It’s an adoring portrait — almost cloyingly so — with an emotional soundtrack that grates a little.

The D Train ultimately generates so few laughs from its thin “be yourself” message that a commendable refusal to gawk at the gay stuff is all that keeps it on track.

It’s obvious that Welcome to Me is about an unusual person, but Shira Piven’s dark comedy makes it perfectly clear that the “me” of the title is no mere eccentric. On the contrary, this tragicomic oddity is that rarest of birds: a genuinely funny movie about mental illness.

Apfel is constantly chatting to “Albert” off camera, not to us, and the affection adds an unusual meta level to Iris, a conversation between two old-timers who have gone from making history to becoming it.

Director Thomas Vinterberg (The Celebration) has always enjoyed thumbing his nose at stuffy cinematic conventions, and while he’s obviously enchanted by Hardy’s text, his movie is fun because he’s keen not to give it too much respect.

Dazzling on his recently concluded Kroll Show in multiple caricatures, Nick Kroll makes a savvy pivot to a role that allows for similar shades.

If you’re even remotely a fan, you need to see this.

Even though Unfriended begins to cheat, springing loud noises and gory cutaways that can’t be explained, there’s a rigor to its dopey, blood-simple conception that you might smile at.

Crawford has produced an inspiring primer, sure to remind viewers that the power has always been in their hands.

It’s made with too much slickness, and you’ll be way ahead of it.

Urushadze’s excellent cast imbues their thinly drawn characters with a great deal of life, but the roles are so transparent that the film feels like more of an advertisement for peace than it does an argument for it.

A somber romance that’s as much about the cultural confluence of city life as it is about the unlikely couple who manage to find each other in it, Maxime Giroux’s Félix and Meira captures the dislocating loneliness of "Lost in Translation" without leaving its characters’ native Montreal.

Tsai’s work sees generational defiance as a symptom of the ennui felt by their young subjects as they drift into adulthood, and Rebels’ unusually sharp focus on that theme makes it an accessible primer for the elements that would inform the more oblique masterpieces to come.

Can a single guitar riff tell you everything you need to know about a movie? The dreadful Kill Me Three Times, which has nothing to offer beyond some aerial looks at the white-and-turquoise beaches of Western Australia, opens with a power chord so cheesy and generic that it immediately identifies this story of amateur criminals as the charmless ’90s throwback that it is.

It’s a sexy concept that will thrill Assayas neophytes, but the director’s longtime fans will find its pleasures virtually pornographic.

Blessed with a wealth of golden b&w footage (Lambert and Stamp always planned to document their managerial brilliance), James D. Cooper’s poundingly fun, scrappy profile has an unusually satisfying nuts-and-bolts perspective on the ’60s fame machine.

At its best, 5 to 7 is refreshingly sentimental in an age ruled by caustic irony, and the obvious fact that its romance is doomed from the start doesn’t make the film any less fantastical.

So while the film clearly wants to be an affirmation of female agency, it plays instead like nothing more than the story of a girl who marries an ogre and waits to be freed by true love’s kiss.

Where he ends up going—a place of real anxiety and envy—speaks to the filmmaker’s nervy ambitions. If this is Baumbach’s commercial breakthrough, he will have made it several steps up that staircase with nothing lost.

Wenders’s reverent enthusiasm for his subject is evident throughout the film, and he details every chapter of Salgado’s life with an acolyte’s inability to separate the wheat from the chaff.

A rare delight that’s laced with melancholy and a suffocating sense of menace from its first scene straight through its shocking finale, Man From Reno is made special by the collisions between its characters.

Here, absurdity is piled on absurdity for broadly comic effect: The kidnappers seem aimless, Houellebecq is fairly unbothered, and the world is, presumably, unmoved. Scrappy in style and surely improvised, the film is a lightweight literary in-joke, amusing enough.

A smart concept is thoroughly wasted in this cute but grating DreamWorks animated comedy.

If Pedro Almodóvar was hired to direct another "Sex and the City" film, it might end up like Cupcakes. The sort of movie that adjectives like frothy and bubbly were invented for.

Miraculously, the movie doesn’t feel mean-spirited so much as profoundly awkward. Scripted by smart guys like Etan Cohen (Idiocracy, Tropic Thunder) and two behind-the-scenes writers on TV’s consistently excellent Key & Peele, the film feels both daring and foolhardy.

Spring isn’t coy about the fact that Louise is harboring a dark secret, and the film’s appeal is rooted in its refreshing eagerness to focus on aspects that most monster movies would think too human.

Combining the knowingly arch style of Abbas Kiarostami (whose "Certified Copy" towers over and belittles this film) with the didactically educational passion of your favorite art professor, La Sapienza alternately feels like a self-reflexive love story or a haunted history lesson—its best scenes play like both.

A Lynchian coda upends the entire film, raising several questions and resolving none. Fans of rigorous storytelling may find it to be one whimsical step too far, but others will marvel at this miraculous coup de théâtre. Jauja is a film to make you wonder.

Al Pacino’s done so much Acting over the last 25 years (hoo-ah), it’s disquieting to see him digging deep again—often with subtlety—into a rich role with hidden depths.

The doc’s most intriguing moment has Summers dropping into a Japanese karaoke bar and singing along to an in-progress Police hit, an affable man wandering through his own legacy.

One thing’s certain: This is no swoony love story. It intoxicates all the same.

Seymour unfolds like a Jewish Jiro Dreams of Sushi—Bernstein may look like your average NYC grandpa, but he lives like a monk and talks like a guru.

Forget that The Lovers doesn’t have the courtesy to be fun; no cosmic romance should be so deeply afraid to shoot for the stars. As one of the film’s many forgettable characters so eloquently puts it, “This stinks worse than an oyster’s fart.”

For a group with property assets in the billions, it’s a major piece of the puzzle, revealing a critical failing: For a religion with so much to give, why do they do so little for so few?

It really packs a punch (bet you saw that one coming).

When the movie is doing its tough-guy-seeking-redemption thing, it’s more than just good.

If Merchants of Doubt ultimately proves that good data doesn’t often make for good drama, it’s only because this doc is such a hollow slog.

Stearns saddles himself with a touch more plot than he needs, and some of the film’s late-game twists are more satisfying than others, but Faults never loses sight of the one thing Ansel can’t see: Free will may come cheap, but most people still can’t afford it.

Buzzard is both deeply unfun and something you can’t take your eyes off. It gets our edge of recommendation because there’s real focus to it: Marty’s ambitions are so low (his life seems to climax while wolfing down a $20 plate of spaghetti in a hotel room) that you truly fear for the future. Meet the new slacker.

The doc makes a hairpin turn into sentiment, as the realities of immigration law impose themselves on Randi’s private relationship with his Venezuelan lover of 25 years. We already know that professional charlatans run from their pasts. Where they head to, though, is the better question: For a while, An Honest Liar brings a captivating crusader into view.

Entertainingly, the klezmer-scored Deli Man charts the history of urban eateries, nowhere near as prominent as they were during the early 20th century but still a vital link to Yiddish-accented comforts.

Wild Canaries may be modest stuff, but its madcap misadventures are loaded with honesty, and it earns the conclusion that love never feels like a cage when you fly with the right flock.

Whatever the film’s virtues, subtlety was never going to be one of them.

The Hunting Ground still shocks and awakens its audience in all the right ways, bringing the recent headlines of a Columbia University rape survivor carrying her mattress around into irrefutably urgent, sharp focus.

Grudges, minor insults and found-out flirtations lead to mayhem and murder on a cataclysmic scale.

The stakes may seem low, but these high jinks resound with abstract generational import, the various episodes cohering into a moving portrait of a nation that couldn’t account for all it had lost in a war that it won.

Never once does the film feel sharp on black identity (as did Bill Gunn’s original), and the terror is theoretical only.

Look, the movie didn't have to cure cancer or anything. But sans the original's redemptive nostalgia or any newfound cleverness, it's just a manic, flop-sweat-drenched mess.

The acting, especially from Menash Noy as an ineffectual attorney, is phenomenal, resulting in a feminist knockout told in inverse.

A dryly amusing mockumentary from the Kiwis behind the similarly deadpan Eagle vs Shark and Flight of the Conchords, What We Do in the Shadows unfolds like the darkest movie that Christopher Guest never made.

Fifty Shades of Grey is a sex-positive but hopelessly soft-core erotic drama that fails to be even a fraction as titillating as the E.L. James books that inspired it. And yet, that’s exactly why it works.

Mistress America steamrolls through its mesmerizingly dense running time with such joyous violence that its themes only bubble up to the surface in retrospect, the heart of the movie identified like the dental records of a body that’s been burned beyond all recognition.

The movement of the story—from wrenching homesickness to blooming confidence and a smile on one’s stroll to work—elevates the movie into universal urban poetry.

What begins as a spirited but safely familiar pastiche of John Hughes and Wes Anderson is compelled to become its own thing, Gomez-Rejon’s film embracing the most tired tropes of stereotypical YA weepies so that it can kiss them goodbye.

The Witch is one of the most genuinely unnerving horror films in recent memory because Eggers has the guts to earn your fear.

It teases out the distinctly modern subject of celebrity profile-writing, a rare one for the movies, detouring into avenues of attraction and envy.

For a movie with a critique of mediocrity well within its grasp, this one settles for an embrace of it, barely breaking a sweat.

Fading out long before it’s able to cohere into anything memorable, Song One has its heart in the right place (on its sleeve)—it’s just in desperate need of a few strong hooks.

Cake chokes you on its self-seriousness, even as it trots out potentially interesting supporting players.

Still Life constantly threatens to become a better movie: John’s scrutiny of photos feels vaguely serial-killer–esque, and there’s a late-inning love interest (Downton Abbey’s Joanne Froggatt) that you privately cheer for.

The storytelling is brisk, though the wealth of events and characters means you have to let yourself go with the flow. But Gangs of Wasseypur is always compelling, and Bajpai’s charisma means there’s always a colorful presence at the heart of the drama long after the endless hail of bullets has grown tiresome.

This is a bleak and bitter movie, but it knows the way forward, if not the quickest way to get there.

For all the brazen charms of this warm, funny debut, though, its quieter moments signal a profundity that’s really worth getting excited about.

As Match wilts into a trite portrait of people who are at the mercy of their pasts, Belber’s menagerie of inexpressive shots leaves his film at the mercy of its own.

Unlike most directors, style is hardly a side dish with Michael Mann—it’s the main entrée. No one captures city lights at night or luxury cars slinking down the highway like the creator of Miami Vice, and his conversion to digital video continues to yield breathtaking results.

Something, Anything doesn’t really engage with issues of faith or materialism.

This version’s shadowy Las Vegas underworld and convenient adoring female coed (Brie Larson, who deserves better) play like clichés.

American Sniper is a superbly subtle critique made by an especially young 84-year-old.

The film plays like a better episode of "Mad Men," pitch-perfect in its details yet fully lived-in: a universe of rolled-up shirt sleeves, sweat-laden brows and screams that don’t sound canned.

Perhaps the most hypercurrent thing about Gluck’s film is how it espouses the value of family while actually celebrating products as the only true form of modern connection.

Fashioning "The Great Dictator" and "Inglourious Basterds" into a cross joint and then lighting it from both ends, Goldberg and Rogen’s second directorial effort follows the hysterically violent misadventures of idiotic talk-show host Dave Skylark (James Franco, hamming it up) and his underachieving producer, Aaron (Rogen).

Workman’s study, complete with a fawning sit-down with Steven Spielberg, feels slightly awestruck: The films certainly deserve it, but you’ll want more of Welles’s Illinois schoolmate, rolling her eyes when the subject is described as “humble.”

I can’t fault Ridley Scott for wanting to stage a version of this saga, just as I can’t ignore the fact that my dad tells the same tale every spring, but much more engagingly, in half the time and drunk on Manischewitz.

A lost-artist comedy in the vein of Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories, but more deeply, a referendum on the dead-end choices Rock himself might be feeling.

The rare film possessed with the courage required to shine a light into that abyss knowing full well that down is the only way out.

Sweet but unambitious comedy.

Unfortunately for us, Dern — only seen in flashback — isn’t the main character.

Olsson requires us to connect the dots to today's struggles (a missed opportunity), but his discoveries are more than sufficient.

The plot’s tired blood is jumped up considerably by style; all in all, it's an intoxicating blend of eerie horror and ’80s pop, made by an artist to keep an eye on.

It’s a ruined community grappling with belated ethics; that’s the real story here.

Dumb and Dumber To may not be quite as funny as the first one, but it’s the funniest thing the Farrellys have made since.

A Most Violent Year, Chandor’s absorbing no-bull NYC drama, further clarifies what might be the most promising career in American movies: an urban-headed filmmaker attuned to economies of place and time, with an eye on the vacant throne of Sidney Lumet.

The main flaw — twirling farm girls and grunting oxen aside — is an utter lack of insight into the future leader’s character.

The animation is fluid and inventive, balancing action and slapstick with aplomb.

Angio reveals a band that is still committed and, almost without precedent, still seems to get along. “We weren’t musicians,” singer-guitarist Jon Langford admits. “We were just seeing how far we could take it.” If revenge can be measured in years of continued creativity, this film shows the Mekons have had theirs.

At its best (which is often), director James Marsh’s affecting biopic of the cosmos-rattling astrophysicist Stephen Hawking plays deftly against schmaltz.

The popular view of art is that it belongs to the masses. Wiseman casts a more skeptical eye, questioning such egalitarianism with cold, hard historical context. Yet he simultaneously acknowledges that these works live on far beyond their original purpose, even if, as the film’s bold, brilliant climax suggests, they may eventually play to an audience of none.

It says a lot that the grossest moment involves a character flossing—no gag, just flossing. Likewise, the candy stuck in your teeth will be the only thing that lingers after the credits roll.

John Wick feels like action manna for its cleanly designed gun-fu sequences—ones you can actually follow—and brutal takedowns. But the revenge plotting is deeply dopey and we shouldn't have to choose one or the other.

Movies this silly, crass and manipulative really shouldn’t be allowed to exist in 2014. But we’re guiltily glad that they do.

Shot when the director was 91 and finished just before he died in March, Alain Resnais’s third adaptation of an Alan Ayckbourn play is his gentlest attempt at using the artifice of theater to affirm the reality of imagination.

Younger audiences will see "The Fault in Our Stars’" Shailene Woodley once again excelling in an emotionally tricky role: Kat, a 17-year-old blooming into her wild years while reckoning with an increasingly unhinged mother, Eve (Eva Green, crazy-eyed and just this side of Faye Dunaway).

Fanning manages to bring soulfulness to a character who mostly reacts to others; you just wish the whole movie were, well, jazzier.

The film builds riotously via a series of verbal takedowns as male authority goes limp in the wake of a regrettable impulse. This is slender material to build a whole film around, but Östlund turns it into something deep, for viewers with patience.

Stations of the Elevated plays like a time capsule, particularly for having no dialogue or plot. It swings to Charles Mingus’s hardest bop and evokes a long-gone city, somehow more adult and confrontational even in silence.

Diplomacy’s origins as a play (written by Cyril Gely and starring the same actors) are always evident. Despite Schlöndorff’s attempts to give the movie some pop through widescreen lensing and noirish lighting, it’s a visually staid affair—very “filmed theater.” Fortunately, both Arestrup and Dussolier are captivating presences.

What really makes Rudderless a full-blown affront is a late-breaking narrative revelation (no spoilers here) that’s meant to add resonant emotional depth, but instead comes off as jaw-droppingly repugnant. That’s appropriate, though, for a movie with no sense of direction.

A title like that needs balls of brass to back it up. Luckily, this fiery college comedy from feature-debuting writer-director Justin Simien, loosely inspired by a series of scandalous black-face parties at all-white fraternities, is full of punchy intelligence and barely concealed anger.