G. Allen Johnson

Ultimately, Marriage Story celebrates life and the journeys all of us are on. Noah Baumbach is the writer-director, and to watch such an incisive, deep-feeling script be given life by actors — Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and those around them — at the top of their game is to rediscover movies as a powerful medium of personal expression.

It is full of joy and laughter, as well as tears. It is about many things, among them sisterhood, the difficulties of parenting, processing trauma in a patriarchal society, and religious extremism. But most of all, it’s filled with life, and all the triumphs and pleasure, pain and disappointments that go with it.

A fascinating documentary that seems to unfold over real time.

It is quite simply one of the great “making of” documentaries of all-time — a short list that includes the George Hickenlooper-Eleanor Coppola documentary “Hearts of Darkness.”

The Blue Caftan, like its title garment, has a handmade, lived-in quality, an authenticity that marks Touzani — a former journalist making her second feature — a director to watch.

Even more so than the original, the gravity-defying Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is as close to a moving comic book as one can get.

If you thought you didn’t like William Shatner, see this movie to have your mind changed. And if you already like him, get ready to love the guy.

Sing Sing is also a celebration of the creative expressiveness of live theater and its possibilities.

It is filled with lavish battle scenes and sharply scripted intrigue, and is among Kurosawa's greatest triumphs. [17 Apr 2005]

Adapted from Justin Torres’ debut novel from 2011, Zagar’s bravura direction, with a visual style by cinematographer Zak Mulligan, is lyrical and poetic in an approach that would suggest Terence Malick, complete with wistful narration by the film’s young protagonist.

An exquisite achievement.

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.

The linchpin is Johnson, who turns in a vulnerable yet confident performance as an always chill woman who might be too willing to make a relationship work, a role she’s mastered since starring in the “Fifty Shades” trilogy.

The most passionate love affair in The Souvenir is with film. Hogg utilizes an almost cinema verite style, with a visual look of the grainy kind of 16mm film an ’80s film school student would work with. Her style is reminiscent of early Olivier Assayas or Éric Rohmer’s “The Green Ray” (1986), an acknowledged influence.

The absorbing rags-to-riches-to-rags story — a must for any classic film fan — is told in The Most Beautiful Boy in the World, directed by Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri.

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.

The Boy and the Heron is unquestionably a personal vision, with its own internal logic. It has a direct conduit with the mind of its creator, who happens to be a genius and one of the best to ever do it. If this is it for Miyazaki, well, what a finish.

Aided by sumptuous cinematography (Eduard Grau), a haunting score (Alberto Iglesias) and eye-popping production design (Inbal Weinberg) – there’s always a font of interior decorating ideas in an Almodóvar film – Martha’s journey toward the great unknown has everything but a light at the end of the tunnel.

This movie has everything but Humphrey Bogart, and I'm sure he's sorry he was unavailable.

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

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

Classic in feel and loaded with sumptuous performances.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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