Cedar impressively creates a complex and intricately detailed portrait of the web of political, financial, social and religious affiliations that has everything to do with how the world works.

The film is much more about the way in which people perceive one another than about the way people really are.

Ascent sometimes lives up to its title by proving a slog, not fully earning its feature-length running time. But the film nonetheless exerts fascination with its haunting imagery.

A touching reminder of music's ability to change the world.

It’s a juicy piece of entertainment that also engages sincerely with its painful, topical subject matter.

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.

Most exceptional is the visual style, which makes even the best animated 3D look like a poor cousin.

While Hugo Perez and Cathryne Czubek don’t tell a perfectly crafted story in Once Upon a Time in Uganda, their film captures enough of Nabwana’s resourcefulness and enthusiasm to make one wish his movies (which have played some fests in North America) were easier to see here — not on YouTube, but in theaters where their shout-at-the-screen, howl-with-your-seatmates vibe would be just the thing to remind you how essential the communal experience of cinema is.

As a timely yarn about the mistreatment of minorities, both in Sweden and worldwide, Border is rich in allegorical layers. But as a thriller at least partially rooted in supernatural genre conventions, its relentlessly dour Nordic glumness drags a little. Social realism and magical realism make uneasy bedfellows.

An episodic coming-of-age story whose plot holes are paved over by strong performances and a few emotional highlights.

A low-key verite charmer.

The performances make this worthwhile.

A cool, confident debut whose steady build mirrors the increasing stakes faced by its namesake, John Patton Ford’s Emily the Criminal is a nail-biter that makes the most of the tough side Aubrey Plaza has shown in even her most comic performances.

Depicting the struggles of three undocumented Bronx high school students to avoid deportation, From Nowhere resonates with tender compassion for its characters.

The mash-up of elements combine with a singularly unpleasant roster of characters to create a work of genuinely off-putting quirkiness.

A class-conscious Scandinavian crime film whose impact is dulled by some extraneous subplots, Daniél Espinosa's Easy Money nevertheless makes a solid vehicle for Joel Kinnaman.

Rippling with psychological complexity and sneaky humor, this is a rich character study that takes constantly surprising turns.

[Devor] displays a relentless curiosity in tandem with an evidently sympathetic eye to human foibles and peccadillos, yielding numerous fleeting insights without ever really aiming to find a grand overall conclusion.

It's a touching movie that, like the best animes, transcends the limitations of the genre.

Even if the movie kind of stalls midway as Schaffer struggles to balance the gags with the action of an overly elaborate crime plot, there are enough laugh-out-loud moments to keep nostalgic fans of the earlier films happy and maybe make some new converts.

Happily, the film is more than a greatest-hits rundown (and at nearly three hours, it had better be): In addition to nuts-and-bolts musicology, it offers real engagement with a complicated character, endearingly stubborn and self-effacing, whose inventiveness changed both his chosen field (“absolute” music) and the one, film scoring, he entered only reluctantly.

What Happened, Miss Simone does its job well, proving especially treasurable for its wealth of rare archive film footage and audio material that captures Simone’s fierce talent, fiery temperament and fragile mental health. But it is unlikely to be ranked up there with the best music-themed bio-docs.

If the movie runs long in places, the vibrant performances from Worthy and the rest of the cast help push things ahead to the grand finale, and there are enough dynamo battles from start to finish to keep hungry rap fans satisfied.

Frederic Jardin's gripping Sleepless Night maintains a consistently high pitch without growing monotonous.

This well-intentioned meditation of the banality of evil packs a modest emotional punch, but it might have been more powerful if it had shown us a little less banality and a little more evil.

Though not all the relationships are entirely clear — the thieves' relationship with Brandt, for example, remains somewhat vague — and there might be some minor issues that could become apparent on multiple viewings, this is first and foremost a rollicking and very imaginatively staged ride that’s enjoyable and different.

Filmmaker Devlin details this complicated series of events with clarity, a sense of drama and more than a few touches of dark humor.

A sterling cast makes up for screenplay weaknesses.