A.O. Scott

Each shot is a kind of sight gag, a visual and philosophical joke with absurdity in the setup and sorrow in the punchline. But this time, more of the jokes are one-liners, in which the premise and the payoff are one and the same.

Nomadland is patient, compassionate and open, motivated by an impulse to wander and observe rather than to judge or explain.

Go see this movie. Take your children, even though they may occasionally be confused or fidgety. Boredom and confusion are also part of democracy, after all. Lincoln is a rough and noble democratic masterpiece - an omen, perhaps, that movies for the people shall not perish from the earth.

The ancient Greeks believed that character should be revealed through action. I can’t think of another film that has upheld this notion so thoroughly and thrillingly. There is certainly no other actor who can command our attention — our empathy, our loyalty, our love — with such efficiency.

The Banshees of Inisherin might feel a little thin if you hold it to conventional standards of comedy or drama. It’s better thought of as a piece of village gossip, given a bit of literary polish and a handsome pastoral finish.

At times, most often when Mr. Bennett is onscreen, Love & Friendship is howlingly funny, and as a whole it feels less like a romance than like a caper, an unabashedly contrived and effortlessly inventive heist movie with a pretty good payoff.

The film, Mr. Aster’s debut feature, is engaging, unsettling and unpredictable, generating a mood of anxious fascination punctuated by frequent shocks and occasional nervous giggles. But I also found it a bit disappointing.

A rich sense of mystery pervades this movie. You succumb to its strangeness the way that a child is enveloped in a bedtime story, trusting the teller even when you don’t fully understand the tale or know where it’s going.

Encountered in an appropriately exploratory frame of mind, it can produce something close to bliss.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse contains a vital element that has been missing from too many recent superhero movies: fun.

There is no comfort in Coen’s vision, but his rigor — and Washington’s vigor — are never less than exhilarating.

Particle Fever is a fascinating movie about science, and an exciting, revealing and sometimes poignant movie about scientists.

The Shape of Water is partly a code-scrambled fairy tale, partly a genetically modified monster movie, and altogether wonderful.

Even though Bisbee ’17 depicts a wholesome and harmonious community undertaking, it is a profoundly haunted and haunting film. What we are witnessing is not the commemoration of a past disaster but its reanimation. Every important thing this movie is about is still alive.

The pleasures of this movie are abundant. The pacing is as swift as a speeding bullet. There are wonderfully evoked lived-in San Francisco locations... And there are splendid set pieces that showcase the perpetually-underrated Don Siegel's great skill a director. This film is efficient, unpretentious and much wittier and more stylish than your average cop movie.

In the end there is nothing especially campy about “The Duke of Burgundy,” which neither mocks its heroines nor the breathless, naughty screen tradition to which they belong. It’s a love story, and also a perversely sincere (and sincerely perverse) labor of love.

Unsparing as Hu’s anatomy of moral drift may be, there is something graceful in his sympathetic attention to lives defined almost entirely by disappointment and diminished hope. Unlike the titular elephant, the film never stops moving, and by the end, instead of feeling beaten down, the viewer is likely to feel moved as well.

This is a comedy, with plenty of acutely funny lines, a handful of sharp sight gags and a few minutes of pure, perfect madcap. But a grim, unmistakable shadow falls across its wintry landscape.

The story is full of emotion and danger, heroism and treachery, but it is told in a mood of rueful retrospect rather than simmering partisan rage.

The brilliance of The Babadook, beyond Ms. Kent’s skillful deployment of the tried-and-true visual and aural techniques of movie horror, lies in its interlocking ambiguities.

It’s a subtle movie, alert to the almost imperceptible currents of feeling that pass between its title characters.

It is outrageously funny without ever exaggerating for comic effect, and heartbreaking with only minimal melodramatic embellishment.

The Red Turtle practices a minor, gentle magic. It wants you to smile and say, “Ahh,” rather than gasp and say, “Wow.” But somehow the understatement can feel a bit overdone, as if the film were hovering over you, awaiting an expression of admiration.

Of Gods and Men is supple and suspenseful, appropriately austere without being overly harsh, and without forgoing the customary pleasures of cinema. The performances are strong, the narrative gathers momentum as it progresses, and the camera is alive to the beauty of the Algerian countryside.

In spite of a meandering story and some fuzzy passages, there is a touch of magic in Museo, a sense of wonder and curiosity that imparts palpable excitement.

Curiously exhilarating. Some of this comes from the simple thrill of witnessing something, or rather everything, done well.

Mr. Shindo's world is sad and inspiring in familiar ways, but what makes it so memorable is that it is also gorgeous and strange.

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.