The performances of the two leads are riveting.

While Angel brings little new to the lexicon of serial killer biopics, it hits the target as an effortlessly palatable aesthetic experience, more shiny period pageant than probing character study.

The three main characters are all vividly sketched.

Arctic is elegantly shot, crisp and unfussy, and seamless in its near-invisible use of digital effects, creating a persuasive you-are-there feeling that's rare in these days of flashy CG thrills. And it's the very old-fashioned movie magic of an expressive face that keeps you watching even as the storytelling ambles.

Pairing his usual boundary-pushing sex-and-drugs fixation with a vital presentation of wildly exuberant dance and movement, Gaspar Noe has made a film that’s seductive in its rhythms and bold visualization of his young dancers’ sometimes beautiful, other times brutal somatic expressiveness.

It is a pleasure to watch the present-day Francis interact with people all over the world and articulate his hopes for improving the lot of the poor. The film is humane and unobjectionable, but in the end, it isn’t pointed enough to seize the attention of skeptics in the audience.

Gibson still has all the energy, impulsive gear-shifting ability and growly vocal command to anchor a muscular film such as this; he co-wrote it for himself, after all, and he certainly knows by now what he does best. Hernandez is entirely credible as a tough little customer with real guts, and all the actors playing bad guys seize their opportunities with relish.

Throughout, Shuman's eye, her editing, and Paul Brill's charming score weave the individual stories Pigeon finds into the tapestry of life on the street

This is one of those films that, if shown overseas, could potentially make people think that the U.S. is going down the tubes even faster than imagined. Everyone in it — adolescents and grown-ups, too — is beyond stupid and content to remain that way.

The result is one of the most visceral essay films ever made, with Peedom and her Sherpa altitude cinematographer Renan Ozturk unfurling a series of glistening images that should be seen only on the biggest of big screens.

Working in an improvisatory vein, in actual locations rather than constructed sets, writer-director Dominic Savage gives this story of a married woman's despair and awakening a powerful, lived-in immediacy. It's also the story of a man's struggle to understand his wife's pain, and the tortured, tender chemistry between leads Arterton and Dominic Cooper is profoundly affecting, at times shattering.

A pleasingly quiet, small-scaled drama about love between strangers and siblings, solidarity between lonely Angelenos and the transformative power of kindness, Anything has much to recommend it.

Active Measures delivers a well-researched and smartly laid-out cinematic thesis that connects the myriad dots in skillful fashion.

Class Rank combines satire with teen romance in sweetly innocuous, but not particularly memorable, fashion.

The doc is so eager to tell you who's visited the hotel and eaten at the restaurant (JFK allegedly trysted here, which didn't keep his widow from enjoying the Cobb salad) that it shares very little about the hotel's origins and operations.

Union certainly dedicates herself to all the huffing, running, jumping and emoting, though her efforts never counter Breaking In’s aura of trashiness and disposability.

Vaughn Stein's Terminal blends tropes from several sorts of crime flicks into a soundstagey affair that's more brittle than hard-boiled.

But the synthesis is underwhelming on screen where it might have resonated in Lipsyte's book. Here, Measure becomes a mildly nostalgic, mildly romantic entry in a genre that, more than most, requires that the viewer feels a personal connection to the misfit protagonist on screen.

The film is a cream puff about a mother-daughter relationship, masquerading as a raucous return-to-campus comedy, most of it predictable.

If the film remains largely watchable it is because Farhadi has cast some of the finest actors in Spain and they know how to breathe life into their characters even when they don’t have all that much to do (though a few of them have quite a lot to say).

Set in Rhode Island, the film focuses on three boys who have had a parent in prison (one of those parents is a mother), and it probes the impact on the children with clarity and poignancy.

Alex Strangelove is much more affecting whenever Johnson steps out of genre comfort zones.

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.

Ray meets Helen, all right, but moviegoers expecting a sprightly golden-years romance have come to the wrong place. So have those looking for a moody but credible reflection on decades of regrets.

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 Image You Missed arguably functions most effectively as an impressionistic primer on tumultuous Ulster affairs during and after the Troubles, providing vivid glimpses of a violent epoch whose controversial repercussions continue to periodically reverberate across the British Isles and beyond.

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.

As viewers, we have no idea whether the doc's last act is building toward a triumphant reunion or a big dead end. Suffice to say that the final scenes, never manipulative, achieve an emotional impact appropriate to the scale of this journey.