Jay Weissberg

Babi Yar. Context has power but falls short of the director’s greatest works, largely because his span here is considerably longer, and in consequence the focus suffers.

Through an ingenious blend of image and music, Memory Box opens channels that allow our own experience to empathetically blend with those of the characters in a mix of imagination and reality.

Given ongoing developments, it’s no surprise the film concludes abruptly, and knowing that there’s been no power change in the country so far adds an inherent level of bleakness, yet Paluyan captures the hopes of a population that spans across gender and generations, and there will always be something uplifting about watching people fight peacefully for freedom.

Straightforward in concept yet psychologically profound, the film draws the audience in with a lingering sadness made more potent by the director’s clear yet unspoken sense of guilt.

What Zeros and Ones does do — deliberately, calculatedly, in the kind of messy intuitive manner that’s been the director’s signature of late — is reproduce the general state of unease and insecurity that’s plagued most of us during lockdown.

What holds Ida Red together and gives it solidity is the relationships between Wyatt, Jeanie and Darla, which might not be entirely original but they don’t need to be thanks to good ensemble performances, with Hartnett very much at ease and Hublitz making an impression in her biggest role to date.

The River, concludes a trilogy consisting of “The Mountain” and “The Valley,” and while it’s his most objectively beautiful feature yet, it also gives nothing away, demanding a heightened engagement with both his artful mise-en-scène and his nation’s psychological state.

Ropert’s understanding of how children furtively watch the adults around them, soaking up the friction, is well-observed and the best thing in this otherwise insipid film that perversely discards any shred of naturalism for an outdated and phony ingenuousness. Even the performances are airless, and consequently there’s no emotional investment in a family whose rapport is so clunkily established.

Though the storied actress’ personality offers moments of charm and occasional depth, a weak, cliché-riddled script reduces almost everyone to a maximum of two characteristics.

As impressive as Homefront is in the way it envisions a distorted world, its fully-realized digital design is all exterior display, whereas Expressionism at its best transforms disturbed psychological states into a nightmarish reality.

Carpignano’s focus here on 15-year-old Chiara (a radiant Swamy Rotolo . . . is a natural way of prepping the audience’s sympathies, but he aims beyond easy generational assumptions, and even more noticeably than in his sophomore work, he’s imbibed some lessons from Martin Scorsese (who also exec produced that earlier film) in refusing to presume a judgmental stance.

Whatever the truth, there’s nothing in Jacquot’s vision of Charpillon to inspire devotion. There have been other unlikely Casanovas, yet the best of them conveyed not just the man’s charm but a depth of intelligence. Lindon’s downturned eyes have always exuded a world-weariness that fits with his characters, but there’s no spark here, no understanding of the man’s aura.

With two screenwriters (including the director) and three script editors credited, it may be a classic “too many cooks” situation, as the whole structure is as risk-free and standardized as a TV film, though newcomer Niv Nissem provides a freshness that papers over the conventionality of it all.

Both as film and as history, State Funeral stands as a canonical work.

This crowdfunded labor of love is unlikely to generate much buzz but will be appreciated by audiences looking for congenial entertainment.

The film’s significant humor comes from amusingly implausible situations coupled with rapid-paced droll dialogue; its equally sizable heart derives from the script’s respect for society’s outcasts and Jensen’s way of nimbly endowing every character with their own emotional backstory, all in need of healing.

Ottinger takes us through this formative time of her life in a way that deftly balances past and present to paint a picture of a threshold era of both positives and negatives.

Audiences amenable to cold, meticulous shots where people are accorded the same attributes as a landscape will find elements to admire, and certainly on a cerebral level there’s much to appreciate, yet Natural Light sheds no warmth and offers no insight into the horrors of the human condition during wartime.

Erich Kästner’s slim novel originally translated in 1932 as “Fabian. The Story of a Moralist” is a brilliantly astute rendering of life in Weimar Berlin, straightforward and yet surreal, witty and perverse. To tackle it in cinema would seem like an impossible task, and while Dominik Graf’s Fabian – Going to the Dogs is to be commended for getting quite a lot right, the movie is blowsy where the book is succinct, awkwardly paced and portentous where Kästner is consistently rhythmical and unpretentious.

Sødahl’s skill at making gesture and its absence count in the most subtle ways is an essential component in our investment with these protagonists, thanks to the superbly understated camerawork of Lars von Trier’s regular DP Manuel Alberto Claro.

Moreh offers no analysis — an especially unfortunate stance given explosive feelings and wildly variable interpretations of events. Finally, the film pushes the deeply disquieting assumption that the United States knows what’s best for those troublesome people in the Middle East, whose tantrums kiboshed all the hard work and emotional investment put in by the sainted Americans.

Director Oualid Mouaness’ enriching use of images and sensitivity to narrative balance outweigh his unexceptional dialogue in 1982. Even with such a caveat, his debut feature succeeds in accessing emotional truths that leave a lingering bittersweet melancholy.

Much attention will deservedly be paid to Knight’s impressively nuanced performance – it’s one thing to cast an amateur who’s been through similar experiences, and quite another to get that person to inhabit a fictional character.

This is truly a documentary for our times, deserving of widespread exposure.

Clocking in at a swift 90 minutes, Final Account is like a teenager-friendly approach to “Shoah,” designed as an introduction to issues of responsibility, guilt and the banality of man’s inhumanity to man.

Padrenostro, or Our Father, is a handsomely made “inspired by” drama with a few powerful sequences studded within a less satisfactory screenplay, at its best when it sticks to the tense rapport within a family terrified they’ll be targeted again.

Tamhane patiently constructs his characters out of small details, relying on his audience to pick up on small changes and muted shifts of tone that signal the passage of time and Sharad’s interior journey.

It’s a film of big themes on an intimate scale that lovingly acknowledges the unimaginable wealth of stories inside everyone we encounter, while also looking at how we negotiate the place of memory in our lives.

Once a sense of rhythm is grasped, things fall into place, and audiences will exit the cinema debating their favorite scenes, recalling a wealth of graceful, humane interactions.

The intriguing ambiguity suffusing Kôji Fukada’s “Harmonium” returns to a certain degree in A Girl Missing, but this time the writer-director neglects to reinforce onscreen relationships, resulting in a disappointing and unmoving drama.

Widow of Silence is a classic example of festival filler, the sort of issue-driven art-house film that masks a plodding obviousness of intent beneath a thick varnish of righteousness and attractive visuals.

Even if the general ultra-clean cartoonishness of it all is deliberate, the film’s whisper-thin premise and sitcom-like characters are the cinema equivalent of Sweethearts candy: rather too sugared, and immediately forgotten.

The screenplay’s seams show so glaringly, and the finish is so tonally mismatched, that notwithstanding audience identification and the inevitable “loosely inspired by real events” tagline, Papicha feels conspicuously manipulative.

Take Me Somewhere Nice has fun with the ride yet feels too derivative to leave much of an impression beyond a few vibrantly colored images.

Notwithstanding a few genuinely affecting moments, Our Mothers never breaks free from being a standard social-issue movie mostly invested in preaching the cause.

Even people reasonably familiar with Gnosticism, Manichaeism and its offshoots, early 20th century history and the works of Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov, whose writings Puiu adapted, will find this punishing film, with its theatrical construct and off-putting running time, a challenge with few lasting rewards.

Caetano Gotardo and Marco Dutra, collaborating as directors for the first time, channel the artificiality of late Manoel de Oliveira but without the enticing mystery, hampered by an understandable earnestness that yearns for a more subtle approach.

Gifted as both a thrilling dancer and a nuanced actor, Gelbakhiani’s magnetic presence goes a long way toward papering over some of the more timeworn plot elements . . . and the film should make audiences clamor for more vehicles that feature his seemingly effortless ability to radiate joy.

Costa’s elongation of time (made more acute since there’s rarely enough light coming from the screen to check your watch) combined with his habit of doling out a few narrative details without exploration, results in a film that distances spectators not already in his thrall.

Utilizing news footage, TV programs, crude activist films and the like, Périot (always his own editor) builds his arguments almost invisibly, guiding the viewer while trusting his audience to use their heads. How refreshing to have a director refuse black-and-white conclusions, knowing that formulating questions is the best way to probe the past and its ramifications.

The outcome is an unwieldy intellectual sprawl whose incontestable visual pleasures (much like Marcello’s “Lost and Beautiful”) distract from the shallow characterizations. ... The overarching impression is of a film too much in thrall to theory.

At every step, Al Mansour feeds the audience exactly what she thinks will make them feel good about positive change in Saudi Arabia, setting up conflict and resolution with all the nuance of a by-the-numbers construction kit.

It leaves viewers gratified by the filmmaking bravura and the sheer pleasure of watching this superb cast in top form, but also feeling shortchanged.

Yet given the opportunity for misinterpretation, it’s a shame the filmmakers didn’t find a way of reworking the story to ensure the taint of anti-immigration rhetoric couldn’t be applied to what’s designed as a children’s tale.

A movie so enamored by its self-perception of cleverness that even policy wonks will find it hard to muster enthusiasm.

Although Desplechin claims his main interest is to get inside the two women’s characters, pushing away moral absolutes about guilt and innocence (yes, “Crime and Punishment” is a key influence), the couple come off as the least interesting people on screen.

Whimsical and wistful yet infused with a yearning for the stability of place.

It’s clearly made by a master filmmaker questioning the nature of repentance, and as such is far from superficial; and yet while it never loses our attention, it also doesn’t deliver much of a punch.

The result offers mixed levels of satisfaction, most successful in capturing the protagonist’s leap into adulthood and her increasing reliance on the forthright, independent-minded women around her.

The enterprise would be something to celebrate if the movie itself weren’t so flawed, not just in scholarly terms but in her mania for visualizing seemingly every phone call she made in the hunt for Guy-Blaché material. Sadly, all these problems overwhelm Green’s noteworthy success in tracking down previously unknown documents and photos.

A little more attention to side characters would have brought increased depth, but the movie still packs a major punch at the end.

For those that have been anticipating this curious, much-delayed oddity, the good news is that Gibson is fine; it’s everything else that doesn’t work.

Breathtaking in the way it careens from one scene to the next in a whirlwind of personal and political meaning all but impossible to grasp in full measure, the film is an excoriation of Israel’s militant machismo and a self-teasing parody of Parisian stereotypes, embodied by actor Tom Mercier in this astonishingly audacious debut.

A Bollywood movie about a rapper from the slums may sound derivative, but what does that matter when “Gully Boy” revels in high-wattage screen chemistry and an inclusive social message, all served up in a slickly enjoyable production showcasing Ranveer Singh’s many charms?

God Exists, Her Name is Petrunya positions itself as a feminist cry against a patriarchal Macedonia in the grips of bullying machismo and hidebound religion, yet the genial rushed ending undercuts its gender-equality thrust by presenting Petrunya’s emotional savior as a mustachioed guy in uniform.

Mysteries remain mysteries, and the value isn’t in finding answers but in emotionally exploring where the questions take you.

A dully made, frequently ridiculous eye-roller shot in standard issue black-and-white that gussies itself up as a brave clarion call for gay rights.

With an intelligent, subtle script and camerawork so organically natural one doesn’t immediately realize that each scene is shot in one take, the film draws on a subject much in the news and spins it into a multilayered yet low-key study without preaching or sensationalizing.

“Evil” is one of those tricky words usually best avoided, since its quasi-mythological sense of moral absolutism tends to downplay the human agency involved. Yet as Barbet Schroeder well knows, there are times when no other term properly conveys the insidious nature of intolerance and carnage robed in the trappings of power.

The filmmaking doesn’t simply tell a story but makes us feel its impact.

It was probably inevitable that Hollywood would neuter the best elements of Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium” franchise, but did the producers really need to shift it into a commonplace cross between a superhero flick and James Bond?

It’s one thing to tell a traumatic story, and another to capture how that trauma impacts a life. What makes Alexandria Bombach’s On Her Shoulders so powerful — besides the profound dignity of its subject, Yazidi massacre survivor Nadia Murad — is the way she reveals Murad’s distress at having to take on the role of activist.

Thanks to her smart narration — clear, impassioned but never polemical — and the astute way she allows exceptional footage to play out to its full extent, The Waldheim Waltz has a sense of urgency made more pressing given political developments not just in Austria but Poland and Hungary as well.

While always attractive, the look conveys a level of non-spontaneous construction that often takes away from the potency of hard, brutal reality.

Boasting a trio of actresses at the top of their game and cinematography that constantly impresses with its confident yet unshowy fluidity, the movie deftly enters into the bosom of a family harboring multiple secrets, encompassing the personal and political.

Die-hard acolytes will argue that the camerawork transcends or even complements the storyline; most everyone else will wonder what happened to an auteur whose work was awaited with such eager anticipation.

Structured as a straightforward life story followed by an extended coda looking in detail at the features Cohen is restoring, The Great Buster can’t hold a candle to the 1987 three-part series “Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow” but will make do as a decent DVD extra.

The artist’s forceful character does battle with technology, bureaucracy, corruption and the elements, resulting in an installation of stunning beauty and a documentary that delights in capturing the act of creation.

Weaving together folklore, gender roles and a fitful kind of emancipation in the story of a mute young woman desperate to counter the ostracism of her fellow villagers, the writer-director couple have created an attractive package that doesn’t hold up to close inspection.

While the film is perhaps longer than necessary, and the adult characters could use some fleshing out, this is a satisfying sensorial work.

"Land” will feel overly familiar to those looking for more than well-intentioned musings on the horrendous treatment of guest workers.

The chaos is there but without the coherence necessary to balance sensorial turmoil with genuine meaning.

This story of two couples dealing with change in their personal and professional lives, so packed with intellectual sparring, gets progressively lighter as it moves along, acknowledging the primacy of human interaction (foibles and all) over doctrine.

All four main actors are in top form, but it’s Mohammadzadeh who steals the show in his scene at the poultry plant, when his desperate monologue takes on an epic, Shakespearean quality as he throws all his physical force into a verbal storm of pained outrage.

Class, desire, motherhood, responsibility to society — all these themes are worked in, to varying degrees. Yet balancing the film’s two halves is less successful, and certain shifts between humor and dead-seriousness don’t quite work.

With breathtaking elegance and stunning assurance, Ramón Salazar takes a melodramatic chestnut and makes it flower with unexpected emotion in Sunday’s Illness.

Ensuring that most characters are neither all-good nor all-bad means “Guilty Men” is a much more human film than other dramas basing themselves on often clear-cut Westerns.

While this is unquestionably an issue film, it tackles its subject with intelligence and heart.

Anchored by lead Rady Gamal’s warm-hearted charisma, the film is a sweet, solid first feature marbled with genuinely touching moments that make up for times when the siren call of sentimentality becomes a little too loud.

Erlingsson’s genius lies in how he puts it all together with such witty intelligence, arranging beautifully shot picaresque episodes around a central figure who lives the ideals of the heroes she has hanging on her wall, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela.

Even more than in his previous film, Ceylan and his fellow scriptwriters (wife Ebru Ceylan along with Akın Aksu, also acting) develop astonishingly complex spoken recitatives that weave philosophy, religious tradition, and ethics together into a mesmerizing verbal fugue.

Clearly the director’s positive impressions from her research made her want to create something that would generate popular sympathy for the cause, but writing a glorified TV movie wasn’t the way to go.

Corruption and humiliation are the guiding forces of Donbass, resulting in a scathing portrait of a society where human interaction has descended to a level of barbarity more in keeping with late antiquity than the so-called contemporary civilized world.

Though the concept of the gendered gaze can be over-pushed in film theory circles, in this case there’s no mistaking Almada’s privileging of a woman’s perspective, with its sympathetic non-judgmental stance and sense of female solidarity.

The real achievement is how the film captures and holds a mood that develops and expands, with a yearning for what was and what might have been.

While trying to save her from being considered as merely an inspiration to the great men around her, the script inadvertently reinforces this impression.

The film is so calculated in its plotting that it loses some of its chill.

Greater attention to how and when information is revealed would make “The Judge” a far more valuable film.

Almost exclusively composed of 16mm footage shot in 1972 and lost until now, Göran Hugo Olsson’s fascinating documentary recounts the summer when Lee Radziwill and photographer Peter Beard decided to record Radziwill’s reclusive aunt and first cousin, hiring the Maysles and shooting in and around Grey Gardens while workers fixed the place up.

Ben Hania’s decision to divide the film into 9 chapters, each seemingly orchestrated in a single take, works on a cerebral level, but the form doesn’t serve the story, and while the overall choreography of actors and camerawork is impressive, it never fully satisfies.

The film is a remarkable, frequently unsettling exercise in staged voyeurism, recreating the interdependent lives of the three members of the troubled Beksiński family.

The undeniably talented helmer’s sophomore feature has little of the emotional power of “The Return,” though d.p. Mikhail Krichman does stellar work and thesping is faultless.

There’s much to praise, especially the oh-so-real dialogue, but true psychological penetration is lacking and Dolan’s hunger to prove his talent results in a superfluity of styles. Still, multigenerational auds worldwide will likely find kinship with the many funny/painful situations, and pic is a genuine crowdpleaser.

The film plays on a number of clever riffs on the Cinderella tale, all in the darkest of veins, from the sadism of Mia’s step-siblings to Salvatore’s drug empire built on shoes made from soluble cocaine.

More problematic, even if we accept the film as pure fiction, is its pedestrian construction and ill-conceived script, unlikely to spark interest in one of the most innovative and influential performers of the last century and a quarter.

Rather than any outward show of police or physical repression, the directors suffuse their drama with a sense of paranoia and constant surveillance, chillingly capturing the fear of one man forced into a moral dilemma.

There’s value in examining the myth of Mansfield and its impact, but here poor Jayne herself is lost.

The documentary wisely avoids questioning beliefs, but it does force audiences to question how those responsible for shepherding the faithful use their influence, for good or bad.

[A] concise, clearly told and deeply effective documentary.

With a script that signals every progression as obviously as the large-lettered signs used in homes for people with dementia, viewers can guess after 10 minutes exactly how this predictable story is going to end.

Wohlatz’s sensitivity to language, the way it’s used and how the ability to express oneself literally changes the manner in which we deal with the world around us, is subtly yet rigorously demonstrated, not just with the words and tenses themselves but how they’re spoken.

This is an enriching way to spend three-plus hours.

Lost among the bulletins and traveling shots is any sense of the individuals whose distinctiveness is eliminated under the crushing word “refugee.”

Sure it’s meant to be taken in good fun, but the energy keeps getting undercut by over-broad comedy and uninspired scenes, such as a limp musical number in the Isabella movie.

Clunkily scripted and generically pretty in a Stately Home porn kind of way, the film is vaguely accurate in its sequence of events but falls completely flat on personal relationships, psychology and political undercurrents — in other words, the stuff that makes history come alive.

The bottom line is that Oelbaum and Krayenbühl have fleshed out a complex, fascinating figure.

The camera barely leaves Trinca’s side. She delivers an over-sized, nervy performance but the material is so flawed that it’s hard to truly say whether it’s exceptional acting.

The movie lightly plumbs that dangerously unsettled space between performing and literally being the protagonist in a biopic.

On one level, the film can be classified as a journey of discovery, but what deepens interest is the way Barbosa constantly asks the viewer to question what it means to travel.

Rodin is a meticulously reverential, handsomely lit and very dull biopic.

Diane Kruger’s powerhouse performance in her first German-language production goes a long way toward compensating for the narrative’s dip into overly crystalline waters.

The film beguiles with its bravura but it’s a deliberately punishing journey, made by a male Cassandra impelled to point out his nation’s destruction yet sadly aware that it’s too late to change the tide of history.

The film nicely plays with the standards of romantic comedy.

A Woman’s Life has the kind of majesty found not in the grand gesture but the modest detail, the kind that accumulates resonance with each seemingly minor event until the picture of a character becomes as complete as a painting by Ingres. Or a story by Maupassant.

Boasting a deliriously loquacious script together with a rare understanding of how to balance certain Italian caricatures with a grounding sense of realism – a combination that’s truly Virzì’s forte – the film takes two psychologically damaged women...and makes them into a mutually supportive duo who surprisingly touch our emotions.

A standard-issue piece of heart-tugging reportage better suited to small screens than art houses.

The film quietly builds to a feeling of inexorable disaster, guided by terrific performances as well as spot-on editing.

Boasting complex, sharply drawn characters and top-notch performances, this mature drama plays with ideas of seeing, both the outside world as well as within oneself, as Fluk (“Never Too Late”) masterfully depicts intimacies gone awry.

Striking a careful balance between narrative and atmosphere, the writer-director paints a vivid portrait of a light-filled summer when a little girl has to face the loss of her mother and integration into a new nuclear family

Right from the superbly framed opening scene of Kostis on the ferry, the visuals satisfy with their unerring sense of composition.

[A] solid yet unexceptional documentary.

Issues are overly simplified and scenes are often poorly constructed (not helped by uneven editing), though Nafar is a charismatic performer. Ditto Qupty, and the energetic hip-hop scenes are welcome distractions. Visuals are spirited.

Călin Peter Netzer’s follow-up to his Golden Bear winner “Child’s Pose” lacks that film’s directness and drive, and not only because this time he’s chosen to shuffle the sequence of events.

What 13 Minutes fails to understand is that it’s a moral imperative to remember, but it’s an ethical minefield to remember in a simplified manner.

It’s hard not to appreciate the astute ways the script captures the moment when carefree childhood turns into the loss of innocence.

Don’t Swallow My Heart, Alligator Girl! aims for poetry yet, like its ridiculously clumsy title, manages only an odd mix of magical realism with over-heated Lynchian touches.

Bland even for the armchair traveler, “Lost” is as inoffensive as a picture-souvenir booklet, and equally unmemorable.

There’s something stirringly essential about Paris 05:59, partly thanks to the late-night-inspired sensation that Theo and Hugo have the world to themselves, and can make it into whatever they want.

The Ornithologist is deliciously subversive and genuinely funny.

Katie Holmes makes an undistinguished helming debut with All We Had, a middlebrow drama with no pretensions but also no depth.

The dialogue is very clear-cut, devoid of all contractions so that people speak in unnatural ways, though perhaps it makes the conversations clearer, especially to audiences whose native language might not be English. More problematic are the never-ending platitudes, all tied to spreading the message of equality.

A solid, and solidly engaging film that nevertheless feels like an extended promo for the Branson brand.

The doc is stylistically uninspiring, with a tedious threatening sound design, but the powerful subject matter largely overcomes such missteps.

Frantz plays like classic melodrama, and has certain charms.

If anything, the film is most indebted to classic cloak-and-dagger movies, in which sharp, richly succinct dialogue and plenty of atmosphere seem effortlessly carried along by the force of magnetic personalities.

Emanuel’s likeability (more apparent in the film than in Blecher’s novel) unquestionably helps bridge the extended running time, and Solange is a fascinating character, liberated yet still drawn to the scene of her hospitalization. The film also has a sense of humor...but the project never quite comes together.

While Kim Seong-hun’s Tunnel sounds like it resembles any number of creepy tunnel pics or grand catastrophe epics, it’s actually a lean, enjoyable disaster story with enough distinctive elements to make it feel relatively fresh.

Sharply yet subtly capturing the atmosphere of fear fostered by the dictatorship of President Ben Ali, this skillfully made drama is especially attuned to the myriad forms of surveillance, from the prurient to the political.

The prosaic script feels far too derivative, and only the impressive rain-lashed finale succeeds in delivering that tingly thrill one expects from historical action epics.

Director McCarthy does little visually that would generate a sense of fear in any viewer, and there’s nothing that will generate so much as a startled jump.

There’s a confused sci-fi element and a perfunctory nod to society’s benumbed attitude toward violence, but really, the pic is just an excuse for more splatter from a director who, as always, knows his target audience.

Norgaard wants to keep viewers guessing the whys and wherefores, but putting two and two together is so easy here that only the narratively challenged will be surprised by the culprit’s motivations.

An allegorical lesson about dictatorships and the cycle of violence they breed, Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s The President unfortunately offers a simplified and simplistic reduction, akin to an ancient morality tale without the ancients’ brevity – rather than sophistication cloaked in innocence, the pic feels like didacticism submerged in naivete.

Mendoza strengthens his gift for describing space with inquisitive cameras, but as the helmer’s star rises, his subtlety wanes, resulting in obvious statements made banal by heavy-handed ironies.

As expected from a master like Mungiu, everything is beautifully structured and utterly credible, yet Graduation feels like a retread.

Boasting superb camerawork from d.p. Ahmed Gabr and stellar crowd direction, Clash might strike some as crossing too often into hysteria, yet this is bravura filmmaking with a kick-in-the-gut message about chaos and cruelty (with some humanity).

Surprises always come at the end of Pablo Larraín’s films, when everything suddenly comes together and the audience sits in the cinema feeling both illuminated and floored. Neruda is no different, representing the director at his stunning best with a work of such cleverness and beauty, alongside such power, that it’s hard to know how to parcel out praise.

Aquarius is a character study as well as a shrewd meditation on the needless transience of place and the way physical space elides with our identity.

Students of the astonishing body of films won’t find much that enhances their understanding, yet Thomsen’s footage offers more than mere scraps from a great career, and deserves inclusion in the corpus.

Even if Tornatore were deliberately aiming for the artificiality that clings to nearly every frame, the pic would still feel needlessly airless, hampered by an Italian-to-English script translation that may be precise but lacks naturalism.

Stunningly shot and marvelously edited to capture the rhythms of the game, the pic transcends its subject much in the way Roger Angell’s essays on baseball offer rare pleasures even to those uninterested in the game.

The running time of two hours and 43 minutes is unquestionably self-indulgent; thankfully the clan’s charisma keeps attention from lagging too much despite frequent opportunities for trimming.

The lack of any significant investigation into performance styles is acutely felt, particularly given the very different methods of her major directors.

The pic is full of nicely observed vignettes that act as signifiers of caste, though at times the script turns overly didactic.

Guggenheim is such a fascinating figure that few will snipe at a character analysis that rarely gets below the surface.

Like all well-done adventure tales, especially those with an intimate human focus and an expansive, epic vision, “Theeb” works on multiple levels.

Chaplin’s performance is characterized by a lack of vanity and an almost magical combination of empathy and pathos.

Hard Labor teeters uncertainly between horror and social commentary. It feels as if the helmers tried to imagine what Bunuel would have done if he had made a horror film.

The three lead actresses, beautifully cast, form just enough of a contrast to each other to create extratextual tension while maintaining a high degree of sympathy.

Getting swept up in the immediate excitement is entirely understandable, but ignoring the less savory elements, such as ultra-nationalist rhetoric, is problematic at best.

A handsomely made, nicely modulated fugitive drama with forceful social overtones that decries the ongoing practice of marrying child brides in tribal regions of the country’s mountainous north.

Sensationalizing every moment of his hajj (pilgrimage) while calling attention to his devotion, the helmer comes across as far too pleased with himself, though countering the demonization of Islam is a necessary goal.

What “Nostalgia for the Light” did for the desert, The Pearl Button is meant to do for water, but the deft melding of past and present that characterized Patricio Guzman’s earlier film becomes muddied here by the Natural Science 101 voiceover and an unsatisfying bridge between two rather disparate subjects.

the director proves especially skilled with her cast of newcomers (of the thesps playing the sisters, only young Iscan, from “My Only Sunshine,” is a veteran), whose powerful individualism as well as their vibrant bond together are perfect vessels for the script’s message.

In Jackson Heights is a classic example of Wiseman’s affinity for this type of subject, full of community organizers and advocacy meetings in which citizens and aspiring citizens learn to use their civic voices. In truth, the camera lingers longer than necessary in these gatherings, but the film has rewards on the macro and micro levels.

Does it all come together? Well, yes, if viewers think of the film as a freewheeling poetic essay, highly personal yet captivating.

With consummate artistry and the self-assurance that comes from experience, master helmer Marco Bellocchio continues to play with form and content with an originality that make younger directors look like they’re grasping at ephemeral straws.

Reitz maintains his visionary sweep through history, favoring plot over development of characters, except as embodiments of large themes.

While cerebral in intent and planning, the pic doesn’t feel overly straitjacketed by theory and offers unexpected moments of amusement.

Always engrossing but also perplexing and offering little deeper than the obvious, “Teacher” still reps a new development in a striking, idiosyncratic director.

The fixed gaze of each “station” is an appropriate choice for illustrating unbending dogma, and helmer Brueggemann always makes interesting use of the frame.

Riklis’ strongest film in several years, this is another well-intentioned plea for coexistence, though apart from one scene that lays bare, with welcome righteousness, the disturbing orientalism infiltrating even Israeli intellectual circles, the whole thing is rather too scrubbed and clean.

The film is a painfully silly, laughably naive Romance with a capital “R.”

Paolo Sorrentino, with Youth, delivers his most tender film to date, an emotionally rich contemplation of life’s wisdom gained, lost and remembered — with cynicism harping from the sidelines, but as a wearied chord rather than a major motif.

Like a pot set to bubble only every few seconds, the drama is tightly measured to ensure a controlled level of tension that remains discreetly constant, nicely melding with Muntean’s skilled construction of three-dimensional bourgeois life.

The most remarkable aspect of Two Shots Fired is that, despite the distancing effect of the artificial performances and simplified, almost basic visuals, viewers manage to find enough diversion and attachment to care.

Maybe if the actors had been coached to actually act, it would have come across better, but their painfully stilted delivery is leaden rather than campily artificial.

TV-style and desperately in need of cutting, “Soul Boys” does convincingly position its subjects as key trendsetters, and their most memorable tunes continue to be enjoyable.

There are no interviews, thankfully no voiceovers, and no music; Holzhausen respects the viewer’s intelligence, just as he respects the museum staff.

Moretti’s exploration of loss is unquestionably affecting, and My Mother has powerful moments, yet they’re not always well integrated with the broadly pitched moviemaking scenes, featuring a caricaturish John Turturro.

Munzi focuses on incongruous leftovers from a benighted past, where kinship and blood feuds in a marginalized corner of rural Italy fester until entire communities are drawn into a whirlpool of intimidation and violence. This is the film’s strong suit.

Where Haupt succeeds is in conveying the passion felt by everyone who works on the Sagrada, from foremen to sculptors.

As carefully crafted as the clothes is Tcheng’s well-considered direction, privileging the creative process over stereotyped glamour or backstabbing.

the pic gathers steam and displays considerable drive, even if it can’t quite shake the feel of a good TV movie.

Managing to be both extremely rational and extremely humane, the film works so well thanks to an intelligent, superbly understated script and a feel for naturalism that extends beyond mere performance.

There are moments when audiences will wonder if laughing about gangland whackings isn’t in bad taste, yet it becomes increasingly clear that the helmer-scripter is using humor to cut Mafia bosses down to size, thereby turning an accusatory glare at an Italy that granted these people power.

While its tone is occasionally overly strident, Aferim! is an exceptional, deeply intelligent gaze into a key historical period, done with wit as well as anger.

The beautifully modulated script, ripe with moments of liberating humor, builds to a crescendo of indignation, allowing Elkabetz several cathartic outbursts, but they’re no more riveting than the actress’ silences.

In essence it’s an historical artifact created in a time capsule: impressive in its way, yet its retardataire mannerisms require more distance before judgment can be passed on whether it’s a major work engaged in earlier forms, or an intriguing footnote trapped in a spent modality.

Transitioning his story to the screen, Taia retains the bare bones but strips away warmth and insight, without any fresh perceptions that would compensate.

Porumboiu so carefully intellectualizes every outwardly inconsequential exchange that the picture has no room to breathe, forcing audiences to work hard to catch the sly playfulness and cunning within.

The documentary envisions the groundbreaking visionary as a voracious polymath (true) while giving shockingly short shrift to the man as artist.

Wim Wenders’ mastery of the documentary form is again on display in The Salt of the Earth.

Beyond the film’s immediacy, “Maidan” is an impressive, bold treatment of a complex subject via rigidly formalist means

A slick, stylish drama, Human Capital starts as a class critique wrapped around a whodunit, and though the mystery elements have overtaken the social assessment by the final third, the pic remains an engrossing, stinging look at aspirational parvenus and the super-rich they emulate.

While Rondon’s focus is the struggle of wills between a boy awakening to homosexual feelings and his embittered mother, the helmer invests their collision with a powerful specificity.

Curry’s interest is in obsession, not Libya, yet surely a corrective is needed, and dressing up a nation’s collapse as if it were an American triumph smacks of the same willful delusion as George W. Bush’s “mission accomplished.”

The pic has genuine appeal, though in truth the script and direction are little more than average.

Trash works in large part thanks to the infectious energy and sheer pleasure in comradeship exuded by the three young teen boys.

Hulsing’s illustrations suggest a depth to pirate Mohamed Nura that remains hidden in the flesh.

Even for sci-fi, some logic has to enter the plot, which also needs to be devoid of major holes if it’s not to fall into ridiculousness, and that, unfortunately, is where Automata lies.

[A] slight, predictable debut.

Some stunning shots and a likable protag can’t cover up the story’s shallowness.

It’s as if the director can’t decide what he wants: to chronicle the disintegration of a family, or to take a magnifying glass to a woman whose mania overwhelms all rational thought.

The script, co-written by vet Mardik Martin, is pedestrian, and the mise-en-scene, striving hard for a classic Hollywood look, lacks grandeur, notwithstanding impressive location work.

Stunningly unsuccessful on all levels, this gothic dud wants to play on the real and metaphoric anxieties of post-adolescents discovering who they are, but the ham-fisted script is incapable of a multilayered approach, while the helming and editing are at the level of mediocre TV.

The adaptation lacks a strong enough sense of modulated construction, making for a tedious sit. One of the biggest problems, though, is the performances.

Fernandez (“Used Parts”) has a masterful handle on narrative, structure and character, skillfully blending them all in a tale with atmosphere to spare.

Less satisfying than his previous pic, yet still a bold, melancholy statement.

For some time, the pic holds interest while constantly frustrating curiosity with the way it parses out information, but soon after the midway point the game becomes tedious, and attention slackens considerably even as Gong-ju’s ordeal becomes clear.

Less a portrait of an individual than of an unchecked culture where the lure of staggering profits eliminates ethics, Universe subtly exposes the pernicious effects of deregulation and does so in an ingeniously cinematic manner.

"Beauty" has numerous scenes of enormous power, though removing one unnecessary plot strand would allow deeper probing elsewhere.

Sure, some of these dames and geezers are fun, and it’s heartening to see them pushing themselves for what’s likely their last expedition, yet Gaynes forgets that even schmaltz needs salt and pepper.

Only a curmudgeon would deny the pic its moments of clean, wholly predictable fun.

The effect of National Gallery is to reinforce the notion that paintings are objects to know and understand.

In the hands of a master, indignation and tragedy can be rendered with clarity yet subtlety, setting hysteria aside for deeper, more richly shaded tones. Abderrahmane Sissako is just such a master.

Szifron does a terrific job of pacing thanks to expert editing (he shares credit with Pablo Barbieri) within each episode and a genuinely subversive sense of humor.

An appealing yet oddly insubstantial work, like an early impressionist sketch in need of a little more focus, and perhaps a more suitable frame.

Ultimately, the training and suicide mission are less interesting to Ayouch than the initial forming of character, and the fundamentalist cell members are only stock figures; what’s important is the group’s sense of disenfranchisement and the lure of inner peace.

Archambault’s handling of Gabrielle and Martin’s sexuality is one of the pic’s strong suits, presenting their desire with a refreshing, straightforward honesty.

When does an exercise in style become a wearying ADD slog through blood-splattered pseudo-Freudian nonsense? When it’s The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears.

Assaults are filmed in ubiquitous slow-mo to better register the way bodies are thrown into the air. It’s all rather confusing, actually, since the monochromatic tonalities and weak script, lacking in any comprehensible battle strategy, tend to meld the two sides together.

The pic nicely straddles a line between Sosa’s private and public personas, never quite delving deep although Vila covers all the bases.

Batra adeptly plays on the tension of will they or won’t they meet, making good decisions based on character and situation rather than the need to uplift an audience.

Deliberately ambiguous in how it approaches the inexorable nexus of violence, Omar will trouble those looking for condemnation rather than the messiness of humanity.

A low-budget potboiler with an overblown score not loud enough to drown out the hackneyed dialogue.

Aiming for a Hitchcockian take on an eccentric auctioneer (well-handled by Geoffrey Rush) who becomes enamored of an heiress with severe agoraphobia, the pic ends up more in Dan Brown territory, with over-obvious setups and phony insight into the art establishment.

With enormous sympathy for all, Al Mansour captures the isolation of Saudi women and their parallel lives of freedom at home and invisibility outside.

Discerning Verhoeven’s hand in it all is difficult, though true to the helmer’s more intimate style, it largely revolves around sex, and has a few fun plot twists.

It’s impossible not to be charmed on some level by Jung Henin and Laurent Boileau’s Approved for Adoption, though it’s best not to ask for too much.

[A] film with a maddeningly opaque narrative and a brutalizing cascade of nonstop verbiage.

Intermittently interesting but more often pretentious, this sluggish exploration of time as real and conceived concepts rarely does more than regurgitate philosophical platitudes without locating the depth to make them interesting.

The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet is the perfect 3D vehicle and Jeunet takes full advantage, offering a feast of amusing visual flourishes suited to the book’s playfulness.

Sorrentino continues to tackle major topics using an extraordinary combination of broad brushstrokes and minute detail. Passion via the intellect has become his trademark, well suited to this dissection of empty diversions, indulged in by latter-day Neros fiddling while Rome burns.

Kleist’s direct language and straightforward storytelling are nowhere in evidence in Pallieres’ narratively challenged adaptation, featuring a French-speaking Mads Mikkelsen in one of his least impressive characterizations.

Brilliantly constructed with a visual audacity that serves the subject rather than the other way around, this is award-winning filmmaking on a fearless level.

If at times it feels like the Alayan brothers have bitten off more than they can chew, the core of the plot, and the weighty issues raised, fortunately remain front and center.

In every sense, I Am Love is a stunning achievement.

Inland Empire may mesmerize those for whom the helmer can do no wrong, but the unconvinced and the occasional admirer will find it dull as dishwater and equally murky.

Staka’s interested in subtleties and looks at the different coping mechanisms of immigrants, from Ruza’s overly efficient life to Ana’s carefree existence.

Pintilie is the opposite of a misanthrope — she’s genuinely invested in opening the mind to the body’s sensations. Keeping it all balanced is where she gets bogged down.

An interesting if overly earnest look at what would happen if cemeteries just emptied out one fine morning.

It’s easy to simply be mesmerized by German’s exceptional talent for stage blocking and camera movements, yet while there’s much here to appreciate, the film lacks the power of “Under Electric Clouds” despite being his most emotionally approachable work to date.

Toward the end, Doueiri attempts to give his two leads a little more nuance, but Tony’s overwhelming anger steamrolls over occasional conciliatory behavior, which winds up feeling just manipulative.

Less accessible than recent "Cafe Lumiere," picture will appeal strongly to fans.

Picture's dour take on the dehumanizing process of medical treatment is leavened by black humor and dialogue that always rings true.

Situated somewhere between neo-realist study and standard women in prison pic, Lion's Den too frequently wanders into common territories to make the material its own.

Mascaro isn’t interested in psychology and instead simply sketches in thoughts and motivations (Shirley’s boredom, Jeison’s father’s dissatisfaction) without exploring them, much in the manner of an observational documentary. The real connective tissue is the locale.

Wilkerson doesn’t mean to suggest ambiguity with his title, since no one questions the identity of the culprit, but it is regrettably indicative of his naval-gazing focus on family skeletons, combined with a deeply annoying tendency to sensationalize the obvious.

Like the intelligent performances — both Rongione and Cléau are standouts — and the terrific art direction, the film’s design reinforces an exquisite, levelheaded decorum about to be smashed by a chillingly cruel monster.

Côté assures them a humanity as well, without trying to analyze their obsession with this extravagant concept of masculinity, nor the need for self-display.