Godfrey Cheshire

Rasoulof gets terrific performances from all of his cast, but particularly noteworthy is Sohelia Golestani's work as Najmeh, which captures the woman's subtle, gradual transition from defender of her husband to an ally of her daughters.

A searing drama about a European refugee crisis that resonates with similar crises in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and yes, America’s southwestern border, Agnieszka Holland’s “Green Border” strikes me as the best and most important film to be released in the U.S. so far this year.

Terrestrial Verses, one of the most brilliant and provocative films to emerge from Iran recently, has qualities that link it to both the modernist formal traditions of post-1979 Iranian cinema and the more recent trend of social and political asperities aimed at the authoritarian repressiveness of the Islamic Republic.

In a sense, Jones’ musical talent and originality, as well as his status as a pioneer of world music, are alluded to more than seriously examined and appraised, and that must be counted as a lack in the film.

If there’s a note of reflexive nostalgia in the proceedings, that inevitably has to do not just with the man at the film’s center but with the era that produced him, a time when magazine and print journalism could take writers and make instant celebrities and hugely influential cultural figures out of them. That day is long gone, but Radical Wolfe makes a strong case that it’s well worth remembering.

Holy Spider’s rendition of this grisly tale is powerful and precise, commendably lacking the sensationalistic tone of some serial killer movies.

Post-Revolutionary Iran’s first masterpiece and one of the most exhilarating films in cinema history.

Rasoulof’s story proceeds with the deliberate pace and simmering tension of a ‘70s political thriller.

Even measured against the Iranian and international cinematic treasures of the ‘70s, Aslani’s vision is still breathtakingly distinctive, an incisively devastating social critique embedded in a complex tale of intrigue, greed, oppression, and murder. The film is also, and perhaps most strikingly, a stylistic tour de force.

Filmmaker Ira Deutchman offers a compelling biographical portrait of a highly influential New York movie theater owner and independent film distributor that is, by extension, a study of the importance and complexities of creative film marketing.

The pleasures of watching There Is No Evil—a title that grows more piercingly ironic as the film progresses—are considerable.

To be sure, cancer may not sound like an inviting cinematic subject, especially to families and individuals who—like this writer—have been faced with its sometimes-overwhelming trials. Yet the effect of Hope is anything but depressing; it’s reassuring proof of art’s ability to comfort as it clarifies.

[A] well-intentioned but only partly satisfying film.

A brave, revelatory, and beautifully realized film, it is easily one of the year’s best and most important documentaries.

Beyond the political implications, this is a terrifically dramatic and very emotional film; understandably, some of the interviewees struggle to maintain composure when recalling their past trials.

That they (the Dardennes) are able to discern this Christian concept even in the tale of a desperate fanatic of another faith is what makes Young Ahmed one of their most extraordinary masterpieces.

The satisfactions of José as a whole offers are considerable, and they begin with the human element. Like the Italian neorealist classics from which it descends, the film has a keen appreciation for the lives of people who maintain a stubborn dignity and resolve under the challenges of poverty and other hardships.

A tremendously absorbing film, a documentary that plays like a first-rate thriller hinging on key issues of the Cold War and African decolonization.

What gives Socrates its special distinction are the precision and excellence exhibited in all major areas of its making, from direction, writing, editing and cinematography to the two standout performances by young actors that anchor its drama.

While the documentary does conjure up the whole sex-drugs-rock ’n’ roll ethos of that fabled time with great flair and pungency, it also movingly probes the hazards and costs of the overindulgence and self-deceptions the era’s lures often entailed. In essence, it serves up the myth and a necessary corrective to it simultaneously.

The screenwriters’ way of describing this world’s fall from grace due to the lures of money and luxury has the power and inevitability of classic tragedy. It could be Greek or Shakespearean, though it is palpably modern and Colombian.

It is also something decidedly novel: a wildly original art-house comedy.

A sharply crafted drama that has elements of noirish suspense, the Danish-Swedish coproduction, which is distinguished by exceptionally fine performances by its three leading actors, offers an incisive, penetrating look at the psychological disorientation and dilemmas of people caught between cultures.

The new film combines the filmmaker’s distinctive stylistic verve and droll wit with the talents and charisma of Mexico’s leading international movie star, Gael Garcia Bernal.

As in Farhadi’s films, the success of this kind of drama depends not on its thematic depth but on its surface execution. And every aspect of the execution on display here posits Jalilvand as among Iran’s most assured directors to have emerged in this decade.

One of the film’s advantages over the book is that it brings in the testimonies of many other people — from friends and fellow ex-hustlers to Hollywood historians and insiders — all of whom support Scotty’s veracity while adding additional perspectives of their own.

Shock and Awe reminds us all of this, and of the American media’s shameful complicity in fomenting an unjustified and vastly destructive war.

Watching it, the film’s intelligent, well-crafted story and beautifully drawn characters seem to suggest literary roots.

The whole thing is handled with sly wit as well as unfailing stylistic smarts, which makes for a very satisfying package.

Alexandre Moors’ film is also so lacking in anything new or compelling to say — either emotional or political — about its subject that it ends up a rather dispiriting slog of a movie.

While Westwood is certainly a remarkable personal and cultural figure in many senses, it’s too bad she’s not more willing to discuss the genesis of punk, since it’s likely to remain the primary thing she’s known for.

A stunning, enrapturing film, a crowning work by one of the American cinema’s most essential artists.

For “Full Metal Jacket” there are revealing, entertaining recollections by Matthew Modine, R. Lee Ermey and others, but there’s no Jack Nicholson for “The Shining” or Tom Cruise or Nicole Kidman for “Eyes Wide Shut.”

Handsomely mounted and well-acted by a stellar cast, but it’s one of those theatrical adaptations that has no reason to exist for any viewer who can recall a superior stage version of the same work.

With a road movie story that aims toward simplistic and rather formulaic romantic wish-fulfillment, it offers some interesting scenery, but its main attraction is another estimable performance by the talented Garcia.

Thankfully, the film does get better in its second half. Not a lot better, but enough to justify one’s continuing attention.

An account of rodeo riders on a South Dakota reservation, it is so fact-based that it almost qualifies as a documentary. Yet the film’s style, its sense of light and landscape and mood, simultaneously give it the mesmerizing force of the most confident cinematic poetry.

One can’t watch this film and not think of events in the world today. How did the German nation get so caught up in the Nazi mythology that it plunged willingly toward its own destruction? Obviously being seduced away from a clear comprehension of reality into self-regarding mass fantasy was a big part of it.

For myself, I couldn’t avoid the irony that, in finding it ultimately rather superficial and self-satisfied in that particular Parisian way, I was echoing Antoine’s criticism of Olivia’s writing.

A documentary that offers some fascinating if glancing insights into a rich and timely subject but ends up being more frustrating than enlightening.

Dibbs does a fine job bringing a nuanced, realistic visual style to this venerable tale of war’s cruel and colossal wastes, and his actors are all first-rate, with Bettany a special stand-out.

There is a real seed of dramatic possibility in Hannah, but Pallaoro smothers it beneath the lacquer of the film’s fastidiously mannered minimalism.

Using skillful, involving storytelling and beautifully executed rotoscoped photography, director Ali Soozandeh creates a world of intersecting urban miseries and challenges.

The film does a good job conveying the excitement generated by that band as a live act, especially in San Francisco and Los Angeles. But though it produced some remarkable music, Cream’s success was short-lived.

As delightful as it is surprising. The surprises begin with the fact that the Iranian master’s last work is, of all things, essentially an animated film.

While the issues it engages are timely and important, the film’s claim to fame really comes from its terrific accomplishments on every front, from writing and directing to acting and cinematography.

It’s interesting to witness the encounter and hear the thoughts of young people from such a bitterly divided land.

The film has a lot going for it. Besides the gorgeous, burnished look supplied by cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi, Cooper gets a range of fine performances from a topnotch cast.

“A good movie is never too long, and a bad movie can never be too short.” That famous quote from Roger Ebert helps me explain why the Canadian indie comedy Sundowners, though it runs only 97 minutes, felt to me like it lasted 14 hours. Longer than “Lawrence of Arabia.” Longer than “Shoah.”

One thing that’s fascinating in the story’s second half is the amount of expertise and effort that’s expended on searching for Alyosha.

I’ve been trying to think when there was a historical drama I found as electrifying as Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour. It may have been Steven Spielberg’s “Munich,” which topped my 10-best list a dozen years ago.

A Gray State captures much of this in one real-life tale that’s as unsettling as it is precisely of-the-moment.

LBJ captures a tumultuous political era and one of its most profanely colorful leaders with a good deal of insight and emotional torque.

The fact that it was made by her nephew, actor/filmmaker Griffin Dunne, gives it a warmth and intimacy that might not have graced a more standard documentary.

The visuals here are interesting because Adela is a circus clown and we get see a lot of the colorful life around her performances.

The word “genius” is heard more than once, and the more the film shows us, the less even hardened skeptics will be likely to demur.

I Am Another You is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story. The more Wang pursues her subject, the more depth and complexity she finds in it, and we share her sense of discovery.

What is unusual about the film is that it is a frankly admiring portrait of a monarch. The king here is the tale’s hero, and the choice he makes regarding the Nazi invasion undergird a drama that is proudly and unequivocally patriotic.

One of those paint-by-numbers romcoms that feels like you might have seen it a dozen times before.

A film so obedient to current academic fashions in both politics and cinema aesthetics that it ends up feeling both contrived and a bit dishonest.

A documentary that had this reviewer wondering if it was a real or faux doc until the very end. Turns out it’s real, but the suspicion that it might be otherwise is a tribute both to the debuting filmmakers’ skills in shaping their story and that story’s innate dramatic power.

Like Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and Louis Psihoyos’ “The Cove” in years past, the film makes a powerful case less through argument than by using cinema’s most basic tool: visual proof.

The Confessions might remind viewers of films ranging from “The Name of the Rose” to Paolo Sorrentino’s “Youth.” But Roberto Andó’s film disappointingly ends up being too flat-footed script-wise to deliver on either its dramatic or thematic promises.

Both Reagan lovers and Reagan haters will find enough in the film to bolster their perspectives. Even more remarkably, it’s almost entirely snark-free.

The movie, then, is not just a niche film but a film for a niche of a niche. Rather than being ideal for people who know a bit about French cinema and want to know more, it’s best suited to people who know a considerable amount about French cinema (and culture) of the early sound era and want to delve deeper.

Dawson City: Frozen Time is a rather clunky and uninspiring title for a film that’s both revelatory and deeply fascinating.

The film’s success comes from how Kernell’s skills as a director match the ambitions of her script.

In the annals of historical biopics, Jonathan Teplitzsky’s Churchill stands out as a uniquely awful and tedious caricature of a fascinating subject.

Afterimage is mounted in a classical, beautifully understated style that throughout conveys the relaxed assurance of a true master. It’s one of those films that doesn’t ask to be liked or admired, but only to be heard.

In some ways, Stone’s soul seems part carnival huckster, part 19th century anarchist. A petri dish of toxic pathologies, he has come so far from his Goldwaterite beginnings he could now write his own book: A Conservative Without a Conscience.

The film is not one for any viewer who’s never heard of Assange. Indeed, it’s best suited to audiences who are familiar with the basic Wikileaks saga and thus prepared for Poitras’ much more intimate and nuanced view of events and personalities that the mainstream media tend to present in more reductive terms.

The fascinations of Obit, Vanessa Gould’s slick but entertaining documentary about the New York Times obituary department, operate on two levels.

One of the strongest aspects of The Student is that, while its view of Venya’s beliefs is decidedly skeptical, it doesn’t ridicule him or suggest that others are immune to his Biblical zealotry.

It is a movie for golf enthusiasts, pure and simple.

A fascinating and fastidiously complex study of one man’s moral choices at a crucial juncture in his life, Cristian Mungiu’s Graduation is a thoroughgoing masterpiece which offers proof that Romania’s cinematic upsurge remains the most vital and important national film movement of the current century.

Tomas Weinreb and Petr Kazda’s film, on the other hand, narrates a true-life crime but fails to provide an element that might’ve lifted it above tasteful art-house ordinariness—an engaging point of view.

This Louis Theroux-starring film belongs to the Michael Moore school of docu-making, in which much hinges on the personal viewpoint and observational wit of the on-camera investigator.

Whatever its limitations, though, The Settlers provides a vivid primer on a situation that looks inherently tragic.

Its narrative and visual approach almost suggests a compendium of the clichés one should avoid in a film like this.

This expertly made, highly dramatic film achieves must-see status for the inevitable light it sheds on the persistence of toxic racial hatreds not just in Hungary but worldwide.

The German boys are very well cast, with young actors Louis Hofmann and Joel Basman especially giving the kind of striking performances that should lead to other films.

Paris 05:59,’s charms are likely slight enough, and its raunch raunchy enough, to keep it from becoming one of those rare exceptions.

Some descriptions of The Salesman call it a thriller, suggesting a Hollywood-style suspense film. It’s not. It’s a psychological and moral drama.

Though many bad movies are simply depressing, Adam Smith’s Trespass Against Us is so exceptionally bad that it at least has this bright sidelight: Unless 2017 turns into a truly disastrous time for movies, it may be the worst of the year is already here.

These are all cartoon figures out of Frank Capra’s most feverish populist nightmares.

[Almodóvar] may share Catholic roots with Hitchcock and Bresson, but this film’s concern with guilt, transference, fate, mystery and (more obliquely) faith connects intricately with his native culture as well as the ideas expressed in his previous films. Building on his previous work while also charting a new course, it is suffused with the casual confidence of an established master.

The Bad Kids is interesting enough in what it shows us to spark interest in what it leaves un-shown. In its case, the information supplied by a few well-chosen talking heads could have given it additional clarity and appeal.

Van Dormael’s film was pure torture from first to last, about as mirthless a comedy as I ever hope to see.

With The Duelist, Rodnyansky is taking a more commercial turn, one that depends less on art-house refinements than on plush production values, action-movie tropes and a couple of stellar lead performances.

The kind of lush historical drama that Hollywood might have made in the 1930s but these days unsurprisingly owes its existence to foreign producers and, most especially, a renowned literary source.

Ang Lee is a great director whose last film, the Oscar-winning “Life of Pi,” made ingenious and very effective use of 3D technology. But that film had a much better story than Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk.

The director has said that the “classical” (her word) style of the earlier film, with its elegant, distanced compositions and paucity of camera movement, is typical of her work; the ragged, edgy, mostly handheld approach of Don’t Call Me Son (flawlessly executed by cinematographer Barbara Alvarez) is a departure.

Is it a real film, or a feature that uses the porn milieu to turn out a piece of softcore titillation that’s halfway between porn and actual drama? No doubt some of the film’s makers and defenders would argue for the former.

Won’t add much to the debased discourse of this miserable season.

Coming Through the Rye may be the closest we’ll ever get cinematically to the novel. And in being so far away from it, it’s close enough.

It’s a fairly familiar critique of patriarchy from a humanist and feminist perspective, but one put across with some very impressive filmmaking skills by a first-time director.

In focusing on the years when the band became the first ever to mount several world-spanning tours, it offers two things at once: a history of the Beatles during the years of their initial success; and a tribute to the group’s powers as a live act.

Curiously, there’s virtually no mention of religion in the film. For that matter, politics creep into the tale only obliquely, and later. It appears we’re meant to understand that the band’s music and Farah’s lyrics have an edge of protest, but this is registered only as a very general sort of frustration and discontent.