Garland has always been a director of big ideas, and Civil War is no exception when it comes to that ambitiousness. But he’s also reaching for an intimacy here that his screenplay doesn’t quite deliver on.

In trying to merge this alarmist theme with an old-fashioned murder mystery, the filmmakers throw at least one plot-twist sucker-punch too many, leaving the viewer with an “Oh, come on” reaction to the entire film.

The Battered Bastards of Baseball is not just about baseball. It transcends the game and is a charming anti-establishment yarn.

Narratively, Titanic is a masterwork of big-canvas storytelling, broad enough to entrance and entertain yet precise and delicate enough to educate and illuminate.

What "Winged Migration" did for birds, Oceans does for all sorts of strange sea creatures in an ambitious, impressively filmed documentary.

A moving if too-leisurely paced effort that benefits immeasurably from the superb performance by its 84-year-old star.

Carlos Lopez Estrada’s debut feature brandishes brash exuberance and stilted storytelling tropes in roughly equal measure, yielding a result that stimulates just as it cheapens itself dramatically.

Immediate Family is an affectionate and insightful group portrait and a sweet jolt of nostalgia for boomers — but more than that, it’s time well spent with delightful subjects who played crucial roles in shaping the popular music of a ground-shifting era.

Kirby Dick's shocking investigation into widespread sexual assault in the U.S. military is an urgent call to action.

A smartly scoped story of great personal growth and transformation. It's not hard to see the personality/political basis for Che's later revolutionary actions.

Honoring the journalist's sense of mission but never shying away from the hard living and psychological damage that went with it, A Private War relies on the believability of star Rosamund Pike, who commits to this take on the character even when Heineman risks pushing off-the-battlefield drama too far.

Benefitting from likeable, good-natured subjects and the peculiar pastimes with which they fill their cooped-up hours, the doc certainly gets us interested in and rooting for the Angulo boys.

It's to the script's credit that it doesn't tie up the story in cute little bows and instead leaves a number of questions unanswered by the end.

Infinite Football has moments of nicely deadpan humor and some deft little touches of insight along the way courtesy of Porumboiu's offbeat protagonist — but major league it certainly is not.

Providing richness of detail and metaphor, elegantly blueprinted themes and impressive mastery of a constantly shifting tone, Little Children does just that. It is a deeply satisfying film.

Delivering plenty of suspense in its taut 81 minutes, this is the sort of pretension-free film that in earlier days would have been directed by the likes of Edgar J. Ulmer or Joseph H. Lewis. Like those B-movies, Hammer lacks a big-name star. But it more than makes up for it by providing a rare leading-man opportunity for veteran character actor Will Patton, who delivers a superb, riveting turn.

Mostly lighthearted and, especially in its closing reels, rather clichéd, the character-driven film nonetheless manages to gently resist the temptation to turn into a full-throttle and heart-warming crowdpleaser.

The film improves upon reflection, raising, as it does, some knotty questions about originality in art and in life, as well as provocatively positing that even a copy of a copy of a copy has the potential to move hearts and minds.

The State Against Mandela and the Others adds little essential to the vast library of documentaries about Mandela and the anti-apartheid struggle. All the same, this is a heartfelt, humane and visually inventive tribute to a fading generation of giants whose principled sacrifices ended up changing history.

Big on atmosphere but low on drama, DAU. Natasha is fascinating conceptually but weak cinematically.

A work of powerful humanism.

It’s refreshing to see a horror movie that relies less on shock tactics than good old-fashioned dread and revulsion.

This is a social justice film made with purposeful conviction and a quiet, never strident, sense of indignation.

Often heartbreaking, Rich Hill presents real life as few filmgoers know it. In certain respects it’s almost as if cultural anthropologists descended on a foreign land, but, unfortunately, it’s a withered part of this nation that is rarely visited.

Marcello never quite manages to shoehorn in both more than a century’s worth of European struggles and sociopolitical thinking and the full story of Eden’s downfall after he’s finally become successful. Indeed, these weighty concerns capsize the entire enterprise in the final stretch, where the story runs aground on an iceberg of undigested ideas, barely developed themes and bad hair choices.

Posing serious questions about violence and vigilantism while reveling in both, Captain America: Civil War is overlong but surprisingly light on its feet. It builds upon the plotlines of previous Avengers outings, bringing together known marquee quantities and introducing the Black Panther and a new Spidey in winning fashion.

At once a satire of artistic pretensions and a tantalizing character study, Late Fame isn’t focused on big cathartic moments, and its third-act cataclysms are almost anticlimactic. But there’s a satisfying depth to it, and the movie abounds in exquisite grace notes

The rivalrous power dynamic between Jones and frontman Jagger is captured in brilliant subtlety in the glances between them during an impromptu interview. But the deeper throughline of The Stones and Brian Jones involves the primal wound of a prodigal son.