The plot is mostly irrelevant, aside from how it allows for Reeder’s ideas and imagery to flow. Oozing, gooey blood and messed-up school uniforms, secrets whispered in high school bathrooms, glitter dresses, and uncanny face masks all meld together to create a film rich in atmosphere and artifice.

Mustache does its job. It gives Ilyas catalysts for growth other than the cookie duster hanging out under his nose, and the writing invites us to laugh with him, not at him because it’s one thing to laugh and another thing to sneer.

Wéber’s writing and Kirby’s performance, working in concert with Mundruczó’s dazzling, multifaceted direction, Howard Shore‘s gorgeously mood-appropriate score and, again, Loeb’s drifting, searching, soulful camera together create, from so many disparate pieces, an entirely complete portrait, that even suggests further internal universes still to be explored, universes every one of us contains.

The story beats are predictable, but Decker forges her own unruly and unforgettable path through them, crafting a teen film with avant-garde flourishes that attempt to find a balance between style and substance.

Though given two committed turns by a tremendously sexy and vicious Arterton and a solid-as-always Ronan, Byzantium often feels as gray and lifeless as the corpses in the film.

From the performances to the repetitive jokes and bizarre actions that have little bearing on anything, Slack Bay exhausts you with its intense spirit.

Is it a somewhat middling ’90s dad-core thriller? You bet, but it’s also a totally underrated skeleton key for understanding the careers of its two leads: Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin.

Mostly, watching these characters tease out their problems is fun but from a far remove, and satire at such a safe distance starts not to really feel like satire anymore.

An engaging enough dramatization of the true story of a man who became known for spending months hiding out in a Toys “R” Us to escape capture after robbing businesses by coming in through their roofs, Derek Cianfrance’s “Roofman” is also a regrettably safe film defined by missed opportunities that ultimately steals any deeper resonances it could find right out from under you.

While the creators do their darndest to make an animated version of “Adaptation,” they’ve instead made an animated version of “Space Jam: Legacy”–a series of callbacks to IP that serves no other purpose than to remind you that they exist.

To witness one of the Oscar-winning thespian’s finest acting feats is reason alone to commit to the, not at all unforgivable, but still noticeable shortcomings of Swan Song.

Somehow, Gillespie manages not only to make it feel fresh but its own distinct chapter in this never-ending story.

There’s still that dissonance — Pixar is creating its own world, though the characters, and replicating our own, in the gorgeous vistas — but even when the combination doesn’t truly sing, it remains entrancing, and even surprising.

It’s undeniably impressive that such a tiny movie has garnered such a reputation. Ball has made an interesting attempt here, and it will be exciting to see what he does with a little more money and, hopefully, restraint. In the meantime, unless you want to tirelessly search “Skinamarink” for creepiness in all this filmmaking fog, you’re likely to find there’s very little there there.

The star-studded cast does good, dependable work. There are visual flairs that linger in the mind: For all its faults, this movie has a striking look to it. And Corbin’s best intentions are genuine. The ending comes with a startling bang. But what remains when the dust settles? By the end of the over-tightened 892, unfortunately, a memorialization to Brown-Easley’s plight, we know little about the actual man.

Diallo has crafted an incisive, intelligent, and stridently political horror film that is distinctly all her own. The terror at the heart of this film reverberates far beyond the myths of this academic institution. Master excavates the very roots of our country’s foundation and dares us to face the haunted ground on which it is built.

The Peter Jackson-directed Hobbit sequel might be the more vigorous, action-packed, darker and more (superficially) engaging version of the series thus far, but that doesn’t actually mean it’s a keeper of any sort.

Hill’s basically remaking Larry Clark’s seminal 1995 film “Kids,” a picture inherently more authentic because it was a snapshot taken in that moment. And if you prefer the rose-colored lens of nostalgia, that’s been done too, in Jonathan Levine’s 2008 effort “The Wackness.”

Just as the film is about to deliver it's package, it sends the viewer an I.O.U. instead, botching two-thirds of what may be Koepp's most entertaining film as a director.

Tamahori successfully brings a sense of scale and scope to “The Convert” He displays an eye for wide-screen compositions, and the film is frequently visually stunning.

Unfortunately, “Tommaso” is far more navel-gazing and long-winded than intimate, in as much of a creative funk as its protagonist.

Thirteen Lives is not an exhibition of spectacle in scale or execution. It neither skirts over details too quickly nor goes too deep into technical aspects, arming the audience with enough to know how much is at stake and why. It’s an examination and dramatization of adversity and the complexity, strength, and resilience of the human spirit, which perfectly draws characterizations that avoid hammy tropes and tired stereotypes.

"Under The Influence" gets more interesting once the doc shifts focus from Dobrik’s rapid rise to fame to peel back the performative layers of his act.

Even if Story Ave occasionally dips into a well-worn narrative, it nevertheless features two powerful performances and acts as a showcase for its first-time director.

A thoughtful if occasionally melodramatic reflection on the nature of grief.

A sly dark comedy that doubles as a very impressive display of wordless storytelling.

This is an excruciatingly stupid movie, and the nicest thing I can say about it is that, at 83 minutes, at least it’s over quickly.

Even without an active political component, Island of Lemurs: Madagascar, on a purely visual level, is one of the more amazing things you're likely to see in a theater this year.