Glenn Kenny

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]

This entertaining narrative documentary is very firmly in the ferment/fervency/fulfillment camp.

A gruelingly tense, deftly plotted, and slyly intelligent piece of work. And also it's really really disgusting.

This movie is a remarkable feat that requires a strong stomach to sit through. I was unaware, prior to seeing it, that it’s based on a true story, and the movie’s coda was that much more powerful for me as a result.

With almost palpable anger, Meirelles hammers home the point that crushing poverty is only one problem for Africa that the West needs to do something about.

The “endlessness” of the film encompasses a lot of absurdity and disappointment, but its notes of grace sound the loudest.

This is the farthest thing in the cinematic firmament from a world-changer you can imagine, but as an evening’s entertainment, it’ll more than do.

Wenders chooses to illuminate indirectly, and to compel the viewer to concoct questions of their own.

Dear Comrades is a fascinating, irony-steeped portrait of a soul who’s been hardened by her trauma, to the extent that she embraces its architects.

The crazy fantasy world of this saga is plenty compelling and quirky.

This is the kind of movie Piaffe is: one that mostly poises its absurd surreality at the edge of what’s plausible in contemporary everyday life until it moves into unprecedented physical mutations.

The Land won’t win any awards for originality of premise. And the movie, after that premise comes into play, tends to meander more than a suspense story ought to. It meanders for the best reason, though, which is to help the viewer get to know the characters.

By putting the garrulous, sometimes cranky Hersh on film, “Cover-Up” reveals, in the behavioral sense, the obsessiveness that makes an investigative journalist.

Throughout the picture, Bernstein interacts with genteel folk who quietly deplore what they see as the American perception of art and art-making.

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.

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

Pheonix is smartly-constructed enough that non-acolytes interested in checking out Harry's world won't need too long to catch up.

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

Not a call to action, River instead contents itself by being a sensational reminder of where it is we all come from.

It's churlish, especially these days, to try to split the difference between an immortal comedy classic and a mere laugh riot.

It is trim, fast-moving and often quite funny, particularly in the exchanges between Ferrell and Heder -- the former's trademark clueless oafishness meshes nicely with the latter's alternating current of petulance and sweetness.

Engrossing and a little moving. And Isaac is a very winning and effective messenger of Peter Malkin’s heroism and humanity.

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.

The result is enjoyable and frequently affecting. The one weak note is Douglas' performance — he does more than phone it in, but his essential Douglas-ness makes the character less believable than he might have been.

Even though Wetlands is absolutely, brutally unrelenting in its depictions of bodily functions and searching adolescent sexuality, it’s also an inventively sharp, briskly edited, spectacularly-acted post-adolescent coming-of-age story.

It's goofy as hell but devilishly smart about it, which is why it's such great fun.

The movie hits its cinematic stride, as it happens, when events are at their worst. The Promise is drenched in production value and replete with ravishing shots of sunrises and sunsets, but it’s in the scenes of fleeing, of battle, and of horrendous loss that the film is at its most effective. The depiction of the savagery inflicted on Armenia is bracing.

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

A largely fun watch, a corporate crime tale of consistent tartness enacted by a superb cast.

Boss Level compensates for its overstuffed scenario and relentless derivativeness—actually, it makes you stop caring about its relentless derivativeness—with concentrated fast pacing and breakneck action.

The movie, starring Zabou Breitman, Jacque Gamblin, Pascal Elbé, Sylvie Testud, and Tony Harrisson, has a more upsetting dimension than most suspense dramas as it’s based on a true story, a story that touches on issues still roiling France today.

This is a nuanced film, one that doesn’t lay itself out in what we would consider a satisfyingly linear fashion. But it’s the sort of thing that gets a grip on your spine when you’re least expecting it.

Ferrara’s filmmaking always has a blunt elemental force and conviction. It doesn’t quite transcend the commonplace aspect of what he’s trying to “say.” And yet transcending isn’t the point—doing is. This is not just guerrilla filmmaking, it’s a kind of action painting. A literal journey to the end of the night.

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.

There’s a lot of good awkward fun to be had as the viewer simultaneously laughs at Otto’s expense and hopefully commiserates a bit with him.

Lesage supplies exemplary tension and intrigue over the course of two plus hours, while at the same time suggesting to the viewer, accurately, that anything in the way of a definitive resolution is not in the cards.

While neither particularly profound nor earth-shatteringly scary, Suitable Flesh is better than passable grisly horror fun in a very specific tradition.

He was a real artist and, especially if you believe that art is all about asking questions, about life and about art, he was a great one.

The first movies of any given year are usually among the worst. Not this one. It’s a keeper, so treat yourself to a scary New Year’s celebration.

It’s a movie that puts the viewer into a bad dream, and is very canny in dispensing the keys to unlock the meanings of that dream — and in strategically withholding some of those keys.

Stahl’s acting has always had a quiet power, communicating roiling emotional distress under an often vaguely menacing stillness. This gives a fresh perspective to Ryan’s eventual impotence as he negotiates his new identity.

Viewers looking for a tidy narrative and gratifying conclusions will come up short with this movie. But if you can roll with atmospherics that are their own reason for being, “Grand Tour” has plenty, and they’re all beautifully realized.

As laudable as the movie is, it does not quite achieve greatness. That’s the fault of both its indirectness and its obviousness.

The work by the two leads is consistently committed, not to mention oozing with old fashioned movie-star charisma.

A documentary that serves a vital function. Ricky Gervais notwithstanding, this disease is no joke, and it’s not going to be addressed as the scourge that it is until a larger portion of the population gets that. This movie should help.

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.

A Woman, a Part mixes passion and ambivalence to create a work with ambiguities that seem earned, and lived in.

The movie has a lot of good bits and terrific performances, including a too-perfect Keanu Reeves as a mystic orthodontist.

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.

The most pleasurable part of watching this Nora’s story is seeing how the males in her life have to make room for her, and do some learning themselves.

That the filmmakers are able to pursue their theme to the extent that the true story on which the film is based obliges them to somehow has to be credited to Renner. His performance is very good, despite the somewhat stereotypical bro characteristics with which the Webb character is here endowed.

Story Ave is a portrait of an artist as a young man, a not-quite-coming-of-age tale, a narrative of escape but not abandonment. The outlines of the movie’s story are familiar, but Torres has resourcefulness, energy, and imagination to burn in how he tells it.

This story is bound to lead to several showdowns at once, and the action climax is beautifully orchestrated by Hill: it’s suspenseful, jarring, and never descends to formal cheating of narrative cheapness to give the audience what it wants and deserves.

This is a striking and thought-provoking picture.

I Called Him Morgan evokes times and places, and the sorrows and joys of the jazz life in those times and places, with real integrity.

This movie won an award in the Un Certain Regard section of Cannes last year, and was also Finland’s entry for consideration for a 2016 Academy Award. For all that, I should warn some readers that this is a movie that’s laid back to what many would consider a fault.

The action is great, the story line unpredictable, the ending satisfying. Stander is crackling. Really.

There’s a lot of crunch and dazzle here. While the overall tone is pitched to a teen demographic, the creative energy and the execution on display is consistently engaging.

A thoughtful, involving and sometimes moving film that almost (and I do mean almost) justifies its use of 9/11 as a dramatic device.

The performances in the picture are all solid, but what makes Summertime really refreshing is that it doesn’t treat its central romance as anything but wholly normal, despite the attitude of other characters, or indeed, the tenor of the time in which it is set.

Iron Man is the first Marvel Comics superhero movie I would willingly sit through a second time. This is the result not just of what the movie does, but what the movie doesn't do.

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.

The fact that Boyle and Garland have here created something close to an actual trip rather than the mere spectacle that most screen sci-fi contents itself with being nowadays is enough to recommend Sunshine.

Greenfield wraps up this compulsively watchable movie with observations of family love and some of its characters striving for redemption and/or an honest living. But she doesn’t quite dissolve the bitterness of the pill. Because it really can’t be.

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.

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

Most of the dialogue is pretty fresh, and it’s delivered with great brio, particularly by Owen. Roberts, alas, is not at her best here, but she has almost nothing to work with.

Guest of Honour, a knotty memory play and character study that, not unsurprisingly, screened at last fall’s Toronto fest, is a gratifyingly solid work that benefits from first-rate performers and a knowing location nose for the scruffier corners of Hamilton, Ontario.

A picture about tragedy in one American family's life, and it's a convincing and humane one.

It’s worth seeing twice just for the privilege of watching Rampling and Sagnier match each other stroke for stroke.

People can find ways to be happy now because they have more choices, more resources. In a world that seems in many respects to be headed to hell in a handbasket, that’s a fact worth celebrating, and this movie does so in an appropriately humane manner.

This lively and engaging documentary could just as well be titled “The Labyrinths of Umberto Eco.”

Blow the Man Down isn’t an earth-shaker, but it’s a small pleasure that makes you wish for more from its filmmakers, and soon.

The depictions of artistic struggle and mania, the communication of the artist’s frequently painful bubble, are insightful and rewarding. The warts-and-all depiction of Giacometti, which establishes a credible explanation if not excuse for the many selfish acts he’s seen doing, winds up being an apt tribute to both the artist and art itself.

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.

With its frequent dramatizations, zippy editing, and song-driven soundtrack, Three Identical Strangers may be said to indulge in the most potentially egregious of mainstreaming devices used in contemporary documentaries. Yet because the story itself is so, well, juicy, and the subjects one-time pop culture phenoms, the approach feels acceptable if not entirely “right.”

Wang and Zhang's film ends with an explication of a new “two child” policy, a celebration of the one-child-policy’s overall success. The propaganda for his policy is as cheesy as that for the old one. A sense of dread as to how this policy will be enacted intermingles with a strange feeling that a true reckoning with the old way is still very far off.

If Hustle passes around a lot of sports movie cliches, it does so with a light touch. And its sense of atmosphere, and depiction of Stanley’s milieu, is sensitive and knowing, But be warned: this movie is VERY basketball-oriented. If you’re not a fan, you might feel a little lost.

These amiable fellow don’t understand young Robbie’s ambitions — what’s with the rock ’n’ roll and all? — until they put it together and exclaim: “You want to be in SHOW BUSINESS.” For all the grand achievements chronicled here — and the music still sounds pretty great — this still is a show business venture.

This is a purely sensationalistic cinematic experience that paradoxically encourages reflection and contemplation.

The sobering note on which the movie ends recalls a stone-cold classic from a sadly long-gone era of moviemaking. The homage actually functions as a token of this movie’s integrity and heartfelt sadness.

The movie’s imaginative energy is undeniable, and Bodhi himself is a winning screen presence. If Webber sticks to his creative guns, he could well become the John Cassavetes of attentive (albeit eccentric) parenting.

Director Rob Letterman, aided by writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski and Darren Lemke and an energetic cast, rise to the occasion, delivering a movie that’s a lot of good creepy fun in spite of some dubious construction.

Okko has to learn how to get along without her ghosts. Seems like a lot of learning, but the narrative fits it in so organically, and the characters and action are so lively and colorful, that the medicine goes down as if it’s been spun entirely of sweet stuff.

This is a real grabber.

I think the most productive way to look at Mank, a new film about Hollywood in the 1930s and ‘40s, and about the screenwriter of a particularly famous and iconic work, is to understand it as Fincher’s most playful work.

Without a single arthouse touch, this ultimately charming trifle could well be an American rom-com were it not quite so, well, promiscuous. In that French way.

The movie does a superb job showing the mental and physical preparation and effort required. And for all that, doubt and a little bit of fear persist, souring Honnold’s first try at a climb.

The movie is not interested in wrapping things up via a “smash the mirror” epiphany. It’s to Oliver’s credit that he’s taken a more tough-minded than easily cathartic approach. And Ansel Elgort’s wonderful performance does appropriate honor to the ambiguity the movie is trucking in.

Wheeler's script is a buzzing contrivance, and Hallström's direction is brisker than almost anything he's ever done. So by all means enjoy The Hoax -- it's smart fun. Just don't buy it.

A Ciambra is not big on plot, instead relying on its main character and his dangerous and frustrating escapades to generate empathy.

The characters in A Perfect Day don’t get to indulge in much eccentricity because they’re too busy banging their wills against bureaucratic idiocy.

It touches deftly on class and race and sexual dissatisfaction and never lets up once it has put its characters under a microscope. Beautifully acted throughout, it showcases Watson's most complex performance in years.

The picture’s great, fast-moving fun for the most part, and Kilmer gives his most appealing, relaxed, and amusing performance since "Real Genius."

While Salomé isn’t anything but a mainstream director, he’s a good one, keeping the movie percolating up to its crowd-pleasing finale and coda.

Sometimes the walls don’t have to be closing in to create an oppressive atmosphere. Sometimes it’s just enough to have the wallpaper closing in.

Director Simon Curtis and editor Adam Recht deserve a lot of credit for packing a helluva lot of story into a picture that’s only a hair over 120 minutes.

There are traces of early Ken Loach in Hepburn’s approach, but ultimately the filmmaker’s voice, with all its frankness and plain-spokenness, is her own.

The gloom is practically enveloping. But, in the end, is it really all about hope? Black Crab is more than sufficiently gripping to make you want to see it through and find out.

A Jazzman’s Blues proves that when Perry applies himself in a particular fashion, his work can stand entirely on its own.

Here’s the thing: The Intern, while having its share of silly moments, is the most genuinely enjoyable and likable movie that Meyers — a longtime writer and producer before taking up directing — has put her name to since, oh, I don’t know, 1984’s “Irreconcilable Differences.”

I say this as someone for whom the very idea of a Kong remake is sacrilege, Jackson's straitened conception yields up a pretty damn good popcorn movie.

Haupt’s film moves along agreeably enough for a while, and the intercutting between the film’s real-life subjects, now at an advanced age, and their dramatized adventures almost 60 years ago, convincingly creates a rooting interest.

The Trip To Greece, while mostly very laugh out loud funny, is also rather more somber than the prior installments and also has, in Julian Barnes’ phrase, the sense of an ending.

Damon is superb in the kind of role he excels at: a man of integrity who gets steered off the path and is subsequently righted. Lest all of this sound heavy, I should assure you that Ford v Ferrari is exactly as fun, maybe even more fun, than its well-put-together trailer makes it out to be.

Given that the B-to-Z movies parodied in Cadavra were funny to begin with, it begs the question as to why writer-director-star Larry Blamire and company bothered. I think they’re not so much nostalgic for this type of movie as they are for the kind of laughter it provoked.

Though Melinda is no masterpiece, it’s also an Allen film that requires almost zero special pleading.

It’s only after the supposedly central mystery is solved that The Pale Blue Eye fully commits to its actual business, serving up in full a tale of loss and wrong-headed resolution. Bale’s characterization, subtle and slightly enigmatic throughout, here blooms. And eventually sears.

The directorial debut of French-Senegalese filmmaker Ramata-Toulaye Sy, this is one of those pictures to which the phrase “every frame a painting” might apply.

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

It’s the filmmaking around the writing that casts a particular spell.

Hollywoodland is one of the nicest surprises of the late summer lull between blockbuster seasons, a smart period mystery--cum--character study--cum--bitter parable on the lures and liabilities of life in its titular locale.

Green’s approach as the narrator is sometimes a little too “gee whillikers” to suit the tastes of this grumpy old man, but 32 Sounds hit my sound and vision sweet spot just fine most of the time.

It’s when Bannon starts turning his attention to Europe, and then the 2018 midterms, that Klayman gets to record the less pleasant aspects of Bannon’s personality — those you thought were always there, maybe, but that he was able to keep hidden.

Directed by Madeleine Gavin, Beyond Utopia is a bracing and frequently jaw-dropping look at, first and foremost, the discontented people of North Korea who attempt defections doggedly. It’s a more difficult trip than you’d probably imagine.

One salutary feature of this sharply observed film is that it does not feel compelled to make Seyi in any way magical: he cannot transcend the sump of addiction and corruption in which he allows himself to sink.

It's a film that approaches greatness and then fumbles.

Yan’s debut as a writer/director is a mostly sturdily constructed, and deftly edited, series of “meanwhiles,” a sprawling narrative of loosely and closely connected people whose lives intertwine in a variety of ways.

A very unusual and rare kind of movie: one that is good in spite of itself. Which isn’t to say that the movie’s director and co-producer Tony Stone doesn’t make some provocative, interesting choices.

While this film is often funny, its ultimate bit of wisdom, from the New Testament, is dark and undeniable: “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

Julia Roberts has never played a dowager before, but heaven knows she makes a good, and funny, one.

If you’re not too conversant with the regions or works under consideration, the viewer has a choice of laboring to connect the dots unassisted, or just kicking back and letting the people and their recollections and philosophical reflections wash over you, like the sea of the movie’s title.

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

The story told in “Out of Darkness” is ultimately sad more than terrifying, a parable about violence and the roots of human war. It’s an impressively credible and gnarly journey back in time.

It’s a movie best received in a relaxed frame of mind. Because much of it is a slow burn, if there’s indeed a burn at all.

This unabashedly crowd-pleasing movie gets to its uplifting but also somewhat disquieting conclusion and coda (which, as is the custom these days, introduces the audience to the real-life miners) with its integrity intact.

Salvador's movie wants to penetrate something elemental in the viewer; if you can give in to its vision in good faith, it might just do that for you.

It’s hilarious, and genuinely cool.

The direction is efficient and coherent. Arterton has been lately choosing roles that emphasize flinty self-determination over movie-star charisma, and she’s getting better at them all the time; this is one of her most credible and engaging portrayals yet. James Norton is equally impressive.

A droll, poignant comedy enlivened by two terrific performances.

Thanks to the movie's very clear respect for Cash and his music, and thanks mostly to the two superb, heartfelt performances by Reese Witherspoon as Carter and Joaquin Phoenix as Cash, Walk the Line eventually earned my sympathy.

The languidly-paced picture has a staggering array of beautiful images and vistas.

While Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven throbbed with purposeful vitality, pictures such as Robin Hood and 1492: Conquest of Paradise seemed to lack much of a reason for being. Scott’s The Last Duel may not be perfect but it never exhibits such inertia.

This finale, which piles one bloody absurd epiphany on top of another almost ad infinitum, is where McDonagh lays all his cards on the table -- and his characters are the ones who have to pay up.

The irrepressible tone of mordant giggliness this movie hits so often is entirely its own, keeping the movie buoyant throughout its over two-hour running time.

Far from a perfect film. But Wenders is trying to do new things within the confines of a pretty standard European art-film scenario, and the viewer can see he’s not approaching the material as though it’s rote; he’s really trying to use the camera to get through the feelings of loss the characters suffer.

What to make of it all? Hard to say. Just to take in the fact that its soundtrack is made up of music by both J. Spaceman and Sun City Girls is to understand that this is a picture that's divided against itself in a way that's perhaps too hermetic to be comprehended.

Comedy-action lunacy of a truly high, and endlessly bizarre, order.

While it's not nearly as beguiling as the Coen's last pic, the uncanny "The Man Who Wasn't There," Cruelty is still a brisk hoot.

Mitchell's energy and occasional ingenuity make Shortbus an engaging viewing experience, provided you can stomach it.

A very nearly epic romance, one that approaches the idea of a ménage-a-trois as emblematic of a particular idealism on the part of its participants rather than a hotsy-totsy taboo-busting arrangement.

The film is beautifully acted by all, but Nora-Jane Noone, as the sloe-eyed orphan Bernadette, is first among equals here, and a genuine find.

The Homestretch invites you to empathize with its subjects, to worry with them, to laugh with them, to worry about them. It’s engaging and compelling viewing.

A movie that’s a pleasure to watch.

The result is a very creepy, suspenseful story that’s also a better-than-average character study.

The movie is largely a story of personalities. Karl is fiery, brilliant, disorganized, passionate. Engels is, despite his courage and curiosity, a bit more of a wide-eyed innocent and certainly a more organized person. Their female partners do take secondary roles, but the movie depicts them as committed, innovative, and acute: true fellow travelers and comrades. The actors portraying these figures are all exciting to watch.

At its best, Mahowny is intricate, engrossing, wryly funny, and strangely poetic.

Corbijn, as has been his custom in directing features, goes for mood and feel rather than narrative momentum, although his scope is clearly hemmed-in by the production’s budget; there’s not much here in the way of effective ‘50s-New-York evocation. But the actors and their exchanges ring true, and by the time the film reaches its lonesome conclusion, the resonances are eerie.

The mode of this short movie is naturalistic. There are interviews of people in voiceover, but not a lot of talking-head footage. The perspective is of an observer sauntering through the town and then thrust into the middle of a fearsome but exhilarating spectacle.

This is a movie of visuals first and foremost; it’s no fluke that director Warwick Thornton shared cinematography duties with Dylan River. In addition to capturing stunning images, Thornton has a sleight-of-hand maestro’s joy in shuffling and fanning them. Lightning-fast cuts to flashbacks and flash-forwards keep the viewer on his or her toes in a bracing fashion.

Michal Clayton shares a number of affinities with Paddy Chayefsky and Sidney Lumet's "Network." Wilkinson's got the so-mad-he's-sane Peter Finch position; while Swinton embodies a sexless, neurotic, overstressed variant of Faye Dunaway's character. Which leaves Clooney as the (considerably younger) William Holden of the piece. And, yes, he makes the most of it.

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.

Tim Roth gives a career-high performance in this meticulous, disturbing film written and directed by Michel Franco.

More often than not laugh-out-loud hilarious.

The narrative never really builds a good head of steam. That could just be because as a Westerner with extremely limited knowledge of Estonian culture and mythology, the barrage of tropes from there is relatively overwhelming for me. Even so, November never stops being a visual trip. And that may well be enough.

A sweet, sunny, cinematic song of praise to simple '70s pleasures, Roll Bounce isn't any kind of life-changing picture, but it's breezy, good-hearted fun.

It is lively, fast paced, charming and funny, and it showcases an especially delightful comic performance from Belgian and French cinema stalwart Olivier Gourmet.

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.

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

There are more than a couple of moments in this film, adapted by writer-director Tod Williams from a big swatch of Irving’s multigenerational quilt "A Widow for One Year," that get Irving’s sense of grotesque tragedy and tragic grotesquerie just right

Return to Dust abounds in small poetic touches from the director and his lead characters.

What We Did On Our Holiday, written and directed by Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin, is replete with zingers, a quality not to be disdained in a family comedy of miscommunication.

The minute Bill Cunningham starts talking in this charming documentary is the minute you fall in love with him.

Imelda Staunton is absolutely astonishing.

Anybody can make a movie that's anti-slavery. But to make a movie that's explicitly anti-democracy-that's something.

For whatever its flaws, Redbelt offers up a good deal of Mametian red meat while also trying to break out of some of the strictures that Mamet's erected around his own work.

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

Mamet’s stark existentialism comes to a shudder-inducing yet mordantly satisfying head in this expertly rendered picture. The text might not be vintage Mamet, but it’s a real meal.

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

While it keeps a sharp, neo-realist-influenced eye on the everyday lives of its characters, Joyland often gets so intimate as to discomfit the viewer to the point of exasperation. But the movie itself never judges.

The situations in this scrupulous, compassionate, and quietly captivating picture, written and directed by Maryam Touzani, are tense, to be sure. But the movie itself doesn’t surrender to the tension. It depicts unruly passions as they stir the lives of circumspect characters.

As exciting and involving as it is brainy.

Such is the nature of this movie. It’s like a series of charcoal sketches with marginalia; there are unexpected mini-flashbacks, and even a visualization of a poem. Hong’s free style isn’t showy; there’s a stillness holding the film together at all times.

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

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.

Anchoring it all is the ever-great Moss, who is also a co-producer on the picture. The actress is always heartbreakingly good playing character forced to endure a lot of humiliation, and in this scenario, she gets it coming and going. She illuminates the serious mess that this farce is about, underneath it all.

This restless film is hardly content to present a portrait of an icon, instead insisting, with compassion and clear eyes, that icons are all too human too.

Shame is a welcome reminder that sex is sometimes too ridiculous to take so seriously.

It’s just another solid Loach film, an affectionate realist portrait of individuals fighting against state and religious oppression. In this case the setting, as it was for his 2006 Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or winner “The Wind That Shakes The Barley,” is Ireland.

Against the Tide, a documentary directed by Sarvnik Kaur, depicts environmental disaster with an intimate lens.

A tricky movie, but not in a way that’s dishonest. Its first feet are in the school of miserablist realism, and while director Lee never abandons his things-as-they-are approach, he tells a love story by letting magic in at unusual angles.

This is the kind of comedy that gives you two meaty underhanded jokes for every big obvious guffaw. It doesn't add up to much more than that, but there's no earthly reason why it ought to.

It then becomes very funny, funny enough that my wife observed that she thought I was going to have a stroke, as I was laughing so much.

The Year of the Everlasting Storm is definitely a noteworthy achievement in anti-escapism, which the current cinema could certainly always use more of.

My own taste runs to different modes of poetic cinema, but I credit The Girl and the Spider for the seemingly paradoxical clarity of its mysterious vision.

If Gifted works for you as it did me, it’s mostly because of the cast, but also the way the story unpeels.

The Innocent is quirky, touching, and well-played fun.

What could have been Solondz's most complex and challenging film winds up being a bit on the flat side. Still, the life-forms skittering over its surface are fascinating to behold.

Ron Howard’s documentary doesn’t just make you miss the singer. It makes you miss, of all things, a robust music industry.

The drama Dom Hemingway explores involves a vicious lout finding a form of redemption, and while that's an all-too conventional scenario, Shepard's movie plays it out in a brisk, inventive fashion and delivers a moviegoing experience that's almost equal parts stingingly sharp and genuinely sweet.

The Signal continues to get weirder, and creepier, and to bring up unusual questions for the viewer.

In a sense, the weirdest thing about Gimme Danger is how not weird it is.

The result is a story that’s hair-raisingly watchable and frequently moving, regardless of what you believe you might already know of Wilson’s life.

Sorrentino and cinematographer Daria D’Antonio color coordinate each and every frame to a fare-thee-well. Even scenes set in an Italian prison have real visual flair.

Even without access to all that it references, I Wish I Knew functions as an admirable cinematic tone poem about a place and its times.

Revisionist this may be, but it’s done with smarts and, sure ... perceptiveness and sensitivity.

A horror movie, a creepy and atmospheric and sometimes blood-soaked horror movie, and it’s got a good amount going for it.

What the movie is very good at revealing and expanding upon is how this reluctant actor became such a masterful one.

Genre fans ought to check it out post haste. I’m one myself, and my admiration for the superb conception and execution of the film goes hand in hand with disappointment and irritation.

My Old Lady is pretty compelling viewing, mostly thanks to Kline, who gives a career-high performance here.

From its opening, there’s a distinct sense of unease shrouded over Miracle, the third feature written and directed by Romanian filmmaker Bogdan George Apetri.

It’s a cogent expression of the proper spirit of resistance—that it should be based in love, but expressed in action. Direct, effective action.

Mike Wallace is Here, a documentary about the legendary and influential television interviewer who defined a particular kind of broadcast journalism, feels different from other documentaries about such figures, because it features no contemporary talking head interviews.

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.

Loushy is resourceful, particularly as an editor, and the talking heads, even those not as internationally famous as the compassionate, articulate, and still-distressed Oz, are spectacularly compelling.

An efficient and pleasurable bad-man-tries-to-go-good exposition that gives Gibson ample opportunity to flex his now-somewhat-grizzled movie-star muscle.

While it doesn’t hit the highs of the very best movies based on the author’s works — those would be Steven Soderbergh’s “Out of Sight” and Quentin Tarantino’s “Jackie Brown,” two outstanding examples of American narrative cinema of the ‘90s—it’s also far less slick and ingratiating than the watchable but very Hollywood-processed likes of “Get Shorty” and “Be Cool.”

In equal parts powerful and peculiar, the film is not my favorite of Green’s, but it helps solidify his position as one of the most visionary young directors around.

Once the viewer finds him or herself comfortable with the idea that it’s going for mildly-spine-tingling rather than gut-punching and eyeball-violating, all holy hell breaks loose. Which in this case turns out to be a pretty hellishly good thing.

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.

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.

The actors and acting are so attractive--as is, per usual in a Merchant Ivory production, the scenery--that the movie’s less deft handling of the scenario’s various themes, not to mention some stumbling in the final quarter, when the story’s tone grows a little darker, doesn’t stand out as much as it might have.

Like a lot of other stuff in this movie, it actually transcends the clichés of the genre while acknowledging those clichés as containing kernels of truth.

The violence is pretty graphic, and some of it is played for laughs, which would be distasteful if the laughs didn’t actually land. Oh well. Sometimes you enjoy a movie, and you don’t feel good about it in the morning.

Will Smith’s performance as Omalu is lovely: small-scaled, precise, imbued with righteousness but not tritely pious.

If the movie’s conclusion is more along the lines of Voltaire than it is to, say, Costa-Gavras’ “Z,” the hair-raising route it takes to get George to a spot of tentative complacency is memorable and eye-opening.

If a woman had not in fact certifiably written the picture, I might have thought that Lester Bangs had come back from the dead to pen an account of the teen years of his ideal mate.

I’m not qualified to say whether it’s an effective delivery system for its Christian message, but I think I can credibly pronounce it a good popcorn movie.

As the caper reaches its conclusion in a swirl of turnabouts and twists -- you'll never guess in whose favor all of them go -- Thirteen delivers more than enough gaming satisfaction for one such picture.

There are really no surprises here. But the action is bracing, Johnson’s performance is solid and, within its extremely narrow parameters, entirely convincing, and Gugino and Daddario are both gritty and attractive. The result is a pretty exemplary popcorn movie.

Perpetually wide-eyed and mega-snarly bedraggled, Christina Ricci prowls through Black Snake Moan looking like something the cat dragged in. If you're anything like me, you'll be very grateful to the cat.

The suspense aspect works like mad, but what's also noteworthy is the character component, which at times evokes a "Smash Palace"-era Donaldson.

Ghosts is one of Forman's most ambitious and daring films; would that all of its ambitions were fulfilled.

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.

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.

To tell you the truth, The Better Angels, as pictorially beautiful and emotionally evocative as it is, is so bereft of conventional narrative momentum that you have to consider it a miracle it got made.

A consistently intelligent (or at least bright), coherently constructed comedy that is on occasion a rather pointed critique of the American education system in the early 21st century. Don’t let that keep you away, though. It’s more often than not really funny.

All told, while the goods that Daggers offers are choice, the movie ultimately demonstrates that too much can be, well, more than enough.

At its best, it throbs with immediacy, just as Strummer did.

This is not a film occurring in an alternate or imaginary reality; rather, it is a film of NO reality, that is, a picture that changes the rules of its universe strictly according to its creators' whims.

Though the movie is predictable, it's also honest; Fin emerges from his struggles a better person but not A Better Person, if you catch my drift. And in any case all of the actors are a great pleasure to watch.

Literate, sober, soulful, and considered as it is, the movie is also a little overly scrupulous in its tastefulness.

The Way He Looks is a modest and good-hearted film that leaves a clean impression: you’re glad to have spent time with the people in it, for sure. But if you’re someone whose own specific circumstances are substantively different from those of the characters, the sense of a pleasant visit is pretty much it.

Whatever its shortcomings, “Magician” accomplishes quite a bit as a corrective, and it also gives one an hour and a half in the company of Orson Welles. That in and of itself is worth at least a three-star rating.

With the almost half-decade spaces between Holofcener's three features, one might (rather unreasonably, I admit) expect her to have sought to break wholly new ground in the interim. So she hasn't; nevertheless, Friends is well-crafted, intelligent, genuinely adult fare.

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.

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

Hong’s new film, “In Our Day,” is not atypical—it’s a plain-looking, often wry, and lightly nourishing character study with a diptych structure that adds enigmatic intrigue to the proceedings.

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.

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.

Amid all the jaw-dropping tales of bullying behavior, there is a constant and almost mordant acknowledgement of the one thing that Ailes was scarily right about: that no public official will ever again be elected “without the skillful use of television.”

The irony of Peck’s position is, while he’s on the rise as a choreographer, as a dancer he’s in a rather more plebian position, which provides the movie with a punchline that Lipes neither overstates nor shrugs off.

I have misgivings about Schreiber's use of the well-worn "I'll make you empathize with these Others, but first let's have laughs at their expense" approach, but eventually I was won over by his humane, moving road trip.

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

As an arraignment of the systems that ultimately rule human interaction regardless of the superficial societal differences between Europe, the Americas, and the East, A Hero is a chilling demonstration of how, as the song says, money changes everything.

The film’s images entangle us with the characters, which makes its indeterminate ending a little more disappointing than it might have been. But this post-cataclysm habitat is worth paying a visit anyway.

The absurdist sectarian comedy gives way, as it inevitably does in this conflict, to tragedy, and death both human and animal. While Shomali resists easy cynicism while seeming to have almost every excuse to indulge it, he doesn’t try to craft a hopeful parable out of his material either.

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.

It plays on your knowledge of/expectations about generic horror movies and then either delivers the goods from an unexpected angle or pulls the rug out from under you.

This Hairspray really is a lot of fun -- colorful, sassy, and brisk.

It has a solid story to tell, and tells it with no winks and few, if any, frills. It’s involving and ultimately exciting.

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 is an engaging and watchable activist documentary that does make way for optimism in its last minutes, but doesn’t, um, sugarcoat its envoi about changing our eating ways: “Not only can we do it, we have to.”

The viewer might strap themselves in for some life lessons. “Driving Madeleine” does serve them up, sure, but the film, written and directed by Christian Carion, is a lot more than a sentimental journey.

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

We’re left with the question of what a person can hang on to when everything about their identity and values leaves them.

A domestic comedy-drama that starts off from a fairly pat premise but builds strength over the course of its careful, empathetic, and crafty unpeeling of its characters.

It’s this kind of mindful direction and editing that helps make 21 Bridges one of the most entertaining and thoughtful American policiers in recent memory.

The web spun by The Origin of Evil arguably features one twist too many, but the viewer is in for more than a pound by the time it happens. Largely thanks to Calamy’s rock-solid performance.

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.

The film also has an unexpected and rich vein of humor. John Carroll Lynch -- you might know him as Norm Gunderson of "Fargo" -- is a stitch as a neighbor of the Burkes.

This is neither a trifle nor a truly Major Motion Picture; it’s an entertainment maybe in the sense that Graham Greene used the term. But one needn’t be so hifalutin about the matter.

The settings are handsome, the cinematography accomplished, the performances first-rate.

I’m not the only one who was at least slightly taken aback, though, by a persistent quirk in the movie’s casting, which is that not one of the Lions of American Literature in this picture was played by, well, an American.

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.

One thing not open to question is that the real heroes of this movie are Johnston's family, particularly his aging parents, who for all their heartbreak are palpably full of love and forbearance for their disturbed and, yes, talented boy.

Almost Sunrise presents a journey that is very much worth the time of anyone who’s concerned about the effect war has on our brothers and sisters who fight—which should translate to “everyone.”

One of the most diabolical things about this psychological thriller is just how open to interpretation it is.

Once the movie hits its true stride it’s really fascinating. At least it is if you have an interest in its subject, which I think maybe you should, since the compulsion to stand on a stage and seek approval by telling jokes is one of the most potentially masochistic in the entire human condition

Coup 53 is worth seeing, but its general effect on this viewer was to seek out more books, rather than movies, on the subject. Which I suppose is something.

In the end it's still Gilliam Lite, but Gilliam Lite is better than no Gilliam at all.

While Solondz's world is a hell hole and Anderson's "Rushmore" is a place of high-toned and often poignant whimsy, Napoleon Dynamite's unceasing burlesque creates a world that is pretty much a cartoon--and it's a damn funny cartoon to boot.

In spite of its abundant action — and for all the interspecies mashups, this is as much an action-adventure animated movie as it is a funny-animal animated movie — is a pretty relaxing experience for the adult viewer.