It isn’t polished and it isn’t focused, and at times there’s a rawness to its emotional exposure that left me feeling a little uncomfortable. But in those respects, it’s a wholly reasonable expression of the sort of grief that, even 14 years later, defies understanding.

The performances are excellent all around, with Scott mesmerizing as the emotionally volatile Laevsky and the gorgeous Glascott making vividly clear why her character drives all the surrounding men to distraction.

Both an unexciting and by-the-numbers history lesson and an inside-view, you-are-there look at an underreported armed conflict, the documentary This Is Congo is almost as full of contradictions as the nation it is trying to portray.

The Order is the kind of tense reflection on American violence that Hollywood rarely puts on the big screen anymore.

The doc happily devotes most of its time to a stylish, energetic account of Hanna's career to date and the impact it has had on a generation of women.

Although the narrative is structured through a highly unbelievable instigating conceit — Zain is trying to sue his own parents in court for giving him life in the first place — Labaki lures such outstanding performances out of the almost entirely non-professional cast and sketches such a credible view of this wretchedly poor milieu that the flaws are mostly forgivable.

It's Not Yet Dark is a heartfelt and stirring documentary

Offers a brisk and eye-opening approach to recent history. The title, by the way, comes from Henry Kissinger.

Elizabeth Olsen steps onto the radar as a seriously accomplished actor in this mesmerizing drama, which also marks an assured feature debut for writer-director Sean Durkin.

This is a wisp of a film that for many will lack payoff, but it has a depth of feeling, strong sense of frustration, and hunger for growth and change that heighten involvement. Its sensitive portrait of being young and gay in an unaccommodating culture also makes it deserving of attention.

Stylistically, The Settlers is crisp: It's an intelligent blend of interviews, historical exposition and newsreel footage.

The sequel will impress any fan of the original. It's fresher than most of the low-budget thrillers gracing theaters lately.

La Belle Epoque is the sort of vastly entertaining mainstream French film that was produced with regularity during the 1970s-'80s and was sometimes remade by Hollywood. Those days are long gone but it could happen with this witty, sexy and original romantic comedy that touches many points of satisfaction.

More than anything, the doc lives up to its name as a portrait of the photographer in his old age.

What makes this candid, unpatronizing movie so engaging is that the sexual conflict is never set up as a deal-breaker, rather as an issue the couple has to work through in their own, mostly roundabout way.

Leveraging limited resources to impressive effect, writer-director Chris Eska’s empathetic scripting and well-tuned casting reliably guide The Retrieval’s memorable trajectory.

As funny as the first go-round, more beautiful to look at, and better conceived.

Sauvage has its longueurs, at times seeming stuck in a circuitous groove with too little forward momentum. However, the movie is never banal. It's a fully inhabited world that pulls us in.

Quite watchable, even sort of plot-driven — for a Serra film.

The vigilance of the character building doesn’t translate to the narrative. The story at the center of My Dead Friend Zoe — a young woman suffering from PTSD and tasked with caring for her aging grandfather — is oddly unyielding, never relaxing enough to fully engage or move us.

[A] fascinatingly oddball story.

A sensitive and well-observed drama that, while not breaking new ground, marks its director-screenwriter as someone to watch.

An invaluable addition to the rock history cinema archives.

Nothing in The Forever Prisoner feels all that revelatory, but the thing that’s essential in the doc is the reminder that for all of the story’s familiarity, it reflects a situation that has been barely ameliorated over more than a decade.

James D. Cooper’s rollicking film is a heady return to Swinging Sixties England at the height of the Mod explosion that’s packed with primo archival material and killer tunes. It’s also a vigorous testament to the rewards of creative collaboration, shining a spotlight on two highly unorthodox, self-invented rock entrepreneurs.

Everything the film has to offer is obvious and on the surface, its pleasures simple and sincere under the attentive guidance of director Jon S. Baird.

Beer and Rogowski are so good, and have such amazing chemistry, that it’s hard to look away or not root for them to be together.

Equal parts ethnographic and poetic, this eloquent drama's stirring soulfulness is laced with the sorrow of cultural dislocation but also with lovely ripples of humor and even joy.