Though the film’s two halves aren’t equally as strong, with the second half lacking some of the complexity and breathtaking sweep of part one, this is an impressive step up for Quillevere.

Fate delivers exactly what fans have come to expect, for better and for worse.

There is no denying the cumulative power of the material, in large part due the protagonists’ endless reservoirs of humanity, dignity and selflessness in the face of one of the world’s worst biggest current and most incomprehensible tragedies. Light on background and contextual facts, Last Men in Aleppo speaks very loudly from the heart.

The Ticket is underwhelming in several ways, but the performance driving it is magnetic — and helps alleviate some of the bludgeoning obviousness of a morality tale that New York-based Israeli writer-director Ido Fluk hasn’t fully figured out how to tell.

Even if the immediacy of the director's approach gives the material an electric charge, 100 minutes of it becomes monotonous.

Unfortunately, he (Schwarzenegger)doesn’t quite have the chops to do full justice to the material, and his decades-long, popcorn movie image proves a further impediment. Despite the seriousness of his intentions, Aftermath doesn’t pack sufficient emotional punch.

The real crime in Going in Style is its waste of acting talent.

The tale is told entirely through Rock’s perspective, with no friends, colleagues, or talking heads weighing in. But that turns out to be no detriment, since the Cambridge-educated photographer proves a witty and rueful commentator whose observations are infused with self-deprecating humor.

Despite its recycled tropes, the comedy-drama manages to be both funny and moving even if its emotional manipulations are fully apparent.

Though its cinematography is nothing to write home about, the action Alive and Kicking captures is so transfixing, one marvels that dancers can keep it up for five years, much less five decades.

Described by Werner Herzog as “a daydream that doesn’t follow the rules of cinema,” Salt and Fire may be rule-breaking, but the result is one of the director’s least appealing adventures.

It’s Gay’s most emotionally direct work to date, thoroughly shedding the clever-cleverness of some of his earlier work, and also his most accessible — a clean-lined, sensitively-written and beautifully played two-hander that tackles complex issues in a refreshingly straightforward, downbeat way.

Although visually observant, the film’s narrative remains frustratingly vague, disclosing little about its central characters and often burying the principal plot points.

Circumstances that might have been static in less skilled hands are given tantalizing life by Young, the actors and the deft camerawork of cinematographer Ryan Balas.

Hubby captures an artistic personality that could manifest big ideas without a shred of snobbery, could deflate pomposity while still inviting deep thought.

The result is a composite portrait of girlhood, refracted — not especially rich in groundbreaking insight, but often shimmering with feeling.

Childhood memoirs always are under threat from self-indulgence and sentimentality, but 1993 successfully sidesteps both, establishing Simon as a talent to watch.

By cataloging every spoon of food not eaten, every sip of water not swallowed and every sigh and every groan uttered, the myth becomes a man and the inherent paradox of being a divine ruler is revealed.

If the "ghost" of anime classic Ghost in the Shell refers to the soul looming inside of its killer female cyborg, then this live-action reboot from director Rupert Sanders really only leaves us the shell: a heavily computer-generated enterprise with more body than brains, more visuals than ideas, as if the original movie’s hard drive had been wiped clean of all that was dark, poetic and mystifying.

An amiable if hardly unusual buddy pic.

Thompson’s heavy-handed storytelling, along with a nonstop score of pure mush, brings this closer to telenovela territory than to the Louvre.

The Widers apply great artistic ambition to a story few would handle in this manner, resulting in a haunting film.

David Lynch, The Art Life will entrance the director’s fans and, who knows, inspire budding, out-of-the-box creators in an artistic coming-of-age tale, told in his own words and deliberate tones.

Smurfs: The Lost Village is a mediocre effort that nonetheless succeeds in its main goal of keeping its blue characters alive for future merchandising purposes.

Where Band Aid excels is in its mix of blisteringly understated comedy with a compassionate view of the ways we can let our lives drift away from us. There’s something bracingly fresh in the way Lister-Jones and Pally combine blind spots and vulnerabilities with a particularly secular-Jewish self-consciousness.

It’s tricky, to put it mildly, to use suicidal impulses as a story engine for a comedy, and director Rob Spera and screenwriter Jared Rappaport don’t quite pull it off as they navigate the middle ground between dark humor and emotional catharsis.

With its assortment of mouthwatering ingredients and dishes, In Search of Israeli Cuisine is an unadulterated foodie delight. But much more than that, Roger Sherman’s documentary offers fascinating insights into a little-understood country, using the culinary prism to illuminate a complex, still-young culture.

Olszanska gives an impressively intense performance, if a little too mannered at first, but neither she nor the filmmakers ever get beneath the character's skin.