Farran Smith Nehme

Farhadi brings keen discernment to this unraveling marriage, and a third-act revelation packs a wallop.

More likely to play well with older children, due to its split-up story line, Ocelot's creation is like nothing else they are likely to see animating the multiplex.

The film shows how quiet exteriors can mask deep interior lives, and how art feeds those lives. The view of art is richly intellectual, sometimes enthralling. But I confess, I liked Museum Hours best for answering a question I’ve always had: What is that guard thinking?

He may be saddled with an overly ironic title role, but Bystrov is terrific. His cowboy squint and dogged intelligence are enough to give you hope for Russia, although the movie certainly won’t.

The friction between a couple of still-struggling artists sounds rather depressing, but in fact the film is often funny; it shows that love is present in even the couple’s harshest exchanges.

The Soviet era is more interesting than the NHL years, but still, the film is entertaining even for ardent nonfans.

The results are remarkably intelligent and entertaining, even for someone who (like this writer) finds Cave’s music rather dirge-like.

Hamer’s style is what might happen if Ulrich Seidl liked people, with immaculate balance in each shot, but the emotions in focus, as well. 1001 Grams is wise about both grief and the need for romance.

Brazilian director Anna Muylaert’s deft, funny film is set in São Paulo, but the class distinctions shown have no borders.

A Hijacking is Lindholm’s second feature as director; he’s also worked with such austere Danes as Thomas Vinterberg of Dogme 95 fame. What he’s learned, it seems, is how to strip away distractions, and let character become suspense, as well as destiny.

Director Grímur Hákonarson excels at building tension through long takes, and the actors are excellent.

You may or may not connect Brinkley to a certain presidential candidate, but, either way, this is one of the most entertaining documentaries to come along in some time.

A sudden lurch into trippy abstraction at the end simply doesn’t work, but for the vast majority of the time this is a strong and original film.

This enigma-delivery system from a sharp mind has enthralling moments but becomes a bit enervating in its self-seriousness. By the end, the whole thing feels more academic than mind-bending.

Pablo Berger’s Blancanieves is the purest, boldest re-imagining of silent cinema yet.

Ethical objections to Milgram’s work are presented as killing the messenger; well-known issues with his methodology appear not at all. The movie’s an intellectual shock tactic, but it succeeds.

Lifetime movies have their pleasures, and so does this film. Chief among them is the cast, a group of over-45 actresses who really are better than ever; in the cases of Brooke Shields and Daryl Hannah, remarkably better.

What makes the movie so delightful is that Wadjda isn’t trying to make trouble; she’s just being herself. A shot of the system of wire hangers attached to her radio so she can pick up Western music stations sums up her can-do attitude.

The on-camera experts make intelligent, earnest points, but the Web means there’s no such thing as a real ban. Indeed the movies have always been available, as two former neo-Nazis point out.

Pigeon, in its deadpan, hyper-composed way, is often paralyzingly funny, and there is compassion for the gray-faced souls wandering through it.

Hollywood has been yukking it up over North Korea and its comical-looking leader for some years now. There’s nothing funny about either, and Mansky shows why.

The adventurous souls who stick with it, however, will find head-spinning images and a cumulative impact that does, in fact, amount to a story.

Meier's tight focus on her primary characters pays off: Seydoux brings a strong array of emotions to a highly unsympathetic part. And Klein, whether plugging his ears with cigarette filters or suddenly embracing a woman he barely knows, is heartbreaking.

The film fragments into an emotionally devastating parable about what enforced silence does to an artist.

The young, novice actors are charming, but they haven’t completely mastered the art of natural-sounding dialogue.

It only seems plotless. Momentous things happen, one of them tele­graphed in a single heartbreaking shot. The sense of time and place is so intense that Jules’ way of life seems to be disappearing even as we watch him.

Not everyone will be in tune with the movie's sick sense of humor, although it's sometimes hilarious.

Despite a too-tidy wrap-up, it’s a humane film, one that sees the war as a tragedy for the Afghans, not just Western soldiers.