J.R. Jones

A fascinating allegory of modern-day Iran.

Chanodr has said that he wanted to portray the 2008 financial meltdown in all its complexity, assigning everyone a fair share of the blame. But the real strength of his debut feature is how persuasively it depicts the fishbowl world of high finance, whose executives seem incapable of seeing past their towering salaries and privileged lives.

Vincent Cassel sets a new standard for Gallic cool as the title character.

The racial satire is about as subtle as a sledgehammer, but there's something exhilarating about so blunt a weapon being swung with such wild abandon.

The 3-D element is unobtrusively handled, except when it perfectly re-creates the woman who's always perched on her boyfriend's shoulders in front of you at a concert.

The thing runs more than two hours, but this is the sort of project that's indemnified against charges of excess.

So few movies these days concern themselves with ideas of any sort that a drama like this one, about a man humbled by the consequences of his own intellectual breakthrough, seems even more powerful.

Despite the gimmicky direction and a disappointing climax, this is a distinctive and unsettling comedy.

Too many extraneous elements have been added--the victim here is an aborigine, which prompts a racial backlash against the men and their families--but at the movie's center lies the knotty story of a marriage poisoned by amorality.

Reitman deserves credit for going through with a bitterly ironic ending, but the movie is marred by its warm condescension toward flyover country.

Ali Selim, a highly successful director of commercials in Minneapolis, makes his feature directing debut with this simple and beautifully paced drama, letting the characters breathe and the land speak.

Sunshine does for sci-fi what "28 Days Later" . . . did for the zombie movie -- its tale about a manned space mission to the sun preys on our growing fear of obliteration as we confront global warming.

The Departed is completely engrossing, a master class in suspense. But in moral terms it may be the least involving story that Scorsese -- an artist much preoccupied with morality -- has ever taken on.

Eleven years on, someone in Hollywood has finally worked up the nerve to address the LA riots--but only on the slickest terms imaginable.

A beguiling combination of agrarian ode and “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” deepened by Peterson's square sincerity as he struggles to find himself in relation to his family's land.

The general tone is one of crusty, unapologetic misanthropy, driven home by the formidable Rudd (who also kicked in on the script).

The ugly emotional mess is so respectfully handled that the story resonates far beyond its comic designs.

Vince Vaughn in a wonderfully low-key performance.

Though the pain of this 9/11 story doesn't pierce as deeply as it should, the laughs are consistently humane.

It's a funny and frequently affecting reminiscence from a man whose TV antics obscured a long, respectable career as a stage actor and director.

This 2005 feature has a drab "Masterpiece Theatre" feel, though Pierrepoint is a fascinating study in ethics: he takes pride in his work, wants his victims to die swiftly and painlessly, and considers hanging an absolution.

A 157-minute holding pattern in which neither of the ongoing stories--Harry's conflict with the evil sorcerer Voldemort, the young schoolmates' coming of age at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft--progresses much.

I still can't decide whether it's a masterpiece of sexual provocation or just a really classy stroke film.

The movie is most fascinating when it shows how Chanel communicated her enlightened sense of womanhood through her innovative designs, which in turn helped women feel differently about themselves.

There's rancor here, but also unexpected tenderness.

Stiller and Wilson are still hilarious as the supercool detectives -- there hasn't been a comedy duo this good since John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd.

Ramsay seems to be seriously intent on probing the outer limits of a mother's love and forgiveness, but the boy (played by a trio of child actors) is so unremittingly evil that the movie begins to feel like a grotesque remake of that old John Ritter comedy "Problem Child" (1990).

The movie reunites Pfeiffer with director Stephen Frears and screenwriter Christopher Hampton, who did Dangerous Liaisons (1988); this costume drama doesn't have nearly as much bite as that one, though the age reversal of its central romance gives it a certain topicality.