A.O. Scott

The political intelligence and matter-of-fact feminism that emerge in this portrait are among its most intriguing aspects. Her cleareyed, down-to-earth thoughts on her profession, her family and American culture (musical and otherwise) make her someone you want to know better.

Is this chronicle of their combat an occasion for nostalgia or a cautionary tale? The film’s perfectly sensible, not entirely satisfying answer is “both.”

Personal Shopper is sleek and spooky, seductive and suspenseful. It flirts with silliness, as ghost stories do. And also with heartbreak.

What Mr. Hanson has done with 8 Mile is make a pop movie instead of a movie about pop. There's nothing disreputable about this.

It is an engrossing portrait all the same, a generous introduction to someone worth knowing, who knows an awful lot.

With his sound designer, Pablo Lamar, Mr. Mendonça has created the aural landscape of a horror movie. And, for much of its running time, a thriller without a plot.

This film, Mr. Baumbach’s movie, mostly brings a light touch and a forgiving gloss to its own self-consciousness. It is not afraid to be implicated in the confusion — in the self-involvement, the anxiety, the pettiness — it depicts. But there are also areas where it feels soft and compromised, where the subtlety and clarity of Mr. Baumbach’s vision seem to desert him.

Though it is modest, almost anecdotal, in scale, 12:08 East of Bucharest is also characterized by a precise and sneaky formal wit.

There is warmth and intelligence here, and undeniable sincerity, but also a determination, in the face of much painful and fascinating history, to play it safe.

The resultant mix of dreaminess, violence and politics is a bit unwieldy, but it sticks to your ribs. You'll savor pieces of Duck, You Sucker in your head much later: the mark of a work by a true voluptuary, the overspill in whose craft comes as much from enthusiasm as arrogance.

The story pops and swerves; the images are by turns comical, banal and ravishing; and the result is a briskly shaken cocktail made of equal parts provocation and comfort. You come away with a buzz that is invigorating and pleasantly familiar.

Shot in black and white (with Hong serving, for the first time, as cinematographer) and clocking in at a little more than an hour, Introduction is both lucid and elusive.

No movie can convey the truth of war to those of us who have not lived through it, but The Messenger, precisely by acknowledging just how hard it is to live with that truth, manages to bring it at least partway home.

Equity pulls off a difficult balancing act with an elegance that should not be underestimated. It turns its unflappable gaze on a maddeningly complex reality and transforms it into a swift, clear and exciting story.

This is a difficult movie because the questions it raises are not easy. There are sentimental and reassuring movies about vengeance, and comforting stories about the resistance to historical oppression. This isn’t one of those. You might say it’s too angry. Or too honest.

There is much to praise about this sweet, smart comedy of intergenerational conflict and solidarity.... But honestly, the wonder that is Grandma can be summed up in two words: Lily Tomlin.

The obsessive crosshatching of allusion, spoof and homage that gives Grindhouse its texture is the product of a highly refined generational sensibility.

Brazenly self-confident in its refusal to pander to the imagined sensitivity of its audience. In this it differs notably from Albert Brooks's "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World," which approached some of the same topics with misplaced thoughtfulness and tact.

Yes Man rarely rises to genuine hilarity. It takes no risks, finds no inspiration and settles, like its hero, into a dull, noncommittal middle ground. Should you see this movie? Maybe. Whatever. I don't care.

Best and most touching when it shows how willing punk is to eat its young.

Like other stories of musical tutelage, Keep On Keepin’ On is ultimately an examination of the pursuit of greatness. It is a grueling and demanding endeavor, for sure, but also, for Mr. Terry and anyone lucky enough to enter his orbit, a source of unending joy.

[Ms. Coppola’s] Beguiled is less a hothouse flower than a bonsai garden, a work of cool, exquisite artifice that evokes wildness on a small, controlled scale.

This isn’t a perfect movie — sometimes the machinery of plot-focused screenwriting hums a little too insistently, especially toward the end, disrupting the quieter, richer music of everyday life — but its clearsighted sensitivity makes it a satisfying one.

Neither sensationalistic nor sentimental, Ms. Berg’s film is clear-sighted, tough-minded and devastating, a portrait of individual criminality and institutional indifference, a study in the betrayal of trust and the irresponsibility of authority.

May not be a great piece of filmmaking, but its power comes from its soul's-eye view of how well-meaning patronizing masked a social injustice, at least as represented by this case.

While the film has an appealingly dreamy, summer-in-New-York look and a pleasantly languorous rhythm, it gives the actors very little to do and the audience almost nothing to care about.

La Flor is perhaps more fun to think about than to sit through, though there are some exquisitely beautiful sequences.

A film that had seemed interested in the lives and feelings of its characters, and in an unlikely but touching relationship between two people at odds with the world around them, turns into a movie with Something to Say.