A disturbing drama of teen disaffection, Vincent Grashaw’s feature provides an essential and insightful perspective that will resonate with audiences attuned to the challenges of adolescence.

The result is one of the most visceral essay films ever made, with Peedom and her Sherpa altitude cinematographer Renan Ozturk unfurling a series of glistening images that should be seen only on the biggest of big screens.

Whatever its impetus, the film is a warm bath of sensations that suffers little for any thematic haziness.

Providing important historical and sociological context, Hitler's Hollywood emerges as a compelling cinematic essay that should be essential viewing for cinephiles and history buffs alike.

Like a bomb ticking away toward detonation, Glenn Close commands the center of The Wife: still, formidable and impossible to look away from.

A pleasingly quiet, small-scaled drama about love between strangers and siblings, solidarity between lonely Angelenos and the transformative power of kindness, Anything has much to recommend it.

[A] simply lovely comedy-drama.

Chronicling the lives of the same six women survivors after the end of the war, After Auschwitz proves an inspiring testament to the indomitability of the human spirit.

Though the story is fictional, the imagery is grounded in a powerful documentary reality.

The result is a riveting portrait, one that doesn't quite dispel what's maddening about Dolezal.

Even more than those acclaimed lion, chimp and bear films that have preceded it, Penguins proves especially delightful — a coming-of-age story outfitted with an engaging anthropomorphic overlay that can make you forget you’re watching an intimately filmed documentary instead of an animated adventure.

The film’s near-perfect calibration between family drama and black comedy recalls the director’s earlier features, Paris of the North and Either Way (remade in the U.S. as Prince Avalanche), but this is the one in which Sigurdsson really projects a distinctive voice.

The premise offers plenty of room for yet another impressive performance by Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

The spareness of both the physical and emotional landscapes yields something quite delicate in a film with the grace and economy of a satisfying short story.

Guillermo Nieto's hand-held camerawork mimics Julia's nervous energy and keeps the audience locked up along with her, working in symbiosis with Federico Esquerro's forcefully realistic sound design.

Active Measures delivers a well-researched and smartly laid-out cinematic thesis that connects the myriad dots in skillful fashion.

The fun stems mainly from the amusing interactions between the two main characters so deliciously played by Coogan and Rudd. Both actors are at peak form here, with Coogan clearly having a blast as the flamboyant Erasmus and Rudd employing his expert deadpan delivery and gift for comic timing as the slow-burning Paul.

The Image You Missed arguably functions most effectively as an impressionistic primer on tumultuous Ulster affairs during and after the Troubles, providing vivid glimpses of a violent epoch whose controversial repercussions continue to periodically reverberate across the British Isles and beyond.

The first feature-length doc by Suzannah Herbert, it is smartly focused, offering nothing to distract from the stories it is able to fit within its running time.

Set in Rhode Island, the film focuses on three boys who have had a parent in prison (one of those parents is a mother), and it probes the impact on the children with clarity and poignancy.

Throughout, Shuman's eye, her editing, and Paul Brill's charming score weave the individual stories Pigeon finds into the tapestry of life on the street

Nossa Chape is a testament to how moving forward does not require leaving the past behind.

Gibson still has all the energy, impulsive gear-shifting ability and growly vocal command to anchor a muscular film such as this; he co-wrote it for himself, after all, and he certainly knows by now what he does best. Hernandez is entirely credible as a tough little customer with real guts, and all the actors playing bad guys seize their opportunities with relish.

The three main characters are all vividly sketched.

The drama feels a bit leisurely and distant at times, and the film runs a little long, yet it intelligently and assuredly explores how longstanding traditions can be gradually upended by drugs, money and outside influences.

Its subversive undercurrent, embodied in fine performances by Emily Mortimer and Bill Nighy, is what makes it really interesting.

There are a few standout scenes in War's closing reels, as well as a few cleverly executed twists, yet Erlingsson doesn't let them undercut the movie's emotional sway.

Slow and surprisingly talky, the three hours of the film do not exactly fly by, and the experience is similar to plunging into a long novel (the hero is a budding novelist) laced with philosophy, religion, politics and moral puzzles. The final sequences are worth the wait, though, bringing together the story’s many threads and offering the classic closure of a young man coming to terms with his identity.