Given the dearth of docs about the heyday of circus arts, one wishes for more of that spotlight showmanship on the screen.

Tai chi devotees will find much to appreciate here, especially the extensive footage of Cheng demonstrating his skills. But the hagiographic approach doesn't delve very deeply, and the repetition of extravagant tributes by talking heads eventually proves monotonous.

Cedric Anger’s stylish thriller Next Time I’ll Aim for the Heart (La prochaine fois je viserai le coeur) offers up a strong central turn from Guillaume Canet while dishing out a number of crafty and suspenseful set-pieces. But it can also be too self-serious at times and winds up dragging a bit in its latter stages.

Director Michael Damian does not bring any special spark to the film, but he recognizes the talents of his cast and allows them to shine.

Even with director Mira Nair’s typically vivid sense of place and the charismatic central performances by David Oyelowo, Lupita Nyong’o and a striking newcomer, the film hits every note of plucky positivity so squarely on the head that it leaves little room for audience involvement.

The film never becomes morbid, though, which is both its strength and weakness.

Though less novel than Flanagan's previous pic, Oculus, Hush finds plenty of ways to flip roles in this cat-and-mouse game, letting his heroine get a bead on her stalker only to see the advantage taken away from her again.

It feels like every script-reader in the Italian-Swiss-German-Albanian-Kosovo coproduction cut out a line of dialogue in each scene, leaving behind an irritating silence and an enigmatic puzzle for the audience to second-guess.

The documentary will nonetheless strike an emotional chord with anyone who's grown up eating the product it celebrates. And over the course of 100 years, that's a lot of matzos.

Audience’s tolerance for this kind of heavy-handed, occasionally very mannerist symbolism may vary, though Messina does ensure that the religious parallels never completely eclipse the contemporary characters.

Ferguson certainly has some strong, even encouraging points to make. And he has brought impressive filmmaking skills to his cinematic essay. Still, one wishes that he had presented his thesis with a little more energy and a little less didacticism.

Fortunately, the terrific lead performances by Jonathan Pryce and newcomer Jerome Holder are enough to help Dough rise above its formulaic ingredients.

Though never managing to surprise us much, this brisk encounter with the living past has moments of charm and the occasional fresh perspective.

Ewan McGregor’s directorial debut, in which he also stars, is decently performed and delivers some potent scenes of inter-generational discord between a concerned father and a radicalized daughter who becomes a murderous terrorist. But the filmmaking is prosaic when it should crackle with tension and disruptive undercurrents,

Despite the occasional jolts, Phantom of the Theatre is not particularly scary. But as befitting its milieu, it looks fabulous.

Visually stunning if dramatically logy and willfully enigmatic.

Directed by French director Anne Fontaine (Two Mothers/Adore, Coco Before Channel), this is another gorgeously appointed but also slightly overly formal film, with a muted emotional payoff that, while appropriate for the story’s convent setting, doesn’t exactly make for must-see cinema.

Uneasily blending familiar horror tropes with forced attempts at slapstick humor, Crush the Skull doesn't fully succeed in either genre, although it does provide occasional laughs along the way.

Best when it reveals the painstaking details of investigative work, worst when it plunges into improbable emotional depths, SK1 is an above-average policier.

There are moments when The Other Side seems to traverse into arts-ploitation territory, and it’s ultimately hard to tell if the movie is trying to render its subjects with some humanity or otherwise if it's taking advantage of all these poor, beautiful losers.

Troy Espiritu’s plot-driven screenplay and Mendoza’s preference for a gritty, documentary-like style mean that the final result is neither as deep nor as resonant as it could have been.

Some individual scenes are certainly striking and the couple’s complex relationship and chemistry are believable but the overall narrative retains an erratic and somewhat jerky quality as the various elements don’t always logically build on what has come before.

A workmanlike but fan-pleasing picture.

Gurukulam succeeds in its goal of immersing the viewer in its gentle and spiritual setting. Whether you'll achieve enlightenment watching it is another question.

With such an elliptical tease of a plot, which jumps back and forth temporally disdaining explication, some may feel a little of this travelogue goes a long way.

Most effective in its quiet dialogue-heavy scenes, the picture stumbles when anything more dramatic is required.

Liberally riffing on situations and themes familiar from the high school-set movies that established the renowned writer-director’s legacy, Lee has crafted an entertaining alternative interpretation that substitutes an international cast of Asian actors for Hughes’ largely white, suburban ensembles.

All this is portrayed in such elementary terms it could be the libretto of a 19th century operetta, or maybe a children’s film, were it not so disturbing.

Inspiring as her journey may be, however, the film tracks an overly familiar arc, dwelling on Shields' disadvantaged background, teenage romance with another young boxer and family turmoil but providing limited focus on the sport of women's boxing or the complexities of obtaining training sponsorship or lucrative endorsements.

The film feels a little too eulogistic, too reliant on hyperbole and too in love with its own gimmicks to make it more than just a serviceable crowd-pleaser.

A dynamic glimpse of contemporary Los Angeles funneled into an old-fashioned coming-of-age saga, Lowriders isn’t always persuasive, but it has plenty of heart.

Meyer...and his easy rapport with the kids and Sacks helps coax sometimes surprisingly candid comments from his subjects. What’s missing however is adequate background on how the boys became such impressive young musicians and why they gravitated toward heavy metal rather than pop or rap.

Traded features nary an original element but nonetheless registers as a solid if minor oater.

Unfortunately, after its fine start, this brainy slice of provocative speculative fiction slowly but surely loosens its grip on audience involvement rather than increasing it.

Yadav’s concerns about discrimination and violence against women are evident in nearly every scene of the film, as her script positions each of the principal characters to undergo an experience of self-actualization in defiance of prevailing patriarchal norms.

It's to the script's credit that it doesn't tie up the story in cute little bows and instead leaves a number of questions unanswered by the end.

In a time of plentiful lush and/or enlightening food docs, only viewers who idolize Rene Redzepi and his talented crew need pay attention to this one.

While the filmmaking is crudely effective at best, it successfully showcases the physical, if not the acting talents, of its largely female cast.

While Brosnan has quite a few opportunities to show his acting chops, Chan makes do with less.... In any case, it’s good to see Chan swapping his happy-go-lucky persona for two hours for some gravitas as a tragic rogue with a marked past.

Kinnaman delivers a superb turn.... Holland and White also are excellent as the boys who still love their father even while becoming ever more aware of his failings. Their quietly terrified reactions to his escalating belligerence is far more emotionally wrenching than the tired thriller genre conventions to which the film ultimately succumbs.

The actors impressively give it their all.

This film feels more of a piece with the fashion shows and musical efforts it chronicles: an art-therapy product valuable mostly to those who made it.

The lead performances have power, whereas pictorially the film is pretty rough and ordinary.

Chan’s English-language dialogue occasionally comes across a bit muffled, but his body language rarely fails to connect. Knoxville thrashes about in a fairly undisciplined manner, but succeeds in providing a sizeable share of the comic relief.

Unfortunately, [Miike] never quite tops the hijinks of this film’s opening reel, and at nearly two hours, As the Gods Will grows gradually tiresome until it seriously drags during a lengthy and entirely kitschy closing battle.

As robust as the lead performance is, though, the movie around it, directed by Stephen Gaghan from a screenplay by Patrick Massett and John Zinman, too often feels serviceable rather than inspired.

The Commune effortlessly entertains at a TV sitcom level, with its pithy dialogue, its chorus of thinly drawn caricatures and its cozy sense of mockery towards the failed social experiments of past generations. But as serious cinema, it feels limited for the same reasons.

Diffuse and rambling at times, An Animated Life, which sometimes has the feel of a tribute film shown at an award gala, is not as compelling as such similarly themed docs as "Waking Sleeping Beauty" and "Frank and Ollie." But it nonetheless serves as an entertaining salute to an unsung figure whose considerable accomplishments well deserve recognition.

The Rocketeer is low-octane Steven Spielberg — projected in the right happy direction but lacking the gritty accelerant and around-the-edges humor and humanity of other heavy popcorn-load adventures.

It feels like a sermon delivered by an extremely cine-literate preacher.

The gentle tone and disjointed sketch-show structure here will appeal to long-standing fans, but Mascots wins no prizes for innovation or progression. The jokes are uneven, the caricatures often overly broad and the plot almost nonexistent.

Combining the mystical and the military in ways that can seem fresh compared to other recent war flicks, this feature debut from writer-director Clement Cogitore could nonetheless use some more adrenaline to make its premise work.

Although often narratively cryptic and stylistically uneven, Antibirth could serve to establish Perez’s reputation in low-budget horror.

Starting out with a bracing, off-kilter wryness, Ove moves steadily, and disappointingly, toward the crowd-pleasing center.

While the doc uses reenactment and plentiful period news footage to chart how Sands withered away, and to capture the mixture of respect and grief his determination to die produced in supporters, the film is always about more than Sands.

There's no way for all this to resolve that isn't fairly absurd. But Morelli's light touch generally keeps the goofiness from becoming tiresome, especially given the help of some quirktronica compositions by Kid Koala on the soundtrack.

Its blizzard of statistics notwithstanding, the film consists mostly of true-life stories that, while undeniably tragic, stir up more emotion than thought.

While lacking the technical polish necessary to lift it into a more elevated cinematic dimension, Philip T. Johnson's directorial debut earns points for its thematic ambitions and cheeky wit.

The picture doesn’t fully succeed, but it showcases strong performances.

The cinematic clumsiness is a shame, because Equal Means Equal makes many powerful points along its diffuse, rambling way. Here is a case in which less would definitely have been more.

Taken together, the shorts offer some scraps on Berger the man and the artist and thinker without really supplying a full overview, while also exploring some of his main preoccupations in ways that would benefit from at least some prior knowledge of his work.

While the human performers are more than adequate, there’s no doubt that the canine stars carry the day. Their utter irresistibility helps a long way in terms of getting past the corny plot machinations of A Dog’s Purpose.

Delivering a fully committed, moving performance, Thomas Haden Church makes you pay attention to a figure you would otherwise pass by without a second thought.

The poignancy of Hanks's reading of Waitstill's letters — that old staple of Ken Burns documentaries — personalizes the tale, but doesn't make this story as compelling as many feature-film (or even documentary) treatments of similar WWII rescue tales.

While those of us who've seen dozens of similar docs could name plenty that taught or moved or enraged us more, Flood's filmmakers are intelligent in their use of the biggest asset they have: Not only do they keep their movie star onscreen, they work hard to tie viewers' concern for the environment up with his biography.

The filmmaking is often splendid to behold, though not necessarily for two full hours, and Tran’s Gallic tone poem winds up suffering under the weight of its own aestheticism. It’s a beautiful flower arrangement in need of an adequate vase.

At its worst, the film oozes the sickly smugness of a self-help pamphlet, but when it relaxes its didactic grip and lets the actors take control it can be quite charming.

The cast's likability keeps us on board, watching the sometimes baffling behavior onscreen just like those on the streets of Seoul, who gape up at a monster in horror but can't make themselves flee to the suburbs.

The sarcasm of superstar director Feng Xiaogang reduces Chinese bureaucracy, the legal system and government inefficiency to ashes in I Am Not Madame Bovary, but risks doing the same for audiences in a caustic, overlong satire whose coy visual effects overpower the story and characters.

As the psychodrama of a lonely woman with a score to settle acquires seriousness it saps the misanthropic sense of mischief and madness, causing the movie to lose its way.

Escalante struggles to illuminate how sex and violence are connected and what this, in turn, means for more specialized types of aggressiveness and oppression, such as misogyny and homophobia.

Swicord took on a daunting challenge in adapting this piece, and she’s met it more intelligently than convincingly. It would have been asking a lot from any actor to carry this film, and Cranston has done the heavy lifting and more.

Filmed in a gorgeous, dreamlike style and Infused with heavy doses of mysticism and allegory, The Vessel is an impressive effort that loses some of its impact, however, for being so derivative.

If it leaves something to be desired at the start of the tale, the procedural details of seeking release and exoneration are well represented.

Spread over hours of poetic ramblings, the message loses most of its urgency.

Fight scenes are staged with brutal directness and relentless energy in an interminable series of beatings, shootings and more creatively inspired assaults.

As homage, the film is visually striking, littered with moments of real cinematographic intelligence, and always watchable, in a nasty sort of way, but as a thriller, its ambitions of intensity are thwarted by a plot which becomes increasingly out-there as the twists and turns pile up.

The acting in the film is outstanding down to some of the smallest parts, and here director Taylor Hackford (who hasn’t had a major hit in several years) deserves considerable credit for guiding these performers.

All of these ingredients should come together in a mouth-watering finale, but such is not the case; in fact, the film becomes more obvious and less psychological as it goes on.

The package mixes existential creepiness with black comedy, demonic carnage and a Satan's spawn scenario, and while it's uneven — as these combos invariably are — genre enthusiasts looking for a female spin will want to check it out.

The overall feeling is a lot less special than their ground-breaking work that flew with birds and swam with deep-sea creatures.

The picture hits many of the expected schoolyard beats with just enough specificity (the vegetarian boy's first encounter with fried chicken, for example) to keep it from feeling generic.

Despite its frustratingly wandering narrative, All We Had does manage to pull you in, thanks largely to its moving depiction of the mother-daughter bond at its center.

Along the way, the film stares unblinkingly, but with tenderness, at late-middle-age questions of career, identity and the torturous question of whether to let go of a dream that’s not paying off.

It's a throwback to Chan's wham-bam action comedies of the past, and a pretty effective one, too.

If you must make another entirely predictable comedy about an unapologetic old white curmudgeon who steamrolls all opposition, you can't do better than draft the redoubtable Shirley MacLaine to keep audiences in her barbed corner while we wait for her inevitable bittersweet humanization.

While Bousman's climax is a not terribly original effects-laden haunted house, the house's builder, and his motives, have enough of their own flavor to please a hardened horror fan.

Although clearly intended to be brimming with symbolical meanings, Lost and Beautiful — which at least is visually striking, thanks to being shot on expired 16mm film stock — never finds sufficient cinematic poetry in its dreamlike storytelling infused with neo-realistic elements.

Given a cast of this size, characterizations are predictably thin, though strong character actors like John C. McGinley and Michael Rooker ensure some viewer engagement with Those About to Die.

There are some thrilling sequences, to be sure, but the whole is definitely less than the sum of its parts.

The War with Grandpa will probably prove riotously funny to small fry while providing some compensations to adults with its supremely overqualified cast.

Viewers who don't mind the lack of dramatic tension may appreciate Dorff's credible take on his modest, gentlemanly character.

Supernatural shenanigans and amateur sleuthing add up to mild-mannered entertainment in Jackson Stewart’s affectionately quirky directorial debut.

The young cast, led by Tom Holland as the bashful web-slinger and Zendaya as a shy girl slow to lose her inhibitions, is plenty appealing as well as funny. But without a proper, full-on villain, as well as an adequate substitute for Robert Downey Jr.'s late, oft-mentioned Tony Stark, this comes off as a less than glittering star in the Marvel firmament.

A promising if not quite audacious debut by Robin Pront, the film benefits from a solidly envisioned family dynamic but doesn't really generate much heat until its final act.

The documentary raises important and substantial questions about an issue that has only become increasingly relevant in recent years.

This religious-themed drama earns points for proselytizing in more narratively compelling form than usual. But while the film is watchable and features some effective performances, suffice it to say that it isn’t exactly All the President’s Men.

A high-carat cast...tears into the juicy material with relish for the most part, but by trying to keep the prolonged sit-down affair from becoming excessively stagey, Moverman adds too many distracting flashbacks to maintain the original’s hard-hitting and well-aimed gut punch.