Anthony Lane

This interfamily clash, fizzing with one-upmanship, is the highlight of the film, and that’s the problem. The planets of the plot, as it were, are more exciting than the sun around which they revolve.

The good news is that, although Baby Driver is not much of a movie, it is an excellent music video — a club sandwich for the senses, lavishly layered with more than thirty songs.

If this film has a secret, it dwells in the cinematography — by Vittorio Storaro, no less, who shot “The Conformist,” “Last Tango in Paris,” and “Apocalypse Now.” He worked with Allen on a segment of “New York Stories” (1989), but Café Society marks their first full-length collaboration, and the result is ravishing to behold.

The movie, photographed by Laura Valladao, is in black-and-white; add the deadpan dialogue and you may be reminded of, say, early Jim Jarmusch. But there’s not a smack of hipness here, and Jalali is not on a quest for cool. Rather, the story is suffused with an uncommon blend of radiance and resignation, nowhere more rapturously than in the final shot.

Like “Get Out” and “Us,” it is another resourceful meditation on fear and wonder—errant at times, yet strewn with frights and ever alert to the threat of racial hostility.

For all its oddities, this movie does carry weight, and, with more than eight per cent of Americans out of work, the timing of its release here could not be more acute.

Above all, what makes the movie work -- what renders it not merely exhausting but fulfilling -- are the boys. Bier summons fine performances all around, but Nielsen, in particular, turns the role of christian into a drama all its own. [4 April, 2011, p. 82]

It would be churlish to deny that The French Dispatch is a box of delights; Wright, in particular, is a joy as the sauntering hedonist. Equally, though, it would be negligent not to ask of Anderson, now more than ever: What would incite him to think outside the box?

Beyond question a return to the dark, simmering days of their best work, in “Blood Simple” and “Miller’s Crossing.”

To dramatize such binding ideals, for almost two and a half hours, and to conjure precipitous revels from next to nothing, as Miranda and Chu have done, is no small feat.

Sometimes too ominous for its own good.

The pathos of About Schmidt -- of the careful, Chekhovian work that it could have been --gradually slides away. [16 December 2002, p. 106]

This is classic Petzold territory, where you can dwell in a place, or a relationship, without ever quite belonging there.

And here's the strangest thing of all: it works. [September 14, 2009, pg.ll4]

In the end, Ex Machina lives and dies by Alicia Vikander. The film clicks on when she first appears, and it dims every time she goes away.

Given the earnest mayhem that prevails at your local multiplex, there is surely a place for a lightly mocking modernist with a growing distaste for the modern. [9 April 2012, p.84]

What really grips the new movie, for all its amused glances at Swiss Guards and ceremonial pomp, is the prospect of a single soul in crisis. [9 April 2012, p.85]

An efficient, politically inert fantasy.

Red Penguins, is here to serve your bedlam-loving needs. Communism, capitalism, corruption: the gang’s all here.

It is worth seeing Happy End for the long scene between him (Trintignant) and the remarkable Fantine Harduin — between the pitiless patriarch and his granddaughter. Together, they compare notes on the harm that they have done. From generation to generation, the blood runs cold.

The work of both Babluani brothers is weirdly stilled and mature, already devoid of the need to show off--serves only to thicken the horror.

The result is a lively bout between bio-pic and fairy tale.

In the end, Lower City is never quite as energetic as it wants to be, touched by the strange, milky lethargy that steeps every waterfront film.

The gist of the critical response has been that The Tender Bar follows a well-worn path. Fair enough, but is that such a sin? (You should try the new Matrix movie. Now, that’s worn.) What counts is the firmness of the tread, and Clooney sets a careful but unloitering pace.

No one who was not laughably self-involved would agree to a project like 20,000 Days on Earth, and yet Cave, to his credit, comes most alive in his hymns to other selves.

The movie is fun, largely because it proposes that fun is the principal legacy of the Beatles.

What distinguishes the latest Cage freak-out is the care with which it’s paced; not until halfway through does he start to lose his hinge, and, even when his face is sprayed with blood, he keeps his glasses on, as if hoping to settle down with a book. Oh, and, if you’ve always wanted to watch him milk an alpaca, your time has come.

Rich in settling and unsettling, Past Lives, for all its coolness, provokes us with difficult questions.