Documentary seems best suited to cable: Lake's informal, Oprah-like concern invites the intimacy of home viewing. But the chick-chat approach in no way undermines the gravity of the problems the docu addresses.

Emanuelle manages to make us care about this bullying girl without pleading for sympathy.

While Feña’s journey may contain some contrivances, the way this young man adapts to each predicament feels authentic and emotionally potent. That’s a testament to Lungulov-Klot, who succeeds in placing vivid characters in slightly heighted situations — amplifying our connection in the process — without sacrificing the sense of realism that makes “Mutt” so relatable.

Guggenheim is such a fascinating figure that few will snipe at a character analysis that rarely gets below the surface.

While Kim Seong-hun’s Tunnel sounds like it resembles any number of creepy tunnel pics or grand catastrophe epics, it’s actually a lean, enjoyable disaster story with enough distinctive elements to make it feel relatively fresh.

Dramatically, Coppola and co-screenwriter William Kennedy, juggle a lot of balls in the air. The parallel stories of Gere and Hines’ professional rise prove more potent, thanks largely to a mixture of romance, music and gangland involvement. Hines and McKee generate real sparks in their relationship and latter adds an interesting dimension as a light-skinned singer trying to hide her racial origins.

An exquisite, beautifully acted gem of a film, one that should serve as a prelude to bigger things for stars Felicity Jones and Anton Yelchin, as well as director Drake Doremus.

Deftly balancing twin goals of informing and entertaining, the pic matter-of-factly details the various ways that marketers, multinational corporations, police departments and government-run intelligence-gathering organizations obtain and exploit info.

It’s not that “My Love” feels inherently dubious; it’s that its execution is just a little too smiling-through-tears slick to be swallowed whole.

While the severity of the film’s environment convinces, the specifics of Amy Fox’s screenplay — tangled up in tech IPOs, post-Snowden security paranoia and venal investment banking practice — are less consistently persuasive.

All sorts of interesting questions swirl beneath the surface.

A watchable enough picture that feels content to realize someone else's vision rather than claim it as its own. Any real sense of risk has been carefully ironed out: The PG-13 rating that ensures the film's suitability for its target audience also blunts the impact of the teen-on-teen bloodshed.

Leads Jean-Pierre Bacri and Emilie Dequenne establish an awkward yet tender odd-couple dynamic, their accomplished work serving to distinguish the familiar material.

Delves far more deeply into grisly physical manifestation than psychological motivation, making it seem something of an actorish vanity piece. But the drama is directed with arresting spareness and control.

Sometimes feels like an extended pilot for a smarty-pants broadcast series in the tradition of Michael Moore's "Awful Truth" and "TV Nation" skeins.

Hopkins delivers a genuinely charming example through the generosity and affection with which he treats his characters, a racially and culturally mixed bunch that could have seemed schematic and forced.

Problematically structured, overly protracted and lacking in narrative fluidity.

Provides an intriguing, well-assembled snapshot of kids in the year 2000, bringing the portraits to an appealing conclusion by briefly revisiting each subject at the prom, graduation and then in sweet on-camera farewells.

Whimsical and wistful yet infused with a yearning for the stability of place.

For Whom the Bell Tolls is one of the important pictures of all time although almost three hours of running time can overdo a good thing.

What begins as a wry tale of a maturing family in bittersweet flux spirals unpredictably into a study of living with extreme mental illness, as experienced by both the afflicted and their gradually alienated nearest and dearest.

Lauren Bacall's charm and Humphrey Bogart's ruggedness count heavily in a strange treatment of a murder story, which if it doesn't withstand scrutiny, does sustain mood and interest.

Likable enough, but a little too tame to make much of an impact.

Genial middle-brow fare that coasts a long way on the charm of its two stars

An interesting plot premise holds out considerable promise for this Alfred Hitchcock production, but I Confess is short of the suspense one would expect.

What adds heart, and humor, is the interplay between the legendary couturier and Giancarlo Giammetti, his longtime partner in business and life.

Accomplished freshman outing by Flemish TV director Christophe van Rompaey features a knockout perf from actress Barbara Sarafian ("8½ Women").

The “LLC” in the film’s title is a clue that the movie wasn’t conceived purely in a spirit of empathy, although Herzog’s humor is good-natured enough. If anything, Family Romance is just the latest iteration of a uniquely human desire to replicate the relationships we can’t control in our lives.

Followers of Alan Rudolph's career will rejoice at his latest effort, Afterglow, an incredibly and incurably romantic comedy-drama that most perceptively dissects the delicate imbalances of two very modern but very different marriages.

A remarkable technical achievement in every respect, from the imaginative and detailed design of tomorrow to the booming Dolby effects on the soundtrack, pic’s only drawback is the slight stiffness in the drawing of human movement.

Although guided by considerable empathy toward its small circle of kinfolk eking out a living in southern Texas, Eska's tale of a woman's unconditional support of her father-in-law is told with a faux-poetic sensibility that never really connects with his characters' lives.

This entertaining docu by "When We Were Kings'?" Leon Gast is more eccentric personality portrait than the in-depth scrutiny of celebrity-culture madness afforded by fellow Sundance preem "Teenage Paparazzo."

Babe: Pig in the City is tour de force filmmaking that masks its achievement in a good ripping yarn.

Producer Charles Evans Jr.'s directorial debut finds an engrossing suspense angle in the involvement of Victor DeNoble, an idealistic scientist-turned-whistleblower whose suppressed corporate research became the bombshell catalyst in that struggle.

The sort of massive vanity piece that would be easy to disparage if it didn't essentially deliver.

It’s far from the first music doc to reveal that it can be lonely at the top, but it is among the few to convey that there are no easy answers for that when mental illness is at the root. Of all the portrayals of pop superstars that have been produced in-house in recent years, “My Mind & Me” is probably the one with the least celebratory third act … which is something to celebrate.

A number of high-powered artists fail to coalesce their talents in Shoot the Moon a grim drama of marital collapse which proves disturbing and irritating by turns.

A gleaming and delightful anime with a large appetite for tenderness and laughter.

Old-fashioned as that might sound, there's a fresh, insightful feel to this multigenerational love story.

For a movie in which you can’t follow what’s going on for 75% of the time, Deepwater Horizon proves remarkably thrilling.

Limbo is half-priced Sayles. After a promising opening in which numerous interesting aspects of life in modern Alaska are laid out, the potentially fascinating social dynamics are dropped in favor of a thinly realized survival tale that falls flat dramatically and cinematically.

No matter how pure your intentions nor how real your pain, these ancient myths all teach us, debts always come due, and the chilling denouement of Jóhannsson’s dark, deliberate debut suggests that is what Lamb is: a modern-day take on some ancient, pre-Disneyfication fairy tale or a nursery rhyme with a sinister history encoded into its Spartan melody.

Fighting With My Family may not be an Oscar contender but it has enough wit, heart, energy and good cheer to make it a fun watch even for non-wrestling fans.

As drama, Mr. Jones sometimes struggles to get out of its own way, but its message still lands with concrete force.

Ultimately, the mock-doc device works because Gyllenhaal and Pena so completely reinvent themselves in-character. Instead of wearing the roles like costumes or uniforms, they let the job seep into their skin, a feat without which "End of Watch's" pseudo-reality never would have worked.

It’s easy to simply be mesmerized by German’s exceptional talent for stage blocking and camera movements, yet while there’s much here to appreciate, the film lacks the power of “Under Electric Clouds” despite being his most emotionally approachable work to date.

However much fun the film’s high points may afford, there is also something faintly depressing about seeing a once-inventive filmmaker plunder his own legacy for easy props.

Writer-director Jared Frieder’s feature debut feels like the LGBT equivalent of “Juno”: snappy and refreshingly nonjudgmental in dealing with the consequences of a risky one-night stand.

The documentary captures how Shatner, as he began to make a career out of performing his public legend, merged his very identity with that of the hambone thespian inside him.

Mel Gibson is always good for a surprise, and his latest is that Apocalypto is a remarkable film. Set in the waning days of the Mayan civilization, the picture provides a trip to a place one's never been before, offering hitherto unseen sights of exceptional vividness and power.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is a wonderfully crafted, absolutely charming remake of the 1964 film "Bedtime Story." In this classy version, Steve Martin and Michael Caine play the competing French Riviera conmen trying to outscheme each other in consistently amusing and surprising setups. Martin takes the crass American role played by Marlon Brando, and Caine plays homage to David Niven by sporting a thin mustache, slicked-back hair and double-breasted blue blazer in a sort of 1930s British yachtsman look.

A seemingly esoteric subject -- the launch of Russia's Sputnik satellite -- is exhumed and made exciting in this important slice of you-are-there documaking.

Eight years after the crowd-pleasing "8 Women" and a mostly impressive run of small-scale arthouse films, Francois Ozon effortlessly moves back to the mainstream with another sparkling, occasionally side-splitting adaptation of a French boulevard-theater play.

All the main characters make a telling contribution to the claustrophobic web of feelings the drama comprises.

Unfortunately, for any filmmaker, probing too deeply into the character of folk heroes reveals them to be fallible human beings – which they are, of course – but to mass audiences, who create fantasies, such exposition is unsettling. Reality often makes for poor drama.

Smile will likely be a hit, because it’s a horror film that delivers without making you feel cheated. At 90 minutes, though, with less repetition, it might have been a more ingenious movie.

Borat has lost none of his bite, treading that same fine line between sophomoric humor and pointed political satire.

The director has managed the difficult feat of making a nonlinear film that contains a handful of almost unbearably suspenseful sequences, each one undercut by bizarre black humor.

Clearly rejuvenated by his collaboration with producer Peter Jackson, and blessed with a smart script and the best craftsmanship money can buy, Spielberg has fashioned a whiz-bang thrill ride that's largely faithful to the wholesome spirit of his source but still appealing to younger, Tintin-challenged audiencs.

A sensationally entertaining old-school freakout and one of the smartest, most viscerally effective thrillers in recent memory.

Bopha! is a heartfelt and anguished cry. Though moored in historic/geographic specificity, it is an easily understood and universal tale.

With no car chases or artificial villains to get in the way, and no treacly contrivances to force unearned emotions, the bright, vaguely sitcom-styled movie is free to make audiences feel good on its own genuine terms.

Sometimes shticky biopic overcomes its cornball conventionality to become a genial entertainment, thanks to Anthony Hopkins' exceptionally engaging performance.

An exquisitely crafted documentary about the woman who was arguably the greatest movie critic who ever lived.

The irony at the core of the Dr. Ruth persona is that the maverick who made the bedroom public is herself incredibly private, and while she encourages women to get intimate with their bodies, she’s not in touch with her own emotions. Still, she is vocal about respecting boundaries, and White acquiesces, trusting that the facts of Westheimer’s life say plenty about her peppy workaholism.

Always engrossing but also perplexing and offering little deeper than the obvious, “Teacher” still reps a new development in a striking, idiosyncratic director.

A useful, engaging and enraging movie that will enlist supporters for its cause.

From the exuberant credits and opening sequence through to the end, Tiger Stripes is the work of a confident new talent whose next work will be eagerly awaited.

Talky, repetitive and largely covering the same ground with no new thoughts, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence is a major let-down.

Intriguing as the resulting ambiance is, it alone can’t sustain the film.

Pat Collins’ echoing, elegiac evocation of the spirit of Irish sean nós singer Joe Heaney is most interested in his haunted vocal gift, letting the troubled life that weathered it show through only in glimmers between the gorgeous songs.

The story is pure melodrama, despite the intention of the original novel’s author, James Jones, to invest it with greater stature. But the integrity with which the film is handled by all its contributors lifts it at times to tragedy.

A deliberately coarse character style that's more Gumby than Gromit.

A frenzied vocal tone and wild, untethered physicality connects all the performances, with every character seemingly eager to burst out of their own body, and by extension, the life in which it’s stranded.

Utilitarian in construction but personally invested, it’s a duly humble career overview that doesn’t risk much individual interpretation of such rich, essential films as “Black Girl,” “Xala” and “Moolaade” — though it should leave viewers eager to make (or regain) their acquaintance.

While always attractive, the look conveys a level of non-spontaneous construction that often takes away from the potency of hard, brutal reality.

Levine’s an emerging talent known only to theater audiences at the moment, owing to his dual roles in Matthew Lopez’s “The Inheritance,” although Minyan makes clear that we are dealing with a performer of uncommon gifts.

Reminiscences about Goodman and readings of his poetry are played over old pictures that capture his singularly seductive appeal and lively sense of humor.

Unlike other actor-directors, Jones never seems to indulge excess on the part of his cast. Though the characters are strong, the performances are understated.

Gifted as both a thrilling dancer and a nuanced actor, Gelbakhiani’s magnetic presence goes a long way toward papering over some of the more timeworn plot elements . . . and the film should make audiences clamor for more vehicles that feature his seemingly effortless ability to radiate joy.

This elegantly written, persuasively performed drama finds the ever-unpredictable Ozon in his plainest, most pragmatic gear as a filmmaker.

Poetic, bawdy, contemplative, often side-wrenchingly funny and finally quite touching, this tale about a nerdy garbage man whose life is changed by an egocentric hobo philosopher is flawed only by its length.

Scripters have provided very little context or societal texture for their unmodulated tale, which disagreeably seeks to find humor in characters’ humiliation, embarrassment and even death. Nonetheless Robert Zemeckis directs with undeniable vigor, if insufficient control and discipline.

An exquisitely realized adaptation of Lionel Shriver's bestselling novel. In a rigorously subtle performance as a woman coping with the horrific damage wrought by her psychopathic son, Tilda Swinton anchors the dialogue-light film with an expressiveness that matches her star turn in "I Am Love."

Film version of Ray Bradbury's popular novel Something Wicked This Way Comes must be chalked up as something of a disappointment. Possibilities for a dark, child's view fantasy set in rural America of yore are visible throughout the $20 million production but various elements have not entirely congealed into a unified achievement.

Constructing character does not appear to be Earl and Caldwell’s strong suit (what’s satisfying about Cee owes almost entirely to Thatcher, a fresh face who tricks us into assuming she’s just a callow teen, when in fact, she proves to be the film’s toughest character). On the other hand, the duo show a real aptitude for world building.

Time may unravel in Omni Loop, but admirably, it opens up the space to think less about the secrets of the larger universe than to take stock of the smaller ones that exist around us.

As with the Guardians of the Galaxy films, what works here is the uneasy tension within a team that comes together out of necessity, rather than any natural sense of affinity.

Proves that few can maneuver one of Cohen's dusky, lovelorn songs like Cohen himself.

Despite the staggering range of material Watermark manages to present — Burtynsky’s five-year undertaking is certainly the most encompassing survey any one artist has ever dedicated to the subject — it’s still just the tip of the metaphorical iceberg.

This is a film with a mature, heartbroken understanding of how we hold onto things.

The result is a welcome return to a form of stop-motion that takes pride in the technique’s inevitable imperfections (such as thumbprints in the modeling clay), while putting extra care into the underlying script, with its daffy humor and slightly-off characters.

This clever, involving spy drama builds to a terrific level of intrigue before losing some steam in its second half.

Its stripped-down approach to a familiar gist has a distinctiveness that is impressive, and is sure to please fans who are always up for a new slasher film — but wish most of them weren’t so interchangeable.

Burton has once again managed to pursue his quirky personal concerns in the context of broadly commercial entertainment, although the idiosyncracies of the villains clearly interest him far more than the programmable heroics of the title character and the related mandatory action sequences.

Constant shock cuts and souped-up music and sound effects will keep small fry in a state of moderate petrification, while the trio of tweeny leads plus attitude-redolent cohorts will make teens feel welcome.

If Johnny Depp’s mesmerizing performance — a bracing return to form for the star after a series of critical and commercial misfires — is the chief selling point of Black Mass, there is much else to recommend this sober, sprawling, deeply engrossing evocation of Bulger’s South Boston fiefdom and his complex relationship with the FBI agent John Connolly, played with equally impressive skill by Joel Edgerton.

The Wave sticks mostly to the big-studio formula (albeit on a much smaller budget), introducing a handful of bland soon-to-be-victims before bombarding them with spectacular digital effects.