Glenn Kenny

There are moments in which this film, written and directed by Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt, feels like an early Adam Sandler comedy remixed by Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Grant and Kurzel’s conceptions of the characters are so one-dimensional they seem to defeat the movie’s talented cast.

It's an awful shame that Shelly will not be making any more films, but all the more reason to celebrate Waitress now.

If you’re a scholar of comedy, Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon, a concise doc about the founding, life, thriving, and death of the '70s-defining satirical magazine, is likely a must-see. It’s an engaging and entertaining film, filled with funny anecdotes expertly related.

That the perspective this time is from a girl’s point of view rather than a boy’s is significant. At least it is in theory. The scripter is Joe Kelly, who, along with J.M. Ken Nimura, created the comic. It’s not a knock to note that the main creative talents behind the camera are male — the women of the cast are clearly imbuing their characterizations with what they know. But there’s still something about I Kill Giants that feels projected, a work more informed by empathy than experience.

This is a movie, not a position paper, and Moore aims to entertain as he informs.

Proves more irksome than moving.

If you’ve ever been curious as to how a cartoonist gets into The New Yorker and what happens then, Very Semi-Serious offers very satisfactory info.

Burning Cane is short and difficult. It does not aspire to entertain. Its realism is shot through with a constant dull ache.

Directed by Maggie Betts from a script she wrote with Doug Wright, The Burial develops into a lively courtroom drama with wide-ranging pertinence. Of course its two lead actors give the bravura performances you’d expect from them, but they don’t eat the scenery — they take the material seriously and invest in it with welcome nuance.

An energetic, visually attractive but ultimately irritating comedy-drama.

Lightfoot is frank about sizing up that work — the movie opens with him expressing disdain for the sexism of his early hit “For Lovin’ Me” — and he’s refreshingly up-to-date in his perspectives about today’s music.

Whitaker's Amin is the kind of raging lunatic that only an actor who has made a specialty of quiet caginess could pull off so convincingly. It's great, and scary, to see Whitaker turn it up to 11 for once.

I’ll always love Lynch’s “Dune,” a severely compromised dream-work that (not surprising given Lynch’s own inclination) had little use for Herbert’s messaging. But Villeneuve’s movie IS “Dune.”

The sensibility behind “The Strangler” is sufficiently unusual and stalwart.

The animation is handsome, the graphic settings understated but intelligently detailed.

This lengthy, nuance-filled story about how eye-for-an-eye stuff differs from theory to practice is one of the most considered, thoughtful, and involving movies of its kind.

The film works most of the time, largely because its subject is such interesting — and warm — company.

While it’s not entirely kid-friendly, this portrait of an artist is both enchanting and thought provoking.

The movie’s tree-falling-in-the-forest-with-no-one-to-hear-it denouement is an apt but not entirely hopeless metaphor for the condition of its characters.

One is hard-pressed to understand why grown-up thrillers like this one don’t get bigger pushes, but if you’re a “they don’t make ‘em like they used to” type when it comes to genre, do have a look at this. It’ll very likely hit an old-school sweet (or sour) spot or two.

The filmmakers are themselves too celebrity besotted to comment in a meaningful way on how Benson’s career balanced depictions of the rich and famous with in-the-trenches risk-taking.

Wang’s non-adherence to narrative lines deliberately prevents the sense of sustained drama. Still, every sequence has some emotional or dramatic hook to make it engaging.

The plot is pretty convoluted, but Miyazaki has a very good handle on it and lavishes his customary heart, humor, and inventiveness on every situation he depicts.

Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly create characters that live and seethe with absolute credibility, and Ron Eldard’s Lester is a subtle portrait of a good man who lets himself go bad, first out of boredom, then out of erotic fixation.

What it falls back on, rather than the troubling truth illuminated in Camus’ story, is the movie-standard gaze of compassion, here proffered by Mortensen, who, it must be admitted, does it well.

The performances are excellent, and Ingelsby’s dialogue largely rings true. But while the movie is indeed considered and conscientious, it’s also careful. It doesn’t risk going over any edges itself. And it shows more than a few instances of fussy and telegraphing Conspicuous Direction.

This affectionate portrait is also well grounded. Finley is remembered as a hard worker among other hard workers.

While the picture doesn’t break any new genre ground, it has several jaw-dropping set pieces, including an incredibly physical fight inside a speeding car. Collet-Serra’s staging is excellent throughout.

Structurally sound while at the same time lacking anything you could call a “plot,” “Suspended Time” invites you to listen in your own life to that which is often neglected or unheard.

The Duke is not his all-time-best picture, but it’s a very strong one, and it showcases his varied strengths as a filmmaker rather nicely.

There's no one today writing English dialogue as sharp as Bennett's, and hearing it delivered expertly is a pleasure worth sitting through some dodgy montages for.

What does not work, in a movie where almost everything, including dramatic rhetoric, has been kept on a modest scale up to this point, is the heavy-handed way Winterbottom (and Jolie) contrast the pain of loss with the pain of begetting toward the end.

The result is the most fascinating documentary about a failed movie since 1965’s “The Epic That Never Was,” about the abortive Korda-produced, von Sternberg-directed, and Charles Laughton-starring film of Robert Graves’ great novel I, Claudius.

Willfully over determined and perversely stylized.

The first masterpiece of 2008 -- at least by American release date standards -- the latest film from master French director Jacques Rivette is a masterful, multilayered, sometimes enigmatic work of dark irony, an assured tragicomedy of manners and more.

It’s a fun journey.

Utama sounds a warning even as it casts a spell, and the spell is one of life and death and eternal returns and never-ending struggles, and the rest we can try to take when the work is done for the day.

The procedural aspects of the story are briskly done, and Chris Cooper's portrayal of the traitor Hanssen is a typically Cooperesque marvel.

The genuine article, a hard-core horror picture from start to finish... Prepare to get seriously stresed.

The Surrogate feels like the vexed progeny of an elevator pitch and an ethics advice column.

While Mr. Reybaud has exemplary artistic confidence and an interesting vision, this is a movie that in many ways defines or justifies the “not for everybody” critical hedge.

Penn has often said that he dislikes acting and would prefer to direct full time. Into the Wild is impressive enough to give him license to do just that.

The movie goes down byways you might not have expected: Taboo from Black Eyed Peas makes an appearance, and heavy metal shows up via both guitarist Steve Salas (one of the movie’s executive producers) and drummer Randy Castillo, who played with Ozzy. Their stories are among the movie’s most moving.

This is a beautifully conceived and executed chamber comedy/drama with tragedy at its core. Potter’s characters are committed to a better world even as they make their own modes of living completely dysfunctional.

The most impressive thing about the film's technical wizardry is, finally, how unimpressive it is. One doesn't leave the movie with a mind blown by visual bedazzlement but with a soul shattered by the profound sense of tragedy Linklater and company so beautifully put across.

Keep the Change is not a seamlessly crafted movie, but it’s awfully tenderhearted and thoroughly disarming. It deserves to be widely seen.

The movie’s depictions of landscapes both sere and fertile, and its all-but-palpable portrayals of isolation, have echoes of the best work of Werner Herzog and Lucrecia Martel. But de Righi and Zoppis here show more genuine affinity than affected influence; they’re moviemakers worth keeping an eye on.

Okeniyi has a strong presence that conveys a genuine moral authority.

Kiki shows us a group of brave and beautiful souls for whom the struggle is, unfortunately, probably about to get even harder.

The documentary doesn’t quite cover everything — their collaborations with Joni Mitchell and Martin Scorsese go unmentioned, for example. This is still a rollicking account that will make even non-herbally-inclined viewers root for the fellows.

The material about Kubrick’s process is finally more interesting than the discussions about his temperament.

The performers don’t seem like they’re acting at all, which contributes to the film’s unsettling power. The elliptical narrative structure articulates a sad truth of the addict’s life concerning both the challenge and the tedium of making it through to the next fix.

Time is more than reasonably diverting.

Haynes's picture may not be perfect -- hell, I'm not even sure that perfection is a state it even aspires to -- but it's bold and individualistic and accomplished. A reason to take heart for the state of current American moviemaking.

It’s a genuine achievement on an inexhaustible subject.

The ingenuity of the movie’s structure is stimulating and delightful, but there’s one aspect of “Hill” that some may find a trifle exasperating: Even more than any of the sad-sack men who populate the director’s other movies, Mori is kind of a stiff.

If you’ve entertained “Green Acres”-inspired reveries on the joys of “farm living,” this documentary may rid you of them in short order. But it may also revive your wonder at the weird but ultimately awe-inspiring ways in which humans can help nature do its work.

Mr. Porterfield’s evenhanded direction doesn’t try to pull the viewer’s sympathies one way or another. Within his realistic mode he crafts some startling effects — a strip-club brawl that spills out into broad, embarrassing daylight is eye-opening.

The action is violent, messy, and threaded through with dark humor. This is a movie for grownups, for sure, but it has a mulish kick that most such pictures consider themselves to tasteful to aspire to.

What Mr. Gibney uncovers is grave and shocking and could make a viewer concerned for the safety of the filmmaker. But its presentation is flawed.

But after surveying pop and rock hybrids, Akin and Hacke go deeper. You will be very happy indeed to make the acquaintance of such Turkish music luminaries as Orhan Gencebay and Sezen Aksu, whose stories and personalities are as fascinating as their music.

Wang — using a direct, unadorned shooting style — along with his cast (Justin Chon, who’s been around for some time, makes a strong impression as Chang-rae) put them across with unusual integrity.

An actor before he was a screenwriter, Mr. Sheridan clearly spent a lot of his time learning about filmmaking on movie sets; his direction is assured throughout.

It took a while for this digressive movie to get its hooks in me, but once it did, Sorry Angel didn’t let go.

It’s rare to see a cinematic drama executed with such consistent care as Supernova, written and directed by Harry Macqueen and starring Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci. And here, that care pays off to devastating effect.

The result is an unusually compelling character study, one that, commendably, opts to end on a humane note rather than a dark judgment.

Exiled brings To back to lighter ground, and it’s one of his most assured, enjoyable pictures, refreshing fun that’s sure to satisfy anyone’s action jones.

Part of what makes these kind of war movies such cinematic comfort food (aside from the moral certainty they strive to convey) is their familiarity. But I wonder if said familiarity is what compels contemporary filmmakers to overstuff the material -- Flyboys is a good two hours and 20 minutes.

The insights offered from the almost two-dozen show biz luminaries are not always commonplace, and Gottfried is always an interesting screen presence, even when he’s far removed from his persona.

Tucci is wonderful, but Timlin comes close to eating him up almost as thoroughly as her character does his.

This film is, in many respects, a plain picture, but also a cleareyed, direct, fat-free one that has something to say and says it affectingly.

One of the more tough-minded and effective war pictures of post-American-Century American cinema.

The movie is a deft sort of dual narrative.

You can get a lot of facts about Mr. Graves and his discography on the internet (and I recommend you do). This movie gives you, well, the man’s heart, and it’s a beautiful one.

The movie’s prefab on-screen graphics are just one reason “Worst to First” has such a limp tone overall.

Over the course of almost two and a half fascinating hours, they make a cogent, compelling, powerful argument, and they also make a terrific movie.

Marvel movies are not concerned with altering your precious bodily fluids. This one is a slightly better than average example of the species. Watch it in good health.

It contains amusing jokes and has an old-fashioned impulse to tug at heart strings.

The earnestness brings the movie from mildly irritating pastiche status to actively awful, and that is all she wrote.

The movie is well put together, enough so that if you’re not entirely tired of its clichés, it might constitute a tolerable entertainment. I’d rather watch “Double Indemnity” for the 15th time.

One could watch Honey Boy musing that it must be nice to have someone finance a movie of your 12-step qualification. That assessment is actually too generous.

In its sensitivity and attention to detail, Ocean Waves makes itself into something special, and kind of magical, and so proves very much a Ghibli gem.

Ms. Wells is appealing onscreen and is a smart writer. She gives Emily some good zingers.

This moving film’s sense of hometown pride is subtle but apt.

With his directorial debut, screenwriting stalwart Scott Frank concocts a compelling variation on a reliable film noir convention.

This is not a terribly plot-driven movie; indeed, at two hours and twenty minutes it’s rather a ramble.

There’s sharp dialogue throughout.

Such a muddle right off the bat.

While not an earth-shaker, this movie is an amiable and informative look at a guy who is shaping up to be, yes, one of the major American directors of the last fifty years.