Ms. Buckley brings her own truth to this mostly synthetic confection, and it’s a beautiful thing to behold.

This award-winning picture from Belgium is the kind Hollywood seems no longer interested in making: a sophisticated drama that presumes a level of insight and maturity in an audience that doesn't need winks and arrows to understand what's going on.

Professor Marston & the Wonder Women stands head, shoulders, boots, tiara and lasso above many independent films of the moment. See it and you’ll come away with a new appreciation for the polywonder of creativity.

Hell of a Summer, as written and directed by Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk, manages to mine some fresh mirth out of the mayhem while lampooning a format’s classic conceits.

A minor comedy, though a major delight.

This freewheeling account of an African-American cop who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1970s is problematic as narrative drama, but stunning as provocation.

It’s a piece of urban history seen through the lens of magic realism, a fragile but beguiling fantasy, tethered now and then to gritty reality, about a do-gooder doing the best he can against daunting odds.

A wonderfully generous spirit. It's a film about cultural yearning and fearless love.

Awash in terrific performances.

Winningly human, and wonderfully funny.

Mr. Birney’s exotically low-fi imagination makes for a freaky and feverish trip.

This startlingly accomplished debut feature by Nia DaCosta has the eyes and ears of a documentary — the opioid crisis is everywhere, the nearest hospital is far away — but the heart of a drama, and a stirring one.

Filmmaker Elaine McMillion Sheldon, a native of the state, has done a breathtakingly expressive job of capturing the strangeness, the beauty and the devastation of her homeland in the poetic, entrancing documentary King Coal.

The outcome is distinctive and entertaining. There's no way you'd mistake this for James Bond, and no reason you would want to.

Mr. Wright and his colleagues have made a movie with a spaciousness of its own, a brave willingness to explore such mysteries of the mind and heart as the torture that madness can inflict, and the rapture that music can confer. Bravo to all concerned.

Manipulative, but confidently so, and improbably but consistently affecting.

By the end there isn't anyone to cheer for, except the makers of this thoughtful and absorbing piece of work. [02 Aug 1984]

It's very funny, terrifically lively and, considering how awful it might have been, surprisingly tender in its portrait of a young guy who learns sensitivity the hard way.

5 Broken Cameras is short on facts and, like the demonstrations themselves, provocative by nature. Still, it casts a baleful light on anguishing, seemingly incessant scenes of tear gas hurled, bullets fired, villagers fleeing for their lives and, on one shocking occasion, a life lost as the camera rolls. This is how the conflict looks from the other side of the barrier.

Creed III brings up unusually troubling questions for a formula picture, and the care the script takes to add depth to Donnie strengthens the final third of the film, which in accordance with the sports-drama rulebook leads us through a rousing training montage and a climactic competition, this time in Dodger Stadium.

Borrowing the look of The Lego Movie, Piece by Piece is as bouncy and playful as a room full of rambunctious toddlers.

This prequel draws new energy from supersmart casting, plus the shrewd notion of setting the beginnings of the X-Men saga in the early 1960s.

We tend to think of gangland tales as exhibiting clear demarcations between those who are and are not “in the game.” La Civil catapults us into a considerably more disturbing environment, a sort of toxic sinkhole that pulls everyone into its horrors.

Taken at face value, these two women are simply despicable. But the screenplay has a bracing tincture of Grand Guignol, and nothing is simple when the two women are played by a couple of superlative actresses who clearly delight in one another.

What works best is what's readily accessible, the startling power of performers who understand the drama all too well.

All the backing-and-forthing between olden and modern days intensifies the emotional impact of a compelling story, and underlines the enduring power of narrative itself.

Haunting, troubling documentary.

Watch them march to the very extremes of extremis, though, and it's easy to feel awe.