Credit first-time director Jeremiah S. Chechik for his sure-handed rein on Christmas Vacation's polar opposites of sentimental and satirical sides. It makes for a smooth-sledding comedy.

Though its dark riches can at moments feel like overload, and its narrative thrust occasionally grows diffuse, the story casts an undeniable spell.

After 90 years and more than 50 films, Wajda has earned the right to make stagey period pieces like Afterimage, minor codas to a gloriously symphonic career.

A minor but touchingly human subplot to the financial crash, Abacus: Small Enough to Jail is both an affirmation and an indictment of the American Dream.

There’s much that international audiences will find relatable and enjoyable in the film, which is graced with a particular empathy for human foibles and appreciation for the specific humor to be found in everyday family life.

There are multiple levels on which to enjoy Roman Polanski’s Based on a True Story (D’Apres une histoire vraie), none of them very deep or complicated. But together they raise the resonance of a masterfully made psychological thriller in the traditional mode.

Its tale of doubles, deception and desire allows Ozon to fool around with some of his favorite themes — the turbulent inner lives of complex women, the distance between appearance and reality, the essential unknowability of even our most intimate loved ones, the necessity of imagination in enduring everyday life.

What saves the movie's sobering latter developments, giving it an emotional wallop that overrides the flaws, is partly the sadness playing across Dafoe's face as Bobby watches from the sidelines.

Miike’s facility for the sharply sketched portrait, in between bouts of bladed mayhem, remains as shrewd as ever.

Only in an extended sequence late into the proceedings...do we get a sense that Pineiro has tried to move outside of his comfort zone and does the film really become affecting.

The fact that the director once again displays a true mastery of his craft, from Deffontaines’ exquisite framing to the decision to record all the songs live rather than having them lip-synched (apparently one of the only times this has been done since Straub-Huillet’s 1975 movie Moses and Aron), makes for a transfixing, if sometimes excruciating, cinematic experience.

The screenplay...is very good in its many observational scenes, which here are more straightforward and less laced with irony and dark humor than in Women.

The flurry of characters takes a long time to get straight, and identification is made even harder by the nervous handheld camerawork and rapid-fire editing that makes no concessions. But no matter: the film comes into its element in the imaginative action scenes.

Shot Caller may cover little new ground but navigates familiar terrain with considerable skill.

The sadistic horror comedy Safe Neighborhood is the kind of film that’s tough to categorize but easy to enjoy, especially if you like watching teenagers do some very twisted things for the holiday season.

Dawson City: Frozen Time could have benefited from judicious trimming of its two-hour running time, and there are times when its wandering focus proves irritating. But, at its best, the film represents a captivating time capsule that delivers a poignant paean to a long-gone cinematic era.

Overall, Pio's accelerated passage from adolescence to adulthood is depicted with moving honesty and sensitivity.

It is clear that Serraille has made a portrait of a very specific individual but that she’s also saying something more general about her own generation.

The doc’s personal portraits of the work required to forge an independent life should connect with and inspire parents and educators.

There are many pleasures along the way, including the effective evocation of Victorian-era London.

Ascent sometimes lives up to its title by proving a slog, not fully earning its feature-length running time. But the film nonetheless exerts fascination with its haunting imagery.

The film is a blunt, brutally effective survival tale distinguished by the parallel suspense tracks of its non-chronological structure.

The issues it addresses are of massive importance.

The pairing of Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart in the lead roles pays off big time, with more laugh-out-loud moments than the original and some particularly hilarious work from Hart, who steps up his game after his fun if broad-minded performances in Get Hard and the Ride Along movies.

An affecting debut for anyone who has dwelled on the far outskirts of adolescent social life, Ian MacAllister McDonald's Some Freaks captures high school/college agony without transmuting it into thank-God-we-survived-it nostalgia.

The genial, relentlessly curious Sharif proves an excellent guide as the security situation spirals from instability into nightmare and the so-called Islamic State (aka ISIS or Daesh) advances inexorably advances towards Jalawla.

Santoalla isn't without its longueurs, even at 83 minutes, and can veer into the repetitive at times. But it scores in its judicious combination of archival materials (some of it shot by camcorder-fan Verfondern himself) with the directors' own interview-based footage, taking that most ancient of squabbles — a feud between farmers — and turning it into a poignant elegy for tragically lost opportunities.

Sticking mostly to one corner of the turf Berry has staked out, this unusual and quite beautiful documentary seeks to connect with him by getting to know the land and those who work it near the author's Kentucky home.