Both informative and moving.

Though too inside-baseball for many casual art fans, it should find some takers in its nationwide tour of bookings at art houses and museums.

Diffuse and rambling at times, An Animated Life, which sometimes has the feel of a tribute film shown at an award gala, is not as compelling as such similarly themed docs as "Waking Sleeping Beauty" and "Frank and Ollie." But it nonetheless serves as an entertaining salute to an unsung figure whose considerable accomplishments well deserve recognition.

Unfortunately, Kampai! For the Love of Sake is more cheerleading than informative, concentrating largely on personality profiles of three figures—two of them Westerners--obsessed with the Japanese rice wine.

While lacking the technical polish necessary to lift it into a more elevated cinematic dimension, Philip T. Johnson's directorial debut earns points for its thematic ambitions and cheeky wit.

Anne Frank's story has always been a moving way of personalizing the horrors of this war, and that remains the case here; but Fouce's dry doc is best suited for screening rooms in history museums.

If similarities to mumblecore dramedies seem appropriate, be advised that by comparison, that subgenre is way more involving than Never will ever be.

The film is as shapeless as a real life — amusing in an extremely mild way on occasion, but no more goal-oriented than a protagonist who, time and again, shows that all he really cares about is getting high and tossing a ball around.

Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV is so lacking in human interest, or even in merely satisfying action, it is difficult to imagine anyone wanting to pay to sit through it. What Takeshi Nozue's movie does offer is massive, vividly rendered landscapes of sci-fi/fantasy pastiche, home to mayhem that is prettier than it is involving.

A fascinating process movie about acting and storytelling, but also a curious meta-contemplation of our own voyeuristic attraction to tragedy.

Though blessed with a spectacular true story and character to work from, director and co-screenwriter Lars Kraume...fails to breathe much life into the stuffy, overly complex enumeration of the historical facts.

Earnest, direct and sometimes surprisingly dramatic.

Its blizzard of statistics notwithstanding, the film consists mostly of true-life stories that, while undeniably tragic, stir up more emotion than thought.

Though only an adequate singer, Medhaffer practically explodes with energy when she’s behind the microphone, making for a very charismatic performer.

Girl Asleep might be about an awakening, but it’s not a sexual awakening, and this is one teen comedy in which, at long last, the geek doesn’t get the girl.

The technical aspects of Mohenjo Daro prove to be a major disappointment.

Misguided, diminished and dismally done in every way, this late-summer afterthought will richly earn the distinction of becoming the first Ben-Hur in any form to flop.

Predictably full of great performing footage and incorporating new interviews with the too-few surviving witnesses, the doc may hold few revelations for baby boomers and their kids, who've had ample opportunities to revisit the material. But it will make a fine entry point for younger auds who grew up with the songs but never had Beatlemania shoved down their throats.

Hardly inexperienced at playing belligerent, outrageous and offensive a-holes, Hill offers a definitive account of one here, to which Teller can only play the blander, if useful, second fiddle who has to try, and try again, to stand up to the gruff bully.

Though it takes some time to sort out the large cast, the leads, all fine actors, eventually come into focus. As the good and bad samurai, Yakusho and Ichimura have the gravitas to take their roles seriously and perform a decisive one-on-one sword fight straight.

Lola Kirke stands in no one's shadow here, delivering a quietly winning performance that would ensure viewer identification even if her character's challenging first-love plight weren't so universal.

An uplifting sense emerges of the resilience through community of youth who are marginalized, abandoned, isolated, bullied or sexually exploited.

An ultra-naturalistic slice of rocky adolescent life that combines violence and sensuality, wrenching loss and tender discovery.

Imperium traffics in familiar undercover cop thriller conventions while gaining resonance from its disturbing, timely milieu.

Irving and screenwriter Peter Warren find it surprisingly hard to milk the charms of performers like Amy Sedaris and Justin Long for laughs.

Representing a dazzling artistic leap forward for LAIKA, the stop-motion animation studio’s fourth feature — and first full-blown fantasy — is an eye-popping delight that deftly blends colorful folklore with gorgeous, origami-informed visuals to immersive effect.

The film is emotionally manipulative, to be sure, but it's ultimately hard to resist, especially given the quality of the lead performances.

A trapped-in-a-house thriller pitting thieves against an unexpectedly resourceful victim, the lean and mean pic offers scares aplenty and at least a couple of game-changing twists.