Bill Goodykoontz

Denis (“Beau Travail,” “35 Shots of Rum”) is a very particular filmmaker, forcing you to adjust to her rhythms. Never is that more apparent than the last scene, which goes on for a quarter of the film or more, right through the end credits and beyond.

The look of the film is jaw-dropping at times, beautiful to behold. If the story... can't quite keep pace with the look of the film (and, alas, it can't) it will take you awhile to notice.

Succeeds in portraying a life so solitary that, even when he knows what's going on, that's a deal Owen is willing to make.

Fences is a feast of brilliant acting, in a story that’s sometimes as difficult as it is powerful.

Puzzle just kind of chugs along at its own pace, one of those small movies that packs a bigger punch, one in which, sorry, all the pieces fit.

Malik Bendjelloul really knows how to spin a yarn.

If it’s not great — think of a sort of JV “Commitments” and you’ll have the idea — it is surely winning.

The Innocents, writer and director Eskil Vogt’s horror film about children with supernatural powers, is definitely difficult to watch, a brutal bit of business. But the thrills aren’t cheap — they’re hard earned, if you can call them thrills at all.

It's all or nothing with Black Swan. Either you embrace its headlong descent into madness brought on by the pressures of artistic perfection, compounded by smothering anxiety, or you reject it. It's that simple.

This is a film as powerful as it is painful.

With “A Real Pain,” Jesse Eisenberg — who wrote, directed and stars in the film — pulls off a kind of magic trick. He’s made a movie with backdrops of pain and despair, both personal and existential, that is also funny, charming and something approaching uplifting. Ta-da!

I can say without hesitation that if you’re looking for something ambitious and difficult and super weird — and satisfying, in the end, though think of that in loose terms — I recommend the rather amazing experience.

Indignation sneaks up on you, and that may be its greatest difference from the blockbuster mentality. Its explosions are quieter, but just as destructive.

You may or may not be surprised by developments here, but it doesn’t really matter. What does is the honesty of the characters and the absolute delight it is to spend time with them.

All of this is interesting, in varying degrees. But watching and listening to Fox talk is magnetic.

Top Gun: Maverick is a movie-star movie with great action pieces best seen on the biggest screen available. It’s a modern take on old-fashioned fun.

In many ways BlackBerry is the standard-fare cautionary tale of tech start-ups. Insert your Icarus metaphors here. But there is a kind of sweetness to the film that makes it more compelling than the typical rise, crash and burn movie.

The script makes the characters a little too witty and spot-on with cultural references, but what makes it work, to the extent that it does, is the innate liability of Sudeikis and Brie.

This is a horrible movie. Which makes it not a lot different from the first film.

The Last Man on the Moon is one of those movies we didn't realize we needed, but turns out to be just the thing for our fractured, cynical times.

It’s Allen’s best film in years, an authentic-feeling deconstruction of a life. It isn’t always easy to watch. It isn’t exactly fun (although parts are funny). Blanchett’s performance sometimes overpowers the story. But it’s an essential work in Allen’s later canon.

It Comes at Night is soaked in uncertainty. It makes us uncomfortable because we want answers and can’t have them. And if there’s anyone who knows how to make an audience uncomfortable, it’s writer and director Trey Edward Shults.

Please Give is an almost perfectly rendered slice of life, buoyant with wonderful performances.

John Wick: Chapter 4 is not a great piece of cinema, exactly, but it delivers on what it promises, time and again.

Roadrunner, however, lays out a convincing case that Bourdain was in pain for much of his life, desperate for answers. But even he may not have known the questions.

As with First Reformed, Schrader crashes right through the boundaries separating the literal from the surreal. It is a strange journey, increasingly so, but an immensely satisfying one.

Johns makes it all bearable. Inviting, even. His performance has such a gentle humanity, especially in the darkest scenes, that you can’t turn away. You don’t just root against the system. You root for him, and that’s an important distinction.

The Dark Knight Rises brings the Batman story to a close in enormous, satisfying fashion, not just on the huge scale it builds for itself, but on a human level as well.