Though the engaging documentary treads through unavoidably familiar territory — the loneliness of the road, the anguish of bombing — its chorus of testifiers often find sharp new angles of approach.

This is the sort of bad film that can only come about as the result of misguided ambitions.

First-time director McMurray, who worked as an associate producer on Fruitvale Station, does a decent job of staging the action and maintaining viewer attention on the straight-line story. But there’s no subtext, investigation of his characters’ various stories or motivations for doing what they’re doing. It’s a very shallow film.

Emotionally involving material is the key element to a good human-interest documentary, and Lipitz, a Baltimore native with a background in Broadway producing, has tapped into a great story here of adversity, struggle and elevating achievement.

The relationships feel deeply etched and honest; the visual compositions are sharp and often interestingly angled, without being overly fussy; and the helmer shows impressive skill at working with actors.

Depicting the struggles of three undocumented Bronx high school students to avoid deportation, From Nowhere resonates with tender compassion for its characters.

While its narrative elements threaten at times to descend from whimsical into hopelessly twee, My Name Is Emily ultimately finds a proper, if not particularly compelling, balance.

Gael Garcia Bernal’s effortless magnetism is the complicating factor — and the only compelling one — in You’re Killing Me Susana.

Featuring a fast-paced plot and a snappy visual style, Park's absorbing third feature should appeal equally to high-tech enthusiasts and action film fans.

Like in any good genre yarn, there are a lot of unexpected twists and turns as characters run into each other — often quite literally and sometimes even with their vehicles — in the desperate hope of getting their hands on the money.

It’s a smart film with engaging moments. But working overtime to build an involving multi-layered drama with a flurry of hand-held camera movements and dizzying flashbacks, it ultimately turns repetitive and annoying.

An intellectually rigorous but stylistically staid peep at the 20-something author of Capital and The Communist Manifesto, Raoul Peck’s The Young Karl Marx is at once historically impeccable and a filmic disappointment.

It’s a meaty role for stage and film actress Mandat, whose very real pain at the thought of animals’ suffering commands sympathy, though eventually a little tedium. A tighter edit could avoid a lot of surplus emotions and possibly clarify a number of obscure plot points.

Building her narrative around a pair of deadpan performances that yield dashes of humor amid a deep sentiment of human longing, Enyedi can sometimes revel too much in her depictions of modern solitude...without taking the theme much further. But she manages to introduce a few welcome surprises.

It’s intense if somewhat choppy filmmaking, although the passion of the amateur cast and vividness of the Kinshasa locations help make up for the narrative shortcomings.

A charming little tragicomedy which flirts with savage social satire but never fully embraces it.

This semi-fictionalized account rings false whenever it eschews reality for a WWII cloak-and-dagger intrigue, trying too hard to dazzle us with plot instead of letting the music speak for itself.

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.

The film is more of a character study than a full-fledged family drama, though one that benefits from strong, naturalistic performances by castmembers that seem to know one another all too well.

Seamlessly melding Marvel mythology with Western mythology, James Mangold has crafted an affectingly stripped-down stand-alone feature, one that draws its strength from Hugh Jackman’s nuanced turn as a reluctant, all but dissipated hero.

While the film depicts a world seldom far removed from grim reality, the sly strain of humor keeps it buoyant, nowhere more so than in Kaurismaki’s deadpan dialogue, delivered with affectless aplomb by his marvelous cast.

The story is scarce to non-existent, but Kim Min-hee in the main role keeps the audience awake, waiting for her next socially uncensored outburst of truth.

Amusing but slight, the small-scale film is elevated by a spirited characterization from Geoffrey Rush as mercurial artist — is there any other kind in movies? — Alberto Giacometti.

Shocking and enraging, funny and surreal, rapturous and restorative, this is a film of startling intensity and sinuous mood shifts wrapped in a rock-solid coherence of vision.

It’s hard not to be both moved and slightly blown away by the plight of these birds.

Canet manages to deliver a fresh celeb satire here that doesn’t shy away from the uglier side of star power, with “uglier” taking on various meanings as the script (co-written with Philippe Lefebvre and Rodolphe Lauga) heads to some outré places in the last act.

Van Cotthem's performance is wholly convincing, which might not be something to brag about, and the film flatlines right along with him.

Though the shifts can be abrupt, the film provides an overview of a huge topic with admirable concision.