Glenn Kenny

A twist whipsaws the movie into a darker place, one in the vicinity of Patricia Highsmith. But no murder takes place, and the movie’s resolution confirms what one may have suspected all along: Its dominant room tone is kinda-sorta that of “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.”

Ms. Covi and Mr. Frimmel’s Mister Universo is a disarming and humane picture, an unexpected delight.

The movie has some pleasures, but can be heartily recommended only to those who like their entertainments equally inoffensive and inconsequential.

Watching it with a demonstrative crowd in a Times Square theater proved to this former grindhouse devotee that sometimes you can go home again, at least momentarily.

There are certain varieties of whimsy that either click with you or don’t. I point this out because what didn’t click for me in “Brian and Charles,” a new comedy directed by Jim Archer, might do something for you.

The movie’s prime mover, Rogen, is a doge of stoner humor, and he shows incredible discipline in this film by saving the first weed joke for twenty minutes in. I commend him for that.

The film is worth seeing because it’s a moving and remarkable story and it represents a great cause. Mr. Carlson often puts a directorial foot wrong.

Directed by Steve Mitchell, it’s as conventional as Mr. Cohen’s movies are not. Which is O.K. While the filmmaker himself is more interested in telling colorful anecdotes than dredging up the portions of his psyche that inspire him, the anecdotes are colorful indeed.

This picture earns its tear-jerking without becoming treacly. OK, without becoming too treacly. And it has other charming, enlightened components.

A giddy kick-out-the-jams entertainment. Diary takes a tack that's not exactly new, but is new to Romero, and as one might expect, the director brings a sharp and uncompromising new perspective to it.

I wish the long-gestating dream had resulted in a better film. I don’t want to read too much into things that I only know second or third hand, but in a sense Peterloo shows the pitfalls of the dream project.

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.

So, no, this is not a frivolous film. There are a few surfing sequences that provide a rush of “whoa!” adrenaline, and some breathtaking Hawaiian landscapes on display. But the movie is a character study more than anything else.

The director remains near-merciless in his approach, never shying away from showing his vulnerable characters (and the tormentor played with twisted relish by Lithgow is, ultimately, as unprotected as any of the others) in states of utter abjection.

The collision of her good-faith lack of inhibition with institutionalized misogyny makes this Canadian’s biography a very disquieting American story.

If you’re a maven or even vaguely curious there’s a lot of production value to be derived here. The human story that the filmmakers want to drape over their atmosphere, though, never quite connects.

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.

There’s a lot to like here, particularly Steinfeld’s performance.

Instead of maintaining an effervescent fizzle, Phantom Boy too frequently sputters piffle.

Given the aesthetically confrontational nature of the piece, one can understand why Mr. Rossi did not attempt an undiluted cinematic translation of the complete Bronx Gothic. But something about his approach (which I assume was approved by Ms. Okpokwasili, as she is one of the movie’s executive producers) feels, finally, like an evasion.

Unfortunately, for this viewer, the formal constraint foisted upon him by writer/director Jeremy Rush in Wheelman went right up his nose and stayed there, resulting in a little less than 90 minutes of annoyance.

A documentary that wants to appear inventive but too often comes off as affected, directed by Jeffrey McHale.

Not unlike an expensively tattooed panhandler, the couple elicit only a skeptical kind of sympathy.

Because it is a French film, or rather the kind of French film that wants to serve its sentimentality with a dollop of prestige, The Midwife doesn’t offer an entirely shameless version of the “dying free spirit imbues uptight caretaker with a new lust for life” scenario.

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

It's too bad that the movie induces eyeball-rolling almost as much as it does armrest-clutching.

The movie is a pointed reminder that Ms. McAdams is one of cinema’s most accomplished and appealing comic actresses. It’s almost heartbreaking to contemplate how amazing she would be in a new comedy that was more than intermittently O.K.

Terrifically charming and energetic film.

The mood Mr. Weerasethakul conjures is all the more extraordinary when you consider that the movie’s premise, in the hands of almost any other director, would be used to build some kind of horror movie.

Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein is a breathtaking coup, an exhilarating riposte to the conventional wisdom about dream projects. The writer-director makes something almost new, and definitely rich and strange, out of a story we all thought we knew well.

The verbal analysis here isn’t always profound — one interviewee trots out the banal phrase “the conversation we should be having” — but the narrative as presented in archival footage (Kaepernick did not sit for an interview for this film) is exemplary.

Stardust is an eye-poppingly elaborate fantasy that's shot through with action-movie adrenaline and attitude.

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

I suppose the fact that I was affected as I was by Wedding Doll is testimony to its emotional effectiveness. But while Hagit is able to crack a smile at the movie’s end, I feel a pall wrapping around me every time I contemplate her predicament, or the predicament of her real-life models.

As it turns out, modes of farce and fantasy enable Mr. Dumont to pull the rug out from under the viewer in a number of new and upsetting ways. Be prepared.

Margot is a fleet, strangely enjoyable film, animated by the acuity of Baumbach's perceptions and -- this helps a lot -- the frequent laugh-out-loud wit of his dialogue.

The Integrity of Joseph Chambers is a reasonably well-constructed non-hero’s journey that may resonate with you if you’re not already sick of movies set on anatomizing the Crisis of White Masculinity in These United States. This reviewer finds the topic tiresome, tiring, aesthetically unappealing, and banal.

It depicts in stomach-churning detail how the contemporary militarization of law enforcement creates an atmosphere in which violence is near inevitable. This conscientious attention balances out the movie’s occasional lapses into sentimentality.

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

The movie chronicles music industry tales of glory and failure. These are dishy, but more interesting is Ms. Jett’s rock ‘n’ roll heart. The stories of how she mentored younger bands are moving.

Tommaso has a different feel than your average variant on Fellini’s “8 ½.” Maybe it’s a sense of shame, something the older film’s Guido hadn’t much of. Whatever it is, it makes Tommaso crackle with ideas and empathy, as Ferrara’s best work always does.

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.

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.

The betrayal of Native Americans by larger forces looms over this powerful movie without ever being explicitly discussed.

Directed by Scott Leberecht, Jurassic Punk tells the very juicy story of pioneers, naysayers and professional hierarchies that made Williams both the Necessary Man and an eventual outcast.

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.

This is a sexy, fun film filled with a lot of zingers, but it also feels a little less personal than many of Assayas’ movies, perhaps in part because it’s not stuffed to the gills with songs he loves.

Armstrong’s version of tech-bro bantering is a lot more literate and zingy than actual tech-bro bantering would be, otherwise the picture would be rather a bore. After a while, it begins to evanesce, like ice-breath does in the mountain air.

One of Cruise's most deeply cherished ambitions is to be a great actor, and this movie goes to great lengths to let him do that--sort of. You'll understand what I mean during the sequence in which there is more than one Philip Seymour Hoffman on the screen.

Even if you’ve scratched your head over Mr. Lydon’s TV ad work and other efforts to maintain a professional life in recent years, this affectionate and frank movie can elicit newfound admiration for a slightly mellowed iconoclast.

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

The documentary is able to record only small, not sweeping, changes of heart. Nevertheless, the film, like the singers, maintains a compassionate optimism.

A repetitious feel begins to take over. For some viewers, quietude may yield to boredom.

By the end the movie has pretty much ceased taking itself at all seriously, devolving into a nonchalant giggliness of the stoned variety that's completely apropos.

A low-key and intelligent character study, Miss Stevens doesn’t escape from its indie-film commonplaces often enough to become really distinctive, but it has enough conscientiousness about its people that it doesn’t let the commonplaces fester into movie-sinking clichés.

It would be reductive to call it a “girlboss” story, but it wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate to, either.

While her filmmaking style can sometimes come across as staid, [Ms. Asante's] sense of pace is always acute. The best reason to see A United Kingdom, however, is the performance by Mr. Oyelowo.

I cannot lie, though. As cranky as much of the movie made me, Pastoll, Blaney, and especially Bolger all contrive to deliver as satisfying a climax and dénouement to this saga as one could hope for. So there is that.

The movie tells an incomplete version of the band’s story...but provides a comprehensive and sometimes harrowing portrayal of the grind a working bar band in the 1970s had to endure to get by.

Ms. Olson’s images are often captivating, but too often undercut by the aforementioned aspiring-to-the-dialectical voice-over, which is awkwardly written, and delivered with a lack of affect that grows tedious over the course of an hour.

Throughout, the filmmakers live up to the movie’s title. But as the story comes to a close, they opt to wrap it in comforting cliché, and they turn a miserable but credible viewing experience into a confounding one.

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

The goings-on are grim, grueling and, eventually, grisly. Mensore shoots them with a sharp eye for maintaining coherent spatial relations, which enhances the suspense. It’s a sometimes bracing simulation.

One thing’s for sure: In Staying Vertical, every character has sex on the brain, all the time.

As is customary in Mr. Desplechin’s work, there’s a lot of dialogue in Ismael’s Ghosts, but this movie’s nerve endings vibrate most avidly and tenderly in scenes where not a word is spoken.

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.

The movie does gain in stature just by letting Cage be Cage. When he’s riding in a car right after his release, Frank rolls down the window feeling a breeze on his face. Cage puts on that “shine sweet freedom” expression he used at the end of “Con Air.” If you’re a fan of the actor, this is a moment when all is right in the world.

In my cut of the film, it ends after Jones opens the parcel from his son that's been sitting on his kitchen table since shortly after he left. I recommend viewers leave the theater at that point. You won't be sorry that you did.

A droll, poignant comedy enlivened by two terrific performances.

Liberation Day, a documentary of preparations for the concert directed by Mr. Traavik and Ugis Olte, is a consistently understated chronicle of Westerners who are very carefully playing with fire.

Wilde Salomé is most fascinating as a portrait of a superstar actor who, for all his wealth and privilege, encounters unusual frustrations as he pursues genuine artistic ambitions.

While The Great Debaters' intentions don't lead it to movie hell, this picture is far more diffuse, commonplace, and predictable than the surprisingly convincing "Fisher."

If this film’s directors, Valérie Müller and the French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj, don’t offer much overt material on Polina’s inner life, it’s because they don’t have to: the point of Polina, and this movie, is that her dancing is her being.

This new cinematic imagining of Carlo Collodi’s classic fantasy tale is alternately enchanting and befuddling.

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.

Whatever genre it belongs to, The Other Side is powerful and disturbing.

Kier is unfailingly captivating in the film, which makes it all the more bothersome that the film itself doesn’t match him.

This is direct and frequently powerful filmmaking that doesn’t much care about meeting my aesthetic standards.

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.

Hyams directs Timothy Brady’s script appropriately if not brilliantly (Hyams is also credited as a co-editor), but the movie’s main attraction, finally, is its cast.

Mr. Newell directs with sensitivity and the occasional invention; the movie has an almost tactile appreciation of period detail, as when Juliet sets to writing, the camera lingers on her onionskin typing paper. The cast is impeccable.

While Nemes’s near-subjective technique can generate genuine tension, it more often yields anxious tedium.

On the whole, Becoming Bond is sufficiently winning that you might even forgive its chapter titles, each one a worse-than-the-previous play on a James Bond-associated phrase

This is a remarkably assured movie, through and through. Walsh and cinematographer Guy Godfree have taken care to make every individual shot a thing of beauty. But the artfulness always acts in service of the emotions, which in the end become both inspiring and heartbreaking.

As revisionist as it might aspire to be, Never Grow Old is rife with clichés, Cusack’s philosophical villain one of the most conspicuous.

The filmmakers really do manage to visualize a distinctly Ballardian nightmare-scape. This in itself makes High-Rise worth experiencing.

A smart, sweet, and thoroughly disarming ensemble comedy that isn't afraid to wear its humanism on its sleeve.

While "Oh, Canada" has moments of mordant humor, its ultimate mode is the elegiac.

Playful, poetic, shocking, saddening, and ultimately gratifyingly and honestly big-hearted.

The film’s generous views of spectacular works like Smithson’s monumental “Spiral Jetty” (the work projects into the Great Salt Lake in Utah) and Mr. Heizer’s “Double Negative” in Nevada (a huge trench bisected by a canyon) are best seen on the largest screen available.

This reasonably engaging picture is being pushed as a kind of diversity-prioritizing indie comedy as opposed to the YA film it really is, for reasons not entirely clear to me.

You don’t have to be a Green Day fan to find this movie interesting, but you’ll definitely be more inherently invested in it if you are.

As the parents, Mr. Wilson and Ms. Arquette seem just about as tired as the characters they’re playing. As Auralie, Ms. McLean is appealing and fresh-faced and could do well in a better coming-of-age movie in a few years.

There’s some intriguing social commentary in the Chinese comedic melodrama I Am Not Madame Bovary.... But appreciating it, and the other points of interest in the movie, requires a perhaps unusual amount of patience, or even indulgence.

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.

Hoss’s work is impeccable and illuminating, and the movie’s foursquare, frank, brisk approach is salutary. But its final scenes lean into triteness and frustrating evasiveness, which makes the picture a less than entirely satisfying experience.

It all moves along so amiably, and offers such consistently delightful visuals, that the conventional plot points, up to and including an inevitable “but I can explain” bit, are entirely digestible.

Tharlo instead opts for fleeting charm and shaggy humanism, until the narrative takes a grim turn that’s both trite and sexist. The bottom drops out of the movie, leaving its interest almost exclusively ethnographic.

The director, Masaaki Yuasa, is adept at stories and visuals where water is a major character.

The movie itself, overall, feels kind of bloodless. Scenes in which Pearson is called upon to defend his new vision kind of fizzle rather than catch fire.

Since this is a rare feature film to treat the Irish famine, it’s a little odd that it tilts so heavily toward a genre exercise. But as a genre exercise, it’s pretty potent.

The movie belongs to Wood, who creates a unique portrait of a girl hesitating at the threshold of womanhood; she's smarter, more attuned, and more spiritually ambitious than those around her, but also too decent and loyal to break from the world she knows-and too unformed to have a grasp of what she wants outside of that world. It's fantastic work.

The moral rot and callous corruption depicted in Angels Wear White has a particularly bracing effect in part because, cultural specifics aside, the inhumanity on display is hardly alien.

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.

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.

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.

Ms. Johnson directs the picture with an assurance that matches that of her plucky protagonist.

Mr. Lindon, who carries his powerful masculinity with canny reserve, is superb as a man inquiring into a faith he had previously thought had nothing to do with him. But Ms. Bellugi is a real find; she inhabits her character, who, even as she hides her secrets, is so genuinely beatific that you can hear it in her breathing.

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.

The performances are conscientious and earnest.

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

Day of the Fight is an unabashed genre picture that manages to be both the kind of movie they supposedly don’t make like they used to, and also something bracingly fresh. It’s anchored by the lead actor, Michael C. Pitt, here ferocious and heart-stabbingly vulnerable in equal proportion.

Northfork feels like the work of a couple of ardent art students who, for whatever reson, are very keen on pleasing their teacher. [July/August 2003, p. 23]

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

The storyline is so rote that the idiosyncrasies of the scene don’t register with any power.

There are revealing glimpses into the early work of artists who would morph into entities that were slicker and ostensibly cooler.

The story is not without interest, and it touches on a couple of worthwhile themes: cultural erasure and the way religious and provincial prejudices can suppress love. But its treatment of these subjects is perhaps undercut by its conventionality.

Whatever the truth of Ono’s manipulations in this affair — and Pang’s claims, including that Ono asked Pang to look after Lennon in an especially personal way, are at times hair-raising — they tinge this saga with a resentment that’s off-putting.

The directors Pierre Perifel and JP Sans put the narrative across with a blithe bounciness, and the all-star voice actors play along nicely.

While 1408 is no classic, it is refreshing to see a horror picture that just wants to do its job rather than prove to its audience how ruthlessly nihilistic it is.

This is pretty much the opposite of a contemporary American comedy: rather than broad, The Kidnapping of Michel Houllebecq is an exemplary example of narrow.

The movie is most naturally a showcase for Efira, whose work as an unusual 17th-century nun in “Benedetta” demonstrated she could play dazzling and tormented with equal facility and who gets to work a similar range here.

It’s tempting to summarize this Irish picture as a working-class version of "Love Actually," and indeed, the hardscrabble lives of most of its amorously unfulfilled characters go a long way in making it a whole lot less emetic than Richard Curtis’s hugfest.

Sibling rivalry is a consistent subtext but only that — Mr. Adrià’s main concern is to create. As it happens, in this generally likable film he is at his most endearing when fixing himself a simple (but indeed delicious looking) grilled ham and cheese sandwich.

While the whole thing is ruthlessly well done, it also sometimes seems to lean into a kind of moral relativism.

As exceptional as the acting in the picture is, and it is wonderful — Whitaker and Keitel are as inventive and surprising as they’ve been in years, and the supporting roles played by the likes of Ellen Burstyn and Stan Carp are well-sketched — it can’t entirely lift the movie from the rut it has all but plowed into by the end credits.

The movie strives for a knowing, amiable tone. It achieves a cutesy, slight one instead.

There’s a consistent inventiveness — and grim humor — to this treatment of a seemingly well-worn theme.

Malkovich is more interested in hitting notes of elegiac lyricism than delivering socko action; this is a thriller that means to get under your skin rather than make you leap from your seat.

The hair-raising narrative content notwithstanding, the movie doesn’t create much emotional traction.

While brisk, informative, and entertaining, feels frustratingly sketchy.

It’s delightful and almost miraculous the way this movie manages to work as a comic heist picture on a huge scale, and with a comic science-fiction picture blended into it…while managing to cohere to the whole, you know, Marvel thing.

The movie’s grave commitment to its own quirkiness is admirable, I suppose. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to recommend it.

The all-live action section of this movie is lit and shot almost exactly like an episode of “The Adventures of Pete and Pete.”

Cold Storage strikes a nifty balance between the sardonic and the stressful and throws a lot of gnarly gore and gook into the scenario, as a bargain.

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.

The Fall is a movie whose every frame pulsates with the desire to be a transportive, transcendent work of cinema. And each one of said frames is full of visual bedazzlement and wonder. So full that one is loathe to sum up with the phrase "Close, but no cigar." But there is something, finally, kind of pushy about the film's desire to be a masterpiece.

The movie steers into a “beat the system” narrative that packs some stirring “Erin Brockovich” energy.

If you’re someone who treasures the music of Led Zeppelin more than you’re interested in the legend—or the gossip, or the dirt, or whatever you want to call it—of Led Zeppelin, this movie is absolutely for you. I’m one of those people, and I ate it up.

A figure as unusual and distinctive as Fields certainly deserves a commemoration. The bad news here is that he deserves better than what Danny Says serves up.

The numerous action set pieces would be memorable even if the plot points didn’t eventually fall into place, which they do.

There’s a resemblance here to both the story and the movie adaptation of the story told in “The Perfect Storm.” The characters involved are making a good faith effort—but good faith efforts by humans can only go so far.

Not that Diamond skimps on the social commentary; far from it. But it makes its points without too much breast-beating, caching its polemic within a tough-minded entertainment.

A consistent—almost catalog-like, you might say—array of pictorial wonders, Medeas, the debut feature from the Italian-born director Andrea Pallaoro is also a work of considerable daring. This plain, almost minimalist narrative presents itself from a position that neither talks down to nor attempts to cozy up to its audience.

Pullman is always great to watch, the Montana landscapes are gorgeously captured by cinematographer David McFarland, and there are a couple of action set pieces that spark.

There’s some fascinating and provocative material in The Capote Tapes that is diluted by the director Ebs Burnough’s insistence on teasing a question that, arguably, has a self-evident answer.

The image of Gwyneth Paltrow looking anguish-stricken has become such a cinematic meme that it hardly bodes well for Proof that it opens with this sight.

It’s never boring but a trifle diffuse. If you’re a Miyazaki fan, you’ll want to see it anyway.

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

While much of the movie was shot on an actual ship, there is a lot of C.G.I., and a good deal of it is not entirely convincing. “Greyhound” also feels like a movie that was conceived as an epic but could not quite muster the necessary force. As such, it’s ultimately one of Hanks’s most perfunctory pictures.

It's flat-out comedy all the way, head-spinningly clever (you'll be talking about a sequence set in the Louvre for weeks) and always engaging. For my money, it's the comedy of the year.

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

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

A Danish revenge Western starring Mads Mikkelsen, is a very real movie, and it is directed by Kristian Levring (“The King Is Alive”), whose sensibility is a little more nuanced than that of the sensationalist Refn, which is all to this movie’s benefit.

Moorhead and Benson don’t overlook the more amusing aspects of the scenario . . . . And the duo deliver shocks, scares and a resonant payoff.

Along the way there’s a scene of a secret meeting in a parking garage that’s more realistic, maybe, than the shadowy one in “All The President’s Men,” but not nearly as gripping. This problem persists throughout.

One of the problems with this My Cousin Rachel is that it’s hard to come up with any issue or reason relative to its creation, I’m afraid.

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.

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.

The interview sections are fascinating, and scenes of the pope’s travels, during which he frequently washes the feet of those who come to him, are moving.... Less welcome are Mr. Wenders’s brief attempts at depicting the life of St. Francis himself.

The movie gains momentum as it indulges in hallucinogenic phantasmagoria. Whatever you make of its intentions, it’s certainly exceptional in its visual distinction.

The movie’s vagueness wants to appear purposeful, reflecting Jean’s disorientation, but it’s mostly confounding. Brosnahan, when she’s not playing panicked, largely enacts Jean as an irritated cipher.

This picture is well acted (one of the cast members, Manuel García-Rulfo, has a growing profile in Hollywood; he was seen last year in “Widows” and “Sicario: Day of the Soldado”) and maintains narrative interest without ever grabbing the viewer by the lapels.

What the viewer is not left short of is a whole lot of yelling and cursing in various languages as Christo’s collaborators and helpmates confront practically each and every crisis in a truculent panic. Art isn’t easy, we all know that. But does it also have to be this crazy?

While it’s possible that the director and cinematographer Chris Moukarbel is good at withholding unflattering material, Gaga comes off well, and credibly so: intelligent, an accomplished craftswoman, a well-mannered collaborator and boss.

Cypress Hill: Insane in the Brain, named for one of its signature songs, is an often engaging chronicle of the group (which has sold more than 20 million albums), one that is probably best appreciated by fans.

Mr. Davis, speaking to Faith Morris of the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, poses a knotty question about how far his cause of eliminating race hate has yet to go. Her reply: “How long is this documentary going to be?”

Constructing the narrative (made up mostly of dramatic reenactments, although given the static nature of many of the scenes, the word "dramatic" is pushing it) obliquely, Devor and co-writer Charles Mudede weave in the thread concerning the individual referred to as "Mr. Hands" into the film almost casually.

Knock Knock ends on a not entirely satisfactory note, but delivers a pretty mean genre wallop getting there (with almost zero gore).

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.

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.

Despite its general tenor of quietude (which breaks in a confrontation scene that reminds you why yes, Schrader is also the writer of the film “Rolling Thunder”), Master Gardener is, among other things, a terrifically emotional film.

Although McDormand's performance is consistently focused -- one would expect no less from the actress -- the movie itself can't settle on whether Miss Pettigrew is Mary Poppins minus the sugar spoonful or just plain Carrie Nation.

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.

“Blizzard” is almost immaculately shot and edited, but its good-taste approach to warfare, along with its treacly music score by Lolita Ritmanis, underscores what seems its main reason for being: a relentless “Go, Latvia!” agenda — which has extended to its marketing here.

With uncommon stealth, Let Him Go morphs from a drama about loss and grief into a terrifying thriller.

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.

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

This portrait of already wounded people who can’t stop inflicting pain on themselves and each other has a great deal of integrity. But if you’re seeking ennobling sentiment, you’ll do well to look elsewhere.

It could be argued that the film needed a little more documentary-style explanation about how the facility works — how long children stay, the goals of the treatment, and so on. But ultimately, Philp can’t be blamed for stressing emotional engagement over exposition.

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.

Phantasm, gnarly as it could get, always had an impish side, just as the monumental power of AC/DC is leavened by the sight of its elfin lead guitarist in a schoolboy uniform. Meander has no such sense of fun. But it offers some newish sights and shocks.

Mr. Hughes, who for many years cocreated films with his twin brother, Allen, and here makes his solo feature debut, is a sharp and engaged visual storyteller. It’s a pleasure to see him working in expansive wide-screen, a fitting format for his chops.

Chef Flynn is an engaging documentary about McGarry’s boy-to-man journey.

The thrills of this movie are aesthetic ones, the creation of new, ravishing imagery (and all three of our young heroes are beautiful enough to be up to this task), the surrender to dream logic, the adoration of the silver screen.

Free Fire is an action movie finely tuned to even the most potentially vicious audiences’ tolerances. It is filled with mayhem, but avoids grisly violence — at least until the finale pulls out some gory, and not inapt, punch lines. Luxuriating in disreputability in all the right ways, the film also contains no shortage of profane verbal wit.

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.

[Roth] knows his stuff and he’s very adept at serving up both gross-outs and real leap-from-your-seat moments.

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

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 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.

A compelling, rousing and at times strangely moving entertainment.

Ripstein, who began his long career working with the maestro Luis Buñuel, has his one-time mentor’s post-idealistic anger but doesn’t adopt an insouciantly ironic mode to filter it through; his perspective is determined but never detached.

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.

It’s all pretty effective but in the end, somehow empty. Not to make an unfair comparison to a classic, but the movie “Deliverance” actually followed through on all of the themes that its storyline suggested, while in Backcountry, we end up with a storyline in which all but the most elemental stuff winds up as window dressing.

This is one of those pictures where the actors outdo the conventional material they are given to work with.

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

This is one of those movies that proves, when they’ve got a mind to, they can still make them like they used to.

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.

Franco practically dares the viewer to call his conclusion far-fetched. And for better or worse, the director’s dynamic filmmaking makes some of his projections stick.

The expectation that a female-written, female-directed effort would yield something refreshingly different is scotched within the first few minutes.

It hardly adds up to much, but it doesn't mean to, and it'll leave you with a cleaner conscience than an Austin Powers picture.

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

That Summer, a new documentary directed by Goran Hugo Olsson, sheds further light on the Beales with footage shot before the making of “Grey Gardens.”

A tidy and nasty and often effective thriller that doesn’t quite blossom into full horror.

As a musical biography, this comes up short; it plays substantially better as a story of recovery and recovered integrity.

With their scrupulous but unobtrusive attention to pertinent details, Mr. Younger, Mr. Teller and the rest of the cast make Bleed for This more than an inspiring version of Mr. Pazienza’s story; they make it a genuinely interesting one.

The Lesson, directed by Alice Troughton from a script by Alex MacKeith, aspires to be high-toned but only gets to the peak of a cliché slag heap.

The intellectual aspirations of this series are just window dressing. Which left this viewer to enjoy the freeway chase sequence (which really is cool), Hugo Weaving’s smirk, and even the PlayStationish stuff.

Crow herself is a more than interesting subject. She’s a musician whose Rock-with-a-capital-R cred — her guitar playing is ace, her voice is soulful and her ear for a hook is unimpeachable — is sometimes overlooked in favor of her pop appeal. And her story has a lot of twists.

There's much visual inventiveness and a good sense of fun here. But I was expecting something more spectacular.

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.

Alex Strangelove is witty, compassionate and enjoyable throughout; a charming movie and in many respects an enlightened one.

Being Eddie is a great time. Murphy is good company, and he’s hilarious as ever.

The Salt of Tears is quite a bit more than a cad’s progress. There are fleeting shadows of Flaubert in this tale, which Garrel crafted in collaboration with two venerable screenwriters, Jean-Claude Carrière and Arlette Langmann.

The scenes that leave Ms. Mara and Mr. Mendelsohn alone are, tellingly, the most interesting and effective ones. Their performances are tightly focused and unflinching; too bad they are surrounded by a lot of heavy-handed, poorly aimed cinematic showing off.

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.

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.

Plane” sinks (or rises, depending on your perspective) to “hell yeah” ridiculousness only at the end, delivering a punchline that lands at the right time.

The way Philippe organizes the hundreds of clips provides more startling and exhilarating moments per minute than most movies about movies can muster, although I can’t say that aficionados of ostensibly realistic cinema aren't going to be too thrilled. Which is too bad, because among the many things this picture captures is how the fanciful worlds of “Oz” and Lynch illuminate the pain and splendor of the world we have to inhabit once we leave the magic realm of cinema.

There’s a compelling cinematic story here, perhaps, but Ricciarelli’s movie is too diffused and scattered and, especially in its first hour, too reliant on commonplaces.

It also brings some devilish ingenuity to its variations on “Memento” and other “who am I?” thrillers. And it adds to that something more rare: a genuine emotional potency.

Beyond the personal stories, the movie frames the tour and Truth or Dare as landmarks in the push for gay rights and awareness, and makes a convincing case.

Mr. Baena (who, with David O. Russell, wrote the tricky 2004 “I ♥ Huckabees”) is more accomplished than many microbudget filmmakers, and the looseness with which he imbues the middle section of Joshy is deceptive, creating a sense that the necessary emotional crash might not actually occur.

“A Glitch” wades only shin-deep into the complex logic that’s attached to this speculation.

Aquatic maintains its buoyancy throughout.

Directed with a genial breeziness by Jeremy Sims, the movie negotiates emotional downshift and uplift with confidence.

Fripp, an endlessly thoughtful and meticulously articulate guitarist, is the group’s most tireless and paradoxical explainer in the film.

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

Never Goin’ Back would make a good drive-in movie, if drive-ins were still a thing. It’s breezy, benignly outrageous, equal parts grotty and sweet.

The movie makes no attempt to engage any current situation, basking instead in a one-dimensional nostalgia.

Bobbito Garcia, the author, basketball maven, sneaker obsessive, D.J. and all-around culture entrepreneur, is one of the most personable documentary subjects I’ve encountered in quite some time.

We Are the Flesh, its abundance of repellent imagery notwithstanding, has an air of the academic about it.

Adam Wescott and Scott Fisher, Ms. Lazzarato’s management team, are executive producers for the film, and to a great extent “This Is Everything” seems to follow an agenda set by them in tandem with the movie’s subject, which is largely commendable in its pitch for acceptance and against bigotry.

The drama is well-paced, and all of the actors are wonderful. Mr. Dussollier, a regular presence in the late works of Alain Resnais, is resourceful in communicating Berthier’s disturbing dual nature, and Ms. Dequenne remains appealing even when her character is making the most grievously ill-advised choices.

This is not a spectacular picture, but it’s an informative and heartening one that might make a good double feature with “First Man,” the forthcoming fictionalized blockbuster about Apollo 11.

The shoot-'em-ups are consistently “whoa!”-eliciting, and while you couldn’t call any of the plot twists genuinely unpredictable, they do not lack for intrigue.

What it all adds up to is a bleak “in space no one can hear your silent scream of existential despair” project. It’s bracing to be sure, but those looking for more positively aspirational fare will have a hard time.

Meet the Robinsons is a mess -- a sometimes fun but mostly frustrating mess.

Wright’s movie is ambitious (that location! that weather!), but not grandiose. Its storytelling economy helps make it credible and eventually moving.

The beauty and absurdity (things also get harrowing) don’t entirely compensate for the overheated romanticism in which the movie is grounded, but they do make Two Lovers and a Bear a nearly singular cinematic trek.

The movie is most effective in detailing how disinformation campaigns work.

The movie is at its most engaging when examining the near-monopolies controlling chicken farmers in the United States.

There are a good number of funny and pointed individual scenes and bit parts here (Alec Baldwin is droll as an inept therapist).

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.

To this viewer, it is a spectacular whiff.

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

Here, Romano sticks to the outer-borough Italian American milieu of his series. The results are mixed.

As moving as Mr. de la Manitou’s testimony sometimes is, this movie too often feels like a credulity-straining attempt at hagiography.

While Sputnik doesn’t make its substantial borrowings from other sci-fi pictures entirely new, it does juice them up enough to yield a genuinely scary and satisfying experience.

It's the stuff of countless advice columns, daytime talk shows, sitcoms, romantic comedies. Quite frankly, it's tired. What makes a difference here -- although really not enough of one -- is the people.

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

Directed by Ritesh Batra from a screenplay by Nick Payne, The Sense of an Ending maintains intrigue and emotional magnetism as its mystery unfolds.

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.

This movie gets better the more it strays from its real-life models and into hazy hallucinatory American weirdness. But the snotty dismissiveness with which it treats country music ultimately overwhelms its intriguing qualities.

For patient or forgiving fans of idiosyncratic thrillers, “Disappearance” may deliver satisfactory spills and chills.

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 fascinating and pertinent tale, but one major aspect of its telling gives me serious pause.

At the end Ms. Maclean forsakes all the unsettling subtlety and nuance she has had so clearly in her command to serve up a finale that I found frankly confounding, despite its having been foreshadowed.

Abominable is an exceptionally watchable and amiable animated tale.

I like cheap exploitation as much as the next guy, but not when it tries to disguise itself with transparently insincere humanist indie trappings.

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.

The movie depicts Mr. Ducasse’s sweeping streak — he prepares food for the homeless in Brazil and concocts a deluxe restaurant at Versailles — competently if not brilliantly. A screening of the film accompanied by a tasting menu afterward, though — that would be something.

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.

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.

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.

The movie will be most profitably consumed by fans — people who believe Hoon earned the tribute. While one does not want to be cruel, one is obliged to be frank.

Eventually the movie paints itself into a corner then sinks into grisly sludge. Stevenson’s technical skill can’t save him from a trite worldview.

The confident storytelling and the bravura acting — Daveed Diggs, Toni Collette and John Malkovich contribute compelling caricatures — carry “Buzzsaw” all the way home.

The movie is both heady (there are real thrills in the stories of exploration) and sobering (Mr. Lorius’s findings are convincing). This is a cogent, accessible cinematic delineation of an increasingly crucial problem.

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 really is a masterpiece--von Trier's first, as it happens.

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

Idiosyncratic to the point of alienation.

Aiding their investigations is an underappreciated policewoman appealingly played by Naomi Ackie. The proceedings are marshaled with affection by the director Chris Columbus.

This is a striking and thought-provoking picture.

The performers get their jobs done without leaving much of an impression. In terms of who or what Footnotes can win over, I think only hardcore Francophiles will find its charms genuinely compelling.

The movie is a good representation of Mr. Hart’s comedy, but not a perfect one.

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.

The movie alternates between the present, with Mr. Jones on the go, and a retrospective of his life and career, narrated by the man himself. His hardscrabble early years on the South Side of Chicago are scary; his triumphs from the earliest points of his career onward are exhilarating; the racism he is obliged to endure throughout is infuriating.

Ms. Huppert’s presence — steady, warm, thoughtful but with a casual air — keeps the entire enterprise classically comedic.

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.

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.

Peirone’s everything-but-the-kitchen-sink directing does tend to head butt her thin writing, but the movie eventually coalesces as a sly, bitter parable against chasing-your-dreams optimism.

The movie, beautifully shot and acted, earns its ultimate sense of hope by confronting real heartbreak head-on, and with compassion.

Wants to be at any given moment--wrenching, thought-provoking, surprising, heartbreaking--all it ever is is tastefully lifeless. It’s been beaten into a coma by its own scruples.

The movie’s flabbiness, its unfocused flopping from scene to scene, its disinclination to provide any individual scene with any dimension beyond its immediate impact, practically vitiates the entire theme of Dickie’s ostensible mentorship of Tony Soprano.

Ne Me Quitte Pas...is soberingly adept at portraying the tedium of drunken life. Whether it actually avoids emulating said tedium depends on how engaging you find its two stooges. I was sympathetic without being wholly charmed.

While this latter-day noir never builds up the froth of lurid delirium that brings genre pictures into a headier dimension, it’s got enough juice to hold your attention.

There’s sharp dialogue throughout.

Costner’s uncanny evocation of Gary Cooper masculinity and Gregory Peck compassion in the role of coach Jim White is the glue that holds it together, but the rest of the cast is equally inspired.

The movie manages to provide moments of witty dialogue while moving forward with its spiritual duties.

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’s an unfortunately apt demonstration of what can befall a clever filmmaker who gets too clever.

A moving account of music as a way of coping with war, as well as keeping it at bay.