Bilge Ebiri

Maybe this frivolous little movie reflects our own world back to us in more ways than we might wish to admit.

Karia’s film is uneven, but, as with its aforementioned staging of “To be or not to be,” it tosses enough new ideas around to keep us watching.

I was never bored by Normal, but I’d also be lying if I said I was ever excited by it. Maybe it’ll help you forget your troubles for an hour or two, but there’s also a good chance you’ll forget the movie itself in even less time.

Nobody ever feels like a real person in this movie, but we’re pulling for them anyway. The same could be said for the film: It’s not particularly good, but I selfishly want it to be a hit anyway, just so we can bask in the genre for a little longer. The world was a better place when rom-coms roamed the land.

The Stranger, it turns out, is a story for our times, which makes this lovely new version doubly welcome.

Like being asphyxiated in a ball pit filled with candy, the experience of watching The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is at once kaleidoscopic and nerve-wracking. It pantomimes the hallmarks of a good time, with a fast, forced cheeriness; the flashing lights, bright colors, sparkly design, and subplot-happy narrative are there to hold our attention and charm us, but they accomplish the opposite, instead making us worry about what we’re missing.

The surprises are mostly in the details. Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is bursting with ideas that feel like clever marginalia on an otherwise familiar setup.

What distinguishes Two Prosecutors is not its overall narrative trajectory (which reads more like a bitter cosmic joke than anything else) but rather how Loznitsa subtly colors in Kornyev’s journey through the halls of power.

Palestine 36 offers an interesting and valuable perspective on a relatively unknown period in history, though I wish it wasn’t so thinly spread out. Jacir wants to show a cross section of people’s responses to these events, but the result often feels like scattershot scenes from a longer miniseries, flitting from one character to another with little narrative thrust or cohesion.

There are certainly some real laughs as well as some groaners, but at times you want the film to just get on with it. Mainly because once you get past the shtick, there’s an intriguing story there, fun and rousing in its own right without need of additional silliness.

Shot in black and white and filled with images of collapse, Below the Clouds is nevertheless a strangely hopeful work.

The first Scream skewered Hollywood cynicism. The latest embodies it.

Hoppers is a fun, modest little movie with enough zip and charm to keep kids engaged, and as such, one doesn’t want to criticize it too much. But the memory of what Pixar once was, the behemoth that redefined animation for multiple generations, may still make us wonder where all that energy and originality and artistry went.

The film Segan has made is very much its own thing. It’s a twilight fable of a city that’s changing, whose spirit remains distinct and grand and full of mystery, much like the remarkable actor at its center.

While The Ballad of Judas Priest may not always feel complete, by centering the music, it excites our curiosity long after the credits roll.

Not an image is wasted. Not a single line of dialogue feels unnecessary, or a subplot tangential.

Rosebush Pruning tries to be about something while pretending not to be about anything at all; it’s somehow both too stupid and too cool for the room.

Zi is fascinating, at times even rapturous.

It’ll probably drive some people crazy, but I enjoyed the hell out of it.

Through heightened control of imagery and mood, attention to composition and texture and sound, Manuel turns this simple, languid setting into something far more sinister without ever betraying the beauty of what’s onscreen.

Knife deserves credit for more than just its compelling depiction of a horrific recent event. It artfully interweaves multiple threads from Rushdie’s life and career. The film works as a biography as well as an important history lesson.

It feels hurried, generalized, inattentive. There’s no specificity, no immersive sense of people actually living their lives. Again, that’s probably partly intentional. But it sure feels like a miscalculation for a movie about the survival of humanity to have so little humanity in it.

McKinley establishes just the right amount of physical and emotional stakes, and a cast led by Ethan Hawke infuses the drama with believable camaraderie, conflict, and tension. It’s the kind of atmospheric, exciting period drama we don’t really get much anymore.

See You When I See You grapples with serious subjects, and everybody involved surely meant well. That’s just not enough.

For a movie so filled with death, The Oldest Person in the World is surprisingly, almost confrontationally life-affirming. That sounds cheap, but Green comes by the sentiment honestly.

[A] truly monumental work of art ... The footage has been edited with fluidity and grace.

Azzam and MacInnes give us a modern-day epic that traverses borders — truly, they’ve captured some incredible footage — but they outdo themselves by following that up with an absorbing, complex tale about the challenges of assimilation.

The peculiar charm of Paralyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford Story ... lies in the way it’s driven by genuine curiosity about its subject. ... Watching Paralyzed by Hope, we start to understand why other comedians, including Apatow himself, would be so fascinated and electrified by Bamford’s work.