Joshua Rothkopf

You doubt Wiseman's sense of pacing. Still, he must have had a good time shooting.

The funny thing? It all works reasonably well, especially if you have a yen for the urbane register of city kids and their amazingly cool parents.

A movie that could terrify parents while charming them with its compassion.

Amer could exist only as a movie, not as a novel or a pop song. If you give it a whirl, you won't simply get drunk on its immediacy; you may throw out plot and character altogether.

The final third is a crush of genius, with several Nas tracks (including his lovely, Michael Jackson-sampling “It Ain’t Hard to Tell”) receiving the kind of detailed breakdowns rare in pop-artist conversations.

Crawford has produced an inspiring primer, sure to remind viewers that the power has always been in their hands.

Based on Amy Koppelman’s 2008 novel, I Smile Back can’t shake its slightly tired structural similarities to other drug dramas, and there’s an obvious imbalance between Silverman’s mighty commitment and the movie around her.

The film is weak on its essential indictment, vaguely suggesting a mood of battlefield boredom without quite pinpointing the pathology that would lead military men to squeeze the trigger pell-mell.

Mikkelsen is endlessly compelling.

Moments like these turn the documentary Undefeated into a far greater thing than a real-life "The Blind Side" - it's diving deeply into knotty matters of patience and parenting, along with plenty of unfixables as well.

To be sure, the film as a whole feels like a creaky vehicle, belabored with plot strands and stereotypes that only serve to highlight Winstead's ragged commitment to something real.

The subtle pleasure of watching Tyrel comes from raising an eyebrow at every inferred (implied?) slight.

It’s only hours afterward that Guadagnino’s film will cohere for you and yield its buried treasures: the bonds of secret sorority, the strength of a line of dancers moving like a single organism, the present rippling with the muscle memory of the past. It’s so good, it’s scary.

No other filmmaker on the planet can touch Evans for long-take beatdowns and wildly inventive flourishes.

Fantastical is what we get: Cameraman is filled with Cardiff's achingly beautiful work.

With unexpected supernatural restraint, the movie approaches a religious parable; am I being unfair in wishing it had a touch more apocalyptic hysteria to it?

Outside of its cracked psychology (well conveyed by papa Bill Sage), We Are What We Are is horror leftovers, neither inedible nor piping hot.

Is Gemini on the level of classic L.A. films like Heat or The Player? Hardly. But you sink into its mood, and that’s enough.

A middling entry in the growing genre of tragic, never-quite-made-it rocker docs, this doesn't have a bona fide genius at its core (The Devil and Daniel Johnston), nor a compelling clash of Spinal Tap–ready egos (Anvil! The Story of Anvil).

If you’re even remotely a fan, you need to see this.

Refn has somehow found his way to an authentic English hard-man drama, anchored in a dynamite performance, even as it celebrates thug life.

There isn’t much of an original signature here. Returning director Dan Trachtenberg hits the beats competently but not too stridently, like a good superfan should.

It's a comedy about the unchecked id; indeed, there's sleepwalking in it. But will those grunting strolls happen through a second-story window or on the highway? You're left cringing, and that puts Birbiglia in excellent company, alone though he might be in bed.

For all its timeliness, the movie works best when it’s echoing the 15-year-old The Rules of Attraction, upping the vapidity of Ingrid’s prey.

Finding reciprocity—in the eyes of the law, your partner, your colleagues—is the essence of this documentary, one that comes at a moment that desperately lacks it.

Sly and suggestive, Lourdes is a cosmic black comedy that bumps up against the metaphysical.

For 
the most part, you’re in the hands of a capable lunatic who has a tale to tell.

This is still one of his (Berlinger) most ambitious films, vibrating with the same municipal unease as "Chinatown."