Inkoo Kang

The men are slightly forgettable, but the woman is not. Far from the flawless fembot in “Ex Machina,” Vikander’s slight gawkiness is highlighted here, allowing her to look like a real girl, absolutely the right decision by Kent.

Dolemite Is My Name delivers on titties, funnies, and kung fu, all mixed up in a syrupy nostalgia that makes the picture’s feel-good populism go down easy. It’s only when the credits roll that you might notice there was little there but froth.

Hittman's debut isn't just a brilliantly tactile study of the mounting sexual curiosity and frustration of 14-year-old Lila (Gina Piersanti); it's also an important landmark in the oft-ignored subgenre of realistic movies about female adolescence.

Though The Dog can be seen through any number of lenses — a study of media distortion, an illustration of life-sustaining grandiosity, a love story gone deliriously wrong — it's perhaps most meaningful as an exploration of the limits of the gay rights movement's political correctness.

It's an ominous, claustrophobic, unhappily sapphic work whose thunderclap of a climax instills terror and awe of the fates' petty, whimsical cruelties.

The dramatic weight loss Gyllenhaal endured for the role, which transforms his dreamboat looks into a bat-like mask, is startling. But the actor's performance is just as impressive, nimbly selling Gilroy's occasionally overwritten lines while Louis’ punishing optimism finds new gradations of sadism and rage. Nightcrawler is the arrival of a thrilling character actor.

A vital, urgent and infuriating look at the devastating failures of the juvenile court system and the insidious reach of prison privatization.

The Punk Singer fascinatingly traces the evolution of a woman.

See The Two Popes for its fine performances, but don’t be tempted by its naïveté.

I saw Tully twice. After my first screening, I wasn’t sure what to think of the ending. The second time, I was convinced of the film’s brilliance.

The recent proliferation of gray-haired cinema is a welcome development, but it hasn’t yielded very many notable pictures. “Dreams” doesn’t just buck that trend; it points a new way forward by being frank about living one’s final years and confronting that fact every day.

The dual portrait that Blindspotting offers is heady and dense and mighty compelling.

If you don’t mind your movies nasty, brutish, and slight, you couldn’t ask for a more delectable chocolate-covered razor blade.

Raya and the Last Dragon occasionally crawls, but most of the time it’s got urgency and momentum to spare. Just as impressively, it builds to a deeply moving climax whose resolution is unexpected yet consummate. This is a film that knows how to soar.

Appropriate to its teenage milieu, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon‘s breakthrough film isn’t unlike spending a couple of hours with an exceptionally witty high-schooler: It’s entertaining as hell, but you can’t help rolling your eyes a little at its self-satisfied pseudo-profundities.

The cast is uniformly impressive in their naturalism, but Lewis, Diemir and Lemire — who have the luxury of actually looking like teenagers — are especially so for their young age.

With Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams starring as its furtive, inflamed lovers, Disobedience has pedigree to spare. But the result feels wonky and lopsided, as if several crucial scenes were left behind on the cutting-room floor.

instead of focusing on the comedian’s complexities, Come Into My Mind focuses on his heartbreak. Perhaps Zenovich wanted to offer closure to fans still shocked by Williams’ final choice. But any artist is far more than their struggles. A proper remembrance would have understood that.

The New Girlfriend is a delicate figurine: too quaint to feel necessary in the current climate of ever-bolder representations of trans lives, and yet rescued from disposability by its delicate beauty.

Emotionally layered, culturally specific, and frequently hilarious, Crazy Rich is a transportive delight, with food montages to die for (the film offers a splendid showcase of Singapore’s justly celebrated street-food scene) and a wedding processional so exquisite I started crying at its sheer beauty.

There’s a particular thrill when all of a film’s many story elements — here, so dense with symbolism — come together with such thematic and emotional vigor. That intensity pairs exquisitely with the tenderness the film never wants to lose sight of.

War is brutal and senseless and would be laughably absurd if it didn’t cause so much widespread, unnecessary destruction and suffering. Tangerines is a heartfelt reminder of that fact, but not a particularly essential one.

Despite its moving conversations, Who We Are never transcends its lecture format.

The happenstance plotting and over-reliance on violence as a plot motor dissipate the film's energy by the end.

Director Clint Eastwood‘s focus on Kyle is so tight that no other character, including wife Taya (Sienna Miller), comes through as a person, and the scope so narrow that the film engages only superficially with the many moral issues surrounding the Iraq War.

LaBeouf is so revelatory as both writer and actor that the film defies cynicism about its second purpose as celebrity image management. It just makes you excited about the work.

The sequential, numbers-heavy structure can make for plodding viewing, especially in the film’s first half. But the doc is ultimately a thoughtful and sensitive tribute to a luminary who should be a household name.

Unabashedly truthful and restlessly intelligent, Akhavan’s remarkable, near-perfect debut has wit and charisma to spare. Miss it at your own risk.