Even with all its familiar action tropes, less-than-fresh special effects and loopy plotting, the most depressing element in the Wachowski siblings' latest sci-fi mash is that, as they conceive it, human society has been around for more than a billion years but is still presided over by a rivalrous British-style royal family that treacherously behaves as if it were the 1550s.

This impeccably assembled and argued film represents a brave, timely intervention into debates around the organization that have been simmering for some time.

There’s a sense that the goings-on are more quirky than comical.

A potentially fun premise soon turns into no fun at all in Cop Car, a seriously imagination-challenged low-end action thriller.

[An] accessible and informative close-up documentary.

For American viewers of an intellectual/historical persuasion, there could scarcely be any documentary more enticing, scintillating and downright fascinating than Best of Enemies.

More lightweight than its ample talk of weighty subjects suggests, the film is nevertheless enjoyable.

Despite a number of trenchant scenes and some startling depictions of sexual degradation, the film has little that's particularly original or enlightening to say about living with a chemical, genetic or emotional imbalance, making its primary function as a showcase for the lead actress to stretch her range.

Impressive in parts, but wildly uneven as a whole.

Garcia’s take, however beautiful physically, is intellectually opaque and creatively cautious, leaving the interested viewer, whether or not a believer, with much to wonder about but little to actually chew on.

A superb, comically gifted cast helps writer-director Jim Strouse lift this quite a few cuts above his previous work as well as above the general run of films about modern life and relationships.

Maclean's screenplay is unshowy but keen.

For all its flaws it’s a rich, thought-provoking film which, while challenging, is not without humor and visual pleasures, particularly in the restrained but bang-on period production design.

Sleeping With Other People is a brittle, bawdy, frequently funny romcom that might be too smart for its own good.

A perfectly chosen cast sells this unhurried comedy, which flows unconventionally but is still, by a long stretch, the most mainstream-friendly picture Bujalski has made.

There’s a breezy spirit and an agreeable touch of tenderness to the movie that makes it hard not to like, even if it never accumulates much substance.

Pleasantly involving and sometimes annoying throughout most of its running time, this is also a vibrant, thoughtful piece about modern life in a very particular gentrified neighborhood.

The film has nothing if not great vitality and an active creative spirit, but it has all been channeled here in a way that comes off as erratic and sometimes ill-judged.

Classily and classically crafted in the best sense by director John Crowley and screenwriter Nick Hornby, this superbly acted romantic drama is set in the early 1950s and provides the feeling of being lifted into a different world altogether, so transporting is the film’s sense of time and place and social mores.

performances from Saoirse Ronan and Cynthia Nixon keep Stockholm, Pennsylvania intense and absorbing, but Nicole Beckwith's initial impulse to tell her confinement story as a stage play feels as if it might have been a sounder choice.

Awash with ripe, voluptuous summertime imagery and brimming with aborning adolescent female sexuality, The Summer of Sangaile is an appealingly simple, poetically conceived teen coming-of-age tale.

Despite its sharp visuals and evocative sense of place, the unevenly acted film never quite builds enough atmospheric dread to distract from its characters' somewhat implausible behavior.

The film's smart craftsmanship is ultimately less noteworthy than its humanizing, prejudice-challenging immersion into the lives of people who inhabit L.A.'s low-end drug and sex industry.

Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini's Ten Thousand Saints offers both a premise and a setting ripe for nostalgic sentimentality but indulges in little of it.

Rather than further expanding those seemingly limitless SpongeBob horizons, the live action/CG stuff never satisfyingly jibes with the traditional nautical nonsense down below.

Goold's work never feels stagey; a smart and varied visual sense opens up even settings as basic as a jail's visiting room. But what happens in that room isn't as convincing as might be expected from these actors.

Swanberg and her co-writer Megan Mercier do an assured job of coaxing the minor-key humor and conflict gently from the naturalistic situations.

A Walk in the Woods serves as a terrific showcase for two exceptionally durable stars.