Starring John Hawkes as a booze-addicted former cop who stumbles across a mystery he can't stand to leave unsolved, the scuzzy-looking pic is a boon to the actor's fans.

Though not solely for superfans, it plays best for those who appreciate a hard-to-untangle knot of realness, fakeness, vanity, artistry, self-commentary and pure comedy. Laced with truly hilarious moments, it’s less daring than one might hope given its conceit, Eggersian title and Charlie Kaufman-seasoned icon-star.

Neither as frightening as a good horror flick nor as enlightening as a straight documentary, Rodney Ascher's The Nightmare borrows from both worlds in its depiction of the phenomenon known as sleep paralysis.

Whether the narrative is in amped-up overdrive or idling, the director and her magnetic cast keep us fully invested in their cautious reconnection and their ability to survive a series of life-threatening encounters.

Clicks on so many levels -- heartwarming family story, rough-and-tumble display of grrrl power and a secondary but tender and convincing romance.

Make of it what you will, this off-the-wall film essay entertains hugely while it makes the audience squirm in their seats.

At times, The Most Dangerous Year gets bogged down with its extensive footage of hearings about various bills and ballot initiatives that, however pertinent, inevitably come across with a C-SPAN dullness. But that's a minor quibble about this powerful documentary, which makes the valuable point that this is a civil rights issue and that the arguments being put forth about transgender people sound much like those promoting segregation decades ago.

Diluting its powerful themes with overcooked melodrama and unnecessarily distracting subplots, The Other Story would have benefited from a simpler, more direct approach.

Frank & Louis poses thoughtful questions about atonement and forgiveness, about how much sense it makes to keep ailing men behind bars when they no longer remember who they were or what they did. It’s an interesting angle for a prison drama, handled with great sensitivity by the filmmakers and cast.

Craig Zobel effectively sets all its surface parts in motion but, crucially, doesn’t sufficiently develop that turbulent undercurrents of tension and intrigue that are called for in the hothouse circumstances.

Torres has created a weird and special little film, one that reflects his particular tastes and curiosities.

This film neither really embraces the mechanics of primitive cinema nor creates a coherent syntax of its own.

Sienna Miller offers a beautiful, agile performance that would by itself justify the film's existence.

The outcome is a flamingly sexy soap opera whose satire on high society is sometimes as savage as Claude Chabrol's "La ceremonie."

Scott packages these concerns and others in a smart way, and includes the occasional bit of eye-opening history.

It's a slow-burn drama with a fairly austere attitude toward conventional exposition, dialogue and character development, which will confine it to the commercial margins. But the film is also transfixing in its formal rigor, impressive craft and striking visual beauty.

May be too clever for its own good. Essentially, it's the story of weekend scientists who build a time machine in a suburban garage. But this nearly gets lost in a miasma of technical jargon and scientific conjecture.

Andre Techine's many admirers will not be disappointed by his latest offering, The Girl on the Train, but they might be hard-pressed to define it.

A hilarious farce and a brilliant takedown of the imbecility of fanaticism.

Beyond celebrating the music, 40 Years in the Making: The Magic Music Movie has something to say about the compromises and reconciliations that are a part of aging, and it turns out to make for a stirring and healing reunion.

Wolfe has made an admiring but nuanced feature that doesn’t aim for biopic completism or cause-and-effect formula.

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

Both goofy and edgy, the film may not land every punchline, but it satisfies in visceral, pleasurable ways that a more sophisticated comedy could not.

A sharp-looking and enjoyable doc that celebrates the writer's legacy but, in its willfully obscure structure, seems a bit too bent on echoing his famous nonconformity.

It's an uncompromising, sophisticated, multi-layered work of art which demands to be met at least halfway.

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.

Monsters and Men is a robust ensemble piece in which every performer finds subtle shadings in characters fully embedded in a realistic milieu. It's a smart, urgently relevant movie that marks an impressive upgrade from his acclaimed short films for writer-director Green.

Emphasizing brawn over brain and spectacle over intimacy, Ridley Scott's Gladiator nevertheless is an impressive accomplishment in its re-creation not only of the golden age of the Roman Empire but of the unspeakable brutality with which one of the world's greatest states conducted its business.