David Rooney

It’s perverse, juicy fun of a kind we don’t get much of anymore.

Builds steadily through a series of masterfully orchestrated modulations to a final act without shattering revelations or lofty dramatic peaks but with a quiet, formidable power.

An emotionally charged account of the ongoing fight of the African-American community of Ferguson, Missouri, to be treated as equal citizens, the film, like the movement it documents, is stronger on impassioned conviction than organization.

Few are going to rate The Christophers as top-tier Soderbergh, but it bats about ideas pertaining to art, commerce, ownership and legacy with dexterous aplomb and boasts two equally superb leads who make the material crackle.

This is the kind of contemplative cinematheque piece that washes pleasurably over you, inviting the viewer to tune in or out, to free-associate or locate the subtle connections and recurring themes as Cohen trains his restless, inquisitive gaze on faces and features that represent a wide spectrum of life.

While that awkward final section shows Jia's lack of assurance working in English, the misstep is instantly erased in a beautiful concluding sequence that reaffirms the film's aching depth of feeling and extraordinary sense of place.

It’s full of flashy technique and ostentatious stylistic flourishes but has almost nothing of note to say about the supposed burdens of privilege.

It’s clearly a labor of love, a unique reflection on an unforgettable summer, inviting us to share in a moment of communal spirit which now seems to belong to another world.

Even if the movie kind of stalls midway as Schaffer struggles to balance the gags with the action of an overly elaborate crime plot, there are enough laugh-out-loud moments to keep nostalgic fans of the earlier films happy and maybe make some new converts.

The director’s customary delicacy, compassion and sensitivity ripple through the drama, though its affecting moments of illumination are more intermittent than cumulative.

If you must make another entirely predictable comedy about an unapologetic old white curmudgeon who steamrolls all opposition, you can't do better than draft the redoubtable Shirley MacLaine to keep audiences in her barbed corner while we wait for her inevitable bittersweet humanization.

This is an elegiac story, a humanistic metaphor for a vanishing world seen through the prism of a vulnerable couple cruelly written off by their families as worthless encumbrances.

What in lesser hands might have been just another tiresome COVID-19 quickie, locking us into a reality we’re all desperate to escape, becomes a tautly suspenseful nail-biter in Kimi, thanks to tirelessly eclectic director Steven Soderbergh and seasoned screenwriter David Koepp.

The young nonprofessional actors are a fresh, natural bunch, even if the bandmembers might have benefited from more individual character development.

While Brawl in Cell Block 99 remains gripping and unpredictable throughout, the two-and-a-quarter-hour running time does feel a tad bloated, and the movie might benefit from being trimmed by 20 minutes or so into a tauter edit.

It elegantly upgrades a key player in the Elvis legend from the sidelines, and anyone attuned to Coppola’s distinctive wavelengths will find it a pleasurably emotional experience.

A highly accomplished, compact feature, which, while it may be light on depth, is rich in humor, rhythm, energy and inventiveness.

A slippery psychological drama that starts out talky and perhaps intentionally distancing but becomes retroactively gripping once its big switch is revealed, this is a darkly playful deconstruction of the indie filmmaking process that digs into the artist-muse dynamic and the power structures in relationships, constantly teasing the viewer as to what's real and what's part of the writer character's imagination.