David Fear

It's a revolutionary movie in more ways than one.

The movie’s b&w images of craggy landscapes and shirtless young men have never looked more vibrant.

Even more than the gloriously gross-out stuff, designed for big laughs and OMG body-horror reactions, it’s the blunt, unfiltered way they treat the ties that bind these two women that sticks with you. The humor is hormonal. Everything else is pure heart.

What’s remarkable is how [Torres] never overplays anything, or goes for easy histrionics and rending of garments even when the movie itself becomes heavy-handed in the back half.

While the director doesn't hide her sympathies, she leaves remarkably few stones unturned in a dogged search for answers.

The fact that it adds an ode to intergenerational storytelling, a parody of time-travel narratives, some oddball left-turns, and a near-transcendent coda that feels very much in line with Kaufman’s body of work — all while still giving the kids what they want — makes this more than a cut above your average rainy-afternoon distraction. It’s really a low-key blast.

This is a tale that’s carefully crafted as much as told, with hints hiding in plain sight and surreal touches that add more to the vibe than the momentum. But you never feel like you’re in the hands of someone who doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing.

A worthwhile portrait of a genius who made beautiful music, and a case study for how to tragically, epically self-destruct.

A first-rate piece of forensic filmmaking.

To make a Western now is in itself a subversive act. Improving, embellishing and reclaiming an old-fashioned oater from the vintage studio-cheese bin with such humor and vigor seems truly, truly ballsy.

Russell, to his everlasting credit, has made a film in which having cockeyed optimism, at this moment in the world, somehow feels like a radical act. For a movie that is all over the place, it’s determination to get back to a bygone moment isn’t just wishful thinking. It suggests, in own roundabout way, that a return to the past can also signal the beginning of a fresh start.

Patel’s pet project is as much a mash note to a way of presenting bloody-knuckled spectacle as it is a standard thriller.

It’s not as gamechanging as that snare drum that opens “Like a Rolling Stone.” But it still feels damn near electric.

As you watch these actors, you appreciate the endeavor the climbers went through all the more — and as triumph turns to tragedy, you feel the grief winding its way through your shaken nervous systems.

This is a saga of self-realization, filtered through both the spirit of free play and the sense that it’s not all fun and games in the real world — a doll’s story that continually drifts into the territory of A Doll’s House.

For many of us staring down the next four years, the idea that a community can come together to take on the rising tides couldn’t be more welcome or needed.

Every so often, you get the gift of watching an under-the-radar actor bloom into a critical-mass phenomenon before your bloodshot eyes: Franka Potente in "Run Lola Run," or Christoph Waltz in "Inglourious Basterds." Add Noomi Rapace to the list; what she does with the title character of this Swedish thriller-cum-pop-lit-adaptation will spawn cults of swooning Rapacephiles stat.

Somehow, amidst all of the shifting perspectives and timeframes and overall blurring of lines, it also manages to move you to tears even as it leaves you bewildered and unmoored.

Buckley hasn’t had a million portraits sketched of him, much less to this degree. The singularity of It’s Never Over, along with the access and the candor, makes up for a lot here.

It’s a tale of lonely souls and literalized online dating, and you assume filmmaker Spike Jonze will characteristically mix high-concept absurdism with heartfelt notions. Unexpectedly, the latter dominates, thanks in no small part to Phoenix’s nuanced, open-book performance.

Mostly, you see a prolific artist going out playing—an unsentimental, salt-of-the-earth tribute that keeps the beat in a way that would make this extraordinary journeyman beam.

This surreal, sentimental journey does provide an excellent encapsulation of everything Ruiz did best: oddball takes on highbrow lit and lowbrow genre conventions, guided tours of characters’ mazelike memory banks, and a reveling in film culture that doubles as a cinephile’s wet dream.

It needs a Soderbergh, who invests this tale of outrunning and outgunning organizations — be they sports leagues or studios tied to old distribution/exhibition models — with a sense of energy, verve and mischievous glee.

The film’s title doubles as its own description. And the fact that they damn near pull it off is enough to make you feel you’ve also been awakened from a long, deep sleep in which you were forced to settle for large, loud, cine-extravaganzas that forgot there’s supposed to be a human factor in any of it. Rise and shine, folks. You’ve got something to actually see here.

This is humanistic drama done right.

It’s a posthumous gift to Päffgen. Even her death, shown here as Nico leaving her house on a sunny Ibiza day, bike in hand and a colorful door closing behind here, is presented with a sense of grace. Nicciarelli spares us nothing but still gives her dignity on way out.

It's only a slight exaggeration to say Kold gives what may be the performance of the year - one that not only offsets the movie's momentary dips into self-conscious quirkiness but adds a genuine sweetness to the proceedings. Forget the muscles; he brings the heart and soul.

Forget the title: Jackass can’t go on forever. Just enjoy one last chance to see these beautiful f*ck-ups do what they do best before they limp and hobble off into the sunset.