A terrifically fresh narrative backdrop and the often delightful interplay of two timing-savvy comedians, Tina Fey and Paul Rudd, help give wings to director Paul Weitz’s Admission, an airy and engaging adaptation of Jean Hanff Korelitz’s novel of the same name. Evincing a pleasant yet not too demanding sense of depth, this comedy of midlife awakening digs into issues of loss and love but in an ultimately comforting manner, resulting in a crowd-pleasing film that should connect heartily with slightly more adult audiences.

In seriocomic films like About a Boy, In Good Company and Being Flynn, Weitz has tapped into familial rediscovery via stories of adrift protagonists who either struggle with or feel outright that they don’t have anything to offer emotionally. Though shot through with a harried quality which feels like a bet-hedging surrender to the casting of Fey (this could easily have been her stab at Truman Show-type reinvention, if only the filmmakers would have had more courage), Admission slots comfortably in the aforementioned canon of Weitz, as a loose-limbed movie whose nominal sins are of omission rather than commission. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (Focus, PG-13, 106 minutes)

An achingly earnest immigration drama whose compelling low-budget artistic vision can’t save it from its overly programmatic dramatic roots and muddled assemblage, Dreamer is the sort of expressive indie film one wants to like and recommend more than one honestly does and can. A recent premiere at the Cinequest Film Festival, writer-director Jesse Salmeron’s movie is loosely in the mold of something like Chris Weitz’s well received A Better Life, from a couple years back — each film showcases the razor’s edge of life as an undocumented immigrant in the United States, in which one simple accident or slip-up can send a hard-working but unfortunate person tumbling into criminal desperation and/or terrible moral compromise. The problem is, Dreamer isn’t as good, and poignant, as the macro story it’s telling. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Undocumented Productions, unrated, 91 minutes)