.

Although screenwriter John Kare Raake’s Raiders of the Lost Ark template may sometimes seem a bit shopworn, at least it doesn’t dwell too indulgently on Viking mythology, playing to the strengths of the action scenario instead.

Grashaw's convincing drama distills this underexposed world into the story of a single young man trying to survive a system designed to break him.

Though some plot elements are pushily therapeutic, they're offset by others whose novelty distinguishes Rudderless from movies of its sort.

Fails to rise above the inherent sordidness of the subject matter. It’s indifferently acted and directed, though it generates a measure of suspense and queasy fascination.

Less an introduction to the green-burial movement than a portrait of one man who embraced it after being diagnosed with a terminal illness, A Will for the Woods is more sentimental than journalistic.

Though individual scenes feel authentic, the overall structure’s rather loose and there’s not a single narrative throughline. This has several advantages... But it also somewhat diffuses the film’s focus.

An enticing, if not extremely insightful, overview of the maverick filmmaker’s work.

Goldberg has made a commendably adventurous and mostly enjoyable meta-comedy that recalls both the best and worst of 1970s Hollywood.

Much of the naval action is realistically and thrillingly staged with blazing cannon fire and slashing swordplay that sufficiently diverts attention from the sometimes unrealistic special effects.

It’s a pretty trying movie to watch, though it does have some striking images.

While the science behind Earle’s conservation project is fascinating, it’s her natural charisma and infectious enthusiasm that are most compelling onscreen.

Although many of the subplots play nicely, they take away from the main thrust of the film: a tightly knit family living so close to the enemy, who rarely is seen and never understood. So this is relegated to a footnote in favor of story lines that, while wholesome, are neither dramatic nor cinematic.

The film manages, impressively, to be both crushingly banal and offensive in its use of cultural stereotypes. Watching it is like being brutally violated by a greeting card.

Although some of the supporting performances can be a bit choppy, director Schirmer sets an effectively unsettling naturalistic visual tone, bathing all those dark impulses in sunny Indiana daylight.

Though the film's cat-and-mouse scenes hardly compare to those in a Bourne movie, they're enjoyable and only occasionally ridiculous.

Sinuous sequences where one object morphs into another are his stock and trade, and that strength is on ample display in Cheatin’.

This smart HBO documentary convicts the media coverage and trial itself as guilty to Farce in the First Degree.

Featuring a non-stop barrage of gross-out effects depicting the substances that its title would indicate, this low-brow horror film is mainly suitable for audiences desperately pining for yet another "Toxic Avenger" sequel.

The screenplay co-written by Nicholas Thomas and director Luke Greenfield fails to mine the potentially humorous premise for the necessary laughs, with nearly all of the gags falling thuddingly flat.

A lazy ending mars this fine, if generic, take on a much-loved YA novel.

Aiming for Hitchcockian suspense but coming closer to daytime drama, the film offers only occasional tension.

Though clumsily enacted, the eventual revelation at least avoids the sick-punchline feel afflicting some dramas sharing this theme.

Talking heads aside, the movie gets a big boost from the wealth of news footage and post-standoff reportage the filmmakers cull from archives.

A provocative portrait of an artist who seemed hell-bent on destroying his own legacy.

The script by John Swetnam is rudimentary, with only the most minimal and pallid stabs at characterization... Nevertheless, once the funnel clouds begin swirling, Quale and his special effects team achieve some remarkably authentic and frightening moments.

All of these characters are worth knowing and the acting is excellent all around, but somewhere along the line the narrative arc vanishes and tedium sets in.

Although all the main characters and plot points survive the transition intact, they don’t carry the same weight. Him and Her have an undeniable literary, collegiate feeling, like reading a long novel and getting to know the characters inside out. Them steps on the accelerator in a sort of Cliffs Notes version.

If the three hours of filming Cameron did in the Trench yield little obvious drama, the story of how the Deepsea Challenger reached those depths makes up for it.

Hughes and cinematographer Peter Menzies Jr. handle the assignment skillfully enough, but without much imagination, sticking to a conventional action style that is more about the quantity of explosions than nuances of execution.

Drawing on the prowess of Donnie Yen, the first 35 minutes of gimmick-free martial arts revives the sinewy action aesthetics of '70s Shaw Brothers classics.

The castmembers portraying Splinter and the turtles achieve a persuasive level of realism that was never possible with the elaborate puppetry required for the original film series and adequately fulfill expectations for their characters.

Though their resolution is a little too neat to be believed, the filmmakers' way with their cast makes this debut a promising one.

It's commonly expected that a self-described "thriller" should deliver some, well, thrills, but actor-director Zoe Quist's self-indulgent third feature turns out to be practically inert.

Visually, intellectually and emotionally, McDonagh’s film is one to savor.

Rabindranath Tagore: The Poet of Eternity, although clearly lovingly intended, is too haphazard and unenlightening to fulfill its mission of educating Western audiences about the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

This Lifetime-grade pic is bad enough to have no impact, a vanity project whose ostensible story -- a grieving dad fights bureaucracy to build a children's hospital honoring his dead daughter -- is one of the least dramatic things put on screen in recent years.

Generic B-level horror marked by numerous dull patches, long stretches of expository dialogue and, save for Astin’s admirably intense turn, uninspired performances.

While Freeland's plotting is graceful, there are occasional moments of stiffness in the dialogue itself, brief rough patches her largely neophyte cast can't fix in the delivery.

While the movie’s theme is familiar, even a little stale, the vivid details help to freshen the story, and the actors sock the movie home.

In Chadwick Boseman, it has a galvanic core, a performance that transcends impersonation and reverberates long after the screen goes dark.

There are so many witty touches and sharp little observations here that The Strange Little Cat can be forgiven for ultimately making no dramatic statement.

Fronted by an outstanding performance from Catherine Keener, who is onscreen, often by herself, at almost every moment, this challenging but not difficult second feature from Mark Jackson parcels out its information in gradual increments, forcing the viewer to infer rather simply receive most narrative information.

Good-looking but not very effective adaptation of the seedy classic by "Grifters" author Jim Thompson.

The plus-sized comic delivers a solid set of often highly personal material that’s consistently amusing even if it never quite hits the level of hilarity.

Paltrow shows a capable hand with the actors... However, the characters only intermittently engage our interest.

Whether they’re filing ridiculous complaints about each other to the unflappable mayor (Michel Blanc), arguing over the proper presentation of ingredients or sharing a cafe table, Mirren and Puri bring an effortless command to their roles.

When a filmmaker is capable of exploring a series of frankly outlandish filmic, thematic and moral propositions with absolute conviction and sureness of touch, the results are usually memorable. Such is the case with Manuel Martin Cuenca’s Cannibal.

There’s a terrific central idea at the core of the film, but it’s lost amid the endlessly repeated nightmare episodes, the banal subplot concerning the couple’s domestic problems and the clunky exposition and visuals.

The reductionist plot eventually forces both the protagonists and the filmmakers into a blind shaft without a productive exit strategy.

Overall, the writers have crafted a well-articulated universe with distinct settings and relatable, compelling characters devoted to a thrilling quest for redemption.

Always interesting, frequently explosive, but also sprawling and unfocused.

It may sound like a backhanded compliment to praise this sometimes cheesy movie for never taking itself too seriously, but in a summer of bloated spectacles, this modesty should not be underestimated.

With such well-tuned performances and scattered intensity, it's unfortunate that the technical aspects of the film are not always up to par.

The film earns a few laughs thanks to the energetic efforts of its hardworking cast, but they’re decidedly of the hit-or-miss variety.

Lucy plays more like a big dumb superhero flick than sci-fi.

Indeed, all this teeters closely to all-out tastelessness, but what makes 3.0 even more unbearable than its predecessors is the sheer ineptitude beneath the glossy surface: the laughable narrative, scatterbrained storytelling and inconsistent characterizations basically magnify the previous film's flaws to an improbable extreme.

A clumsy high-school sex comedy which tries too hard to be both shocking and endearing, falling short on both counts.

Has some clever ideas up its sleeve, but otherwise fails to provoke much interest in the travails of its 40-something central character.

The wistful pleasures are stretched awfully thin at almost two hours in a film that blurs the line separating self-irony from tiresome self-consciousness.

Magic in the Moonlight does have a not-disagreeable expensive-vacation vibe to it. But the one-dimensional characters are mostly ones you’d want to avoid rather than spend a holiday with.

Despite what sounds, and sometimes plays out, like a working-class soap opera, Pagnol’s genius is evident in the way emotions are often distilled through the characters’ winsome Southern attitudes, creating an atmosphere infused with playful humor, innate wit and an endless flow of alcohol.

Fanny is definitely a worthy companion to Marius, although it’s also more claustrophobic in terms of staging, confining the action to a handful of interior sequences that feel less like a movie than like filmed theater, albeit of a rather high order.

Featuring unlikeable characters, preposterously contrived plotting, ham-fisted dialogue and strained attempts at poeticism, Among Ravens is a misfire on every level.

The not so fair and balanced film might have made its religious themes palatable if it worked reasonably well as a thriller. But director/screenwriter Lusko shows no flair for the genre, his muddled execution lacking any sense of pacing or suspense.

The Purge: Anarchy efficiently exploits its high-concept premise while delivering far more visceral thrills than its predecessor.

The film’s scattershot approach proves more enervating than enlightening, with the barrage of information presented in such a haphazard manner that continuity and coherence become lost.

Thomason delivers a strong performance as the stalwart hero, and Furlong... makes for a highly convincing jerk. But their efforts aren’t enough to prevent the end of the world, at least as depicted here, from seeming awfully dull.

It is unlikely that a lot of viewers come to see a Step Up film for convincing dialogue or psychological insight into a group of young things trying to make it big in a ruthless industry. But there’s barely any humor that doesn’t feel third-rate and most of the plot threads are so thin that All In occasionally feels like a satire of a dance film.

Sex Tape is sexcruciating.

Klinger is clearly aiming at a hardcore of filmmakers and cinema students, but even that niche audience will only glean incomplete insights into the methods and motivations of his subjects.

A fable-like horror mystery with strong comic and romantic tendencies, Alexandre Aja's Horns draws on source material by cult scribe (and son of Stephen King) Joe Hill to deliver something much more beguiling than the straighter genre fare (High Tension, The Hills Have Eyes) that made his name.