Kenji Fujishima

If The Hero works at all, it’s because Elliott brings a measure of emotional truth to even the most sentimental of plot developments, and because Haley exudes such warm patience for his lead actor’s rhythms and cadences.

Tragic anecdotes put a human face on this still-polarizing issue and serve Soechtig and Couric’s broad argument in Under The Gun better than any heavy-handed music cues and animated statistics ever could.

Brain On Fire is often effective, and at times positively enraging, but one can’t help but lament the much more disquieting film that might have resulted had the filmmakers been more willing to trust the facts of Cahalan’s case to speak for themselves instead of feeling a need to shove them into uplifting platitudes

Hers is a humane vision that refuses to cast easy judgment on her deeply flawed characters, never excusing them for their unwise decisions, but understanding the inner anguish from which they arise.

Intimately focusing on its main character's personal triumphs, its refusing to fall into heavy-handed polemicism.

Even at its most outrageously bizarre, Your Name is bound together by a passionately romantic core.

Some of the wittier one-liners and more affecting emotional moments feel undermined by the frenzy of chaotic excess.

The familiar premise is done with enough intelligence and heartfelt conviction that it rises above its potentially cliché trappings.

Onur Tukel is able to offer a reasonably fresh spin on familiar vampire-movie tropes, giving pitiless misanthropy pedal-to-the-metal comic wit.

It resonates as a portrait of artists trying to figure out their own paths toward making valuable contributions to the world.

Robert Cenedella exudes humility even as he sounds off against the societal forces that anger him and fuel his work.

The near-surgical precision with which Yorgos Lanthimos approaches the most surreal of conceits turns out to be a double-edged sword.

Living has the feel of a film afraid to fully step out of its predecessor’s giant shadow.

It weaves through past and present, memories and reality, analysis and history, like a mercurial mind reminiscing seemingly at random.

It's never made clear how witnessing a family deal with their specific issues affects Jesus's own perspective on his destiny.

Not even Bernardo Bertolucci's choice of a lead actor with visible facial acne scars, in a welcome gesture toward authenticity, is enough to overcome the gaping hole of psychological nuance at the center of the film.

Maya Forbes reveals herself as a sunny optimist, insistent on remembering the ecstatic highs and never dwelling on the despairing lows.

The film imbues a pessimistic view of the seemingly bottomless depths of human cruelty with sorrowful tragic force.

Hlynur Pálmason, who has a background in visual art, explores the film’s family dynamics through a vignette-like structure that sometimes feels akin to walking through an art exhibition.

It isn’t without its pleasures and insights, but it’s ultimately little more than an excuse for Hong to try out a new stylistic color in his auteurist palette.

The whiplash contrasts between snideness and sincerity is deeply rooted in the main character's psychology.

The film is surprisingly amiable, thanks to the commitment of its lead actors and its refusal to condescend to its characters.

Dickinson, in his film debut, almost makes this familiar narrative feel fresh.

Rama Burshtein allows us to form our own impressions based on what she presents to us of the Orthodox faith.

Anja Marquardt feels the need to puff up her film with relatively artificial conflict that generally comes off as sops to screenwriting conventions.

The film is a historical action epic that, for all the novelty of its setting and subservience to contemporary attitudes, traffics in a lot of cliché narrative beats and ideologies.

For all the heartbreaking depth with which the filmmakers explore the horrors of human trafficking, the film still leaves one with a sense of a larger story just beyond their grasp.

Temperamentally, Guy Ritchie aligns more with the lithe, James Bond-like Solo: detached, above-it-all, eternally cool under pressure.