Marrit Ingman

John Cameron Mitchell’s sophomore film effort asserts – with great gusto and even a brass band – our universal right to sexual happiness.

This film is not a freak show or exposé but rather a call to arms to pick sides in the deepening cultural, political, and spiritual schism between the two Americas of the 21st century.

Even if it’s not quite an affair to remember all year, this BBC Films mockumentary about three wacky weddings is pleasant and enjoyably diverting.

Chong cuts a hugely sympathetic figure in the story of his legal troubles after Operation Pipe Dreams, an anti-paraphernalia sweep that specifically targeted his bong business.

The House of Sand is a quintessentially moderate art film: panoramic and symbolic, epic in scope, technically accomplished, and miraculously acted by the mother-daughter team of Fernandas Montenegro and Torres in showy dual roles.

The Rock’s moral football tale is a pleasant surprise: a swift, sure-footed, and gritty melodrama that plays to the strengths of its formula and elicits empathy for its kids.

The first Burnt Orange Productions joint mixes The Piano with Poison Ivy. Perhaps future generations of film scholars will embrace The Quiet as a B-movie that problematizes the oppressive gaze, but for now, it’s a misfire.

Don’t confuse this Sundance charmer with My Big Fat Mexican Debut, for its farcical scenes of high hair and waltzes form a genial, light-comic prism for watching race, age, class, and sexuality collide in one of America’s most economically and ethnically complex cities.