Sutton is aiming to make a grand statement about America's downtrodden, and he never lets you forget it.

Dolan has labored hard to yoke together these tricksy, time-jumping, intertwined plots, reportedly editing down a mountain of material over two years. In the process, a whole character played by Jessica Chastain was surgically removed. But however long he tinkered, Dolan has not quite salvaged a story whose default setting seems to be mirthless, ponderous navel-gazing.

Running a farm is a tough life of never-ending work, and once the film drops its initial idealization of back-to-the-land fantasies in favor of a more realistic assessment of the challenges involved, it becomes genuinely involving and heartening.

The film is aware of the weight of its subject but loath to behave like an "important" film — focusing instead on the specificity of one sick young man and the family that loves and fears him in almost equal measure.

[A] solid, straightforward history of abortion rights in America.

For all its vividly and realistically rendered graphic violence and gore, The Basement is an example of torture porn at its most ironic. It threatens to bore its audience to death.

A gender-flipped sibling to Crystal Moselle's Skate Kitchen (set in Los Angeles versus that film's NYC), its narrative of sudden belonging and onrushing perils mirrors that Sundance entry. But in emotional punch and shoulda-seen-this-coming skill, it is more like Hill's Lady Bird, a gem that feels simultaneously informed by its author's adolescence and the product of a serious artist's observational distance.

The film has its resonant moments, notably a wedding and a funeral. But it is by no means the jewel in the crown of a series that most recently has included electrifying docs like At Berkeley, In Jackson Heights and Ex Libris: The New York Public Library.

It’s contrived at every turn and talky like a French film, though 100 percent American indie in its earnest conviction that it’s saying something of substance about the unpredictable roller coaster of life and love.

Throughout, Asante raises questions about bravery, conscience and, most of all, identity.

It's a competent, by-the-numbers action melodrama.

No one makes movies like Peter Strickland.

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.

The film benefits from the fine cast and from many sharp and poignant moments. It's an impressive achievement technically as well.

The filmmaker's expressively cockeyed impulses soon take over (he's ably assisted by the terrific cinematographer Seamus McGarvey), and the resulting craziness is quite delightful to behold in the moment and to reflect on after.

Stern's melancholy on election night in 2016 is genuinely affecting, but despite some incisive footage en route to the depressing conclusion, the film ultimately leaves us feeling that the director has become a little too close to his subjects to probe as deeply as our national chaos requires

The mix of commentators is unusual and lively, hardly the usual crowd that often pops up in documentaries like this, the clips are illustrative and on point in addition to often being eye-popping, and the film looks certain to please Keaton aficionados. Most importantly, it's likely to induce newcomers to investigate the great stone face for themselves.

Without Denis’ typically transfixing aesthetics and with a storyline that lumbers along in places, High Life is not always an easy sit, even if occasional outbursts of violence spice up the action in distressing ways.

Crucially, like its predecessor, Gloria Bell maintains a warm but rigorously unsentimental tone despite material which could easily lend itself to mawkish sentimentality.

If the movie’s slow burn seems to build toward a powerful release that doesn’t materialize, the sheer beauty of its craft and the heartfelt feeling behind every scene nonetheless command attention.

The film would not have the same impact without the commanding lead performance. Thanks to Ramos’s affecting work, Fistful of Dirt sticks in the memory.

Fall is Pretty Woman for socialists, a Capital-conscious fairy tale in which a nice guy not only attempts a perfect crime but wins the heart of a prostitute hitherto moved only by American dollars.

A twisted tale of toxic female friendship, the film offers its share of pleasures: eye candy in human, sartorial and real-estate form, as well as the unmistakable flair of a director and performers who know their way around a piece of pop entertainment. But the result leaves you scratching your head.

Widows is a solid piece of genre fiction made more resonant by how its creators have bored down into its characters and sociological implications in ways specifically designed to examine some of the rotten underpinnings of business as usual.

The picture has a good shock or two up its sleeve before getting to Laurie's armored, booby-trapped home, and once it's there, it surprises us again.

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.

As a portrait of bogus revolutionary rhetoric used to undermine and control women, it’s thoughtful and provocative.

As enacted here by unquestionably fine actors, this story does not emerge as compelling or convincing, and the film is aggravatingly narrow-minded in its interests. However, if one stays with it all the way to the end, it is absolutely worth sitting still for the end credits, over which is played a monologue by Nic which is the best thing in the picture.