Kenneth Turan

Fireworks is bracing and original, an indefinable film made from familiar elements. "Hana-Bi," its title in Japanese, is a combination of the words for "flower" and "fire," and filmmaker Takeshi Kitano has, in the same way, adroitly fused genres, creating a film in which almost every moment pops out in unexpected ways. [20 Mar 1998, p.F4]

Graced with performers who bring a purity of emotion to their work, the film is always dramatically convincing. There is a fundamental air of truth about it, a sense that, horrific though things seem, this is how it must have been.

The result is as gripping as a title fight and as mesmerizing as a conversation with a cobra. You may not be happy with everything said, but you will not be bored.

Another traditional Japanese production, weakly plotted, woodenly acted and indifferently dubbed.

Intensely specific in story yet wide-ranging in themes, with a tone that turns on a dime from comic absurdity to close to tragedy, this is brainy, bravura filmmaking of the highest level, a motion picture that is as difficult to pigeonhole as it is a pleasure to enjoy.

Both intimate and expansive, Free Solo is a documentary beautifully calculated to literally take your breath away. And it does.

A stirring documentary.

Thorough, impressive and smartly put together, joining dynamically edited verite footage with a series of thoughtful interviews, Breaking Point serves a pair of interlocking purposes.

The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki is a lovely piece of work, a sweet, warmly observed tale overlaid with just the right amount of Scandinavian melancholy, a combination that perfectly suits its quietly engaging protagonist.

The most memorable thing about Sweet Dreams is that it allows us to experience the resilience, the capacity for happiness these women retain in spite of all they've been through. There's a lesson there for all of us.

Part Valentine, part memory lane, “Intervista” may not qualify as a great film, but it is the kind of film only a great filmmaker could create.

Locke stands out both for the way filmmaker Knight conceived and executed it and for the kind of hypnotic acting Hardy can be counted on to bring to the table.

By refusing to be cheap or insincere, "Fly Away Home" allows us to enjoy our emotions without feeling we've been criminally manipulated. [13 Sep 1996, p.F1]

This examination of the whys and wherefores of indie rock star Nick Cave is an unusual and nonformulaic cinematic enterprise and an adventurous film by any standard.

Robert Duvall's performance as a Holy Roller who shakes off his secular life to become a man simply known as “the Apostle” is a masterpiece of emotion.

This is a nearly flawless little film, a cheerful nightmare that knows just where it wants to go and uses precisely calibrated comic effects to get there.

A provocatively structured and thrillingly executed film noir, an intricate, inventive use of cinema's possibilities that pushes what can be done on screen in an unusual direction.

Coogler and company do fine work convincing us against our better judgment that nothing we see is preordained, that anything can happen within the four corners of the ring. You can't ask a "Rocky" film to do more than that.

This effects-loaded extravaganza has more trouble finding its dramatic bearings than the Space Family Robinson has in figuring out where the heck in the universe they are.

Artfully put together by writer-director Falardeau, Monsieur Lazhar shows us life in the round, illustrating the way humor, compassion and tragedy can all be elements of experience. Its emotional honesty is heartening, a lesson we are never too old to learn.

Beautifully put together, sensitively acted by Nicolas Cage and Elisabeth Shue, directed by Mike Figgis with assurance and style and making exceptional use of its musical score, this doomed romance is finally not as satisfying as all of that would have you believe.

Told with wit, genuine poignancy and all kinds of humor, Venus charts the unlikely relationship between a man in his 70s and a young woman more than half a century his junior.

Intoxicating and meditative by turns, helped by Fred Frith's minimalist score, this film opens a portal into a singular creative mind.

The Second Mother is a satisfying contradiction. It's a soap opera with a social conscience that casually mixes dramatic elements about serious class issues with a crowd-pleasing audience picture sensibility.

Fascinating and frequently compelling, The Mustang is a hybrid, the unlikely combination of genres you wouldn’t think go together but are able to coexist thanks to an exceptional leading performance.

The most bravura 69 minutes in film history. [18 Mar 2011, p.D9]

The last thing you see in Ajami should be the first thing on your mind about this compelling new film from Israel. That would be the closing credits, written in both Hebrew and Arabic, separate but equal, side by side, mirroring the creative process behind this potent work and the story it has to tell.

Just as sports mirror society, so do the best sports films not only take us inside games and those who play them but also provide insight into our world and how it works. “Wrestle,” a superb sports documentary, does exactly that.

Author Coben, who says he is a fan of "stories that move you, that grab hold of your heart and do not let it go," has gotten a film that does exactly that.

There is something magical about The Illusionist's world, and that's as it should be.

Exceptionally well-made and completely fearless in its depiction of the widest range of romantic emotions, this is a film as fiercely committed to passion as its heroine, and that's saying a lot.

It's a chilling, completely fascinating documentary.

Paradoxically, it is Shawshank's zealousness in trying to cast a rosy glow over the prison experience that makes us feel we're doing harder time than the folks inside. [23 Sept 1994]

A heck of a story splendidly told, Maiden succeeds by combining the athleticism of “Free Solo” with the enriching, across-the-board emotional appeal of “RBG.”

Enormously entertaining.

A film that grips us dramatically, intellectually and emotionally.

Short Term 12 is a small wonder, a film of exceptional naturalness and empathy that takes material about troubled teenagers and young adults that could have been generic and turns it into something moving and intimate.

A ticking time bomb of a movie, a gripping, incendiary, casually subversive piece of work that marries pulp watchability with larger concerns without skipping a beat.

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.

The Wind That Shakes the Barley turns out to be a more complicated, more dramatically potent story than it appears at first. It's concerned at its core not with how bad the British were but with what the cost of dealing with them was for the Irish.

It's most successful when it is being off-center, a state of grace it doesn't quite have the nerve to maintain. [6 July 1994, Calendar, p. F-1]

Part avant-garde art film, part amusing but morbid fairy tale, it is a delightfully ghoulish holiday musical that displays more inventiveness in its brief 75 minutes than some studios can manage in an entire year.

Shallow where it would be meaningful, demanding leaps of faith it has not earned, this film's marriage of arresting technique to empty thinking is not unique, only frustrating.

Acutely observed, faultlessly acted, graced with piercing emotion and unsparing honesty, it will make you laugh because you can't bear to cry.

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.

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.

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.

It's the film's glowing visual qualities, a striking performance by Denzel Washington and the elegant control Carl Franklin has over it all that create the most exotic crime entertainment of the season.

Effortless and effervescent, Frances Ha is a small miracle of a movie, honest and funny with an aim that's true.

Parse it any way you like, Miyazaki's gifts as an animator place him in a category of his own. To see his latest film is to be somehow reminded of Italians who could hear Verdi's operas as soon as they were sung or English readers who could experience the novels of Dickens episode by episode.

A Hijacking is as lean, focused and to the point as its title.

You may never have expected to see the words heavy metal, endearing and warmhearted in the same sentence, but you just did.

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.

The conflicts involved are intense and absorbing, proving that compelling moral dilemmas make for the most dramatic cinema.

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

Well-directed with exceptional access by veteran documentarian Doug Pray, whose previous films include "Hype!," "Scratch" and "Art & Copy," Levitated Mass in essence intercuts three stories, each of which is more unexpected than one might imagine.

The reality it confronts is so gripping, we cannot turn away. This may not be the most sophisticated retelling of what happened while Berlin burned, but what a story it is.

Director Taylor Hackford brings an appropriate level of pulpy energy to the telling, and star Kathy Bates... gives a better performance than the film deserves as the grumpy and possibly homicidal title character.

Energized by Offerman and Clemons, the effectiveness of the music and the emotional freshness of "Hearts Beat Loud" are finally triumphant. Sometimes wearing your heart on your sleeve is the only way to go.

In its best moments, Face/Off practically mainlines fury, leaving audiences no time to think or even breathe.

What is life like on the ground for ordinary people in another culture, another world? That’s been the bread and butter of observational documentaries for forever, but almost never is it done with the kind of beauty and grace filmmaker James Longley brings to his Afghanistan-set Angels Are Made of Light.

Rams is so much its own film that figuring out where its unusual, unpredictable plot will end up is difficult if not impossible.

Not only is the story dreamed up by producer Ahmet Zappa even odder than the title indicates, its execution gets increasingly irritating as the film goes on.

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.

As viewers of his Enron film will testify, Gibney is a scrupulous director, and Taxi to the Dark Side is filled with detailed factual information.

Though the new film has some good things, it does not have enough of them to make the third time the charm.

Steve Jobs is a smart, hugely entertaining film that all but bristles with crackling creative energy. What it is not is a standard biopic.

What Marley and its wonderful performance footage leave you with most of all is the joy the man took in the music that set him free and enchanted the world.

Director Demme has done other potent and meaningful films, but The Agronomist defers to none of them in its effectiveness and its power.

It's a nervy, quasi-documentary scheme that's often successful, perhaps more so than you'd expect for this kind of a hybrid endeavor. But Macdonald's technique eventually turns out to be as distancing as it is involving, paradoxically undercutting the reality as often as it enhances it.

Buster Keaton isn't dead, he's alive and well in Finland, where under a new identity he pursues his own particular brand of deadpan absurdism to wonderful effect. If the name Aki Kaurismäki doesn't mean anything to you, it should, and Le Havre may be the film to make it happen.

Beautiful, strange, disturbing, Embrace of the Serpent is a film with a lot on its mind.

As directed by Rachid Bouchareb, himself born in France to Algerian immigrants, "Days of Glory" is a kind of a North African "Saving Private Ryan," a taut, involving film that delivers all the things we look for in war movies and does so with intelligence and integrity.

Two teen girls forge an explosive connection in a compelling Pawel Pawlikowski film.

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

While the plot twists in Read My Lips may be too intensely melodramatic for some tastes, the performances of the two leads are impeccable, just about compelling our belief.

While most films are fortunate if they succeed on any level, The Return works easily on several, making as powerful a mark emotionally as it does visually and even allegorically. Yet the film so catches you up in its compelling story, you're almost not aware of how masterful a piece of cinema you're watching.

People fall in love in every country, but nowhere is the experience put on film with the flawless style, empathy and emotion the French provide. Mademoiselle Chambon is the latest in that line of deeply moving romances, an exquisite chamber piece made with the kind of sensitivity and nuance that's become almost a lost art.

As the summer heats up, let Frozen River wash over you; let its bracing drama and the intensity of its acting restore your spirits as well as your faith in American independent film.

Heal the Living reveals a gift for joining skillful visual filmmaking with moving, affecting storytelling, all in the service of a story that unfolds in surprising ways.

Like its determined heroine, Night Comes On burns with a smoldering fire, a heat that is no less intense, no less effective, for remaining largely beneath the surface.

This utterly compelling behind-the-scenes account of that horrific event unfolds with a potent sense of authority and authenticity.

The piercingly realistic Captain Phillips will exceed your expectations.

Off-and-on cynical and sentimental, Russell's darkly comic tale shows how much can be done with familiar material when you're burning to do things differently and have the gifts to pull that off.

Part science fiction scare movie, part offbeat romance, part completely unclassifiable, "Color" is also one-man filmmaking of a remarkable sort.

In an attempt to be both modern and traditional, this gorgeously made film ends up betwixt and between.

An idiosyncratic, metaphysical meditation on tennis, cinema, human behavior, maybe even life itself, "Perfection" at times risks being too pleased with itself for its own good, but its one-of-a-kind credentials are never in doubt.

A Walk to Beautiful will leave you speechless two times over -- first with despair, then with joy. Neither unmentionable subject matter nor nonexistent commercial prospects can keep this documentary from having a power over your heart that is unparalleled.

The Maid has that particular gift of leaving you off balance in the best possible way, and whenever something like that comes around you owe it to yourself to check it out.

A film as arresting and at times as frustrating as the Pistols themselves.

This pleasantly twisted low-life serenade harks back to several decades earlier, to the golden age of the B-picture and the moody fatalism of film noir. Harsh, gritty, unflinchingly intense and absolutely unforgettable, it’s as heartless as its protagonists, and that is saying quite a lot.

An exceptional film, at once disturbing and elevating, deliberate yet powerful.

It may sound commonplace, but in the hands of master filmmaker Mike Leigh, the everyday becomes extraordinary.

An involving portrait of what's called "one of the world's most powerful knowledge-producing institutions" and an examination on how that institution is coping with a significant financial crisis.

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.

Heartening and unashamedly emotional, it's a certified crowd pleaser that doesn't care who knows it.

No matter what is going on, Hansen-Love's talent for bringing us inside a specific world makes Eden an experience we all can connect to.

Their (Kim Bartley and Donnacha Ó Briain ) remarkable true-life footage makes this 74-minute film as potent as behemoths twice its size.