John Anderson

The unlikely, bittersweet, bristling comedy Support the Girls is easily one of the best films of the year, and the most sympathetic to women, despite having been made by a man. How can this be? Luckily, Andrew Bujalski’s remarkable movie — with its killer performance by Regina Hall — is not just about women. It’s about men being idiots. And no one is arguing ownership of that narrative.

The film acknowledges the bones of Johnson’s story—a very thin narrative in terms of things actually happening, though the things that happen are enormous. The execution is nevertheless lush, sometimes startlingly beautiful, and painterly and evocative of Johnson’s elegiac theme about a bygone America. The Old World is never old until it’s gone, but in Train Dreams one feels it passing.

A film like About Endlessness invites comparisons not to other movies, but to other media. The Preludes of Chopin or Debussy, for instance, brilliant flashes that don’t need to go anywhere, but might. Or something like Baudelaire’s “Paris Spleen,” an intriguing whole composed of incongruous poetic fragments.

The performers—not just the miraculous Ms. Pugh but Ms. Cassidy; her mother, Elaine Cassidy (who plays Anna’s mother); and Tom Burke, as the journalist-love interest Will Byrne—give memorably complex portrayals in a tale where elements theological, maternal, political and pictorial are transformed alchemically into narrative gold.

Museo is in part a caper film, a heist film, and while it leans on such classics as “Topkapi” and “Rififi” the robbery has its own signature and is done in a visual style that’s hypnotic.

It might have taken one actress to make a movie so reliant on others. It certainly took a director with a supreme confidence, not just in the talents of her performers but in the power of gesture.

It also happens to feature a pair of performances that eclipse all else around them.

Felix (Duvall) simply wants to host his own goodbye, maybe have a band, and the reasons why are the reasons Get Low is essential viewing. That, and the acting.

It’s a masterpiece — an overused word, but not the wrong one.

There are not a lot of moments in documentary cinema that equal Citizenfour. Ms. Poitras was already at work on a film about government surveillance when Mr. Snowden presented himself, and she’s something of a lightning rod, too, one with little evident sympathy for Obama administration data mining.

The characters are really minimalist masterpieces, sculpted, polished and uncompromisingly female.

Thoroughly entertaining, startling and highly erotic film.

Anderson, who makes as impressive a directing debut as has been seen in some time, creates a perfectly modulated mystery that doesn't even feel like one. It's a character play, and Hall, Reilly and Paltrow are so convincingly damaged they take on the properties of fine china.

The pulp-fictional hero is inhabited by the charismatic Andy Lau who, together with Chinese stars Bingbing Li, Ms. Lau and Tony Leung Ka-fai, makes Detective Dee the most purely entertaining film of our vanishing summer.

With A Hidden Life and the story of Franz Jägerstätter, the director has found the ideal vehicle for his cosmic inquiries, and has created a film that is mournful, memorable and emotionally exhilarating.

The aesthetics of Mr. Wiseman’s visual storytelling have seldom been so prominent or important as in “Menus-Plaisirs.”

The creative process is always an elusive thing for filmmakers to capture, but amid all the startling visuals and the splendid acting, Polina rises, gloriously, to the challenge.

As a work of nonfiction, it deserves its own nomenclature. "Docu-poem" is too inelegant; "masterpiece" works, although it's been used before.

Much of the fun of Marjorie Prime is in figuring out where it’s going, and why. It would be shameful to reveal much more of the journey save to say that the people who make it do a splendid job.

Infectious and inspiring, despite one's best efforts to resist its charms.

While there seems to be a glut of b-ball documentaries right now, “Underrated” is, much like its subject, a highly graceful, even artistic entry into a muscle-bound medium.

The filmmaking is fluid and electric; the acting, precise; the archetypal storytelling, seamless and brutal. What happens in “La Jaula de Oro” might enrage audiences, and probably for a variety of reasons. But there’s no getting away without it leaving a mark.

Frank is a genuine original in a summer sea of sameness, and a darkly comedic manifesto against the cultural status quo.

Mr. Kauffman is interested in pure storytelling, the rise and fall of his various characters, which covers at least the last 10 years; he has created a beautiful film in terms of its aesthetics and affection for the machinery and people. But he is also telling a cautionary tale about the cluttering of space, and the pursuit not just of profit but power.

Containing as much forward motion as any film in recent memory, Good Time is as heartbreaking as it is exhilarating, and that’s no small thing.

Director David Mackenzie's gripping, convincing and convincingly violent convict drama owes its authenticity largely to the experiences of ex-prison therapist Jonathan Asser, who wrote its screenplay. But the opening 10 minutes are a virtuosic example of virtually wordless filmmaking.

In a film of grand acting, flamboyant color, vaulting ambition and global conflict, the more slippery gestures contain much meaning.

There is an implicit story within—about the ancients building with marble for eternity and us moderns building with concrete for a virtual moment. But it isn’t just beauty Mr. Kossakovsky is concerned with here. It is how humans view their world and, more importantly, themselves. And their place in the universe. And their disposable landscape.

Funny, wry, emotionally potent, and like most films by Hirokazu Kore -eda (“Shoplifters,” “Nobody Knows,” “After Life”) operates on multiple levels—usually some kind of domestic tragicomedy under which lies profound existential disquiet.

Art is supposed to help us see the world in novel ways. The Sound of Silence, in its quietly exhilarating manner, may make us hear it differently, too.

One of the assets of Stranger Things is its air of mystery, and the actors give the indelible impression that they have much locked away inside.

Based on the Le Carré memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel allows Mr. Morris to exercise his extraordinary gift for making the interview format irresistibly cinematic, and feels like a collaboration of kindred spirits.

[A] moving and poetic documentary portrait.

Ms. Wilson may put a viewer off balance with a lack of concrete detail, but it is a seduction technique that works, to satisfying effect.

Dorothy Lewis, the subject of director Alex Gibney’s collagist masterpiece Crazy, Not Insane, is out to demolish “the myth of pure evil.” As such, she may be among the most dangerous women in the world. She is certainly a “pioneer,” as one colleague calls her, adding that pioneers are often not treated very well.

Mr. Von Einsiedel is convinced that his subjects are “true heroes.” Viewers will be convinced of the same.

The attitude of Mr. Navalny and his colleagues is fearless, in a country governed by fear. Thrillers are rarely so inspiring.

It’s difficult to describe the astonishing beauty of “Porcelain War” without trivializing everything and everyone involved.

Kon's best work yet.

The pace is nonstop, the humor abundant, the devotion of Mr. Fox’s wife, actress Tracy Pollan, is made plain, and there’s no small amount of nostalgia in store for people who know and love the Fox filmography. But the heart and soul of the film are the face-to-face interviews, which are far less delicate than one might expect. And all the deeper for it.

To lavish too much praise on Mr. Pitt’s performance would be to somehow suggest he isn’t already among the best actors on screen. He is. Between this film and the current “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” he could and should be a double Oscar nominee next year. If he’s not, it doesn’t mean his performance in Ad Astra isn’t an epic one.

The deliriously talented Lake Bell wrote, produced, directed and stars in this peculiar bit of comedy magic, set amid the cutthroat world of Hollywood voiceover artists.

The acting is first-rate, a disquieting pas de deux written by Indianna Bell and directed by her and Josiah Allen, who edited the piece.

Each of the five superb actors gets a moment of dramatic glory out of Mr. MacLachlan’s screenplay, which is about guilt, roots and the selfishness of implacable conviction. Each makes the most of it.

The film is terrific fare for kids. But the underpinnings of its fantastical story lie in tortured Irish history, English imperialism, and the use of religion to rationalize oppression; there’s a hum of yearning for a pre-Christian Hibernia of pagans, Druids and nature worship. Adults will be eager to see where it’s all going to go.

The film may not take quite as many chances with the documentary form as Armstrong took with the opening cadenza of “West End Blues” (recorded by Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five in 1928) but it is a daring work, a worthy and affectionate statement about the most important single figure in American popular music, 20th Century Division.

Frances Ha also marks the rare instance in which an actress has the perfect role at the perfect time. Ms. Gerwig's work here is fragile, delicate, subject to bruising; something that could wither under too much attention. Perhaps Ms. Gerwig is the greatest actress alive. And maybe Frances Ha is just the ghost orchid of independent cinema.

By making Emilia Pérez a quasi-musical, Mr. Audiard cranks up the campiness; by making it a parable about one’s own past being inescapable, he makes it profound.

While certainly a curiosity, We Met in Virtual Reality—a pandemic-inspired documentary filmed entirely within a social platform called VRChat—is also revelatory, if not entirely ennobling of the human condition.

Years after its initial release, Ornette: Made in America, part of Milestone's continuing "Project Shirley," still feels fresh - its moves always surprising, yet always somehow perfect.

It’s a gripping historical document, regardless of where one stands on the central argument.

Acting may be a collaborative art form, but Mr. Ahmed also flies solo with considerable grace.

It is the understated, matter-of-fact tone of the story that sucks us in, and the two central performances that help make this effort by Ms. Moss such a singular addition to the monster catalog.

Few viewers anywhere will be immune to the movie’s charms, or the performances, notably that of Mr. Sigurjonsson, who makes Gummi a slightly mournful, enormously lovable and quixotically heroic figure.

Like Sun Ra’s music, the motion picture is deliberately fractured, the virtues to be found in the departures from the expected, the familiar, the comfortable.

Ms. Israel's movie proves, once again, that the best nonfiction cinema possesses the same attributes as good fiction: Strong characters, conflict, story arc, visual style.

Hold Your Fire is a bona-fide thriller, its elements in delicate balance.

The Square is journalism, but Noujaim’s agenda is greater than mere reportage.

A moving and even poetic mixed-media meditation on Albert Einstein, his life after Hitler and his sense of “responsibility, not to say guilt” about his theories and how they played into the destruction that, lest one forget, ended World War II.

“Reflection” is a highly playful exercise in its kaleidoscopic approach, though “kaleidoscopic” is about as useful as “surreal” in describing the film’s effect or philosophy.

Much of what makes “The Boy Who Lived” special are the inexplicable ways people respond to the unexpected, and the randomly tragic, and whether they stick around when it would be much easier to vanish, as if by wizardry.

The big difference between Mr. Romero's film and Mr. Eisner's--which is so intelligent you fear the fanboys will scatter--is that Mr. Eisner never gives us the military's point of view. All we know is what David and Judy and Russell know, which for a long time isn't much. And The Crazies is all the scarier for it.

What God’s Time affords us, as few Hollywood movies do anymore, are performances that rely on sustained craft and emotion, an ability to mesmerize the camera and justify why it isn’t cutting away.

The source of all this information was a real-life KGB agent, Vladimir Vetrov, code named Farewell, and with the usual adjustments for drama his story gets a respectable retelling in this nervy French production.

The material is often intimate, often heartbreaking.

Conventional it is not. Engrossing it is.

A mood piece, a character study and an exercise in poetic gesture possessed of a sort of evanescent, secular spirituality.

It’s a story that doesn’t quite follow the money. The money is a maguffin, as per Hitchcock.

An urban nightmare with a surfeit of soul, Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire is like a diamond -- clear, bright, but oh so hard.

As in the previous films, the pilgrims stay in the most picturesque places, and are served the most sumptuous meals, the preparation of which Mr. Winterbottom uses as a visual digestif when his two stars begin to cloy. Most often, though, they are supremely urbane and consistently hilarious.

So refreshing and funny and, in its way, sophisticated.

The situation is fascinating, and given an illuminating investigation here.

Yes, there’s a sermon of sorts at the center of “A Different Man.” But the message arrives post-movie, thanks to a narrative that is consistently compelling in its novelty, and twin performances—by Messrs. Stan and Pearson—that really do get under the skin.

It's a trip into a primordial world and primeval sensibilities, and if you're looking to shake off the mall-movie blahs, there are few better places to look.

Documentarian Nanette Burstein has a wealth of photographic material at her disposal, much of it breathtakingly lovely, and she uses it gracefully and in the noble cause of forward motion.

While essentially a disaster film, the visually alarming and nerve-racking “Fukushima” is also a cross-cultural psychodrama, about an industry, and perhaps a society, having a meltdown all its own.

That the film is online because of the Covid-19 pandemic might be considered a silver lining: Not only will more people be able to see it, but they can, and should, experience it through headphones. A big screen would be nice, too, given Ms. Rovner’s hallucinogenic way with pictures. But the sound, as she would probably agree, is paramount.

What Mr. Mungiu puts together, in tandem with the ornate private lives of several main characters, is an anatomy of race hatred.

Despite the “improvements” to the animation technique, there remains a purity to Wallace & Gromit. In fact, the most endearing aspects of the series are its links to silent comedy. And dogs, naturally. And penguins.

Vandross regularly produces sounds that seem superhuman, and does so with no visible strain. It is also no work at all enjoying a movie so full of affection for its subject and his music.

There’s much amusement to be had in the film. Very little of it stupid.

As naturally and insistently buoyant as Mr. Strassner is, Ms. Larsen is a marvel.

Woman of the Hour may be sensational, in the tabloid sense, but it is angry, too, and full of questions.

The upshot is an emotionally satisfying fusion of the mixed up and the magical.

The storytelling is first-rate, snowballing along from one outrage to the next.

The Innocents features some superb kid-acting, which doesn’t just entertain and convince but embellishes the malevolent intelligence (call it sociopathy) at work in Mr. Vogt’s story.

Both the underlying story and the dramatic re-creations possess an urgency that eludes so much televised—and sensationalized—nonfiction.

The actor and his director may be addressing the oldest subject in drama. But they manage to give it a new twist nonetheless.

How does it play? With the same verbal and musical fireworks as the stage version, and with the same emotional kick, which is rooted in the casting.

Golden Arm could be interpreted as having a profound feminist message and liberating agenda. Mostly, it’s just goofy fun. An antic romp. A briskly paced gag fest. A lot of wrist, no relaxation.

Influencers both dwells in and demolishes an online, text-happy, selfie-saturated world, one that thrives on misinformation and FOMO-mongering and drives CW more than a little crazy. Watching poseurs brought down is fun, though. So is Ms. Naud.

That the circuitous international influence of the western should manifest itself in South Africa is no surprise. Neither is the fact that someone as charismatic as Mr. Dabula should be the star of such a story, which is ripe with indignation, injustice, righteous violence and, ultimately, a shootout of cosmic resonance.

While much of The World Before Her speaks to global womanhood, other aspects are more specific to India, but that’s what gives the film much of its life and spark.

What’s lovely about The Adam Project is its treatment of grief, the love between mothers and sons and, to a slightly lesser extent, fathers and sons.

As director Alison Ellwood shows in her briskly entertaining documentary—The Go-Go’s—the band’s members can explain away, with enormous charm, the naked ambition that made them the most successful “girl group” ever.

Mr. Gaines occasionally loses confidence in his audience—the parallels that can be drawn between Gregory’s times and now are pretty obvious and don’t really need the punctuation. Most of the time, though, The One and Only Dick Gregory is a memorable portrait, of someone whose story deserves to be better remembered.

For all the disorder and sense of emergency, there’s also a combination of human sweetness and cosmic serenity to be found in Wuhan Wuhan.

Victoria Day (a very Canadian holiday) is expertly put together, the editing and framing so sturdy and right that the twin currents of the film flow over the viewer unimpeded.