Calum Marsh

However you enjoy its nearly four hundred minutes, I expect you'll be held rapt till the last second by a film of abundant wit and generous heart.

The stories have an almost dreamlike sweep and imaginative energy, and the film never exhausts that exuberance. More extraordinary still is its emotional depth.

This is a masterpiece not because it culminates in some redemptive catharsis or clinching argument for social change, but because, by disavowing such facile ends, it meets the mess of life on its own clear and true terms.

The film is alarmingly dark. It isn’t especially funny, or quirky, or even much in keeping with the spirit of the series. But in its own singular, deeply strange way, Fire Walk With Me is David Lynch’s masterpiece.

The flashbacks are well-written and add off-the-court dramatic interest, but it’s the basketball action that is the movie’s claim to excellence. Expertly staged and beautifully rendered using a combination of computer-generated imagery and traditional hand-drawn animation, it’s often so spectacular that I am eager to watch again.

It is amazing, given the modesty of its scope and means, how much Manakamana is able to achieve.

The world the film describes is so vividly realized that it seems to spill over the edges of the frame, as if the lives of its characters will continue after the credits roll.

Surprising, challenging, and never less than thrilling.

The film, a kind of hybrid between understated drama and essayistic tourism, approaches its subjects with uncommon patience and curiosity, lingering over objects and faces as if to savor their aesthetic qualities, eager to convey truths without authorial imposition.

With its rambling momentum and quick-witted, almost musical dialogue, it feels less like “Superbad” than a Robert Altman movie, sort of like a pint-size “California Split.”

Part of what’s so invigorating about A Touch of Sin is its refusal to betray the depth of its intellectual ambition, deferring when needed to generic convention and relishing the entertainment which follows.

Diliberto has managed to make a political comedy that seems at once tremendously funny and intensely serious — a provocative, and perhaps even important, combination.

Tobia approaches comedy in the same way that John Cassavetes did, which is to say that he embraces the absurdity of human behavior at the same time that he recoils from it.

Norte tells a big story on a grand scale, but its emphasis, moment by moment, is on the quotidian. It's simplicity that resonates most deeply of all.

The animals act like real animals, not like cartoons or humans, and that restraint gives their adventure an authenticity that, in moments of both delight and peril, makes the emotion that much more powerful. With the caveat that I’m a cat lover, I was deeply moved.

Force Majeure represents what is perhaps Östlund's most sophisticated thought experiment yet, at once provocative and wise. It is a penetrating study of that most ludicrous of social pretenses — masculinity, toxic and ubiquitous.

The faults and merits of the free-school movement are elucidated with a steely, journalistic rigor. More surprising is that this candid glimpse plays as exhilarating drama.

Reichert and Zaman level a perceptive, justly withering eye at the state of healthcare in the United States, careful to remind, if only implicitly, of the tragedy that necessitates these commendable acts of charity.

This is a film about the devastation of Inner Mongolia and the systematic annihilation of its migrant workers, but it is no mere coup d'œil of righteous advocacy. It is a work of film art.

One of its most refreshing aspects is its acceptance of both western and action-film conventions on their own terms, refusing to regard itself as operating outside of or superior to the genre.

White Reindeer concedes that much about Christmas is funny — its notions quaint, its fixtures cliched. But it proposes that beneath this sometimes lurid veneer lay something to cherish all the same.

The action in The Wrecking Crew is so good, its fights so brisk and its car chases so lively, that it makes you wish its muscular leads, Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista, had starred in more decent action movies.

The documentary “Glitch” is slyer and smarter than some of its paint-by-numbers dramatized contemporaries, and the story it prefers to tell is more interesting and complex than the battle of two domineering egoists who came up with a novelty app.

I suppose it doesn’t cohere into anything more than the sum of its parts. But this is the first time I’ve felt the anthology horror format really worked, and gosh, the parts are really good.

Greene seems fascinated by the contradictory identities — each a kind of real-life performance — that Burre endeavors to reconcile, and he is profoundly sensitive to the emotional truth these performances describe.

The humor is over-the-top and often exaggeratedly juvenile, but like many nominally “dumb” comedies, it’s the product of a keen and deliberate intelligence.

It’s not simply a movie about how Giannis became one of the most dominant players in the league. It’s about why Giannis is so lovable.

A funny and thoughtful high school comedy.

This is a film for which the landscape, both social and material, is paramount.

An exemplary mystery, a paranoid thriller rooted in contemporary technology but not crafted to denounce it.

Tender and exuberant, it includes set pieces modeled on “Footloose” and “Grease,” and feels closer to those films in spirit than to the Disney Channel. This is the kind of movie that vibrates with the energy of the people who made it, whose enthusiasm radiates from the screen.

The film expresses, with much style and sophistication (if, at nearly three hours, perhaps an overabundance of both), the personal tragedy of love torn apart, of watching helplessly as your life crashes hard into another's but fails to stick.

The Double taps into a deep reservoir of psychic turmoil even as it navigates the script’s abundant jokes, and the nightmare of the heart of the film is doubtless universal.

Yoo was granted exceptional access to San Quentin, and when she depicts the mundane qualities of life there — inmates working odd jobs, writing letters, passing the time alone in their cells — the movie gains some of the penetrating clarity of one of Frederick Wiseman’s films.

Lynch is a difficult influence to wield responsibly, yet Erkman keeps it largely under control: A Desert, if at times too ambitious, certainly feels distinct.

That winsome charm and gusto is infectious, as in a Central Park-set dance number with some of the Technicolor verve of an old Hollywood musical, and it manages to sustain this unflagging exuberance across its fleet 72-minute running time.

The infectious brio at the heart of “Bojangles” is a testament to the performances of the ensemble cast, but especially Duris and Efira, whose chemistry is magnetic.

Like Pez, the film is charming and colorful — and perhaps too sweet.

Silver locates the ordinary madness bubbling just beneath the surface of his own life, and flickers of lunacy abound.

They/Them/Us finds sharp humor in more relatable friction: namely between Charlie and Lisa (Amy Hargreaves) as they attempt to reconcile their domestic responsibilities with their voracious sexual appetites.

Jaeden Martell, Julian Dennison and Rachel Zegler, as the teens tasked with thwarting the apocalypse, make charming heroes — but it’s Mooney himself, as the loquacious stoner Garret, who is the film’s dopey MVP.

While sometimes grating, the film is always appealing, with pleasing details, down to its Art Deco end titles.

The director having fun is the presiding feeling here — which may account for why the movie is so frequently amusing, and occasionally delightful.

The film mounts a compelling case on behalf of what was, perhaps, a sort of genius — a rare gift for identifying talent in others and nurturing it, even amplifying it.

At its best, the film does the job of the albums lost to the floods: It captures a town's history.

The ensemble of children has a natural, authentic-seeming rapport, and Braff and Union, as the beleaguered but loving parents, have an easy, irresistible chemistry, buzzing with big-hearted charisma every time they share the screen.

This is portraiture for the Zhangke-acquainted. Admirers will find much of interest here, as Salles, scrupulously self-effacing, affords Jia the latitude to think and talk at his leisure — to speak at length, and candidly, about his work and what informs it.

It’s fast, witty, and packed with clever punchlines, though it still finds time for several scatological gags.

It’s a winning setup, and the director, Daryl Wein, escalates the action shrewdly, with clever rom-com engineering.

A wry take on the material that combines animation and live-action comedy, the movie has some of the hip flair and anarchic meta-humor of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” as well as an irreverent, self-referential attitude that’s rather appealing.

If the movie’s portrayal of rivalrous (and homoerotic) hypermasculinity doesn’t always seem original, it is nevertheless realized with seriousness and vigor.

Perhaps the richest of Resnais's recent efforts.

The result is a pleasure, perhaps as much for audiences as for Polanski; it's a chance to luxuriate in the atmosphere of world-class Formula One, here a lavish free-love party interrupted now and again by a few laps on the track.

Office Race, a ribald comedy from Jared Lapidus about an inveterate deadbeat reluctantly training for a marathon, understands one of the great unspoken truths about running: that it is a miserable, arduous, soul-destroying pastime, and also deeply, profoundly rewarding.

The “Dragon Ball” formula is repetitive and predictable. But it’s difficult to overstate how exquisitely gratifying that formula can be.

With compelling verve, “Hall of Shame,” from the director Bryan Storkel, tells the story of Conte’s ignominious rise and fall.

Sprouse plays it a touch broad, veering sometimes from endearing to goofy. But Condor is note-perfect, and Winterbauer directs with a light, playful touch, giving the movie an energy that’s nimble and vibrantly sexy.

This is pretty routine material, but it’s been realized with charm and enthusiasm: The director, Simon Cellan Jones, maintains a good handle on the comic-thriller tone and shoots the action with wit and creativity.

Martin and Peranson, a savvy pair, appreciate their outsider status here, and they remain uncommonly sensitive to even the subtlest ways that ignorance and entitlement may manifest themselves — both in art and in our relationship to it.

What ultimately holds the film back, I believe, is its tendency to err too far on the side of that sweetness — it indulges too often in the hallmarks of the mediocre indie, the stuff a press release might call quirk, to level its more substantial points with real seriousness.

The film is starved for the kind of nuance Kore-eda wields effortlessly elsewhere. What’s left without it is something merely schematic.

We Are as Gods is a mildly interesting documentary about a very interesting man.

The film articulates this dimension of the story, regrettably, in little more than biopic platitudes and daddy-issue clichés...But it's not all bad. Badgley delivers a nuanced performance of such ferocity he almost singlehandedly makes a conventional film seem loose and improvisatory.

When it isn’t fawning over roller rinks, “Goonies” posters, and Casio watches, 8 Bit Christmas (streaming on HBO Max) is a warm and refreshingly earnest holiday comedy.

Merrily We Roll Along is an OK movie of a good production of a great musical: on balance, another worthy addition to the Stephen Sondheim canon, which can always stand to be expanded.

Subject is at its clearest when interrogating the material conditions of documentary filmmaking, as during a segment about whether the subjects of nonfiction films have the right to be paid for their participation; it feels slipperier when glossing issues of diversity and representation.

Holmes is a generous but indiscriminate director of actors: She has the tendency, not uncommon among actors turned directors, of extending a cast of inconsistent talent a degree of latitude better reserved for the heaviest hitters. (She doesn’t have this problem with her own performance, which is both compelling and well-situated in the context of the film.)

The story proceeds with all the flighty unreality of a film unconcerned with real-world scientific rigor... but Cahill manufactures enough conspiracies, coincidences, and extraordinary turns of plot to keep his thinking audience too busy to care.

Lily Sullivan plays this unnamed reporter with cagey, harried intensity, and she is more than capable of carrying this one-woman show.

The only serious liability is the script, which never quite goes far enough. The provocative questions don’t have provocative answers, and though the film gestures toward edginess, it feels altogether too tame, lacking a bunny-boiling moment that would really make you squirm.

“It is belief as much as anything that allows one to cling to a wall,” James Salter wrote in his mountaineering novel “Solo Faces.” The Sanctity of Space is at its best when conveying the power of that belief.

In the end, with only Hudson to deal with, Kijak gets the big picture.

Gentle has its charms, and August's vision of the world, archaic though it may willingly be, is appealingly urbane .

Fixed cameras lend themselves well to dimly lit effects and shrewd obfuscation, and McGinn proves a fine hand at stock-horror misdirection.

Just a Sigh's day-long liaison sustains interest largely for the appeal of Devos and Byrne, its accomplished leads — they share what is known in the rom-com lexicon as "chemistry," and this quality invigorates their time together, in bed and out.

The film repeatedly undercuts whatever tension is mustered with its frustrating tendency to crack goofy, juvenile jokes.

Only Howell truly embodies the spirit of the Old West.

Although she is buoyant and cheerful, Nikuko is cast as oafish and uncouth, and she is always ultimately the butt of the joke. It’s a puerile, mean-spirited tendency that altogether spoils the otherwise exquisite imagery.

When the kids are just doing kid stuff . . . Secret Headquarters has the playful, mischievous air of something like “The Goonies.” When the kids acquire some of the Guard’s superpowers and start flying around and fighting baddies, it has the air of … well, of just another superhero movie.

Logan, who also wrote the screenplay, feels so averse to engaging with the thorny political implications inherent in this material — of having to negotiate a cast of gay, transgender and nonbinary characters in a horror context — that the whole thing winds up seeming rather tame.

Though ostensibly a character study, it's nevertheless characterized by the vaguely moralizing tone of an issue film, one whose candor in the face of brutality seems calculated for maximum liberal appeal.

In flattening everything into a single shade of funereal gray, “No Future” has none of the ineffable, multifaceted complexity of life.

When The Angels' Share suddenly transforms, in its final act, into a kind of farcical heist picture, that fleeting slapstick tendency wins out, regrettably diminishing the film's social consciousness in the process.

A competent director can do only so much with a poor script, and Arcadian is littered with shortcuts and screenwriting clichés. It is vague to the point of careless, and often seems to be inventing rules for its monsters as it goes along.

Naturally, the guests are weirdos, though none are very memorable. And since Glover himself is the ultimate weirdo, it all feels a bit much.

I appreciate Shepard’s affection: I also grew up loving movies, and I found his wistful reminiscences of being awed by “Jaws” and “Star Wars” relatable. But Shepard’s level of self-regard can be stultifying.

There are slapstick foibles, sight gags about rubbers, and many, many vulgar jokes — some good for a laugh, though I doubt the film’s Oscar prospects.

Without Shepherds is all sprawl, a loose mélange of talking heads and landscape b-roll.

Nan Goldin: I Remember Your Face conjures the aura of Goldin's halcyon days with the ease of diaristic reminiscence, and for that it proves a valuable record. But on the subject of her cultural significance the film remains oddly quiet.

“Black + White” does feature plenty of Peterson’s music, including several cover renditions performed in tribute for the film by a contemporary ensemble. But at almost every opportunity, Avrich undermines these numbers by cutting to one of an endless lineup of talking heads, usually to repeat predictable platitudes about Peterson’s brilliance.

While Brooks deserves acclaim, he deserves it in a format as compelling and dynamic as he is. “Defending My Life” is simply too flat.

This attention to the personal crises of Segerstedt comes at the expense of a broader and more elusive subject, namely, the war. We know what Segerstedt did, and Troell tries to ask why. What he ignores are the implications.

It can be a preachy and po-faced movie, to be sure, but a handsome one.

Much of the dialogue feels canned and phony in the style of a badly written sitcom. But coming out of J. Lo’s mouth, I believed it.

The awe incited by the world is enough — no pontificating necessary, man.