Glenn Kenny

It’s hilarious, and genuinely cool.

Ramshackle one minute, pointlessly deliberate the next.

The quirks of Beaton’s personality — his cultivation of enemies and frustrated romanticism, among them — are finally not as interesting as his work.

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.

Directed by Molly Bernstein and Philip Dolin, “Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse” is a remarkably cogent and compelling presentation not just of Spiegelman’s life story but also his personality and art.

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

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.

Fire Will Come practically becomes a documentary, and a devastating one at that.

Against very steep odds, writer-director Billy Ray and company have, in telling the real-life story of fictionalizing "New Republic" writer Stephen Glass and his downfall, produced the most entertaining inside-journalism movie since "All the President's Men."

If the resultant wreckage is a little underwhelming, and the film's coda useless and trite, the getting there is pretty absorbing.

To its credit, this consistently interesting and at times engrossing picture declines to strike any of its notes with a hammer. Trading on the great British art of understatement, it’s scrupulous, sober, and tasteful throughout.

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

“Rock & Roll President” is a potent and poignant reminder of how some things used to be and may never be again.

The movie’s disinclination to judge doesn’t deprive it of a point of view. Skate Kitchen is unfailingly compassionate to, and genuinely appreciative of, the people it chronicles.

It's been well-publicized that Affleck, going for as authentic a feel as possible, cast many genuine South Bostoners in both extra and speaking roles, and, while that's salutary, in some scenes his strategy backfires, yielding caricatures that are merely more vivid than the ones turned out by Central Casting Hollywood productions.

As a statement about the economic insecurity inherent in American capitalism, Where Is Kyra? has grim power.

As much candy as the movie encourages the eyes to gorge on, Tale of Tales is 135 pretty minutes of empty calories.

Beth B is not out to deliver a comprehensive biography. Instead, she achieves a vivid snapshot of a still-vital artist late in a still-purposeful life.

De Palma can’t realize all the elaborate effects he clearly wanted (the film’s climax occurs at a bullfight that’s conspicuously not crowded). But his direction often compensates with B-movie energy, particularly when he’s able to concentrate on his perverse vision.

The movie’s imagery is consistently unearthly; its pacing has a magisterial weight. Call it pulp Tarkovsky, maybe.

The emotional resonance may be surprising given the movie’s relentless gloss, but it’s real. The spectacularly charming cast, led by the young Nick Robinson in the title role (who brings a knowing touch of 1980s Matthew Broderick to some of his line readings), puts it all across, including a genuinely crowd-pleasing ending.

Always Shine is a deft, assured movie with a sly self-reflexive undercurrent containing commentary on sexism and self-idealization that’s provocative, and sometimes disturbing.

Along with the loving portraiture are elements of peculiar mystery.

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.

It has an uncommonly strong ensemble cast...but the movie belongs to Mr. Trintignant.

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.

This quiet movie, shot in black-and-white and color, is an unhurried, beautiful, and pained work that through simple means resonates on various levels.

The Death of Dick Long, until it meanders into a semisincere dramatic dimension, manages to pack in a good number of laughs for a significant amount of time.

Cairo Conspiracy is a measured but unsparing portrait of corruption perpetrated by people who, across the board, are utterly confident of their own rectitude. Its denouement offers some mercy, but zero hope that the rot depicted can be corrected.

The narrative conceits of Nine Days, while exquisitely constructed, are intricate to the point of laborious. At times the movie almost sinks under their weight.

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.

The movie is certainly colorful — this is a guy who, when he had it made, lived VERY large, even if he continued on what seemed like a quest to break every bone in his body multiple times. And it tells, as it keeps reminding us, a very American story. For all that, though, it doesn’t illuminate the guy’s character beyond what’s obvious.

This film rests on the fact that Mother Earth is always being called on by other worlds in the forms of comets, meteorites and asteroids — and it’s about as transportive as documentaries get.

This is an informative film that deals up its facts in a sober, linear fashion. This is salutary in that it avoids sensationalism that might lead to accusations of conspiracy-theory mongering. But it also has the effect of making the film feel a little dry.

The cast is appealingly natural, the cinematography subtly seductive, and the Colombian pop songs on the soundtrack establish a sinuous groove.

An exhilarating switchup: A comic fable that’s both deftly clever and irrepressibly goofy.

It’s in trying to locate the — for lack of a better term — heart of the movie where problems emerge.

Harris and Murray are such reliably engaging screen presences that they provide a few glimmers of entertainment, provided you’re able to set aside the movie’s practically all-encompassing repulsiveness.

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

The spectacular feature-directing debut of Qiu Sheng.

It is a disarmingly and consistently sensitive movie that remains engaging even when its reach sometimes exceeds its grasp.

A lively, fun one.

Possessor is a shocking work that moves from disquieting to stressful with ruthless dispatch.

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, in many respects, it is conventional in form, alternating archival footage from the late 1970s and early ’80s with newly shot interviews, the movie has a momentum (aided by an exemplary soundtrack of songs from the era) and a rare interrogatory spirit.

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.

The ending, while not inapt, also delves into a realm of cinematic overstatement that the movie had up until that time been careful to avoid. While disappointing, it doesn’t wholly mitigate the power of what has come before. This is an engrossing and unnerving film.

An excellent documentary directed by Richard Peete and Robert Yapkowitz.

The characters and the actors playing them are appealing, and the fight scenes have a lot of moxie, not to mention a lot of steel-slinging.

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

The ending, in which the reunited Sirens play before an enthusiastic crowd, is heart-tugging and rousing, even for non-metal heads.

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.

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.

While I have no problem enthusiastically recommending writer-director Nicolas Winding Refn's Pusher trilogy, I'd also heartily discourage all but the most rabid crime-movie nuts from consuming the whole thing in one afternoon or evening.

Ms. Didion’s triumph, as a writer and a human being, has been to take the age for what it is, to pinpoint how she saw it, and to stick it out.

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.

An eccentric and lively animated fantasy.

As an oblique examination and critique of political and art history and their various interactions over the 20th century, Manifesto is both witty and provocative. It is not, however, a motion picture for people seeking a plot.

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

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.

The documentary’s raw material arguably could have yielded a more powerful fit with a tighter edit. Nevertheless, this is a mostly engaging portrait.

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

Every performance here is wonderful, and the movie abounds in moments so true as to be cringe-worthy.

The result is a kind of very faux documentary style, which, along with the subject matter, has suggested to some the influence of the BBC television series "The Office." Von Trier says he's never seen an episode, and I believe him.

This is not a picture about which extravagant claims ought to be made; it really is, in the end, an hour and change in a London disco in 1984. But as a page from an artist’s notebook, and a time capsule curio, it rates pretty high.

I have to give Morgenthaler credit for what we used to call “moxie” — whatever the hell he’s doing, or thinks he’s doing, he’s fully committed to it, and while he doesn’t really pull off the unhinged apocalyptic fireworks he’s reaching for at the end (and I don’t think any director save Andrzej Zulawski, who’s clearly an influence, could pull them off), I give him credit for trying.

Accomplished and well-intentioned to the extent that one wants to accentuate the positive, but the positive isn't the whole, alas; for every moment in the film that evokes classic neo-realism, there's another that's commonplace or overly sentimental.

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.

This sentimental, nearly genteel movie demonstrates there’s a world of difference between invoking magic and conjuring it.

The movie wants the viewer to believe that James didn’t have it easy — and he didn’t. But it can’t skate over the aberrant actions that led to his imprisonment. “Bitchin’” is fascinating and troubling viewing.

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.

The movie also show’s Perrier’s humor, and his talents as a mentor.

The filmmakers’ bold pushback against the rigid formality of the genre they draw upon doesn’t always deliver. With the exception of Ms. Korine, the performers often seem to have a hard time shaking off the aura of the contemporary. Nevertheless, there’s much of value here.

The issues presented in When Two Worlds Collide are so crucial that it feels churlish to characterize it as a dutiful, and ultimately pedestrian, documentary. There is something evasive about it as well.

When the tension finally does break, the movie goes a little nuts, in venerable Johnnie To tradition. The elaborate, largely slow-motion multifloor action climax is as audacious as anything he has staged and filmed.

This tidy, thoughtful film gets at jazz’s joy and pain.

Cory Michael Smith’s performance as Adrian is a quiet marvel in a movie that’s superbly acted all around. The film’s intimate consideration of still-enormous issues is intelligent, surprising and emotionally resonant.

This is a potent, vital film.

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 movie’s generic quality is spruced up by eccentric plots points (go-go dancers who also serve as undercover eco-activists, a nice Andy Sidaris-like touch) and kooky dialogue.

It may surprise people who’ve experienced the Gallaghers only in tabloid-fodder mode that “Supersonic” teems with stirring and even moving moments.

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

The movie is at its liveliest when it depicts Mr. Frisell making his distinctive sound with a variety of colleagues. And, fortunately, Ms. Franz includes a lot of such footage.

There are a lot of laughs in his Hollywood redemption story, which also reveals Trejo’s hard-won gentleness.

For a while Pearce does a very clever balancing act, taking everyday unpleasantries and grotesqueries of life and exaggerating them just so.

Although the milieu of “Coup!” speaks allegorically to the pandemic of our own century, it does so softly; the movie is ultimately more a tale of class warfare than public health.

Even if you don’t care for Warren’s tunes, this movie is likely to make you a fan.

A more finely focused treatment would have made a much better summation of, or introduction to, Mr. Naharin’s work.

A movie that’s a pleasure to watch.

Enthusing over an effect Bergman used in his great 1983 “Fanny and Alexander,” the director Olivier Assayas concludes, “Art defines truth.” Just about every minute of this movie shows how that’s true.

The Outpost evolves from what initially feels like a collection of war-movie commonplaces, highlighting crude-talking soldiers in a bad situation, into something more complex and illuminating.

This film about an exemplary woman, made by women, is as much a pleasure as it is a lesson.

The movie’s lived-in acting and unhurried pace make it a better-than-palatable viewing experience.

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.

If there was ever an example of a movie's visual language leaving its verbal and narrative components in the dust, this, unfortunately, is it.

For the first half-hour or so of Eternal Beauty, Roberts and Hawkins take an unusual and intermittently illuminating approach to depicting mental illness. . . . But the movie doesn’t keep up its good work.

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.

If Billie gives short shrift to its subject’s artistry while underscoring her life’s squalor, it still offers pockets of valuable insight.

I wonder if there was a point in the making of this film at which Hickenlooper might have realized he picked the wrong subject. [May 2004, p. 18]

These songs have the power to move, inspire, make you dance. For the first time in my experience of Springsteen, they made me want to hide under my seat.

Black Book is Verhoeven's best film since "RoboCop": audacious, smart, shamelessly entertaining.

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.

The movie was directed by Morgan Neville (“20 Feet From Stardom”) and Jeff Malmberg (“Marwencol”), and is a tad more fanciful than their prior work. But fancy is a good fit for the Veecks, it turns out.

As forceful as its title suggests, and sometimes unbelievably ballsy.

There’s much historical material here that’s of high interest, and Ms. Swinton’s performance of Bell’s letters convey Bell’s skills as a writer, but the movie is ultimately too conceptually labored for its own good — or that of its subject.

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.

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.

The movie’s wide-screen framing, ruthless plot reversals and say-what-you-mean writing sometimes recall a master of socially conscious cinema from another era, Sam Fuller. But this is a picture with its own strong voice.

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 movie also provides a smart primer on the “New German Cinema” Herzog helped bring into being during the 1960s.

It's distinctly Morrisean, as it were, and seeing his style applied to subject matter with which one is already somewhat familiar makes one... well, question the style a bit.

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

While the last third of Butterfield’s life is tragic, spending the better part of 90 minutes with the man and his music is exhilarating. The picture may get at least a few people talking about him again.

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.

This ostensibly edgy comedy didn't wring a single laugh out of me until maybe fifteen minutes before the finale.

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

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

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.

The work Watts and Murray do in this sequence is both emotionally raw and acutely thoughtful, rife with specificity. It’s career-high stuff.

Only intermittently stimulating.

The humor has a persistent goofy streak, but what sticks to the ribs is the poignant stuff.

It’s a 21st-century version of "The Sting" for these so far rather unkind and ungentle times.

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.”

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.

The movie’s most moving sequence is near the end, when Mr. Jia discusses his father, who faced awful hardships during the Cultural Revolution.

Intermittently compelling but rather unfortunately titled documentary.

It's not likely you'll see a film more visually exhilarating until, well, Gondry's next.

I haven't been crazy about a lot of Van Sant's recent work, but what he does here is simply astonishing. [November 2003, p. 25]

When you’ve hired human actors to do nothing but sneer, shout, and shoot guns, their onscreen function can get ever so slightly monotonous. This is not the movie’s only reliance on commonplaces but it’s the most prominent.

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.

Good-hearted stuff, to be sure, but mainly of interest to lovers of cinematic comfort food.

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.

Belladonna of Sadness is compulsively watchable, even at its most disturbing: The imagery is frequently graphic, and still, after over 40 years, it has the power to shock.

Feature-length failures as abject as this one are almost frightening, in part because one worries about what kind of a snit the director will be working out if/when he gets a second shot.

The movie is a fast account that is sometimes a tad facile in its analysis of a cultural moment. But as Mr. Schrager’s personal too-much-too-soon story, it’s compelling.

Too-laborious meditation on life and death.

The documentary elicits some viewer indignation on her behalf, but overall, it’s not a very inspired piece of work. While it depicts M.I.A.’s bristling at being called a terrorist advocate, it never wholly clarifies her specific political aims.

“Do the Universe” knows it won’t change the world, or precincts outside it. But the abundance of not entirely cheap laughs that this movie — which is best watched over a plate of nachos — delivers is therapeutic.

This movie packs in plenty of cinema acrobatics and spectacle without ever feeling out of control, even as it morphs into a far-fetched whodunit.

The ensemble is superb, and each member has at least one standout moment, but the movie rides on the shoulders of Parsons, as Michael, the host of the party.

Everything in Life of Riley, Resnais makes plain, is a contrivance. Much of the joy and beauty of the movie comes from letting the levels of contrivance fall into place, as with some Rube Goldberg contraption, creating a parallel abstract narrative to the more conventional semi-farcical one unfolding on screen.

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.

“Blues,” playing now in a 40th anniversary restoration, is a constant charmer. Watching it is a buoyant experience even when the humor is a bit tasteless, including a bit involving mistaken sex partners during a blackout.

Ultimately the movie is as scattershot as it is enthusiastic. . . . But the narrative about the theaters’ present-day fight for survival is undeniably compelling.

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.

Job tensions hammer at the fault lines of the couple’s marriage, but the movie maintains an understated “I love ya, tomorrow” tone. A pleasant sit — the kind of picture that’s moving, but not too moving.

This first feature from Dan Rybicky and Aaron Wickenden demonstrates that these documentary filmmakers might do well to think more like journalists sometimes.

A modestly scaled film on every level, but Hedges and company manage to ring true on almost all the material's sweet and sour notes.

Gottsagen is a disarming performer who creates a sweet and funny character.

Double Lover, which Mr. Ozon “freely adapted” from the Joyce Carol Oates book “Lives of the Twins,” spins its influences into a frenzy that ultimately reveals the story to be very much its own thing. And a crazy, and eventually strangely moving, thing it is. As elaborate as its visuals are, the movie is also intimate.

Her insistent imagery and sometimes oblique narrative approach don’t always deliver the dividends sought. But the movie identifies Ms. Shortland as a talent to watch.

This is a straightforward story that Mr. de Los Santos Arias, making his fictional feature debut, tells in an ever-changing style, shooting in color and black and white. He also alternates the shape of the frame, mostly toggling between a boxy frame and the wider one most mainstream movies are shown in. Whatever effect was hoped for, this viewer just saw affectation.

As stomach-churning a suspense exercise as the cinema has seen since the salad days of Hitchcock.

Obviously, this is not a film for viewers unfamiliar with Mr. Tsai’s work. But its insistently austere format does suggest a purpose beyond its immediate context.

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.

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

While second-guessing the marketing strategies of movie conglomerates is happily not the concern of this reviewer, it does seem a shame that this exhilarating, bizarre, good-hearted, blatantly obvious sci-fi-fantasy-slapstick eco-fable isn’t getting wider fanfare.

Sokolov’s debut feature is a clever, bloody as hell, often hilarious virtuoso exercise in excruciating harm-doing among mendacious people.

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.

Neither character talks all that much, but both actors project complex intelligence and consistent emotional acuity.

Eventually—about the time it demonstrates Henry’s expertise as a killer of men, in several well-done action mini-sequences—we learn the details of Henry’s past, and your overall enjoyment of the movie may hinge on whether or not you’re willing to, as they say, go with it.

Redoubt reaches for intimations and apprehensions of the cosmic.

Chasing Trane streamlines the story of the jazz saxophonist, but it does so in a way that doesn’t feel like cheating. Scheinfeld’s approach is to give the viewer the forest, point out a few trees and get out, confident that those trees will inspire the viewer to spend more time in the forest.

[A] heady, fascinating movie.

Julia is an apt tribute to a life well-lived and well-fed.

The movie reminded me of what Peter Bogdanovich said of Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”: that it "is not a young man’s movie; it has the wisdom and poetic perceptions of an artist knowingly nearing the end of his life and career." The wisdom and poetry here are just as real and just as thoroughly felt.

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.

The movie’s straddling of the dramatic and the documentary forms is unsettling. Unless you unquestioningly accept its method, this chronicle can look like a glaring invasion of privacy. But the film’s people are moving, and the payoff is compassionate, humane and worth heeding.

The movie’s most provocative aspect is its near-methodical portrayal of hive-mind thinking pursued as a kind of norm — not just by the examiners, but the hopeful applicants.

Director and co-writer (with Boris Yutsin) Atsuko Hirayanagi has a knack for staging scenes in a way that makes them intriguingly uncomfortable, but that doesn’t succeed in elevating Oh Lucy! from some of its more commonplace features.

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

The movie’s climax has sufficient twists and turns for a conventional payoff. But the movie, adapted from a novel by Tatiana de Rosnay, is ultimately more concerned with the genuinely tragic dimensions of the story than its suspense angles.

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

The moments of charm and fun are few.

This is a sensitively made film that’s pretty frustrating. In the tradition of some vintage Italian films that got gathered under the rubric of Neo-Realism, it gives you a character to root for and then places her between a rock and a hard place with no cavalry coming to the rescue.

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.

In depicting the horrific specifics of this particular man’s awful military experience, Hermanus delivers in abundance.

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

As a straight, sentimental melodrama, Youth works well. While there are a lot of conventional tropes, the cast enacts them with such fresh, tenderhearted sincerity that they regain some power.

Asako proceeds from a premise that flirts with the mystic, but Hamaguchi executes it with elegantly rendered realism. (It is adapted from a 2010 novel by Tomoka Shibasaki.) The result is a picture that is simultaneously engaging and disconcerting.

This is a harrowing movie that depends on our collective hindsight to underscore its manifold and particular ironies.

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

Their moment of resolution at the end is very moving, but the movie also testifies that while love and forgiveness can ameliorate suffering, it can’t really wipe it all away.

The most satisfyingly diabolical cinematic structure that the Coens have ever contrived, and that's just one reason that I suspect it may be their best movie yet.

Sean Penn’s work in Haiti after its devastating 2011 earthquake continues to this day. And this new documentary Citizen Penn is a revealing, engaging chronicle of the actor’s activism.

My reservations about such pictures in general were not put to rest by Patriots Day, but this film’s real merits are not easily dismissed either.

The tragedies in this family’s life are nearly constant, but Mr. Matuszynski approaches them with a tone that’s matter-of-fact while also partaking in the particular wry irony that has been a hallmark of Polish cinema since the early 1960s.

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.

While the making of the song was partially detailed in its long-form video, there’s plenty of new, engaging, and sometimes eyebrow-raising anecdotal material here.

Brian Kirk, the director, has a good feel for this formidable, intimidating setting; the viewer appreciates its beauty while maintaining a keen sense of how awful it would be to get stranded there.

The courtroom scenes are the animated ones…and said animation looks rather cruder than your average PS3 game.

Although this installment is a beautiful stand-alone thang (check out how its chronology-juggling storyline creates a perfect circle, structure-wise).

Mr. Moore recognizes an affinity he shares with the president — also a showman. So he is in a nearly unique position to shame the viewer with a frank perspective on how Mr. Trump used his extrovert side to make citizens complacent about the less savory aspects of his character.

While Broomfield’s films often take a sardonic, close-to-cynical tone, “Marianne & Leonard” is admiring, affectionate and a little awe-struck.

22 July is at its most engrossing and moving in its depiction of one brave kid, a victim of Breivik who was shot five times and lived, and that kid’s eventual resolve to face the terrorist in court.

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.

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

Understanding what McGrath is trying to pull off is not the same thing as McGrath pulling it off; as ambitious as it is, Infamous falters in execution too often to create a lasting impression.

While avoiding specious bromides about universality, Persepolis insists on communicating with its audience, and insists that communication and empathy are the keys to our survival.

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.

In many of Herzog’s nonfiction films, the director himself is a defining presence. One understands why he wanted to stay behind the camera and off the soundtrack here. This wrinkle in modern social life is best taken in without the mitigation of overt distancing.

It’s undeniable that Manhunt delivers first-rate cinematic technique while skimping on substantial emotional investment. It’s still a great deal of fun.

Once the mercenaries start tooling around wearing actual Ku Klux Klan outfits, the pretenses to allegory have gone out the window. And yes, it is salutary to see guys with pointy hoods getting blown away by righteous African-American avengers. But the cinematic cost of getting there was not, for this viewer, worth it.

The cast perform with conviction, and the whole movie is attractively, solidly put together. But its dramatic components, fraught as they are, are tepidly delivered.

The overall integrity of the effort is impressive.

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

Meerpool’s movie is scary without being alarmist.

It’s a film of scenes rather than of one unified narrative, but each scene is a showcase for the magnificent talents of Ms. Balibar, a multifaceted performer of spectacular magnetism and intelligence.

The movie is at its most entertaining when detailing the making of “Midnight Express” and the contentious personalities involved.

The star of the movie is a compelling figure, and Mr. D’Ambrosio presents quite a few people from Mr. Serpico’s past who have a similar draw. But the director’s filmmaking instincts are not always salutary.

By framing the movie as a multipronged narrative that eventually culminates in the big event of the fair itself, it risks prosaicness. But the subjects are winning and heartening, and their mission is one you just can’t take issue with.

Are We Not Cats is a well-put-together film with a lot of striking imagery, but, as you may have already inferred, something of a specialty item.

The measured tone with which the movie presents its ostensible revelations is more than half the fun; nothing that comes up is ever played as a twist; the aforementioned opening scene shows Munch’s hand deliberately.

The ensemble is packed with seasoned acting professionals across the board, who more than sell their drunk scenes and deliver more than a few laughs on their way to redemption.

Mr. Schreiber has almost no physical resemblance to Wepner, in his heyday a burly, mustachioed redhead. Mr. Schreiber is a terrific actor, however, and he pulls it off. His portrayal works partly because of its understatement.

It’s an earnest account of a religious movement that still resonates — Whitefield’s practice was instrumental in the growth of the Methodist church, and his sermons and lectures are still in print today.

The keen affinity the actor David Oyelowo has for his fellow performers is the best thing about The Water Man.

As much as Eastwood finds to condemn in the movie’s designated villains, he does not deliver any comeuppances to them in the end. Which is merciful in the context of fiction, and kind of the mordant point in the context of fact.

What’s good about this movie is funny, and refreshing, enough to make the dry spots feel more tolerable in retrospect.

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.

The movie’s energy doesn’t pay off in dividends of real pleasure. Anarchy has never been so mere as it is ultimately rendered here.

This sports underdog story, which is based on true events, has several features endemic to the genre. But Dream Horse, an unabashed crowd-pleaser directed by Euros Lyn, earns its smiles and cheers.

The documentary also reminds viewers of why Friedkin has earned this tribute. For all his career ups and downs, he has remained devoted to making genuinely challenging and exciting work, and has succeeded more often than not. The documentary serves as a strong incitement to dig into it.

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

Gillan plays her messy, mournful role with unfussy integrity. The movie does not stray beyond the borders of the modest character study, but within those parameters, it’s accomplished and impressively straightforward.

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 film is sensitively wrought. It’s credible in its evocation of mid-’70s suburbia. The acting is excellent throughout, and Ross Lynch in the role of Dahmer elicits genuine sympathy for an increasingly lost but not yet monstrous soul. But in abandoning the subjective perspective of the graphic novel, My Friend Dahmer feels a little lacking in purpose.

One feels the filmmaker trying hard to work out the inner struggles of his sad but largely unsympathetic characters. But his movie is as miserable and ultimately confounding as it is earnest.

One of the things that makes this movie such a great rush is that while you’re watching it, it seems a good deal more subversive than it really is.

The movie becomes less fizzy once DeCillo decides to make A Statement (a rather incoherent one at that).

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.

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.

The filmmakers, who made “Leviathan,” the striking 2012 immersion into commercial fishing, seem to be arguing that Sagawa needs to be understood beyond moralistic preconceptions. Caniba did not make the case for me. I consider Sagawa repellent, and the movie an exercise in intellectualized scab-picking.

Once Palpatine's machinations set the cogs in motion for the creation of Vader, and the Clone Wars start getting bloody, Sith commences to cook in a way that no Star Wars movie has since "Empire."

Barnett muses on the contradiction of how, in one performance, she might be “vivid and alive” and in the next “distant,” even though she’s going through the same motions with each show.

Proceeds at a very stately pace, hoping the otherworldly mood of its detailed recreation of the old West might seep into the viewer's bones. This viewer did, as it happens, fall under the film's spell.

Those who still relish the sight of Anthony Hopkins portraying an evil criminal mastermind will get the most out of Fracture, which is not so much a whodunit -- we see Hopkins' character putting a bullet in his wife's head in the movie's first few minutes -- as a howdunnit.

This documentary directed by Lydia Tenaglia is a conspicuously imperfect movie that turns more compelling after trying your patience, then yields a final half-hour that’s as engrossing as a finely-wrought suspense drama.

Santoalla ends with the mystery solved. The threads that remain hanging imbue this peculiar story of paradise lost with a tragic resonance.

Its punchline, imagining the worst that could happen to Auteuil's slimy exec, is weak and kind of dumb, but the rest of the film is genial, appealing, and brisk.

If the movie doesn’t go more than skin deep in interrogating questions about interventions both military and journalistic into the Middle East, it does succeed in opening up Mr. Hondros’s contradiction-filled world.

I wish it had been a lot more fun, frankly. The movie’s tone never quite gels; it’s too outlandish and cartoony to convince, but not so outlandish and cartoony that it takes off into a realm of over-the-top exhilaration.

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.

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.

The information here is compelling and frightening, but the movie is ham-handed.

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

The consequences of seemingly innocuous careless moments, the inexorability of fate, and the possibility of grace or just mere reconciliation in the face of disheartening catastrophe: these are the themes of Bluebird.

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.

Outlandish as its action often is, The Captain is based on a true story. Schwentke’s film, though, has an allegorical/satirical axe to grind, and it more often than not frames the narrative in dark archetypal terms.

Yeah, it's pretty funny. And it's a pretty accurate depiction of a certain feature of male romantic humiliation. But it's also a little -- and this is one of my two misgivings about the movie -- expected.

The direction is energetic, incorporating frantic flashbacks and resourceful split-screen perspectives, and the plot adds several new twists not found in the first movie. Rest assured, this may be a remake, but it’s not a retread.

Match has enough meaty and engaging character material to effectively sidestep the very theatrical contrivance of its plot premise, which does have a great deal of potential for reversal and counter reversal and indeed takes full advantage of that potential.

The movie’s convincing accretion of detail and its affectionate fictionalization of an actual subculture are disarming.

All of these actors are incredibly fine, and as a confirmed Beckinsale non-fan, I'm obliged to say that she really knocked me out here.

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.

A work of exceptional, undeniable craft, but it’s also a movie that’s meant to stick to you a little bit.

Framing John DeLorean doesn’t fully answer its own central question, and leaves several others hanging as well. As frustrating as this can be in hindsight, the movie, while it’s playing, is unfailingly engrossing.

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

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.

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

Despite the appalling circumstances and events it depicts, the movie’s plain and unstinting affection for its lead characters gives Parched a frequently buoyant tone.

The film is an unusually layered look at how the combination of privation, misplaced familial loyalty and just plain rotten luck can make the immigrant experience in America a nightmare.

The reason I’m rating this movie higher than I would otherwise, is Christopher Walken. His commitment to making Caleb as thoroughly unlikable as humanly possible yields a character who’s kind of terrifyingly off-putting even when his words and actions are ineffectual. A piece of acting alchemy of which only few are capable. I can’t imagine how powerful it might have been in a better movie.

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.

It’s rich enough in atmosphere to make you almost buy the quasi-allegorical absurdities.

Depp and Winslet in particular are, as you might expect, immaculate. I don't think there's another actor alive who can convey the intermingling of gentleness and passion with as much precision as Depp.

The movie is pedantic, humorless, dry — all of the things that, as it happens, “The Searchers” is not.

Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation, directed by Barak Goodman, uses the perspective of nearly 50 years’ hindsight to demonstrate anew how the festival was both a mess and a miracle, and implicitly argues that it was a good deal more miracle than mess.

Much of the movie, from its attempts to capture the confusing exhilaration of youthful experience to its predictable progressive character dynamics, is labored.

The movie also falls back on a lot of boogity-boogity docu-clichés. Skittery editing, ironic music cues, that sort of thing.

Casta and Garrel generate wary warmth as a couple rediscovering each other, while Depp and Engel provide the comedic ballast.

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.

For my money, if I'm in the mood for the kind of aesthetic and emotional experience Saints is selling, I'll just blast Jim Carroll's more concise (and rocking!) "People Who Died" out of my iPod.

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.

It’s not as poetic or immediately enjoyable as the first film. But it is tougher and more analytical, with real challenges embedded in its pleasures.

The most interesting thing about Ibiza, not to get too highfalutin, is its positive treatment of female desire.

The reversals the characters suffer across the movie’s running time are epic, and the movie’s finale unfolds to genuinely startling effect.

Upgrade is an energetic, superficially slick, latter-day B-movie of the “but dumb” category. That is, it’s kind of like “RoboCop,” but dumb, and also like “Ex Machina,” but dumb.

The dumbness doesn't kill Death at a Funeral, but it certainly weakens it.

If this movie leaves Cage adrift, he doesn’t seem at all uncomfortable about it.

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.

When the movie isn’t straining, the go-for-broke performances of Dyrholm and Lindh give it a specific, unusual tension — like the feeling you get when you’ve over-tightened a corkscrew and know the matter around it is about to crumble.

There’s a lot more here for tennis fans than you get in average sports documentaries.

A picture that certain Brits and connoisseurs of British colloquial English might call "a grower" … more moving and funny the more I think about it.

Nighy is, of course, exceptional in fleshing out what could have been merely a set of irascible tics and traits. And the Andersonisms, while not particularly exhilarating, are not thematically inapt. But this is a film best consumed by those who don’t mind “slight.”

The movie is impeccably crafted and consistently engaging.

This is a movie that is too frenetic and basic to make a substantial impression. I appreciated a kernel of observation here and there, but not enough for me to give it a whole-hearted embrace.

Nancy exhibits a seriousness of purpose that’s rare in American movies today.

In the final half-hour, things start picking up, not just because of the impending surprise victory of Donald J. Trump and the way these players react to it.

The movie’s approach is gratuitously grandiose.

While the picture, directed by Rick Gomez, has an often jaunty tone, it’s really at its best when it leans into the sadness that shadows the father-daughter relationship. Those scenes are where the two Zahns do their best, most affecting acting work.

Olivier Assayas latest effort could be mistaken for a hipper-than-thou thriller. But it isn’t--it’s in fact a difficult, challenging, and troubling art film. [October 2003, p. 19]

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.