Eric Kohn

While the rules of her conundrum never quite coalesce and some of the twists feel shoehorned, The Intruder generates so much intrigue to maintain a breathless pace and unsettling atmosphere at every turn, with Rives’ layered performance fusing the strange trip together.

The closing minutes are a completely original sort of survival drama, one that defies precise explanation even as it delivers significant payoff.

The Meaning of Hitler doesn’t have to make sense of this decade’s chaos to clarify just how much it remains vulnerable to the same complaisant attitudes exploited by the German leader decades ago. The movie isn’t just another cautionary tale; it’s a jagged intellectual wakeup call that cuts deep, and America can’t hear it enough.

In its revelations of Salinger's flaws, the documentary capably strips away the fanaticism associated with his books to create the impression of a human being.

While hardly reinventing the wheel, Donald Cried spins it faster than usual, taking cues from its memorably irritating protagonist. Beneath its entertainment value, the movie also hints at the tragedy of aimless adulthood.

So much of Welles’ history has been relegated to scholarly texts that it’s a thrill to see this final chapter laid out with such clarity and charm.

Chukwu maintains an impressive command over her material, but Woodard herself becomes the movie’s central storyteller.

Director Alonso Ruizpalacios’ exciting and unpredictable look at a pair of Mexico City police officers blends documentary and narrative techniques to deliver a refreshing and innovative look at the challenges of modern-day police work — as well as the underlying corruption that makes the most earnest officers vulnerable to a system rigged against them.

The movie deals less with awkwardness of this comedic scenario than the emotions it creates for its central duo, and the psychological struggle when words can only go so far.

Amazing Grace is soulful ear candy. But Franklin’s sweaty, impassioned delivery, which galvanizes her audiences with an electric charge, extends her awe-inspiring musical convictions beyond religious euphoria. It’s a rousing portrait of creativity as a unifying force.

Estevez treats the drama with a straight-faced, utterly earnest approach with dual respect for the material and the audience's awareness of how it can go wrong. By playing it straight, The Way never goes off the deep end.

This is pop art by way of lowbrow slapstick, with a premise that suggests "Cast Away" meets "Weekend at Bernie's," but really feels like a lunatic's idea of a big, broad studio comedy — or maybe a mad scientist's.

No matter its overarching ridiculousness, The Handmaiden remains a hugely enjoyable dose of grotesque escapism from a master of the form.

Magic Mike XXL keeps its aspirations low enough to satisfy only the simplest of expectations; at the end of the day, it's just another party, but sometimes a party is just good enough.

The movie presents its plot like a ridiculous gamble, and keeps pulling it off, somehow managing to justify its existence.

Cold-blooded killers rarely look this pathetic, which testifies to the impressive balance of Skarsgård's amusingly low-key performance.

Blue Jasmine belongs to Blanchett, who appears in almost every scene and frees it from the limitations of Allen's style, pushing it to far sharper results than any of the more traditional movies, good and bad, that he's churned out in the past dozen or so years.

Miller applies Gerwig to the center of a busy story with simple themes, but it glides along so effortlessly that its reductive qualities barely register. The filmmaker's exceedingly smart screenplay is the real plan, and Gerwig's performance puts it into action.

In its finer moments, however, Lee translates the book's wondrous prose into grand visual conceits meant for the big screen. Posited as a story that "will make you believe in god," instead it has the power to confirm one's faith in the cinematic experience.

In Towheads, every comic bit is weighted with an awkward blend of sadness and irreverent humor.

The movie is a visual investigation into the roots of sexual liberation in societies steeped in repression. Watching it from start to finish is a means of engaging with the inquiry at its center.

Eventually, Soo-hyun's relentless pursuit-and-release approach outlives the director's skill and the premise starts to feel redundant.

The scariest aspect of The Boy is the extent to which Macneill makes it possible to sympathize with the troubled protagonist — even as its haunting final shot hints at the horrors yet to come.

Drawing on interviews with 10 experts and internet theorists with an endearing mashup of film clips and trippy 3-D animation, A Glitch in the Matrix adapts to the internal logic of its echo chamber until starts to sound pretty convincing on its own terms. If you’re not already one of the diehards convinced we’re living in a simulation, this movie might actually get you there.

“Shoemaker of Dreams” works as well as it does because Guadagnino fills each moment with such delight for his subject that it’s impossible not to end up consumed by that spell.

Treasuring small victories and mood above all else, Land Ho! makes it possible to engage with its subjects' pathos and experience their sense of renewal along with them.

At its core, A Screaming Man emphasizes the strength of family bonds. It's a sad, moving portrait that has nothing to do with its chaotic setting.

If nothing else, this memorable effort eloquently displays Hushpuppy's fragile understanding of her world, where the only certainty is that nothing lasts forever. That makes "Beasts" into a gigantic triumph even when it falls apart.