Glenn Kenny

Has a warmth that’s utterly enchanting, and a tenderness that’s genuinely touching. This is a real gem.

Director Julie Taymor's gargantuan all-Beatles-songs musical is that rarest of animals, the perfect disaster that fulfills expectations by defying them.

In the battle of the leading men, Crowe's character has a slight edge, and the actor really makes the most of it, showing us how boyishly mischievous charm and utter venality can exist without seeming contradiction in the same being. But Bale builds to a pretty impressive boil himself after laying back for about three quarters of the film.

Despite its shortcomings, there are things about this film that are hard to shake; the movie’s ultimate wisdom and overarching compassion make it very likely that you won’t want to shake them, after all.

Syriana depicts a system so thoroughly and intractably rotten that the standard liberal how-you-can-make-a-difference solutions--being more conscientious about using electricity, getting a hybrid car, and so on--only look like so much spit in the face of an atomic fireball.

Swartzwelder, going for “thoughtful,” instead achieves “glacial.” A romance wants to sweep viewers up, not bog them down. Still, Old Fashioned is both unusual and intelligent enough that, despite it not being entirely MY cup of tea, I’m hoping that it’ll succeed at doing at least a little more than addressing the converted.

Filmmakers have arguably lost the plot, turning “War is hell” into a “Can you top this?” competition.

Appears at first to take a more macro perspective on gay rights. But it tells a big story indeed.

A Cop Movie, directed by Alonso Ruizpalacios, is exceptionally challenging to begin with. As the movie unspools, and the layers of its production become clearer, we understand the challenge is the movie’s entire objective—up to a point.

It's kind of amusing to see slinky Christina Aguilera sing the "Live With Me" line about a score of harebrained children, as she clearly hasn't got the faintest idea of what that means.

Moncrieff’s overriding theme here isn’t empowerment but survival. The movie crams a hell of a lot of dysfunction into its 88 minutes.

An epic treatment of epic themes that doesn't soft-soap its audience, but at the same time provides a terrifically satisfying entertainment.

[Mr. Léaud's] riveting, and a little alarming. As for Mr. Serra, while he often enjoys playing the foppish provocateur in his interviews, his film is sober, meticulous and entirely convincing in its depiction of period and mortality.

It's rare that a picture that deals with as much tragedy as this one also manages to convey as much warmth to its characters.

The character dynamics are recognizable in the way they hew to genre conventions. But the details provided in the writing, and by the two leads’ performances, add distinctive details and dimension here. This makes the film’s harrowing action all the more believable.

As it happens, this movie is an expansion of Ms. Pourriat’s 2010 short film, “Oppressed Majority,” which was a punchier, and not particularly comedic, allegory of sexual assault. That picture can be found on YouTube; I don’t think it’s good either, but it’s more genuinely thought-provoking than its expansion.

Ghostbox Cowboy feels like a William Gibson adaptation directed by David Lynch and Jean-Luc Godard — while not directly lifting from or nodding to those artists. It’s rare that a release so late in the year is so noteworthy, but this is a genuine find.

The moviemakers craft a satisfying narrative while leaving the viewer with some questions; this is a movie that manages to be disquieting and entertaining simultaneously.

The terrific cast all delves into the material full-bore, which contributes to its peculiar resonance. Perry may hate everyone and everything, but in making a show of it, he’s thoroughly entertaining.

By turns harrowing and stirring, it’s a shame-inducing history lesson that never feels like a lecture.

The movie exhilarates.

Murina is a slow burn of a movie, one that doesn’t end in a detonation but with an enigma. Nevertheless, it’s one of the more coherent and satisfying narrative releases of the year.

The Broken Lizard guys don't so much send up a genre as inhabit it, and subvert it from the inside.

Before the heartbreak, there are outlandish and often funny stories about iconic album covers.

Intelligently written and beautifully acted throughout, it’s a good, and rare, example of what we used to refer to as a movie for adults. Adults, be advised.

Directed by Silas Howard from a screenplay by Daniel Pearle, who adapted his own stage play, A Kid Like Jake is humane, compassionate and strangely detached, almost to the point of inconsequentiality.

Pretty people behaving poorly in beautiful settings is something we don’t see as much of in cinema as we used to. This is a master class in the subgenre, and one of unusual depth.

Stronger takes more artistic risks than any other American-made “inspired by true events” picture I can recall.

There are laughs and uncomfortable observations throughout, but Tsangari never lays on too heavy a hand. One is free to contemplate the allegorical and satirical implications, but also free to enjoy the spectacle of self-imposed insecurity that plays out among these characters.

This consistently ridiculous movie, written and directed by Leo Zhang, does offer Jackie Chan mixing it up at a magician’s rehearsal (he pulls a rabbit from a hat) and Jackie Chan kickboxing at the top of the Sydney Opera House.

The movie is grisly and its sense of humor is mordant, but it winds up communicating a heartbreak that’s pretty straightforward, all things considered.

This effervescent picture has an often infectious underground-movie aesthetic.

This movie grabs you by the heart quickly and doesn’t let up the stress for any significant amount of time.

The movie, directed by Jon Weinbach, offers several eye-opening mini-narratives on the way to a rematch with Argentina.

The new perspective Scott and Zaillian want to bring to this material never gels convincingly, and despite some effective set pieces, a cast of memorable faces and attitudes, and evocative cinematography by Harris Savides, this would-be epic feels tired and rote.

It is a daring and assured subversion of conventional film language that will likely infuriate certain viewers and reward others.

Stewart recounts how he thought that if his films could make people love these animals, he could push popular opinion against their being hunted. He doesn’t quite pull this off here, despite impressive footage of him swimming with sharks. He does, however, convince us that these superpredators are important to oceanic ecosystems and that because they are so indiscriminate in their eating habits, they are full of toxins.

Asteroid City, his latest collaboration with cinematographer Robert Yeoman, may be the most incandescently beautiful of all their movies so far. Additionally, its emotional impact is substantial. Imagine a gorgeous butterfly landing on your heart and then squeezing on that heart with sharp pincers you never knew it had.

Demme here shows off both the mastery of suspense that made "The Silence of the Lambs" a classic, and the humane understanding and appreciation of character that not just deepens but energizes this film.

The wisdom of this meticulously crafted film is in its genuine irony, which amplifies steadily throughout until culminating in a moment of real heartbreak that, ironically enough, only sets the stage for a cycle of deceit to begin again.

Nothing Compares is a worthwhile appreciation of the artist.

The spirit of Claude Lanzmann, whose monumental Shoah remains a nonpareil cinematic text on the Holocaust, lingers over and around Final Account, a film assembled by Luke Holland around interviews he conducted beginning in 2008.

Hong’s formal confidence yields a movie that’s very simply constructed and utterly engrossing.

By the jaw-dropping climax (an argument over a family portrait), and the film’s not-entirely unpredictable denouement, you aren’t sure whether you are witnessing an investigative family chronicle or an act of revenge.

Ultimately, Ascent is a genuinely poetic portrait of a place, and various people’s relation to it.

This collection of interactions with ordinary people is a cinematic gift both simple and multilayered, an intellectual challenge and an emotional adventure.

Fascinating and exasperating.

This is a movie that aims to startle in overt and subtextual ways; the less known before viewing, the better.

In its understated way, the movie is a celebration of the miracle of connection.

An entirely watchable and sometimes engaging effort that serves as a great showcase for both the new and more seasoned members of its cast.

The gray skies under which Glavonic shoots, the unhurried takes in which he chronicles the drive, they put us with Vlada in an unmitigated way, the better to compel viewers to ask themselves what they would do in his position.

This movie shows how Fitzmaurice was able to direct the picture — scheduling the shot so that he could efficiently marshal his energy was a big part of the process, as of course was the “eye gaze” computer.

This material covers a good deal of the same ground as the 2016 documentary on Frank, “Don’t Blink.” Both films give a strong “lion in winter” sense and are moving in their treatments of the tragedies of Frank’s life. If you’ve seen “Don’t Blink,” you may ask whether you “need” to see this. I’d say yes. “More light,” as Goethe put it.

The filmmakers might have cleared up suspicions about their motivations and ethics had they worked them into the narrative.

If you go in for allusive British humor that builds slowly from dry to uproarious, as executed by two absolute masters of the form, The Trip To Italy will work for you, I believe. I also think the film, directed, like the prior one, by the astute Michael Winterbottom, is a somewhat smoother trip than the first.

The actual filmmaking, and the excellent acting, do a good job of camouflaging the way Vidal-Naquet ultimately romanticizes Léo.

I Am a Noise, beginning with Baez actually consulting a voice coach as she prepares for what will be a “farewell tour” (it was undertaken in 2019 before COVID hit the world), is a coherent, cohesive, and sometimes jarringly frank portrait.

“Recorder” doesn’t explore the extent to which Marion’s original project of analysis was subsumed by the compulsion to tape everything. But her taping of everything created an irreproducible archive that is enlightening and the stuff of madness.

Bergman wants the viewer to empathize more with the characters’ perseverance than their pain, and he pulls it off, thanks to his sharp eye, compassion, and humor, and of course to the performances. [March 2004, p. 26]

Undine is ultimately more enigmatic than most of Petzold’s work. It is also, like its title character, eerily beautiful. While it could well serve as a high-end date movie, it’s also something more.

What makes it a better-than-average satire on the unthinking hostilities that human beings are prone to is its steady intelligence, combined with a humor sometimes so dry as to be undetectable.

Once the players are established, the movie falls into a sweet lather, rinse, repeat mode of scenes, alternating character intrigue and fighting.

The movie’s inconclusiveness is the source of its appeal; Zombi Child is fueled by insinuation and fascination.

It's a fascinating portrait, but it's also choppy and rushed and lopsided.

The film, directed by Jason Kohn (“Manda Bala” and “Love Means Zero”), turns the slogan “a diamond is forever” on its head with its title. Which is not about the durability of a diamond itself, but about the diamond market, which is being roiled by the high volume, and high quality, of synthetic diamonds.

A superb effort by a first-rank director, and manna from heaven for Cheung fans.

Did I mention this movie is a comedy? It is, and a very sure-footed one, although the style does take some getting used to.

Burgess carries this succinct (and arguably slight, narratively disjointed) comedy without making you want to strangle his often willfully naïve character.

Mr. Gomis’s cinematic style is spectacularly multifaceted.

This is a real grabber.

In Profile, the images mix real documentary footage with fictional social media and news organization posts. And meaning is elemental—a simplistic rush meant to induce viewer panic. While also being incredibly on-the-nose.

The details of this engaging and sometimes heart-tugging picture are entirely contemporary.

Even if this documentary directed by Lisa Hurwitz had nothing else to recommend it, it would be worthwhile as an excellent source of Mel Brooks.

Most thrillers of this ilk have no qualms about going past the 120-minute mark, but I think Greengrass and company understood that overdoing it would turn mass excitement into massive headache.

It’s always a pleasure to see Blythe Danner in a movie. And it’s even more of a pleasure to see Blythe Danner in a good movie. No, not a good movie. A really good movie.

One need not admire Zweig’s writing to recognize the worth of this thoughtful treatment of one of the countless real-life tragedies of 20th-century history.

This is Friedkin on the movie. And what he does have to say, after all this time and so many articles and movies touching on “The Exorcist,” is still engaging, fascinating, and entertaining.

Despite its best efforts, Tanna drifts into a mode of exoticism that renders it an ultimately frustrating experience.

Within about a half hour, what seemed at first banal is in fact oppressive. With deliberate pacing, minimal dialogue, and solid acting from the leads, the movie makes its point felt about marriage.

Ms. Ferguson’s film does not seem to have a particular organizing principle at first. These survivors do not necessarily know one another. But their stories, intercut with archival footage over a brisk and frequently harrowing 81 minutes, build to a pitch of horror and sadness that eventually allows for a note or two of hope to sound.

This movie, which was written by Mr. Diggs and Mr. Casal, has an energetic-to-the-point-of-boisterous style. Its lively frequency is embedded in the writing, bolstered by Carlos López Estrada’s direction, and kept buoyant by the performers. This particular aspect of the film makes it exciting to watch, but can also be confounding.

Tedesco is the son of the West Coast guitar great Tommy Tedesco, and he clearly has a knack for getting musicians to open up. The band members.

Some might not even notice what's going on when director Walter Salles finally shows his hand, and ends the film with documentary footage of the real-life Granado, now aged 81, romping in the earthly paradise that is present-day Cuba.

While the movie has allegorical resonances with the political and human rights disasters of 20th-century Romania, by the end, its surfaces, while remaining superficially unimpressive, open up as the film moves from epistemological speculation onto a plane of mysticism. This relatively short film contains worlds.

The anecdotal, multi-narrative approach is useful in personalizing the phenomenon, but the movie still brought me up short. The approach also has liabilities. I wanted more context, more history.

The Plagiarists does skewer its characters, but where it goes from there is more genuinely bleak than what mere finger-pointing can achieve.

Mandela did not die before effecting a huge change in his still-traumatized country. This movie sheds a valuable light on his struggle.

By the Grace of God is a rarity: An important film that’s also utterly inspired.

The movie intersperses observations and speculations on Welles’s life and work with long looks at his graphic pieces. These are fascinating.

The talented Morano, whose work on the TV series “The Handmaid’s Tale” shows a knack for shuddery grim realism, sometimes seems to want to subvert the espionage-action genre by bludgeoning the pleasure out of it.

One of Cronenberg's subtlest, most insinuating pictures, and one of the highlights of the year so far.

The Man in the Basement doesn’t endorse a single answer; it ends on a deliberately tentative note, leaving the viewer thoroughly unsettled.

The Bob’s Burgers Movie, directed by Bouchard and Bernard Derriman, is such a breezy, engaging picture that it qualifies as a summer refreshment.

As for this film's esteemed director, I don't remember getting such sheer pleasure out of an Altman movie since . . . hmm, lemme look at the filmo . . . hmm—"The Player"? Not so much . . . "O.C. and Stiggs"? I wish . . . Um, "Popeye"? More likely, but . . . Ah-"A Wedding." Yeah, that’s it, "A Wedding." Whoa. That was, like, almost 30 years ago.

This is an angry, vivid, passionate film.

It’s a striking, human portrait of men in trouble, looking for escape and possibly redemption.

Bigelow’s ability to take a series of hypotheticals and render them into narrative actuality has never been more pinpoint accurate or merciless.

One of the more striking and effective horror pictures of recent years.