Joshua Rothkopf

Worthy is a marvel, transitioning from pasty wallflower to a glowering, unencumbered threat.

The potent image-making and performative ferocity turns what could have been a crime thriller into a near-metaphysical showdown.

The Arbor's pummeling second half begins with the collapse of its celebrity subject; the following spirals of self-destruction make you suspect that some childhoods are simply too hard to escape. Tough, worthy stuff.

The real richness of the movie, though, comes well in, as the improvised script gets around to deeper anxieties of aging and avoidance.

Blessed with a wealth of golden b&w footage (Lambert and Stamp always planned to document their managerial brilliance), James D. Cooper’s poundingly fun, scrappy profile has an unusually satisfying nuts-and-bolts perspective on the ’60s fame machine.

Starring a tough-minded band of scrappy teens who actually do some solving, it's the movie "Super 8" wanted to be - or should have been.

Even as the trio heads into a complicated dance of multiple infidelities, In the Shadow of Women never villainizes any of them.

The film plays like a Trump-state "Big Lebowski," as Ruth and Tony’s amateur sleuthing teases out a much deeper conviction, perfectly stated by its main character.

The film manages to span from feisty Wilson Pickett to Confederate-flag-flaunting Lynyrd Skynyrd, but if ever a music doc needed insight from the fans who went along for the ride and forgot their troubles, it’s this one.

No matter how predictable his arc is, writer-director Thomas McCarthy (The Station Agent) never loses sight of the difficulties of cashflow and making one's weekly nut. You'll want to give his movie-and his secret weapon, the lovably neurotic Bobby Cannavale, as a recent divorcé hoping to co-coach the team-a pass for sweetness.

As gritty as Heaven Knows What often feels, it’s leavened by empathy and poetic moments: desperate kisses, a passed-out couch nap lit by slanting sunbeams, the beautifully eerie synth music of Tomita. This isn’t an easy watch, but it validates every risk we want our most emboldened filmmakers to take.

Matthew McConaughey finally locates his perfect métier as the town's Fordian skeptic, a district attorney who smells a rat.

The movie deepens as Nelly, destined for the gossip columns and a peripheral attachment, becomes painfully aware of her own fragility (Jones’s performance is devastating).

Everyone rises to the occasion of a special project of subtle significance: a comedy about nothing less than the proper way to say goodbye to the past.

A remarkably committed portrait of NYC homelessness in which Gere—grizzled and often topped in a wool cap—hunkers destitute. Call it an actor’s stunt if you must, but that would be overly dismissive of an indie with a serious mission of social awakening on its brow.

The year’s most shocking transformation arrives in the form of Gary Oldman’s Winston Churchill, a creation for the ages.

Berlinger is fully invested here, but a little distance might have helped.

The takeaway isn’t exhilaration; the unease is what makes Garland’s film valuable. You watch it with your jaw hanging open.

Feels like the kind of movie that would have been designed for Meryl Streep or Sigourney Weaver back in the day, ragged yet sumptuous, filled with moments for devastating monologues yet never so obvious as to be self-aggrandizing.

Those euphoric moments, scored to Black Sabbath, show the brothers sneaking out in their masks, discovering activism and growing into individuals. You’ll wish Moselle had started, not ended, there.

A quiet, sneaky sense of dislocation vibrates through Chad Hartigan’s indie comedy, which contains so many ideas about race, child-rearing, fatherhood and accidental exoticism, that to call it a mere coming-of-age movie would be a shame.

As brought to life in the stentorian tones of Ben Kingsley, the curator comes off like a driven visionary, but his actual efforts aren't dramatized enough. The paintings speak more articulately: doomy, dank colors and oppressive shapes.

Thoroughbreds plunges you into an ice-cold bath of amorality, but debuting writer-director Cory Finley has such a command of details—the perfectly soigné clothes and hairdos, the lavish Connecticut living rooms and attentive gardening staffs—that you’ll laugh your way through the shivers.

Particle Fever is that rare, exhilarating science doc that’s neither dumbed down nor drabbed up.

This isn’t a straight documentary — part of what makes the film so suggestive is the idea that we’re seeing a double performance pitted against our own prurient interests. As for the movie’s final scene, you won't witness something as confrontational all year: a yowl from beyond the grave. It’s a small piece of revenge for a lost soul.

Based on a banned short story from the 1920s, Caterpillar might be read as a reaction to hawkish nationalism, but it's more a cry for the unknown soldier in the kitchen and bedroom.

Some viewers might give the movie a few extra points for its retro vibe of taciturn badassedness. But little punctures the wall of emotional remove-the pulse rate is way too controlled for entertainment's sake.

It helps that Milo (Hader) and Maggie (Wiig) are cranky adult siblings, sharing a whip-crack shorthand that longtime skit partners know how to muster effortlessly.