Some would say the jury's out on that issue; but near-unanimous love and admiration suggests Hesburgh's stance was a great way to win friends and influence people.

Hal Ashby's direction is perfect in realizing the offbeat humor and gentle satire of the piece.

Iranian-American filmmaker Ramin Bahrani has followed up his well-received Man Push Cart with another penetrating portrait of life on the outskirts of New York.

This outstanding, muscular feature debut for French-born, British-based director Yann Demange almost never puts a foot wrong, from the softly underplayed performances to the splendidly speckled cinematography and fine-grained period detailing.

Fayyad and his cinematographers and editors wield the cameras and shape the scenes in the documentary so beautifully that The Cave is both intensely real and a carefully wrought work of cinema. A kind of counterpart to Last Men, the new film is perhaps more wrenching and even more ambitious in its visuals.

Focusing on the notoriously aggressive orca Tilikum, this gripping film presents a persuasive case against keeping the species – and by extension any wild animal – in captivity for the purposes of human entertainment.

Despite focusing entirely on a single individual speaking into a headset in a Danish emergency call center, The Guilty nevertheless emerges as a twisty crime thriller that’s every bit as pulse-pounding and involving as its action-oriented, adrenaline-soaked counterparts.

As a poetic dispatch from society's lower depths, Field Niggas is an oblique but inescapably topical slice of slick but rough-edged humanism — a polyphonic roundelay that hits some powerfully discordant notes before the director decides to start tooting his own horn.

As a portrait of a besieged community carrying on as best it can, the film is keenly observed, its character observations lucid and engrossing.

What makes Segan’s movie so intoxicating, however, is not just the depth of its inside-and-out central character study but the granular textures of the world Harry inhabits and the incisively drawn secondary characters played by a deep bench of very fine and impeccably cast actors.

Unlike Mara, the writer-directors of The Girl and the Spider can shape and control their story. They orchestrate a closing sequence of high-impact lyricism, bringing their tale of the mystery-infused quotidian to a shimmering, open-ended conclusion.

A wondrous flight of fancy, a stop-motion-animated treat brimming with imaginative characters, evocative sets, sly humor, inspired songs and a genuine whimsy that seldom finds its way into today's movies.

Its strength lies in the way it offers intimate access to people on several clashing sides of the situation, making for a complex, layered and thoughtful examination.

It is good-natured, lowbrow, backlot, hit-or-miss humor, but with no cumulative effect beyond its succession of hard-worked jokes. More theatrical than cinematic in its conception, this group effort relies on the improvisation of its performers.

Predators isn’t a documentary about closing the door on the To Catch a Predator legacy, but on seeing what shades of gray we can discover now that the door is ready to be reopened.

While this is fascinating material, it's the flawed human behavior it exposes that makes the story so compelling. And yet what elevates Marsh's film is the even-handedness of his perspective.

Decidedly dark, though not necessarily bleak, Bertelli’s hybrid docu-fiction is an unflinching look at the trials and travails of contemporary sports. It’s also a visually seductive meditation on the many ways in which science — whether biological or technological — now plays a pivotal role in any serious athletic endeavor.

While Demme's latest doc might not fully express the sublime arc of Young's career, it's another worthy contribution to the artist's lifelong body of work.

The movie delivers its share of shudders, along with fabulous arias of anger, wrath and disgust from both actors as the power dynamic bounces back and forth.

It's refreshing to witness a superhero with doubts. Maguire and Dunst again display the depth of talent they bring to these roles by injecting such everydayness into larger-than-life characters.

In exploring how the ruptures of the past map themselves onto relationships in the present, [Quy] elegantly approaches a familiar theme: how war reverberates throughout generations, imposing on witnesses and their successors.

Collaborating again with The Unknown Country cinematographer Andrew Hajek, Maltz plays with close-ups and other snug camera angles to make viewers co-conspirators in Jazzy’s adventures. There’s an endearing clumsiness to the film, too, reflecting the awkward pauses and missteps of real life.

[A] slender but appealing debut feature. Of note for its nonjudgmental stance on abortion and its normalizing treatment of queer parenting, though not immune to occasional heavy-handedness or caricature, the film has enough modest charms to connect with audiences similarly navigating the bridge between youthful detachment and grounded adulthood.

Cosmatos' ability to put us in Red's head — overwhelmed at first with pain and fury, then saturated by the strange drugs he for some reason feels compelled to try — make this much more than the usual exercise in vicarious bloodshed.

Neville unearths a treasure trove of archival TV, concert and film footage featuring many of these vocalists in their heyday, balancing the material with perfectly-lit contemporary studio interviews and performances shot in pristine digital cinematography, supplemented by more informal scenes depicting the frequent challenges of these musicians' careers.

A fully believable, flesh-and-blood (albeit not human flesh and blood) romance is the beating heart of "Avatar." Cameron has never made a movie just to show off visual pyrotechnics: Every bit of technology in "Avatar" serves the greater purpose of a deeply felt love story.

Impressive in parts, but wildly uneven as a whole.

The sheer likability of these lived-in characters is a powerful magnet, thanks to insightful writing and a note-perfect ensemble anchored by a never-better Annette Bening.