Kenji Fujishima

Chaitanya Tamhane's grand canvas is Indian society as represented by its legal system, and what it reveals is none too flattering.

Under Sora Neo’s direction, each number becomes a mini-study of Sakamoto and the grand piano he plays on.

RaMell Ross’s remarkable film finds an expressive power in formally adventurous technique that fashions mesmerizing, cumulatively affecting poetry out of Colson Whitehead’s prose.

The warm, rueful, and sometimes angry All the Beauty and the Bloodshed accomplishes the goal of any documentary worthy of its genre by shining an insightful light onto what informs an artist’s vision.

This singular mix of character study and mysterious mood piece might not have come off quite so successfully if not for Royalty Hightower's internal performance.

It’s sobering enough to witness a dedicated artist facing the possibility of losing his/her ability to create. And yet, Restless Creature is anything but relentlessly downbeat, primarily because Whelan refuses to be cowed by the pressure.

Among the film's many revelations is the level of self-aware humility Brando exudes while talking about his life and creative process.

Arnaud Desplechin tries his hand at a coming-of-age tale, and does so with equal doses of mature reflection and youthful impetuosity.

As impressively exhaustive as it is as a work of history, Dawson City: Frozen Time plays even more affectingly as Morrison’s most direct love letter to cinema: as a tool not only for recording history, but also for capturing between-the-lines truths that history books can only graze.

What makes it play as more than just another activist doc is its focus on the power of images as a way to inspire change.

The Fabelmans is a provocative investigation of the cinematic medium from one of its great masters.

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.

Cristian Mungiu's film is more than just a cry of despair toward the hopelessness of life in modern-day Romania.

Though the film doesn’t quite overwhelm as horror, the thematic implications are dense enough in this case that it ends up leaving a lingering aftertaste anyway.

It distinguishes itself from Pual Greengrass's films by virtue of its close attention to political and moral ambiguities.

Brett Morgen is less interested in factual biography than in eliciting a sense of the man as an artist and personality.

Annie Baker’s spare dialogue style remains intact, with each line revealing of character and mood.

Gabe Polsky's quiet yet welcome achievement is to allow us to see the individual amid the politics, clearly and sympathetically.

The characters here are so vividly drawn and performed, and the contemplative mood so remarkably sustained, that the film casts a genuinely suspenseful and mesmerizing spell over the span of its nearly four hours. Don’t be daunted by its length: at its best, Diaz’s film has the richness of a great, wide-ranging, deeply immersive novel.

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

Ira Sachs, for all the tenderness of feeling he brought to Love Is Strange, wouldn't have countenanced the stacked-deck sentimentality that lies at this film's heart.

Haimes seems less interested in examining this unfamiliar world and the people involved than in shoving them into feel-good platitudes about following your dreams.

Deepak Rauniyar may be more skilled dramatist than inspired image-maker, but his admirably balanced and humane social and political perspective is bracing nevertheless.

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

The climax has a certain primally cathartic power, but it doesn’t quite dispel the air of self-satisfaction that envelops the script.

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

Striking throughout are the seemingly caught-on-the-wing moments that subtly enrichen the film’s characterizations.

Hong’s two-part structure in Right Now, Wrong Then, instead of just being a cute formal trick, reveals a character’s troubled inner life in fiendishly clever ways.