A music documentary of uncommon richness.

Plenty to admire here, if only this tasteful tearjerker lived up to its title with a few more explosive fireworks instead of settling for timid twinkles, ending not with a bang but a whimper.

Gina Prince-Bythewood’s entertaining music-biz melodrama is no less satisfying for the familiarity of its soapy trajectory.

Poehler’s telling is energized by a personal edge, searing and sympathetic, as it traces career struggles, creative breakthroughs and formative sorrows.

A superbly sensual character study of a young woman navigating emotional and professional crossroads.

The Impossible is one of the most emotionally realistic disaster movies in recent memory -- and certainly one of the most frightening in its epic re-creation of the catastrophic 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

The movie is a sweet star showcase that belongs unequivocally to the incandescent Maura, whose earthy naturalness, sly humor and tenacious spirit feed a direct link back to her Almodóvarian glory days.

The strongest film.

The results are as entertaining as they are sobering.

The film lacks Hong's usual insight and narrative innovation. It occasionally even feels self-indulgent.

Overall, though, Lost in the Jungle is a solid telling of a story that’s hard to make anything other than compelling.

Cantet keeps a lid on a story that he could have easily exploited, but he makes his points about beauty, fulfillment, self-indulgence and delusion with a measured hand.

The film is imbued with an engaging mix of warmth and prickliness by the lovely, lived-in performances of Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan.

This is an accomplished suspense-action piece that touches on universal themes of brotherhood, exile, love and honor.

Though the film sets out only to chronicle the group's life, not the history of the disease, some viewers will wish for a parting message making sense of where things stand today, with the disease mostly vanished from headlines but still destroying lives around the world.

Renner and Imbert spend more time dishing out jokes than they do weaving the kind of meaningful narrative that made Ernest & Celestine so special, yet while Fox is more of a slaphappy romp than a morality play, there’s still a method to the madness.

Gilbert is less interested in the ups and downs of Gottfried's public life than in showing what we've never seen.

The film strongly argues against the use of elephants for such things as giving rides to tourists and performing in circuses. What gives those arguments their moral force is the animals themselves, demonstrating intelligence, sociability and emotion.

There’s barely any let-up in tension throughout the film, even during interviews with subjects who could either be concealing murderous personal histories or potential victims risking their lives to disclose the excesses of law enforcement.

By concentrating too much on the physical hammer’s adventures in the closing reels, Mielants loses sight of the might of the hammer as a metaphor.

Clever, funny and visually appealing, Daniel Chong’s nutty action comedy zips along, driven by rambunctious energy and a spirited Mark Mothersbaugh score. Its tenacious protagonist is flanked by a cast of amusingly anthropomorphized creatures that will thrill the core audience of kids while keeping the grownups entertained.

This is a minor-key modern Western whose melancholy probe into the bruising past gives way, in a quietly satisfying conclusion, to the hope of reconciliation, even healing.

A somber, often downbeat depiction of human savagery and treachery as well as of human kindness. Writer-director Anthony Minghella has meticulously crafted an intimate epic.

The plot reversals of the third act happen rather abruptly, perhaps unbelievably, in comparison to what precedes them. But those who've been in Margaret's shoes may find this appropriate — an honest acknowledgement of the false starts that can result when a newly hatched idealist tries to apply abstract principles to messy human emotions.

Jim ultimately raises more questions than it can answer, so it cannot be considered a completely satisfying documentary. Nevertheless, it builds undeniable emotional force as it reaches its somber conclusion.

Emergency mostly stays close to the surface of the issues it presents, which results in a darkly funny but frustrating viewing experience.

Christian McKay's impersonation of young Orson Welles is sensational in this enjoyable, though slight, historical fiction about a teen who spends a memorable week with the legendary wonder.

Catapulted by an endearing lead performance by Reece Daniel Thompson as a stuttering high-school student, Rocket Science transcends the predictable high-school yarn and arcs into usually unexplored domains of self-discovery and personal growth in a coming-of-age film.