This low-key indie drama has enough well observed, insightful moments to compensate for its occasional lapses into forced quirkiness.

A Life in Dirty Movies is still a sweet and illuminating journey into cult cinema history, but it would have been more honest and psychologically rich if it had shown us the money shot.

Life’s a Breeze is breezy, lighthearted fun.

Keep On Keepin' On is both tender and joyous, a moving account of the mutual nourishment of artistic mentorship and the rewards of accentuating the positive in whatever life throws at you.

Henry & Me is a heartwarming tale that should prove irresistible to young baseball fans.

Although ultimately far too muddled in its concept and execution to be anything more than a curiosity, The Scribbler does manage the dubious feat of being one of the strangest films you’re likely to see this year.

And to be fair, Cusack doesn’t phone it in. He gives the part his all, displaying his usual expert deadpan comic timing while delivering the weak quips in Carmine Gaeta and Luke Davies’ screenplay. But it’s disheartening nonetheless to see him working so hard to enliven such inferior material.

Distinctly and proudly old-fashioned in its retro, film noir vibe, A Walk Among the Tombstones is notable for its dark atmospherics and strong performance by Liam Neeson.

Though it drags in spots and doesn’t convince on all fronts, Bliss is nonetheless a worthy minor addition to a canon of homefront films.

The historical overview they provide is insightful and lucid, yet their polished production intermittently lapses into dry chronology while they bury the lead.

Offering a silly conceit that requires either finesse on screen or a cast whose magnetism overrides disbelief, Mind has neither.

The film will appeal to art lovers, but some viewers who can hardly tell their Cezannes from Chagalls will find the story fascinating as well.

[A] mostly engaging but only fitfully inspired serio-comedy.

It’s like watching a first-rate standup routine transformed into fiction, or in this case auto-fiction, as Rock has more on his mind than just making us laugh, offering up a witty celebrity satire that doubles as a love story set during one long and eventful New York City day.

Facing the physical challenges of depicting Hawking’s disability, Redmayne pulls it off with enormous grace and endurance.

The toll the disease takes on the life of a brilliant linguistics professor is superbly detailed by Julianne Moore in a career-high performance, driving straight to the terror of the disease and its power to wipe out personal certainties and identity.

Laura Wade’s adaptation of her hit play, Posh, has sacrificed much of its savage comedy en route to the screen, and while the dark drama is never dull, its portrait of upper-crust entitlement run amok is seldom surprising either.

Though it abounds in the kind of sardonic humor intrinsic to life’s absurdities, the film is rarely laugh-out-loud funny. In a nutshell, quiet desperation prevails.

Both a powerful allegory for post-war regeneration and a rich Hitchcockian tale of mistaken identity, Phoenix once again proves that German filmmaker Christian Petzold and his favorite star, Nina Hoss, are clearly one of the best director-actor duos working in movies today.

A classically helmed biopic that brings nothing new to the genre, but benefits from handsome craftmanship and solid performances by Tobey Maguire as the Brooklyn boy wonder, and Liev Schreiber as his longtime Russian nemesis, Boris Spassky.

It was a given that this meeting of two iconoclastic directors would yield something far more unfettered and instinctive than conventional bio-drama. But the result borders on incoherence, providing few startling insights for aficionados and minimal illumination for the uninitiated.

A modest film made with an authenticity that commands respect.

[A] handsomely produced if occasionally rather old-fashioned feeling period drama, which plays like a soap opera in which the characters just happen to have better manners and finery.

Blending fiction with documentary and exquisite film craft with playful improvisational freedom, Andrei Konchalovsky delivers what might be the most captivating screen work of his post-Hollywood career with The Postman's White Nights.

Like his erratic protagonist, Gilroy doesn’t always know when to settle down or call it quits, and the film’s constant shifts of tone can grow tiring, even if the action as a whole never gets boring.

[Aubrey Plaza] adds something different to Hartley’s usual hijinks, making for a crime dramedy that’s ostensibly quirky, but also short, sweet and quite moving.

Jason Reitman's new film skillfully navigates through the personal melodramas of many characters with a nice sense of balance and a sharp appreciation of generational differences.

Unfortunately, Barthes brings nothing new to the familiar story.