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.

Deformed from the start, it confirms the very thing argued by its narrative – namely, the folly of unwarranted resurrections.

It promises a minute character study, but Franny, though embodied by a game Gere who in all fairness does visit places in his performance we have rarely seen him even stop by before, is less a person than a collection of quirks.

Ultimately, Ross hasn’t just successfully mounted an adaptation of a hot literary property, or even launched a film series that earns the right to be a franchise. He’s produced an engaging, thoughtful, populist piece of entertainment that transcends gender, genre or source material.

An unremarkable but solid genre exercise, one that shows off Jackie Earle Haley’s chops as a director.

It’s a promising premise fit for a thorny inquiry into personal and institutional priorities, and yet no sooner has Secret In Their Eyes laid its story’s groundwork than it goes off the rails

Rousing in spirit, surprisingly emotional and visually dynamic, filmmaker Ryan Coogler’s first studio movie, Creed, is a worthy successor to the best of the “Rocky” movies and proves the young director is the real deal.

Lawrence is never less than commanding in her last outing as the fiery dystopian heroine, but the most heartening liberation proffered by Part 2 is its star’s escape from this one-note fantasy series.

Always energetic like the wild whoop of a bachelor party, the lights burn brightest when The Night Before indulges in big goofs and kooky tangents.

Nielsson’s documentary portrait is a tragic look at the broken political process in Zimbabwe.

The Big Short ends up an energetic, absorbing version of these events, marked deeply by its director’s uniquely surreal vision.

Using its characters' memories, loyalties and resentments as vehicles, Return to Ithaca gently expands our understanding of life within a society that, in contrast to our own, did not even pretend to cultivate the idea that its citizens were free.

A lack of pace and illuminating insight are what keep Concussion from lasting resonance, its flaws threatening to dull the issue for drama in a way that the NFL could only appreciate.

Despite the predictability of storytelling, The 33 is an undeniably rousing picture.

For those who are coming to Codegirl looking for a fiery rebuke and exposé on the gender imbalance rampant in Silicon Valley, they've come to the wrong place.

From the outset, What Our Fathers Did doesn’t have much narrative thrust. The film makes it clear that it is more interested in the process than any end goal. But the process of what exactly is a question that gnaws unanswered for the first third of the documentary.

Elemental in construct and narrative, the picture breathes through the screen during Theeb's moments of quiet reflection at his surroundings and all the cruelty the vast, all-encompassing desert has to offer.

The film proves — in both style and attitude — a successful bridge between the old and the new, and one that, no matter its emotional slimness, ultimately never loses sight of the fretful angst with which all kids must, at some point, contend.

Jolie Pitt’s insistence on creating a piece that reflects the harsh inner state of a person suffering to understand herself as a wife and as a woman in the world is commendable, and fascinating in her growth as a filmmaker.

Seidl uses the peculiar relationship of Austrians to their basements as a way to pick away at the cracks between our public and our most private selves. But it's an idea that is elevated further by his rigorous eye for composition and cinematographic portraiture that makes the even the most bizarre images beautiful, and fashions the film, which could feel very fragmented in that it jumps from subject to subject and back again, into a deeply engrossing whole.

Lost in the Sun gets most elements right in order to put together one of those gritty and melancholic southern crime dramas, except for when it comes to producing a unique screenplay and direction that rises above mediocrity.

The Armor of Light condemns the organizations that create cultures of fear in order to line their own pockets, cultures that end up putting human life below profits.

Out 1 isn’t just exploratory in its filmmaking methods; exploration is its dramatic essence.

If you’re not too undone by agitation with Carter’s umpteenth quip about the female body, you may even work up a smile over some of these sweeter moments involving the uniformed trio.

Structuring their modern tale around the Mark Twain narratives, the sibling directors find laughs, pathos, and some surprising storytelling twists, plus have a game cast to deliver it.

What keeps The Royal Road from feeling like its trapped in amber is the genuine heartbreak that Olson clearly feels, the rawness of her emotions and her dedicated willingness to share.

A highly polished film that belies the soap opera melodrama of its plotline by having the twists and turns spring directly from well-observed human behavior, Stone's The Daughter is a quiet, immensely affecting triumph.

The problems run far deeper than craft — it is simply a film that has no reason to be made, a story without point or insight or drive.