Ella Taylor

Director Chris Weitz seems ill-at-ease with the rhythms of action scenes, but this Hollywood-zed version of history comes to life when it features Oscar Isaac and Ben Kingsley verbally sparring.

To make Penelope Fitzgerald's astringent novel more broadly palatable, adapter Isabel Coixet softens it nearly beyond recognition. Fitzgerald fans, be warned: The result is marketable but mealy.

Chloë Grace Moretz plays a queer teenager shipped off to a conversion therapy camp in this even-handed if occasionally sluggish film that won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.

"If 98 movie minutes about the subversion of campaign financing isn't quite your idea of beating the summer heat," says critic Ella Taylor, "there's not a dull or dry moment" in this incisive doc.

Kevin Macdonald's documentary about the life and death of Whitney Houston contains no shattering revelations, but it artfully and compassionately places her extraordinary talent in a meaningful context.

Filmmaker Tim Wardle reveals the fascinating story of three identical triplets who found one another by chance, and shows how the ensuing media circus, and long-buried secrets, took a toll on each.

In this clear-eyed docudrama, filmmaker Fellipe Barbosa retraces the final days of his mercurial friend who died of exposure on Malawi's Mount Mulanje in 2009.

Beloved children's show host Fred Rogers is the subject of this compassionate — but not blindly worshipful — documentary from the filmmaker behind 20 Feet from Stardom.

While many biographies of artists focus on their tortured personal lives, Rodin maintains a close focus on sculpture itself and what makes it last.

In Spanish filmmaker Carla Simon's "intimately visual" autobiographical debut feature, a young girl from Barcelona is sent to live in the country after the death of her mother.

A stellar cast, a faithful adaptation, and a director with a rhythmic sense of pacing ensure that this film version of Anton Chekhov's play takes flight.

Director Jason Reitman re-teams with Juno scripter Diablo Cody for a film about an overburdened mother and her nanny that's "a little bit funny, a bigger bit cruel, and with it all, oddly moving."

In this delightful French tale, Juilette Binoche plays an amorous, tart-tongued artist. Filmmaker Claire Denis seems to have created "a fresh sub-genre: the looking-for-love comedy procedural."

This "smoothly crafted, satisfyingly earnest" film features many sports-movie clichés, but digs a bit deeper to find psychological affinities between the two very different athletes.

Lynne Ramsay (We Need to Talk About Kevin) directs Joaquin Phoenix in this violent, strident and repetitive tale about a man who sets out to rescue a kidnapped girl.

French writer-director Arnaud Desplechin can't hold the thread of the story he seeks to tell, so this film about the mysterious return of an old lover fades into frustrating ambiguity.

A gay man saunters through the French countryside, pursued by his lover, in this loose meditation on the perks and pitfalls of hooking up.

This sweetly funny tale of a recently widowed Orthodox Jew struggling to care for his son offers a humane and sympathetic view of life in a Hasidic enclave.

In this unsentimental, unflinching, increasingly harrowing film, a young woman in Victorian England internalizes the various cruelties visited upon her ... until she doesn't.

Lara Stolman's documentary follows three members of a swim team made up entirely of athletes with autism. The team offers community and support — to the swimmers, and to their parents.