Botso is a deserving homage to a life well lived.

The endless parade of parodistic gags displays no semblance of wit, with the filmmakers content to perfectly ape the silliness of the era's music videos and such fashion statements as wearing a single cross earring.

Visually arresting as it is, the pic stands out mainly for its subject matter, the first documentary on blind chess, even though it fits snugly within the sub-genre of underdog stories.

The film is a meditation on its themes, and as such is probably too amorphous for its own good. But Vanquishing nonetheless represents a typically audacious effort from an intriguing filmmaker whose work bears future attention.

Default’s search for ultra-realism ironically starts to make it look ultra-artificial.

Aaron Zigman’s score provides reassuring downhome uplift — perhaps a necessary element in a tale of impossible, perfect love, where everything happens for a reason and is as it should be, even when it’s terrible.

The earnest film’s straightforwardness and down-to-earth characters — especially the lead performance by Maggie Baird — have a gentle appeal, but its tendency to spell out every emotion and theme in on-the-nose dialogue undercuts its potential impact at nearly every turn.

Gerard Johnstone, a first-time writer-director from New Zealand, demonstrates a sly command of deadpan humor along with an assured grasp of seasoned horror tropes.

The Book of Life is a visually stunning effort that makes up for its formulaic storyline with an enchanting atmosphere that sweeps you into its fantastical world, or in this case, three worlds.

No matter one's personal stance about what Snowden did, this revelatory work is fascinating and thought-provoking, if, at the same time, oddly lacking in tension; unlike the provocations of Michael Moore or Oliver Stone, the temperature of this film is very cool.

The film unfortunately depicts black female sexuality, a topic rarely portrayed onscreen, with all the depth and subtlety of a late night Cinemax offering.

Fury is a good, solid World War II movie, nothing more and nothing less.

You're Not You isn't entirely successful in avoiding a television movie-style predictability in its depiction of its central character's incapacitating illness. But its superb performances and emotional complexity ultimately elevate its familiar themes.

Co-scripters and directors Dallas Hallam and Patrick Horvath never seem quite sure which horror subgenre the film should favor, as the supernatural elements demonstrate little synergy with the serial-killer procedural plotting.

Cartoon violence and action, gore and humor, all rolled into one schlocky but enjoyable package.

With a scare factor far greater than its modest dimensions initially seem to promise, The Canal is a polished indie psycho-thriller full of macabre twists and nerve-snapping tension.

Essentially a feature-length advertisement for the Mormon Church which makes AT&T's "Reach Out and Touch Someone" TV commercials seem edgy by comparison, Meet the Mormons is strictly for the converted.

Shot over the course of several years, Evolution of a Crime is often rough-hewn in its execution, but it's deeply moving nonetheless.

It offers a plethora of personal accounts, practically all of which are unabashedly laudatory, that provide a fuller picture of its subject's complex personality even if the results border on hagiography.

Sad and disturbing, this smartly and conscientiously crafted film is a powerful wake-up call, heard but not yet implemented, by the “civilized” world.

It's pretty silly stuff, leaving the film to rely on more conventional car chases, woman-in-peril scenarios and mistaken identity to keep things interesting -- all seen on that laptop via security cameras and the like.

This terrifically performed piece of filmed theater is filled with twists, turns and underhanded schemes that show how history sometimes lies in the hands of a selected few, not to mention a good glass of Chardonnay.

Only fitfully does the film manage the kind of lift-off as that achieved by Pynchon's often riotous 2009 novel and, most disappointingly, it offers only a pale and narrow physical recreation of such a vibrant place and time.

This juicy tale of a reckless robbery and its spiraling bloody aftermath is enjoyably overripe pulp, steeped in grubby textures and flavorful atmosphere.

Some of the film’s most effective moments are masterful in their visual storytelling skill.

Though it doesn't answer every question it raises and may occasionally confuse the uninitiated, the polished film easily stirs indignation.

The rather routine imitation of reality TV-style camera and editing techniques, along with uninspired special effects associated with Carson’s spiritual affliction, don’t attempt to break new ground but gain little by repeating familiar formulas.

Intelligently assembled by Lemelson, a UCLA anthropologist, it addresses a Westerner's concerns without condescending to its subjects; though a three-family focus is hardly enough to make an authoritative-feeling portrait.