Farran Smith Nehme

There are so many echoes of “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” that it starts to feel like a barely disguised sequel. But those reminders, and the rather trite journey-of-self plot, are just decoration. This tender film works to remind us of how much we still love Deneuve, and succeeds in scene after scene.

Lore is the sort of movie you’d already expect to rip your heart out, but that doesn’t diminish the tragedy when it does arrive.

Terry’s talent is so magical that you may wish there were longer snippets of his playing. Still, this is a wonderful portrait of two artists strengthened by friendship.

A groundbreaking, highly influential film, A Man Vanishes is a fiercely brilliant piece of work, but it's more intellectual challenge than pleasure.

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

Darci Picoult’s script renders all of these characters, if not always sympathetically, humanly and fully.

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.

Breakup at a Wedding works, because Quinaz has come up with a concept that lets him skewer directorial pretension alongside wedding hysteria.

The closing subtitle says that no one was ever prosecuted for this madness. The pure-archive approach leaves a taste of despair; civic governance, it seems, can’t even promise not to kill you.

If this documentary is swift and witty, that’s in part because it relies heavily on clips of Orson Welles talking. And oh, how Welles could talk, that beautiful voice wrapping itself around tall tales and wine commercials with equal grace.

The film is nominated for this year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar, and it doesn’t deserve to snatch the prize from the towering likes of “Ida,” “Timbuktu” or “Leviathan.” Yet in its gaudy, predictable way, Wild Tales is enormous fun, and the consistent wit of the quiet stretches shows there’s more to Szifrón than shock tactics.

The Wall winds up as a captivating fable, an end-times scenario that’s more about the survival of the spirit than the body.

It’s a sympathetic portrait of an artist whose heart lay more with new work than old glories, right up to the end.

It’s a truly interesting slasher fest; in this one, the heroine gets to be both beauty and beast.

The movie's most exciting when the precision and jaw-dropping nerve of the gang holds center stage.

It’s a film heavily dependent on tone and atmosphere for its charm, the budding relationship shown through things like a lovely twilight bike ride down a hill to the shops below.

We know Paris never went anywhere, and the film’s a little too flashy and theatrical, with too-neat ironies. As a duel between acting talents, though, this is first-rate.

The bright palette of Reality is an obvious way to underline the hero’s unraveling, but it looks good, and it works.

In addition to the magnificent music, the movie takes its rumpled charm from Fry's unfeigned fanboy manner.

There isn’t a lot here about her films, or great performances, but this is two hours of Ingrid Bergman, much of it rarely seen before. I’m not about to complain.

The film is both elegiac and amazingly retro, like the nature specials that baby boomers were weaned on - although it's not for animal lovers, unless you have a specific grudge against sables. "Happy People" is the title, but it's virtually all men.

The remarkable performances from the central trio are what carries the film.

In the poignant, symmetrical end, Touré leaves the idea that the real yearning of these people is for a fair shake in their own home.

Directors Matthew Pond and Kirk Marcolina wisely keep this unrepentant charmer, in her 80s during filming, on-camera, save for when they’re interviewing fascinated writers and fed-up prosecutors.

Gibran’s book was huge in the 1960s, and it feels fresher here than it has in ages, although the visuals are stronger than the music.

John Maloof’s documentary has an opening both apt and witty: Talking heads, one after the other, struck dumb by the mystery at hand.

For those willing to lock into Reygadas’ mad wavelength, the beauty is worth the puzzlement.

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.