The package mixes existential creepiness with black comedy, demonic carnage and a Satan's spawn scenario, and while it's uneven — as these combos invariably are — genre enthusiasts looking for a female spin will want to check it out.

Noxon, who also wrote the screenplay, manages to explore dark and complex issues while frequently leavening them with unexpected moments of humor.

Thankfully, Finley isn’t only adept at writing and directing good dialogue but he also understands how images and sounds can enhance his story.

Even for those limited to swimming virtually among parrot fish and sea turtles over vast marine ecosystems of astonishing color and complexity, this superbly crafted documentary is likely to wield an unexpected emotional charge.

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.

Geremy Jasper’s dynamic debut crackles with energy and grassroots authenticity. But it wouldn’t have worked at all without the right leading lady, which it found in Danielle Macdonald, whose rapping seems convincingly born of her character’s rough life experience.

It’s a simple, somewhat mundane scenario that, in the hands of a terrific cast and two talented filmmakers, is transformed into a minor Greek comic-tragedy, with one fearless woman trying to stave off loved ones who smother her with guilt and affection.

Joshua Z. Weinstein's charming Menashe immerses us in an authentic environment of ultra-Orthodox Judaism and makes it relatable by weaving a sweet story familiar in its general contours, of a single father struggling to hold on to the son he loves.

Even at its most sorrowful, Marjorie Prime is suffused with warmth, the core of it emanating from Smith in two complementary iterations of the same character.

Rosefeldt and a very game Blanchett spring one surprising creation on the viewer after the other. But what it all adds up to is of course up for debate.

Luckily, Elliott succeeds in pulling you into Lee's emotional orbit and holding you there even when the movie falters.

The unstated angst, desire, suspicion, frustration and emotional turmoil is almost entirely expressed by Keegan DeWitt’s extraordinary musical score, which runs like an underground river through this elegant and supremely expressive gem of a film.

Graced by its refreshingly frank treatment of gay sexuality, its casually expressive use of nudity, and its eloquent depiction of animal husbandry as a contrasting metaphor for the absence of human tenderness, this is a rigorously naturalistic drama that yields stirring performances from the collision between taciturn demeanors and roiling emotional undercurrents.

Intriguing formal noodlings can’t disguise the cliches in the script. Even so, it’s clear that Abbasi has talent and ambition.

Visually stunning but strained by pretentious poeticism and a simplistic storyline, My Father Die is ultimately as labored as its ungrammatical title.

With its uneven performances and purposeful touches of theatrical artifice, Alligator Girl is finally more distancing than involving.

Kitty Green creates something powerful, provocative and dazzlingly original with her second feature.

On the plus side, Mifti does at times become an endearing person despite her big mouth and bad behavior, with credit due to Bauer for her rather subdued depiction of a girl searching for emotional attachment in a world where everyone seems blinded by their own pleasures or problems.

Perhaps cowed by respect for a real man who suffered so much, Stanfield seems reluctant to charm viewers. Warner is sympathetic, of course, but Ruskin continually requires wounded earnestness from his lead, and shows little of whatever spark of inner life must have been required for Warner to survive these years without losing his mind.

Kim keeps the action sequences tightly focused, particularly in the tense opening segment, but tends to let dramatic scenes go on for too long after they’ve conveyed their point.

The action is practically non-stop from beginning to end, but is never remotely exciting due to the Cuisinart-style editing that reduces it all to an incomprehensible, messy blur.

Scott packages these concerns and others in a smart way, and includes the occasional bit of eye-opening history.

Heineman offers up a double portrait of devastation, of a truly destroyed city and of partially decimated survivors, leaving the viewer with an empathetic sense of deep sorrow.

A lame would-be comedy that wouldn’t be any funnier even if you were smoking the most powerful weed on the planet while watching it, Doobious Sources is a total bummer, man.

Disjointed and confusing, the film fails to live up to the promise of its spooky setting. There’s a good horror film to be made from this story, but The Axe Murders of Villisca isn’t it.

Jack Black...finds a role that invites a great deal of Jack Black-ness, full of peppy showmanship and thickly accented dialogue. But even moviegoers with a strong tolerance for that shtick may be less than involved with this half-charming feature, which inspires some sympathy for its protagonist but not enough to carry the film.

Loneliness, alienation, the ache of nostalgia and the everyday absurdity of life infuse every encounter in the unconventional road trip.

An excellent novel about the Iraq War and its homefront fallout has been turned into a rather flat and disappointing film in The Yellow Birds.