Chris Nashawaty

If you look at The Post next to something like All the President’s Men, you see the difference between having a story passively explained to you and actively helping to untangle it. That’s a small quibble with an urgent and impeccably acted film. But it’s also the difference between a very good movie and a great one.

In the end, the answer may be only slightly deeper than “because it’s there”, but for 100 nerve-racking minutes, Free Solo brings us one man’s suicidal quest with sympathy, grace, and a ton of adrenalin.

Gere, an actor capable of great nuance, hams it up so mightily you’d think the film was sponsored by Boar’s Head.

In the best scene, which comes late in the film, James holds his dying mother and shares a vision of their future that they both know she’ll never get to see.

A dizzyingly tense and creepy workout.

It’s the quiet, simple moments between Olli and Raija that stick with you, whether he’s giving her a ride on the handlebars of his bicycle on their way to a country wedding or skipping stones across the smooth surface of a lake.

Hepburn doesn’t know whom to trust and neither does the audience, which is what makes this Hitchcock-lite thriller so much fun. The chemistry between the two leads — something surprisingly missing between Depp and Jolie — is electric.

Yes, Locke is a bit of a storytelling stunt: For the entirety of the movie, Ivan is the only character on screen. But even with nothing to cut away to and no flashbacks to offer context, the film manages to stay as tight as a vise.

The Woman Who Left may not be a movie for everyone, but if you allow yourself to settle into its leisurely tempo and marinate in its heroine’s journey, it can be a richly rewarding experience.

In the end it’s a movie about legacy, and it more than preserves the Rocky franchise’s. It reminds you why it was great in the first place.

Petzold walks the tricky tightrope of being both timeless and timely, the performances (especially those of Rogowski and Beer) are chillingly good, and the ambiguous final shot is damn near perfect. In Transit, the past is prologue… and it’s devastating.

The Love Witch is so thin that if it turned sideways it would be invisible. It’s like a Bewitched episode stretched out to two hours. But boy, is it gorgeous to look at.

Like Caesar and company, the films seem to be getting more intelligent and human as they evolve.

If you’re willing to surrender to his singular vision, you might just walk out of the theater seeing the world in a new way — which is probably more than you can expect from the new Kevin Hart comedy.

As sharp and slick as Steve Jobs is, it ends up feeling more interested in entertainment than enlightenment.

While its strange rhythms may not be for everyone, it does provide something unusual in today’s movies: a truly original experience for the mind and the soul.

It isn’t until the wonderful Gladstone comes along with her aching tomboy heartache and sad seeking eyes that the film finally burrows below the surface and finally hits a dramatic nerve. Unfortunately, by then, it’s too little too late.

With a taut and timely screenplay by Taylor Sheridan, Sicario is a brilliant action thriller with the smarts of a message movie.

If you enjoyed 2013’s Pacific Rim but secretly wished it was more like a vapid Transformers sequel, then you’ll love Pacific Rim Uprising. Everyone else can give this heavy-metal howler a hard pass.

As brilliantly funny as Chris Rock is, he's never been able to replicate the high-voltage danger and electricity of his stand-up act on the big screen. But in his latest film, the sharply satirical Top Five, he not only makes a case for why he should be a bona fide movie star, he also proves he's a writer-director to be reckoned with.

Yimou’s lovely import is the kind of lump-in-your-throat drama they don’t make much anymore, at least in Hollywood. Watching Coming Home you’ll wonder why that is — and who we can write a letter to to fix it.

Bridge of Spies is like Capra with a dash of le Carré.

The most haunting thing in Bennett Miller's latest film, Foxcatcher, is Steve Carell. That's right, the same rubber-faced comedian who gave us the dim-witted meteorologist of "Anchorman" and the oblivious corner-office boob of "The Office."

Raw is unsettling and repulsive and, believe it or not, occasionally funny. It’s got audacity and style, and it packs an undeniably wicked punch.

Anderson's film is something to be experienced, like a psychedelic drug trip where the journey trumps the destination. Unfortunately, his journey just didn't do it for me.

The best documentaries reveal the ways in which truth can be stranger (and wilder and weirder) than fiction. And director Tim Wardle’s stunning and tragic Sundance sensation, Three Identical Strangers, is stranger (and wilder and weirder) than most.

A love letter to the theater—and a deeply poignant one at that—Lonny Price’s sentimental documentary Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened… is a bittersweet gem.

Shot in inky black and white, Ana Lily Amirpour's fractured Farsi fright flick has a spooky, otherworldly quality. It's like an early Jim Jarmusch indie set in Little Tehran at 4 a.m.