Aaron Hillis

The Queen is a surprisingly compassionate portrait (excepting Blair's reactionary wife with the "shallow curtsy") of a rigid pragmatist in denial over the monarchy's out-of-touch dysfunction.

Preaches post-9/11 family values to conservatives while appeasing liberals with ideas of tolerance and social activism.

Mafioso isn't a straight black satire of Sicilian culture so much as a suspenseful near-tragedy leavened by the zesty, irreverent wit that helped define the golden age of Italian comedies.

Shallow, witless but pretty enough French ode to Woody Allen.

This critic found much to digest (pun barely intended), with thoughts of FDA politics and standard practices, the ritualism and sacrifice of our own species, why baby animals are considered protectable innocents (and inversely, grown steaks-to-be just a fact of life), plus, on a meta level, how people's dietary philosophies will inform their reactions to the work.

How 49 Up differs from its precursors for the better is that it's the first to have its participants interact with Apted the filmmaker, no longer a one-sided interviewer.

Fantastic news, true believers: Spider-Man 2 is smarter, hipper, faster, funnier, and flat-out more electrifying than the original, swinging to new summer-movie heights as the greatest comic-book adaptation yet made.

Kasper Collin's melancholy, beautiful feature debut does more than just chronicle this undervalued musician; it brings Ayler and his message of spiritual unity back to life.

With unpretentious formal rigor and a lighthearted deadpan, the film tracks Xiaobin’s development through self-reflexive escalation.

Director Teddy Chan's glossy thriller pays tribute to martial-arts cinema by casting enough Hong Kong industry legends to rival the cameo count of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. It's a pity, then, that it's an undeniably bland film in style and story, despite a few elaborately staged fight sequences.

While Bartley and O'Briain flat-out lucked out with this felicitous endeavor, their fearlessness, unobtrusive narration, and lack of Michael Moore man-and-microphone pandering is to be saluted.

Paprika ain't no kiddie 'toon, even if its thumpin' techno-pop and bubble-gum thrills have the same splashy palette as an episode of "Pokémon" or "Dragon Ball Z."

This is as exceptional as microbudget cinema gets.

A conventional but genuinely heartrending exposé of the Indiana boy who grew to be a powerful religious cult leader, director Stanley Nelson's thoroughly researched doc is not a posthumous character assassination, which would be all too easy and unnecessary.

There's no drama illustrating the thanklessness of their jobs, and potential wisdom about fiscal instability, animal welfare, or GMOs waft by without much argument.

Marker's even-handedness and playful spirit tries to show that innocent art and activist politics are two sides of the same culture, even if deviant government duplicity threatens the balance between them.

Don't discount October Country filmmakers Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher's tragicomically beautiful art-doc, which sensitively favors unflinching testimonials and visually impressionistic observations over journalistic activism.

This self-reflexive ode to following muses, finding meaning in nothingness, and transcending the sensitive roadblocks between fathers and sons is loopy, irreverent, and more intensely personal than anything its mystic creator has invented before.

Guaranteed to deliver more innovative eye candy and smarter fun-per-second than most of this summer's fare, and that one-two punch ought to knock you off your seat.

As the phrase turns, it's better when things come off WITHOUT a hitch.

Technically, it rewards with nothing less than painterly cinematography and a seamless surge of organic soundscapes, but the story is entirely predicated on a weather metaphor so obvious that even an unplugged Doppler radar could detect it.

The setup may be as unsubtle as a metaphoric morality lesson about Europe’s not-too-distant past, or perhaps it’s politically timeless; it’s not a far leap to also think about a certain someone’s insane need for backscratching loyalty within the White House.

At its most simplified, Sucker punches its way to the top of the Italian-western mountains, but never reaches the peak of its immortalized trilogy brethren.

What On the Run has going for it: solid acting, taut editing, smartly economical dialogue, an elevatingly reverberant score, and a rousing vitality that left me salivating for The Trilogy in full.

Dullaghan's film is a bit too straightforward and introductory to be declared a definitive portraiture. The gold nuggets worth sifting for lie in the anecdotal minutiae.

Herzog smartly takes a broad, bird's-eye perspective of our early techno-evolution.

DiG! never delves deep enough to act as a true cautionary tale. It's an amusingly drunken PBS-worthy human-interest doc, unless you're too old or not cool enough to have played in the embarrassing hipster zoo, in which case DiG! may be the closest you'll ever get to the uncaged animals.

Machines proves both uncompromising and unforgettable.