G. Allen Johnson

Happiness might remain elusive in Nico’s last years, but after years of loneliness and fading fame, at least she can catch a glimpse from time to time.

There is much to think about in Far From the Tree, a worthy and at times tender film.

A consistently absorbing, often gripping, sometimes muddled whydidhedoit (because we already know whodunit), The Third Murder moves along Kore-eda’s customary careful, incisive pace, yet manages to be, for the most part, a riveting legal thriller.

Not only a portrait of a great artist, but a sensitive and engrossing depiction of the act of creation and its process.

What starts out as a bottom-feeder noir a la “Breaking Bad” or “Hell or High Water” transitions into scattershot ambitions of being a mythic tragedy.

In watching Ava, a visually inviting and sharp portrait of teenage life in Iran, one must admire how writer-director Sadaf Foroughi was able to play her own tune in life.

That Summer leaves me with Beale fatigue. It would seem to appeal to “Grey Gardens” completists only.

Word of warning: Don’t go to the theater with a full stomach. Some of the images of animal abuse are graphic and hard to watch, although this is rather tame compared with other documentaries on the same subject.

Escape means a roller-coaster finish, and with this delightful sequence achieved without the aid of computer effects, this “Ant-Man” entry stakes its own corner of the Marvel Universe sandbox as a throwback to ’80s-style childlike adventure.

McKay doesn’t take sides in the immigration debate, although he is clearly sympathetic of these hard-working young men who experience great indignities to work jobs most of us would not want. His approach is more cinema verite than high-stakes drama. It is almost a gentle, sweet film.

The film is an excellent reminder of how important soccer is globally. It’s more than a sport.

Lek gives Love & Bananas humanity, but Bell’s personality and enthusiasm is contagious, inviting us into the film. We root right along with her.

Suffice to say that McNeil plays it way too safe. Trying to have it both ways, he satisfies no one.

It’s colorful and imaginative, but other than Lu, the characters don’t have much depth. Emotional, that is, not oceanographic.

Sometimes the movie is a little too slick. Some of the characters, such as Sean’s girlfriend (Jacqueline Byers) and the FBI agents who begin to believe Sean’s story, are underdeveloped. But Tennant, excellent as a creep, and Sheehan, who is appealing in his helplessness, provide the necessary depth.

A film with no context, it is a sporadically interesting, overlong look at the legend as she nears 70, still performing before her legions of fans.

A cute and scruffy movie. Helena Bonham Carter, lending a female presence to the otherwise all-male story, charmingly narrates as Robert’s sister, who pieces together the Stubby legend from letters sent home.

It is such a soul-killing exercise in narcissism — and not a very smart thriller, either — that yeah, you can buy into the notion that Tinseltown is a total drag.

A film so rich and pleasurable you’d be forgiven if you thought about it each time you have a glass of red.

Still, I’m not sure Kiarostami really intended this film to be a movie. It seems more like an art installation. Of note is the terrific sound design; the sound is credited to Ensieh Maleki, who captures full, rich, peaceful sounds of nature.

Leaning Into the Wind asks us to appreciate art for art’s sake, and that’s not a tough ask at all.

A bleak, at times fascinating but strangely inert Chinese animated film.

Buoyed by an appealing lead performance by John Hawkes, Small Town Crime is a smart, sharply written detective story that, though not without humor, plays it straight and tough.

A moving, quite amazing documentary.

On the Beach at Night Alone is really Kim’s film. Her performance won her the best actress award at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, and she is in every scene, warts and all.

At 2 hours, 21 minutes, feels like a slow death by a thousand cuts.

For a documentary about one of the most prestigious opera institutions in the world, The Paris Opera has, maddeningly, very little opera.

A good, strong movie, but never threatens to be great. One salivates at the adventurous directions the film could have explored.

In the face of this relentless nihilism, it’s quite an achievement that the new documentary Wasted! The Story of Food Waste is so darned entertaining and hopeful, as well as informative.

A horror “comedy” about a deranged 12-year-old boy with a script that feels like it was written by a deranged 12-year-old boy.

Like many first-person medical documentaries — such as the recent “Gleason” — Unrest can be really hard to watch. Brea’s film, though, might be the beginning of hope for millions of sufferers who might see the film, and could be a conversation starter for additional funding into research.

It’s a quiet film that almost slips by without notice.

When explored by writer-director Mike White’s expert, soulful script, Brad, against all odds, becomes a sympathetic figure, and the film itself achieves a sort of poetry.

Salinger, who died in 2010 at age 91, probably would have hated this movie. If Jones doesn’t quite pull it off, it is at least a film of many pleasures and a thought-provoking look at American literature’s most famous loner.

The film is undeniably energetic, with a lot of good lines written by Shores, but it descends into obvious preachiness, and from this view, the unrelenting wackiness becomes overwhelming. Still, good times are had by all.

A play-it-safe film, with its chaos a little too controlled. But Bell’s examination of the institution of marriage has it insights, and there are laughs.

The problem with Birth of the Dragon, George Nolfi’s largely fictionalized account of a 1964 fight between an Oakland martial arts instructor named Bruce Lee and San Francisco instructor Wong Jack Man is that Lee...is the third-most important character in the film.

The Fencer, directed by Klaus Haro, is basically a “Hoosiers” remake — a true story set in a 1950s small town, in which a coach with a mysterious past arrives to shape a rag-tag bunch of kids into tournament contenders (there’s even a halfhearted romance that seems thrown in at the last minute in both films) — but that’s OK. It’s a winner here, too.

Hamm perfectly plays Walter as a sort of suave, GQ version of HAL 9000, and Davis and Robbins have their most satisfying feature film roles in years. Along with the pitch-perfect Smith, they provide the humanity to Almereyda’s vision of a species in danger of slipping into the void of selective memory and loss.

Nicolas Cage gives one of the best performances of his strange, courageous career.

Dreamy and elegantly filmed.

A spectacular failure, despite further evidence of the director's keen eye and bold cinematic ideas.

Leigh has a gift for demonstrating character from the outside in.

A movie that features rich Mexican American characters and an uncompromising story line is always timely.

Powered by the great Soviet director Mikhail Kalatozov ("The Cranes Are Flying") and the unmatched handheld black-and-white cinematography of Sergei Urusevsky, it is one of the most visually hypnotic films ever -- and that's not hyperbole.

There isn't a whole lot of fancy subplotting, just a potpourri of funny and engaging characters.

Now "Rod Tidwell," with Jerry Maguire as a supporting character, would be a movie to pay to see.

But then, just when it appears the race is lost, Steve James' love for his character and art form kicks in and wins the day, and, though flawed, Prefontaine is an engrossing portrait of a complex figure.

Excited with the possibilities of the relatively young film medium, Russia's Dziga Vertov took to the streets of Moscow, Odessa and Kiev to give us a portrait of an ever-changing world that is more essay than documentary. It's a 1929 silent film that added its punctuation in the lab - jump cuts, dissolves, split screens, etc. - to create an indelible work in cinema history. [13 Apr 2017, p.E8]

Classic in feel and loaded with sumptuous performances.

Perhaps a bit miscast, and with a penchant for too many double-takes, Perry nonetheless is game.

It is an important work, and a very good one.

What could have been an insightful, irresistible movie is instead a simple, self-contained fable, pleasing to look at but meaningless

A work at once detached and thrillingly intense, an experience where intellectualizing turns to a raw emotion so overwhelming, unexpected in its power, that you sit in your seat as the end credits roll, unable to move.

Playtime is sharp and colorful, and visually makes quite an impression.

A warm-hearted valentine to old traditions in China that are being obliterated by modern - and admittedly more efficient - technology.

A demanding, rewarding (if overlong) and - yes - a personally felt experience.

Kurosawa pulled out all the stops with Ran, his obsession with loyalty and his love of expressionistic film techniques allowed to roam freely.

SORRY, SALLY. I didn't like it. I really didn't like it.

Like sitting on the beach under a cozy, warm afternoon sun. The view is beautiful, but not much is happening and soon you drift peacefully to sleep.

You would think Towne would identify closely with a big young talent who flames out too early. But when Pre turns to Mary and says, "I can endure more pain than anyone I ever met," it seems forced, empty. Towne just doesn't capture his subject.

Cause for celebration. It's not only a cracking good film, but it is the first by Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien to gain a national (though limited) release.

It's simply terrible.

No amount of excellent period costuming and brilliant set decoration can substitute for a good story and decent acting.

An idiosyncratic, oddball movie that is funny and moody.

De Sica has to be considered one of the great directors of children, and the film, which won the first Academy Award for best foreign film and has been championed by Orson Welles and Martin Scorsese, is as valuable for its location shooting as its storytelling. [03 Jul 2011, p.P22]

Spoof both of P.I.s and independent filmmakers is languidly paced and not very funny.

Misses some creative opportunities to really drive this story home, but it's a naturally haunting story nonetheless.

About as warm, pleasing and inviting as a film about divorce, infidelity and terminal cancer can be.

It's a more intelligent and dimensional epic than, say, "Anna and the King." Emperor is worth every single penny.

Kiarostami's genius is elusive. His films may be unknowable, but they are undeniably hypnotic, charismatic.

Not much of a plot, but the trouble is that Shana Larsen's script, as directed by Risa Bramon Garcia, isn't very deep. Worse, none of the self-absorbed characters are that likable nor are they funny.

The weird thing about the films David Mamet has directed is that they have about as much emotion as a cyborg in a science fiction movie, yet by the end of the picture it isn't necessary; by then the audience has supplied their own.

The effect is riveting and frightening. You feel you are under siege with the combatants.

Quickly degenerates into a grueling piece of unpleasantness.

POSITIVE vibes aside, Down in the Delta is fairly simple stuff, with acting that at times sinks to the dialogue-of-agreement level of those after-school specials a network used to run a while back. But it will go down in history as the first film to be directed by Maya Angelou, and it isn't a bad one at that.

Dead Man on Campus, a supposed black comedy produced by MTV, is simply awful.

There is a point of view here, a rather strong one. It may sound like slight praise, but Love Jones is a movie that is exactly what it wants to be, and that's an achievement in a homogenized, test-marketed vanilla-movie landscape.

In tackling 1000 A.D., (McTiernan)'s suddenly an unwieldy, clunky filmmaker.

Bite the Bullet is epic Americana, gorgeously filmed, and a candidate for most underrated film of the 1970s. [10 Jun 2012, p.20]

To watch Ozu's films is to watch elegant simplicity, although they are meticulously complex. It's even a relaxing experience - you can almost feel your heart rate lowering - yet there is much human drama on the screen, and much wisdom.

The emphasis is on comedic interaction, not plot - too bad, "48 HRS" had both - but the pair adds spice to the predictable opposites-detract gags.

A guilty pleasure and one of the best films of the year.

An independent film so enamored of itself it refuses to have any fun.

It's a movie drenched in narcissism and wish-fulfillment, almost a textbook on how to make a formulaic, romantic film.

There's not a whole lot to Waking Ned Devine, but it may be enough for those who like their quirky comedies from the British Isles - a burgeoning genre now - both atmospheric and gentle.

Cholodenko's strategy of having the actors, in every scene -- whether it involves Lucy, the boyfriend or the Frame editors -- perform with an intonational flatness approaching monotone pretentiously undermines the effectiveness of her subject matter.

Troubling and troubled.

The real reasons to see it are Barrymore, Barrymore and Crawford, the beating hearts of the picture. [21 Jun 2018, p.E5]

The movie is meant to be uplifting and to the degree that you can ignore its unquestioning treatment of mental illness, I suppose it is.

It is possibly Kurosawa's most underrated masterpiece, rich in characterization and structure, yet lost in the shuffle among such classics as "Rashomon" and "Seven Samurai." [14 Sep 2008, p.N31]

The intention is there, but the needed emotional maturity isn't.

What we get are quirky characters who are such cartoons that they undermine the effectiveness of the scare scenes (Brad Dourif's turn as the weird doctor is an example) and well-composed camera angles that mean nothing.

Directed with a touch both delicate and muscular by the great Delmer Daves, it's truly a Western for those who don't like Westerns, and will be treasured by those that do. [02 Jun 2013, p.Q21]

A crowd pleaser that caters to our horror of totalitarianism, our love of personal freedom, our belief - justified or deluded - that knowledge is a powerful tool and that access to information is a God-given right.

An entirely unconventional, hypnotic, meandering film.

The only film sequels in history that just keep getting better.

Minghella is an artist and he has painted himself a masterpiece.