Kenneth Turan

Aviva Kempner's warm and intelligent mash note to a man who clearly deserved it.

An equal-opportunity energizer, director Boyle adds zip to everything he touches, and his familiarity with the material and the characters makes it easier for him to bring even the unlikeliest moments to full life. In the world of sequels, that counts for a lot.

Takes a clever premise and Black's unflagging manic energy and comes up with a pleasing mainstream comedy that uses new people and attitudes to entertain in old-fashioned ways.

Both an irresistible human story and as fine a documentary on football as "Hoop Dreams" was on basketball.

Its easygoing and engaging quality masks how rare an accomplishment it is to create something achingly true as well as amusing, as wise about people as it is about the craft of film.

But a great sense of pace is a wonderful thing, and director Jackson and his crew (who made good use of hand-held and Steadicam shots and reportedly averaged an impressive 30 to 40 camera setups a day) move so quickly from shot to shot and location to location that viewers have a limited time to dwell on the film's predictable implausibilities.

Bening has done a remarkable job of capturing Grahame's look and her breathy way of talking, insuring that her performance is real and using it to explore still-relevant issues of aging, glamour and relationships.

Like all memorable sports documentaries - Undefeated is really an examination not of how games are won and lost but how lives are lived, how young people faced with daunting challenges come to see, often in the most dramatic fashion, what is important going forward and what is not.

Witty, intelligent and quintessentially French, it is an unusually involving costume drama that takes us into a decadent world few will know existed, a place where “vices are without consequence but ridicule can kill.”

No matter which way you come down on the nuclear power issue, watching Indian Point will clarify your thinking.

Cheerful, cheeky entertainment, a clever confection.

Meet The Patels is more than just a hoot. Its candor and empathy allow it to make keen points about love, marriage, family and the unexpected complications that American freedoms can bring to immigrant lives.

A smart and suspenseful legal thriller that comes completely alive on-screen.

Greg Mottola has taken that most overdone of contemporary genres, the coming-of-age story, and made it engaging, bittersweet and even fun.

Its intent is to show us how difficult it is to see clearly during times of crisis, how what seems as simple as black and white today was the source of uncertainty and soul-searching when it happened.

A strongly acted, character-driven melodrama, concerned with the dynamics of family in general and father-son issues in particular, it presents situations so emotionally supercharged that the whole story could have come straight out of Balzac.

A surprisingly vast and involving topic.

A series of subtly interlocking character studies.

While excellent films like Danis Tanovic's Oscar-winning "No Man's Land" and Vinko Bresan's "Witnesses" have dealt with the war itself, few have dealt with the aftermath, and none with the aching power and empathy of Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams.

It's all strangely wonderful, and it will take your breath away if you give it the chance.

An intriguing entertainment that’s invigorated by smart filmmaking and potent acting by the virtuosic Weisz and her fine costar, Michael Shannon.

Frustrating yet deeply watchable melodrama that makes you think it's a tougher picture than it is.

The film's core, anchored by a fine ensemble cast and a controlled, focused performance by Bacon, is completely solid.

There are so many colors to McKellen's performance, so many diverse emotions fleetingly play on his face, that resisting his art is out of the question. Better work by an actor will not be seen this year.

After the Wedding would never pretend to have any answers, but in hands this skilled the act of exploration itself couldn't be more illuminating, or more dramatic.

In other hands, these clashes of good and evil might have seemed ordinary, but Eastwood makes Changeling a hard story to shake off. To see this film is to understand both how fragile and how essential our hopes for decency and truth are in a world that must be made to care about either one.

Once Oceans' exhilarating visuals get going, it's easy to ignore the words. This really is a film that manages to show us things we've never seen and make what we have already seen look different and new.

Genial mirth and the nightmarish gloom of the Middle East do not sound like natural companions, but the droll and delightful Tel Aviv on Fire has made the impossible possible.

It's a complex, determined look at one of the most pernicious problems facing organized sports on all levels.

For while the idea of comparing the Europe of 60 years ago to the Europe of today sounds didactic, the results are anything but. Ferrario turns out to have a delicate, unforced eye for elegant counterpoints, and his style unobtrusively draws you into the journey.

What makes this film especially engrossing is that what happened between that chimp and the humans with whom he spent his life in intimate contact turns out to be only half the story that Marsh, who directed the electrifying "Man on Wire," has to tell.

While Maria By Callas is short on facts and biographical detail, it expertly presents an emotional essence of this performer, leaving you both shaken and stirred by the extent of her gifts and the way they connected to both audiences and her tumultuous life.

Satiric, surreal, unexpected and at times wildly funny, Zero Motivation is a savage black comedy that eviscerates an unexpected target: the Israeli army.

It’s not just that Pike changed the timbre of her voice, the way she walks and even her posture to accurately reflect Colvin physically (though she has). It’s that this fierce, lived-in performance, complete down to the drawn face and go-for-it personality, is so convincing that people who knew Colvin were shaken at the resemblance.

The most gripping parts of Advocate are the film’s fly-on-the-wall cinéma vérité sequences of Tsemel at work, meeting with clients’ families, navigating the legal system and conferring about cases with fellow attorneys and her staff.

The 1959 film's style is dated, but it is visually glorious and tells a fascinating story.

The Tenth Man is a low-key charmer, an unlooked-for combination of Jane Austen and Isaac Bashevis Singer. With a twist of Buenos Aires thrown into the mix.

While X-Men doesn't take your breath away wire-to-wire the way "The Matrix" did, it's an accomplished piece of work with considerable pulp watchability to it.

Salles has lovingly crafted a poetic, sensitive, achingly romantic version of the Kerouac book that captures the evanescence of its characters' existence and the purity of their rebellious hunger for the essence of life.

Even if Girl With a Pearl Earring is not nearly as remarkable dramatically as it is visually, it is, finally, a film of great beauty, and that is something worth appreciating.

These kinds of merciless conditions lead to a culture that is stoic about life and death and a story that will surprise you by its willingness to embrace that unsentimental natural world.

Director Amir Bar-Lev finds a way to mix the personal, the philosophical and the historical into a complex human document, something that's funny, moving and sad.

Its plot is complexity itself, but its "kids save the world" soul is simple and earnest as opposed to earth shattering. With apologies to Bill and Ted, it's an excellent adventure, and let's leave it at that.

Call this a brooding comedy or a darkly whimsical drama, "Wilbur's" willingness to mix gallows humor and real sadness make it something on which labels do not easily fit.

Saving Brinton is an endearing, affectionate documentary, an examination not so much of film exhibition pioneer Frank Brinton and how his life's work was saved but of the genial and humane eccentric who did the saving.

It is not as exceptional a film as the reality deserves, but with a story this strong and races this expertly re-created, it squeezes out a victory by being as good a movie as it needs to be. On some days, that is enough.

Surprising and deeply satisfying.

Whether Aaron Swartz is a personal hero or someone you've never heard of until now, his story cannot help but touch you.

In its visualization of a life that feels exceptional as well as ordinary, In This Corner of the World draws us in with the beauty of its animation and the specificity of its detail.

Deadpan, determinedly low key and deeply absurd, the films of Corneliu Porumboiu are very much a particular taste, and The Treasure is no different.

While some individuals are inevitably more compelling than others, as a whole the entire series, and 63 Up in particular, is completely enveloping as it draws us into the latest happenings of these people we’ve followed for so long.

Director Spike Lee has made angry films, epic films, even sentimental films. But he's not made anything as heartfelt and finally celebratory as Get on the Bus. [16 Oct 1996, p.F1]

Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11 has launched an unapologetic attack, both savage and savvy, on an administration he feels has betrayed the best of America and done extensive damage in the world.

Renoir is a lush, involving film.

Brisk and involving with a streamlined forward propulsion, it's the kind of superhero movie we want if we have to have superhero movies at all.

Slick entertainment is rarely as, yes, slickly entertaining as it is in Heartbreaker, a French romantic farce that is commercial cinema at its most successful.

Anchored by a charismatic and accessible performance by Javier Bardem as star-crossed Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, this florid examination of an artist's coming of age, of cultures in collusion and conflict, is difficult to resist.

Treating an incendiary issue in an austere, minimalist manner has turned The Assistant into an arresting independent drama.

What is a most pleasant surprise is how emotionally involving a story writer-director Billy Ray has fashioned, how he's turned Shattered Glass into a film for anyone who cares about strong drama.

This warmly sentimental G-rated film about facing new realities and recapturing lost dreams has, despite its relatively adult story line, a beguilingly effortless feeling to it, as if it had nothing to prove.

The film is at its best following the former vice president as he spans the Earth both gathering evidence and promoting his message.

Israeli journalist Amos Elon once wrote that the demands for justice presented by the Israeli-Palestinian impasse exceed the human capacity to administer it. The dramatic, involving The Oslo Diaries details the closest these adversaries have come to proving Elon wrong, a story that is heartening and heartbreaking by turn.

The result is a rich and detailed picture of the particular culture of this particular part of the South.

Even with its drawbacks, Blue Car remains an intimate, thoughtful drama, with a performance no one is likely to forget.

Noah manages to blend the expected with the unexpected and does it with so much gusto and cinematic energy you won't want to divert your eyes from the screen.

One of the most unfashionable movies of the new year, and one of the more appealing. [19 February 1999, Calendar, p.F-10]

As poignant and pointed as it is funny (and it is very funny), it dresses up familiar forms with modern twists and ends up an assured and amusing comedy of manners. [04 Aug 1993, p.F1]

If there is a through line that unites all the women in Abortion: Stories Women Tell, it’s that they take the potential responsibilities of parenthood very seriously. And no matter how tough and self-reliant they are, this decision is always an impossible one, and one that the outside world's unbending attitudes do not make any easier.

Entertainment like this is too hard to find to second-guess for too long.

Though it has its over-caffeinated aspects and its missteps, this Star Trek has in general bridged the gap between the old and the new with alacrity and purpose.

This is one terrific thriller with several wicked tricks up its sleeve, each more satisfying than the last.

Observational with a vengeance, more an art piece than a conventional motion picture, Manakamana is simple in conception, but the reactions it evokes in viewers will be complex and multifaceted.

Encouraged by Mendes' artful direction, his gift for eliciting naturalness, the core of this film finally cries out to us today, makes us see that the notion of characters struggling with life, with the despair of betraying their best selves because of what society will or won't allow, is as gripping and relevant now as it ever was. Or ever will be.

You feel the love in Love, Antosha, that’s for sure. But you also feel something else, a sadness that is close to overwhelming. How could it be otherwise?

If it verges on being a little too pleased with itself for its own good, that's an acceptable price to pay for something that makes you smile.

Their personality types match up splendidly with the characters they play as well as each other, and Mrs. Brown's greatest pleasure is seeing and hearing them spar. Even with the gloves on, this is a battle well worth observing.

It's a film of unexpected, almost indescribable off-center charm that deepens as it goes on.

A very small film but a sweet one, an easygoing venture of the feel-good variety. What sets it apart is something even larger pictures often lack: an excellent performance by its star.

A Touch of Sin, the powerful if uneven new film by highly regarded Chinese director Jia Zhangke, is a corrosive depiction of the New China.

In a world where everyone was looking for an angle, hoping to survive the nightmare and maybe even turn other people's misery into a tidy profit, the fact that a fragile humanity survived at all is little short of a miracle.

It's not every day that you end up rooting for a bank, but the story Abacus: Small Enough to Jail tells is no ordinary tale.

Though Wendigo has weak spots, including an ending that is not as satisfying as it might be, the film remains memorable despite its flaws. This is a properly spooky film about the power of spirits to influence us whether we believe in them or not.

What we find out about Maier, revealed in self-portraits as a striking woman with a singular sense of self, is fascinating.

This is an entertainment that really entertains because any number of interesting and unexpected choices were made, starting with the selection of Doug Liman as the director.

With the help of clear direction and some excellent acting, especially from Flora Cross in a memorable debut as Eliza, Bee Season is affecting in ways that movies have all but given up trying to be.

This is a pointed, emotional story of a divorced Palestinian woman and her son who immigrate to the U.S. just after the invasion of Iraq, a story that benefits from Dabis' background as a child growing up in the Midwest during the Gulf War as the daughter of a Palestinian father and a Jordanian mother.

Directors Bryan Carberry and Clay Tweel stick with this story long enough to emotionally deepen the proceedings and show us how the struggle changes lives in profound ways no one could have anticipated.

The Good Dinosaur is antic and unexpected as well as homiletic, rife with subversive elements, wacky critters and some of the most beautiful landscapes ever seen in a computer animated film.

Escapes is as unconventional as its subject, demonstrating the charming things that can happen when a life in no way ordinary gets documented by a filmmaker most unusual.

The film's plot may have more holes than one of Tequila's innumerable victims, but when a visual stylist like Woo is at his peak, no one even thinks of caring.[30 Apr 1993, p.F6]

If people here feel trapped, despairing of a way out, it is Singleton's gift to make us empathize with their hopelessness, and make us wonder, along with them, how long this must go on.

Intimate and unusual behind-the-scenes look at the creation of a ballet, it may sound rarefied but has enough moments of truth and beauty to engage general audiences.

Looking at combat from all sides, examining the pride, the anger and the regrets, is what this fine documentary is all about.

Genteel moviemaking with modern overtones, The Winslow Boy is especially good at the visual re-creation of its time.

Simultaneously poetic, dramatic and realistic, White Material is an altogether stunning work.

A bit longer than it might be, a bit more attached to its digressions than we might wish. But the length does encourage the feeling that we've been through the whole creative process with Gilbert and Sullivan .

What is most involving about Gould is the extraordinary way he played.

Rife with familiar elements given something of a different spin, Run All Night manages to leave you out of breath but hungry for more.

In truth, every part of this film trades so heavily on Eastwood's presence that it is impossible to imagine it with anyone else in the starring role. [09 Jul 1993 Pg. F1]

Triple Frontier is a solid, engrossing genre item with designs on being something more. It doesn’t quite get there but it does well enough along the way to make the journey worth taking.

Funny but not a comedy, serious but never overbearing, emotional in an engaging and bittersweet way, Good Bye, Lenin! is a wonderful film unto itself about a world unto itself.

It's hard to believe a story this serious can be told in such an involving way, but that is one of this expert documentarian's greatest gifts.

While many familiar tropes are present, including murder, mayhem, a tough lawman and a tentative posse, Thornton uses them to tell a 20th century outback story and offer sharp, pointed commentary on relations between whites and indigenous peoples.

A very smart and funny movie directed by Jason Reitman, who also shrewdly adapted the screenplay from Christopher Buckley's savagely satiric novel.

Smart, sweet and playful romantic comedy.

Azkaban breaks free of all these shackles in its final hour. Working with the persuasive Thewlis and Oldman, able to focus his gifts on what's distinctive, dramatic and surprising about the story, Cuarón creates on screen the heartfelt magic that has enthralled so many on the page.

Crossing the Bridge does more than offer a wide variety of entertaining and intoxicating Turkish music. It also uses music to paint a portrait of a vibrant, cosmopolitan city and provide a window into a rich and varied national culture.

Cities engulfed by rolling walls of flame, sinister aquamarine power blasts turning beloved national monuments to toast, even the roiling clouds the spaceships appear out of, they are all disturbing, unsettling and completely convincing.

It's not only this idealism that makes the subjects of Fame High so compelling, it's also their honesty, their willingness to open a window into their lives at that pivotal moment when they're taking their first tentative steps toward becoming their own person personally and professionally.

As the intriguing documentary Harry Benson: Shoot First demonstrates, the fact that an art-for-art's sake modus operandi is alien to Benson makes his work and the personality and philosophy behind it more compelling than they would otherwise be.

Graced with a clever script, a cast that will make you smile until you ache, and a snappy sense of pace, this summer '92 hit is the funniest by-the-numbers comedy in who knows how long.

A stirring documentary.

The Reports on Sarah and Saleem snaps, crackles and pops. A taut and compelling Jerusalem-set melodrama, it effectively intertwines the personal with the political in a way that is only enhanced by that city’s fraught atmosphere and cultural dynamics.

An organization that stubbornly resists being pigeonholed, the Black Panther Party emerges from this documentary with its significance enhanced but some of its tactics questioned.

Lively, imaginative, with a playful sense of humor.

It projects equal parts fury and despair as it reveals how a particular group of individuals was caught in the unforgiving gears of the criminal justice system.

Just as interesting, if not more so, is how Rohmer integrates his very contemporary concerns into a period drama, how he creates characters who manage to be true to our times as well as their own.

Exact and exacting, made with formidable skill and unwavering focus, Lady Macbeth is a film that demands to be admired and cares little if you actually like it.

The end result was that the performances reached a remarkable level of intimacy and intensity.

The French have a knack for it. They've been making funny and agreeable movie farces for forever, and seeing The Women on the 6th Floor makes you hope they'll never stop.

Smart and genial satire.

Though it is a tale of real-life 15th-century rulers and lords, The King uses superior filmmaking and fully involving storytelling to make it seem very much a modern situation — in which wholly human individuals deal with up-to-date themes including power and its corruptions and the nature of friendship.

The Last of the Unjust, like Lanzmann himself at his advanced age, is ungainly but powerful.

He [Caton-Jones] has made the film all of a piece, making sure that the three lead performances complement rather than overwhelm each other. [9 Apr 1993, p.F1]

Though American sports dramas find it hard to avoid heartwarming elements, this is a decidedly more even-keeled film, its European nature allowing it to focus on the drama of character as well as what happened on the court.

Somehow, against considerable obstacles, it has captured something true about families and friendship, creating a texture of believable emotions on screen.

The Summit tells a multifaceted story that deals with more than the expected peril and exhilaration of adventure tales. Here you'll find love, fear and forgiveness, personality conflicts and cultural differences, even mysteries that have stubbornly resisted solving.

Graced with good-humored comic energy, they overcome sizable script problems and turn Ron Shelton's White Men Can't Jump into a sassy and profane urban fairy tale that finds laughs in some very clever places.

Strongly tied to a powerful underlying reality (though it inevitably tends to simplify), this film has the additional advantage of being concerned with the emotional truth of its key relationships, adding an unusual father and son story to its incendiary mix. [29 Dec 1993 Pg. F1]

Having abandoned for a while the portrayal of real people, Streep demonstrates here that what great actresses do is show us ordinary people in an extraordinary light.

Written, directed and acted with real compassion and sympathy for the humanity of its characters, no matter who they are or on what side of these multiple issues they turn out to be.

A two-hour theatrical feature that has the kind of emotional and storytelling reach regularly found these days only in cable TV miniseries. It's a warmly done family and personal drama that seems to cover familiar territory, but only up to a point and very much in its own way.

A smart, involving and strikingly adult drama about Sarkozy's rise to power.

Energetic and absorbing documentary.

It's a film whose pleasures are much more visual than dramatic, but that doesn't mean there aren't serious things on its mind.

Millennium Actress fascinatingly goes where films have not often gone before.

Seven years in the making, it demands to be experienced not just because of the good it does but because of how unexpectedly good, even buoyant, it makes you feel.

A seriously satisfying superhero movie, one that, rife with lines like "the stench of your fear is making my soldiers hungry," actually feels like the earnest comic books of our squandered youth.

An enormously emotional and spirit-raising documentary.

This shrewd mixture of slick comic-book mayhem, unmistakable sweetness and ear-splitting profanity is poised to be a popular culture phenomenon because of its exact sense of the fantasies of the young male fanboy population.

Enjoyable and entertaining.

Although this is director Birmingham's first feature -- she has a very sure sense of what she wants out of her cast and the ability to put it on screen. Tully may go against the grain of hipness, but that proves to be very much of a blessing.

The real world is not a just or simple place, this thorough, compelling documentary points out, no matter how deeply we may wish it were.

Polsky's treatment of this material is nothing if not entertaining, including lively visuals like placing a tiny bouncing hammer and sickle over song lyrics, and his ability to apply a lively style to serious subject matter is key to Red Army's success.

Fear of retaliation often keeps faculty and administration from speaking up for students or talking at all, and six university presidents declined to be interviewed here. If it does nothing else, The Hunting Ground should make that kind of evasion more difficult in the future.

Don't mistake a lack of flash for an absence of substance. The story told here couldn't be more significant or more timely.

A beautifully mounted and directed film that, despite the presence of Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow, is unexpectedly lacking in emotional impact.

Minions' all-silliness all-the-time philosophy will put a smile on faces and keep it there, like a fizzy beverage on a hot afternoon.

Unconventional, imaginative, nothing if not audacious, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life is a portrait of creativity from the inside, a serious yet playful attempt to find an artistic way to tell an emotional truth.

The pleasure of a film like this is not in wondering where it's going to go, but in knowing its exact trajectory. Getting us to pull for a foregone conclusion as if the outcome was in serious doubt is no small sleight of hand.

This thoughtful, sensitive film, perhaps the most emotionally wrenching of all the Iraq documentaries, could have been made after any war.

The film's pronounced split between violence and softness notwithstanding, Prince Caspian is finally a more polished effort than "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" and squarely in the tradition of the kind of teenage movies the Disney organization used to make before teens discovered horror and gore.

“Raise Hell” does more than allow us to bask in Ivins’ trademark attitude and humor; it shows us how she got that way and explores the toll that being the public Molly Ivins took on her personal life.

The step-by-step examination of how so many smart people with such a good idea failed so badly results in a film which offers up not only a crackling story but also enough lessons that it could be a Harvard Business School case study all by itself.

A charming, character-driven film that conveys enormous feeling for its people

A slick and efficient piece of action entertainment, fast moving with energetic stunt work and nice thriller moves.

Sarah's Key is more powerful than you expect, maybe even more powerful than it should be.

Winter on Fire never takes its eye off the story's underlying and very dramatic theme, and that would be nothing less than revolution.

It's a convincing romantic drama, written, directed and acted with so much skill it's able to break loose from its conventional moorings and become more effective, more moving than we anticipated.

Grabs you by the throat and won't let go.

The movie musical may not have been dead after all, just resting up until this lot came around. [12 Feb 1993, p.F10]

Filmmaker Herbig and his team prove to be especially adept at contriving situations where anything anyone does causes fear, anxiety, stress and worry, leaving everyone, very much including the audience, existing on the knife’s edge of unremitting tension.

The power of film to irrationally transform and exalt is almost a religion to Woo, and another reason why he was the natural go-to guy for this lucrative movie franchise.

An increasingly disturbing film, it offers no relief for its central character, or for its audiences for that matter. Akin was inspired to tell the story by real-life political events in Germany, and his skills as a filmmaker are such that escape from this unsettling film is not in the cards.

A sharp brainteaser of a film, a compelling mind game you compulsively play along with.

It's remarkable for where it takes us, how it takes us there.

Most surprising are the involving performances of all concerned, but especially the pair playing the young lovers, actors with finely expressive eyes and faces.

Culturally specific to its joint Berlin/Jerusalem setting but with themes that are universal, it joins an exploration of sexual fluidity and the nature of love and relationships with a strong plot that keeps you involved and guessing until the very end.

What makes this film distinctive is the adroit way it both subverts and enhances old-school expectations, grafting a completely modern sensibility onto thoroughly traditional material.

It's got an involving, adventurous story to tell and the wherewithal to tell it correctly. And while young adults may think this is intended only for them, in truth it's their elders who are especially starved for this kind of entertainment.

No one comes out and says that music is the language of the soul, but no one has to. We see it happening right before our eyes.

Making a successful Hunger Games movie out of Suzanne Collins' novel required casting the best possible performer as Katniss, and in Jennifer Lawrence director Gary Ross and company have hit the bull's-eye, so to speak.

A gloss on the disillusion that came with the embracing of communist ideals that is part playful farce, part dark satire, this unclassifiable film, both comic and strange, always holds your attention even when it doesn't seem to know where it's going.

This highly polished costume drama is exceptionally well-made and a model of intelligent restraint, but it is also unapologetically earnest and a bit on the bloodless side.

It combines delightful humor and charm with what movies at their best have always conveyed: the honest power of pure emotion. It is a movie love story and a love note to the movies, all at the same time.

Clearly, the directors have to be Merritt advocates to hang in there that long, but the film that resulted has elements that keep it from being simply a fan's notes.

As shaped by Villeneuve and his masterful creative team, especially production designer Dennis Gassner and cinematographer Roger Deakins, this film puts you firmly, brilliantly, unassailably in another world of its own devising, and that is no small thing.

Georgia is not an easy film, but in the American independent arena, it outperforms everything in sight.

A side benefit of seeing The Judge is that it reveals the rarely seen everyday side of Palestinian society, where ordinary people just want to have a good life and be treated fairly by their family. People who need a fair-minded adjudicator like Kholoud Al-Faqih and are fortunate to have her.

Genial, generous-spirited and unmistakably entertaining.

Fiendishly researched and smartly constructed, A German Youth is a formidable piece of documentary detective work focusing on a small but significant historical moment that continues to matter.

As directed by Thomas Piper, a filmmaker who specializes in arts-related docs, "Five Seasons" does two things with grace and skill, starting with immersing us in what Oudolf's work looks like.

This is a train wreck you think you see coming, but no matter how prepared you are the nature and extent of the damage will overwhelm you.

Walker was the best choice to document this journey. For one thing, her first film, "Devil's Playground," and its examination of how Amish teenagers react when confronted with the outside world, showed her to be both curious and fearless. Plus, it turns out she is herself blind in one eye.

One of those special films that broadens and deepens as it goes on.

You'd have to be a stone not to be moved.

An involving examination of and tribute to the art and agony of stand-up comedy, "Dying Laughing" will leave you convinced that a) comedians spend a lot of time thinking about their work and b) it's too difficult and even painful a vocation to take on unless you absolutely feel it as a calling.

One of the truly heartening international political stories of recent years.

Claude Chabrol makes his particular kind of unnerving, deliciously amoral thrillers look easy. Once you've made as many of them as he has, they probably are.

[An] engrossing, unexpectedly moving documentary.

Despite the potential for rancorous finger-pointing, one of the remarkable things about “The Front Runner” is its determination to be even-handed, to encourage viewers to make up their own minds (at least up to a point) about what happened 30 years ago and what it means for today.

Rueful, funny and wise, The Salt of Life is a comedy not of errors but of the tiniest of missteps. A warm yet melancholy film of quiet yet inescapable charm, it has a feeling for character and personality that couldn't be more delicious.

Nyoni, working in English and the local language of Nyanja, has an unforced way of dealing with themes like exploitation, oppression and superstition, showing how easy it can be for nonsense to pass itself off as sense.

What we are seeing may be a representation of the truth, but it is not real, and this collision of artifice and reality is jarring and disconcerting. This is a hurdle but not an insurmountable one. Even if it is counterfeit in a number of ways, the story In This World tells finally wins us over because it is too disturbing and well told not to.

Everything about Executive Decision is familiar except how crisply its conventional story is executed. Since most action thrillers think blowing things up is enough to attract an audience, it's a nice surprise to come across a savvy piece of work that relies on suspense and is as professional as the elite anti-terrorist unit it celebrates.

A true storyteller, able to easily mix and match moods in a playful and audacious manner, he (Anderson) is a filmmaker definitely worth watching, both now and in the future.

As delicately and deliciously prepared as the dishes it features, Big Night is a lyric to the love of food, family and persuasive acting.

Though Penn's fierce identification with the protagonist is a key source for the film's accomplishments, Into the Wild succeeds on screen because Hirsch ("Alpha Dog," "The Lords of Dogtown") throws himself into the part without reservation, projecting an appealing openness and life force that brings a special poignancy to his fate.

A consummate entertainment that echoes the rhythms and attitudes of classic Hollywood, it's a satisfying throwback to those old-fashioned movie fantasies where impossible dreams do come true. And, in this case, it really happened. Twice.

Lola is played by veteran Spanish actress Victoria Abril, one of Pedro Almodovar's favorites, and though the character sounds familiar, Abril brings so much zest and enthusiasm to its creation that it feels original and makes the passion she inspires believable.

A political thriller with more plausibility -- and yes, more thrills -- than most.

Green Book is a savvy and super effective piece of popular entertainment.

Lean, muscular and on the money, The Last Days on Mars takes a familiar story and tells it so tautly that we are pleased to be on board.

Despite its pitfalls, this movie musical is a clutch player that delivers an emotional wallop when it counts. You can walk into the theater as an agnostic, but you may just leave singing with the choir.

It's to be expected that the music is going to be wonderful, and it is. But there is more to this film, a surprising amount more.

Hamilton's story is so filled with dramatic incident and personal and psychological complexity, not to mention spectacular visuals of waves upward of 100 feet tall, that it compels attention whether surfing means anything to you or not.

A solid and satisfying commercial venture with more than enough pizazz to overcome occasional lapses in moment-to-moment plausibility.

Natural Born Killers is both audacious and astonishing, a vision of a charnel house apocalypse that comes close to defying description. [26 Aug 1994, p.1]

They both saw themselves, "Dying to Know" posits, as adventurers exploring alternate realities, and hearing where they ended up is a trip all by itself.

Enlivening things to an unprecedented extent, the songs turn O Brother into perhaps the warmest production in the Coens' repertoire.

A lively, old-fashioned adventure yarn with just a twist of modern attitude, it's the kind of pleasant entertainment that allows the paying customers to have as much fun as the people on screen.

Though the feeling sneaks up on you, The Mule has an unexpected emotional kick. That’s because in subject and execution it plays as personal as anything the filmmaker has done.

With its perspectives on love, aging and solitude, "Prelude to a Kiss" still offers a good deal more than the usual smiles of a summer's day. [10 Jul 1992, p.F14]

More than anything, this is an intelligent audience picture, a solid and engrossing piece of old-school filmmaking, both humane and character driven, in which the various protagonists learn something - not too much and not too easily - about the nature of their lives.

Hal deals with each of the director's films in a smart, engaging manner. As befits a former editor, director Scott has an ear for the great quote and the skill to make it all flow beautifully, to both entertain and help us understand who Ashby was and what he wanted to do.

An exciting and involving rock music doc, a smart and satisfying look inside that tumultuous world.

Working from a screenplay by Edgerton, rising Australian director Matthew Saville has expertly constructed a low-key, realistic drama in which the malleability of morality in an increasingly murky situation takes center stage.

There's no denying that Soul Kitchen is a film that delights in contrivance and improbability, but it does so with such a big-hearted sense of fun that it is hard not to be swept away.

Focus is really the heart of Morris' unsettling film, which strikes a remarkable balance between art and disturbance, between beauty and pain.

A look at the annual San Diego convention that is sweetly empathetic where previous Spurlock works have been brash and confrontational. Plus, it's a lot of fun.

Irresistible family entertainment.

Fortunately, director Michael Apted and his team understand the challenges of this kind of story and have met them with intelligence and energy.

The Last Race is a high art film about a blue-collar subject, and that unlooked-for ability to see beauty in the everyday is what makes it both a surprise and a success.

Though it's longer and more elaborate than it needs to be, it shares its predecessor's smart but relaxed sense of humor, a sophisticated imagination and the ability to be sharp and playful without being malicious.

Happy Valley is especially good at revealing a mass desire to shift blame, showing how everyone the scandal touched wanted to focus on the aspect that made them the least responsible.

Everything about The Phantom is pleasantly old-fashioned, the opposite of avant-garde and cutting edge. Not intended for those who yearn for greatness, this unassuming adventure film is so cheerful and sweet-natured it's difficult to resist warming up to its modest charms. [7 June 1996, p.CF]

"Weeping" is a simple tale of animal estrangement and reconciliation that in its own quiet way manages to be soothing, hypnotic, even magical.

Make no mistake about it, this woman is a force, and the great service this clear-eyed and admiring documentary provides is to emphasize not just Ginsburg's work on the court but how extraordinarily influential she was before she even got there.

Concerned with fathers and sons, expectations and dreams, ideals and reality, this completely engrossing film gets more involving as it goes on.

If you’re in the mood for a movie like “Alita,” “Alita” is the movie you’re in the mood for.

As directed by Oscar-winning documentarian Steven Okazaki, "Mifune" is thorough and insightful enough to enlighten the man's numerous fans and serve as an introduction to those unfamiliar with his gifts and his influence, which were huge.

As good as it is because of the care and skill writer-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck bring to it, gifts that were visible in their first film, "Half Nelson," which earned a lead actor Oscar nomination for Ryan Gosling.

Fascinating for what it signifies as much as what it shows, This Is Not a Film illustrates how Panahi is struggling to stay alive creatively and, paradoxically, can't help but demonstrate how much of a natural filmmaker he is.

The result is an exquisitely calibrated hypermodern comedy of manners. A quiet but devastating ensemble piece, both acerbic and sweet, "Friends" blends empathy and a great sense of comic timing with the richness of Holofcener's trademark take-no-prisoners observations.

British actress Jane Horrocks plays Little Voice, and it is a transfixing, tour de force performance.

At its best, Winged Migration is a marvel, and if that seems like a gee-whiz word, that's because this film has a lot to be gee-whiz about.

Made with the on-camera cooperation of Spitzer (though not his wife), it is a sad, disturbing and in some ways tragic tale that in its lurid combination of sex and politics, banal hypocrisy and bare-knuckles power, seems very much an American story of our times.

Memorable and significant.

Communion is a heartbreaking example of a classic documentary genre — the immersive, observational film that takes a bold leap and embeds itself with a small group of people.

While the conclusion to The Other Side of Hope is open-ended, Kaurismaki unashamedly believes in brotherhood, and among other things his film celebrates people who do the right thing without making a big deal about it.

With the perfect assist from their actors, all of whom are well in on the joke, this affectionate look at the frozen North brings the Coens back in from the cold.

Whatever this woman is saying or doing, you want to be there to hear it and see it, and there's no better formula for an entertaining documentary than that.

It sounds like a throwback to an earlier, more traditional style of Israeli filmmaking but it instead provides a view of that country that's as satisfyingly eccentric and unexpected as anything we've seen.

Candid, insightful and unpredictable, Dame Eileen Atkins, Dame Judi Dench, Dame Joan Plowright and Dame Maggie Smith are not only acting legends but also great friends. And a treat to hang out with.

The Farrellys here show a gift not just for finding humor where others have feared to look but for presenting it in a way that is surprisingly close to irresistible.

My Dog Tulip is as disconcerting and unusual a piece of animation as the 1956 memoir that inspired it, and that is saying a lot.

This coolly passionate film mostly deals with Stevenson’s thoughts rather than his life, providing an involving examination and analysis of the ideas (and ideals) that consume the man’s every waking moment.

A fast-paced, character-driven heist movie that combines robberies with romance and solidifies Affleck's reputation as an actor with a genuine gift for directing.

What this film does is reveal two very different societies — both exhibiting, each in its own way, unmistakable signs of collapse.

As played by Alfred Molina with both computer-generated and puppeteer assistance, Doc Ock grabs this film with his quartet of sinisterly serpentine mechanical arms and refuses to let go.

The key reason Richard Jewell works as well as it does is the perceptive nature of Hauser’s lead performance. His sense of who this character is, how he thinks about himself at his core, leads to scenes with both Rockwell and Bates that are unexpectedly powerful.

A chilling portrait of how fanaticism can grow and be enabled, this is a matter-of-fact film that moves with an awful inexorability toward its foregone conclusion.

Part 2 turns out to be more than the last of its kind. Almost magically, it ends up being one of the best of the series as well.

How this all played out in terms of the Austrian election will surprise no one, but seeing how much the situation came to prefigure the contemporary house of mirrors in Europe as well as America still comes as something of a shock.

Yes, Jellyfish says, it's a wonderful life, not in that old-fashioned style we've perhaps tired of but in a surprising new and magical way all its own.

What saves Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is what created it in the first place: J.K. Rowling's enrapturing imagination. At those sporadic moments when the film allows us to share in Harry's wonder, it lets us recapture our own as well.

It's a can't-miss effort that knows how to please.

American Animals is not like other criminal stories and the differences make it one of the summer's freshest, most entertaining films.

The whole truth about the complicated, charismatic man may never come out, but The Armstrong Lie is closer than we ever thought we'd get.

This is one documentary, as “La Danse” was before it, that is a thing of beauty in and of itself.

Emma partisans, fortunately, never say die, and a very satisfying new version of Austen’s sprightly novel has been directed in high style by Autumn de Wilde.

Butler used several elements to make this story come alive, starting with that vintage Frank Hurley footage, whose rescue from icy waters is in itself something of a miracle.

Crisply and efficiently put together by writer-director Zandvliet, Land of Mine has the inherent edge-of-your-seat concern about what kind of damage the bombs will inflict on which of these boys, but it is the psychological qualities of the situation that hold the greatest interest.

Obsession creates its own fascination, and never more so than in King of Kong, a sprightly new documentary that's as compulsively watchable as the vintage video game it focuses on is addictive.

Subject and style could not be more different than in The White Crow, but that fusion of opposites has resulted in an involving biographical drama that rarely puts a foot wrong.