Baumbach’s sharp examinations of the limitations of the callow arrogance of youth and the fatuous nature of egocentricity are pointed and riotously enjoyable.

A heartbreaking and poignant story about choices, country, commitments, sacrifice, and love, Brooklyn is a superb, luminous, and bittersweet portrayal of who we are, where we’ve come from, where we’re going, and the places we call home.

The filmmaker clearly has great skills and a knack for pulling strong performances out of actors. But the tone-deaf misjudgment of the film’s second half is catastrophic.

Sure to baffle some, it’s a weird movie that isn’t actively weird, but what’s striking about the picture is Sobel’s point of view and confidence. While the movie is amorphous and porous, it’s clear this is exactly what the filmmaker is going for, and that’s certainly bold for a first timer.

Utilizing underseen subjects, [Baker] captures their world in a thoughtful and artful way, and it also happens to be a damn fun ride.

Though it’s dealing with difficult subject matter, the film teems with life throughout every funny, bittersweet, and wild moment, slapping a smile on your face that won’t go away and you don’t know why.

The film is exceptionally well-made... There is nothing warm about the style, yet it allows for moments of simmering tension, broken by a few emotional explosions that shatter its well-composed surface.

Unexpected is sweet and the portrait of the friendship is lovely, but it also feels too slight.

Its craft can be impressive: Zobel’s film possesses a searing, slow burn tone that’s beautifully controlled. The movie is admirably patient and gives breathing room and space for these relationships to bloom believably and organically. But the build to a climax is far too slow and with little emotional payoff.

The Wolfpack is a film about access, and though we are admitted into the world of the eponymous Wolfpack, not understanding how we got there robs the film of compelling commentary.

The genre play is an interesting and original take on what has become a cliché genre of Brooklyn relationship dramedy. But unfortunately, the execution of the story is bungled along the way.

Much more of an adolescent male fantasy than a relatable, genuine film about love or relationships, “5 To 7” is deeply naïve and has very few, if any real insights to the heart or human condition.

Fleck and Boden certainly have strong filmmaking smarts. They understand restraint, have terrific observational eyes, and know how to coax honest performances out of actors. So it’s perhaps a shame that Mississippi Grind is ultimately too underwhelming to stake with any confidence.

Brimming with wit, crushing last-act melancholia, laughs, and poignant heart, Me And Earl And The Dying Girl is a spectacular delivery of tears, love and laughter, and a beautifully charming, captivating knock-out.

While the performances are compelling, particularly Franco's, and the ideas batted around are worth grappling with, much of the storytelling is bogged down by extra details and exposition, and hampered by its unwillingness to take a position on the topic. An interesting story, but unfortunately, rather uninterestingly told.

The good certainly outweighs the uneven. Dope is both intelligent and crowd-pleasing.

Trying to find a middle ground between an action packed Statham vehicle, a '70s style mood piece, and a '90s era, character-actor packed crime tale, Wild Card is not surprisingly an unsuccessful marriage of those ill-fitting genres.

All of the young actors are committed, and director Dean Israelite has a good handle on the material, offering his own contributions to the time travel genre (like how violent the act itself is) while continually tipping his hat to what came before it.

It’s a bit of an irony that The Voices doesn’t have much to say, but the fact of the matter is that it’s the tone and the tenor of the film that make it most watchable; a truly hilarious film about truly horrible things, the real artistry in Satrapi’s direction of The Voices speaks for itself.

Mond’s film doesn’t feature traditional structure or many familiar character beats of self-improvement, but as a visceral, in-the-moment portrait of struggle and suffering, it’s a striking first film.

As Night Will Fall shows, even in the darkest hour, sometimes the greatest heroes are those willing to stare bravely into humanity's worst depths and tell the world what happened.

As uneven as it can be at times in its last fifteen minutes, Marielle Heller has crafted a super promising debut that evokes the idea of unlocking the secret world of teenage girls and letting us live inside the special little jewel box if ever so briefly.

A deeply impressive first film by director Robert Eggers, “The Witch” is immaculately constructed, evinces an exquisitely ominous tone, and is unequivocally haunting. It’s exacting look at the dissonance of human nature is terrifying.

Lynch has a sure hand... The camera moves but never feels overly active, and within the first few minutes the geography of the apartment is so brilliantly laid out that you feel like you could navigate your way around blindfolded. It has a nice tempo, with the appropriate lulls in the action and some surprising reveals.

Intimate, soul-baring, and winning, The End Of The Tour is a special, lovely little gem.

The fashion mogul feels as if she’s learning bit by bit how to tell a story cinematically, how to complete transitions and flash back and forward, how to set a mood and tempo. It’s basically the rough cut of a student film which, to its credit, is also often more interesting than most student films outright.

Queen & Country is hardly reinventing the wheel, but it's charming, evocative and (mostly) well-performed, and were Boorman to continue with his autobiographical cycle, we'd certainly welcome further installments.

Matt Shepard Was A Friend Of Mine is a stirring, sometimes tough-going piece of documentary filmmaking: pure, honest and undiluted by hyperbole.