Andy Howell

Steal This Story, Please! is not just an important film but a great one. It will entertain, inform, and might even change your views about the world and the kind of person you can become.

The lightning in a bottle you have to catch to make an epic love story work is chemistry between the leads. With one actor a relative novice, and the other trying to stretch himself and direct his first feature, the deck was stacked against them. But wow did they pull it off. Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper are terrific together.

I have a feeling Echo in the Canyon will be watched for decades into the future as the essential document of a very specific time and place that changed music forever.

It will stick with you long after you leave the theater. It is as moving as it is possible for a film to be.

As clever as the plot is, how it comes to life is something to behold — a command to witness awesome splendor is really the only word that fits here.

The brilliance of Holy Spider is how it takes all the gripping, lurid suspense of the serial killer thriller, turns it on its head, and takes it to the next level as symbolic of a corrupted, misogynistic society.

Even with everything else going for it, Ezra either fails or succeeds based on the title character’s performance, and William Fitzgerald knocks it out of the park. As with any child acting performance, Goldwyn deserves a share of the credit for getting exactly what was needed from the young actor.

The strength of Out of Plain Sight is that it dramatically illustrates both the importance and process of science and journalism, at a time when both are under attack.

Characters are keenly observed and come front and center over the plot. Anything can happen. Absurdity reigns supreme. Yet, at the end of the day, we know a little more about the human condition after seeing it bursting at the seams.

It feels like a timeless classic. It takes us into the forbidden spaces we can’t otherwise know, not just cloistered rooms but deep into the human soul.

Sometimes reality is stranger, more unbelievable, and more inspirational than fiction.

No amount of words that can convey the sense of the film, because it is such a gut-punch of emotion.

Green Book is a real crowd pleaser — aside from the banter between the oppositely-minded characters, it has clear heroes and villains. The writers do manage to sneak a few nuances in, especially when discussing Shirley feeling out of place in both the white and black communities.

Rustin is an important story well told, with an outstanding must-see lead performance.

It achieves that magic combination of nuance, depth, and having a big heart that makes it both a crowd-pleaser and a favorite of critics.

Lee is beautiful, daring, and elusive, as all great art should be. It’s a fitting tribute to a woman whose work exhibited the same qualities.

Where Licorice Pizza was fun, bombastic spectacle of performances, I Like Movies is a more subtle, more human, more cohesive film with a devastating and distinctive point of view.

What Daniel Roher has done with well-worn forms is to use them as setups, but put them together with a twist in a way that seems fresh and exciting.

The film gets points for style, boldness, and an innovative science fiction setup.

You might see Lost Transmissions just for Simon Pegg, but you’ll come away with a deeper sense of what schizophrenia is. You just might become more compassionate about people whose mental illness keeps them on the streets. And you’ll get to see a great debut feature whose nuance will keep you thinking about it for days.

Hold Your Fire is well constructed. It is as suspenseful as a top-notch thriller and has the added allure of being true and impactful.

Linklater was a visionary experimenter in his youth, but now he’s grown into a true master, one able to buck the orthodoxy, not just for its own sake, but to achieve something transcendent.

It is a worthy return to feature directing by Jane Campion and a thoroughly relevant film to our modern discourse.

It is a violent, funny, well-acted pulpy delight.

Living is a good remake and a solid film on its own merits.

There’s a reason 70s cinema is so revered for astounding character studies. In this age of superheroes, it is nice to have a throwback that lets us see some normal humans working out their differences the old-fashioned way — by being stuck together.

Decision to Leave deals with the biggest subjects humans have to grapple with: love, sex, and death, and does so in what amounts to a serious, dramatic fashion.

2nd Chance stands right up there as a complete portrait of someone we are simultaneously repulsed by and drawn to. As such, it is one of the year’s best documentaries.