Kenneth Turan

[Barthes'] measured, distanced style brings a certain stiffness to the proceedings and makes us miss even more than usual the Emma Bovary interior monologue that makes the book so memorable.

The result is surprisingly companionable and enjoyable, an unhurried look at a location that is in no kind of rush, a place that is concerned most of all with preserving the way it’s always been.

When Iris DeMent's impeccable version of the hymn is heard on the soundtrack as the final credits roll, it's the perfect touch to end a film whose aim is always true.

"Meyerowitz” feels very much from the heart. It has an unexpected maturity and warmth, a compassion that seems to reflect Baumbach’s desire to dig as deeply as he can into the myriad conundrums of family life. And, as noted, it is often quite funny.

Maysles' portrait of Iris Apfel, a 93-year-old self-described "geriatric starlet," is surprisingly memorable, graced with an unforced but unmistakable charm.

Though a definite improvement on the last three abortive Star Wars prequels directed by series creator George Lucas, The Force Awakens is only at its best in fits and starts, its success dependent on who of its mix of franchise veterans and first-timers is on the screen.

At a time when so many in this country are at odds about what represents America at its best, it's refreshing and then some to see a film that everyone can agree is an example of exactly that.

Though she’s a first-time director, Costin has put together a film that’s a savvy cinematic education as well as pure fun. If you care about the movies, don’t even think of staying away.

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.

A smartly done, involving look at a number of interrelated water issues.

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.

A substantial film of unexpected emotional force. And when at a certain point it seems to slip the bonds of this world and take a leap of faith into an almost mythological dimension, it breathlessly takes us along for that memorable ride.

What happens to Charley, the film posits, the bad and the good, is not so much the fault of specific individuals but of the indifferent dead ends built into America's despairing culture of the underclass. Your heart goes out to this striving, yearning young man, and that's a tribute to the fine filmmaking on display.

Love and Death on Long Island is sharp, sophisticated and completely delicious, a purposeful comedy that focuses on the power of screen images to uproot lives and the poignancy of amour fou, totally mad love.

It's not the kind of work that wins awards, but without Cruise's intensity almost willing our interest in Spielberg's unrelentingly dark world, Minority Report wouldn't have nearly as much life as it does.

[An] excellent documentary.

See it and it'll stay with you as your own memories do: funny, poignant, bittersweet and irreplaceable.

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.

Room 237 becomes not a film about "The Shining" or even a film about film. Rather, it is an examination of the nature of obsession, about how we are capable of convincing ourselves — and possibly others — that just about anything might be true.

The most frankly sensual movie in memory. Winner of five Cesars, the French Oscar, including best picture and best actress for its luminous star, Marina Hands, it has found the soul of the celebrated D.H. Lawrence novel.

Both sweet-natured and sharply pointed, a film whose poignant, emotional effects and subtle acting sneak up on you.

Unusual in both its subject matter and its approach, this film guides us on a pair of intertwined paths American movies rarely venture down.

Where most movies lie, Lorenzo's Oil tells the truth and pays the price. In a genre rife with romantic sentimentality, this film won't trifle with its integrity and ends up not artificially uplifting but heart-rending and exhausting. Based on a true story, it shows how dreadfully hard you have to fight to make a difference, and how grueling it can be to save even a single human life.

Pohlad did not lack for ideas about how he wanted to portray Brian Wilson's life, but he is without the wherewithal to effectively put them into practice.

Couldn't be more unlikely, more unfashionable -- or more compelling.

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

it’s an unexpectedly unnerving film that’s at least as terrifying as it is beautiful.

Disturbing, unnerving and wire-to-wire involving, Deep Water is the story of a dream that got so wildly out of hand that it ensnared the dreamer in an intricate trap of his own devising.

The result, unusual in a documentary involving the police and the public, is a film that does not advocate for anything but the truth, one that aims to show what happens on both sides of an issue rather than coming down in favor of one or the other.

Only the tigers, beautiful and dangerous, maintain their integrity. By staying true to themselves, they make nothing else matter.

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.

A remarkable feat of imagination, a magical tale with a genuinely sinister edge.

Its conclusion, and its well-earned message, are more positive and hopeful than even its participants likely ever imagined they would be.

Nothing is rushed, everything is given its appropriate time and place. When we watch Hansen-Løve's films, we're not only experiencing a life unfolding before us, we're also realizing what a great privilege it is to be able to do that.

Sweetgrass is an unexpectedly intoxicating documentary, unexpected because it blends high artistic standards with the grueling reality of one of the toughest, most exhausting of work environments.

It’s a puckish film with a wistful quality, a gently comic end-of-the-line adventure about doing what you love, the passage of time and the things that might have been.

We may have seen it all before, but when it's done up like this, experiencing it all over again is a pleasure. [16 June 1999, Calendar, p.F-1]

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

Above all this is a film for gluttons for punishment, for those who never ever can get enough of Sylvester Stallone. Everyone else, please leave the building.

The result is involving, engrossing cinema -- more thrilling, in fact, than Howard's "The Da Vinci Code" -- filmmaking of a type rarely seen anymore and sorely missed.

This is the best class of poetic realism, the kind you can believe in without a trace of hesitation.

Effervescent, unflappable, supremely pleased with herself, Cher (delightfully played by the much-publicized Alicia Silverstone) is the comic centerpiece of Clueless, a wickedly funny teen-age farce from writer-director Amy Heckerling that, like its heroine, turns out to have more to it than anyone could anticipate. [19 July 1995]

When Close and her costars command the screen, we can forgive problems and simply enjoy the proceedings.

A look at the intertwined lives of a father and his three live-at-home daughters, this is more than anything a personal-scaled film, funny, emotional and compassionate toward the human comedy, Taiwan-style.

A documentary with the pace of a thriller, a story of motors and machines that is beyond compelling because of the intensely human story it tells.

Though it has its charms, Monsters, Inc. does not measure up. As a childhood entertainment it is certainly fine, but Pixar's celebrated lure for adults is largely absent.

Working Woman is more than a feature that makes compelling drama out of workplace sexual harassment; it’s an excellent work by any standard, a subtle and insightful character-driven drama that will compel anyone who cares about the interplay of personalities on-screen.

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

This calm and thorough film has just the right attitude and tone to deal with a most incendiary story.

A potent and unexpected mixture of authenticity and flash -- even if this is what happened on the ground, making it worth our time on screen is just beyond the contortionist abilities of even this most acrobatic of films.

Pride is an unapologetic crowd-pleaser of a movie, but it has some potent points to make, and the reality of what happened has a power of its own.

The story it tells is such a wrenching one it cannot help but move us, especially when the performance of a lifetime by Don Cheadle is added to the mix.

It is the gift of Midnight Traveler to allow us to feel this family’s fate in the pit of our stomachs. If the plight of refugees has ever seemed abstract, this film makes sure you know how real it is.

Funan is a stunning piece of animation in which the beauty of the visuals and the horror of the situation are inextricably intertwined.

A sharp and satisfying romantic comedy.

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.

What Surfwise reveals is that the dark side of the surfing doctor was that he could be a terrible tyrant, someone whose controlling, self-centered rigidity limited his children in ways large and small as much as it gave them richer lives.

A vibrant crime story filled to overflowing with crackling situations, taut dialogue and a heightened, even operatic sense of reality, A Most Violent Year captures us and doesn't let go.

Superbly cast from the two at the top to the smallest speaking parts, impeccably directed by Fincher and crafted by his regular team to within an inch of its life, Gone Girl shows the remarkable things that can happen when filmmaker and material are this well matched.

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.

You don't need to be a fan of Wagner, or even opera, to find this a fascinating glimpse of a dauntingly complex human endeavor.

Intelligently written and directed with a pleasing frankness by Bill Condon and well played by Liam Neeson, Laura Linney and a strong supporting cast, the film skillfully uses the forms of old Hollywood to tell a story that would have given heart failure to Harry Cohn and his fellow tycoons.

Though it can overreach for emotional effect and overplay its hand at times -- Sexy Beast brings considerable virtues to telling this tale, including a great eye for faces and director Glazer's palpable excitement at working in the feature medium.

Lapid's filmmaking skill helps keep us involved, as does Policeman's philosophical underpinnings.

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

Loving is an unpretentious film about unassuming real people, but don't let that mislead you. Just as Richard and Mildred Loving ended up overturning the status quo and making American legal history, so this feature on their lives by writer-director Jeff Nichols turns out to be a film of quiet but quite significant strengths.

Saucy, scary and pleasantly unsettling.

Performances this strong and direction this sensitive make us simply grateful to have an emotional story we can sink our teeth into and enjoy.

Smart, thoughtful and elegantly done, Hitchcock/Truffaut is more than an authoritative look at the careers and interpersonal dynamics of directors Alfred Hitchcock and Francois Truffaut, a pair of unlikely soul mates; it's also, as director Kent Jones intended, a love letter to film itself, to the value and lure of the cinematic experience.

This infectious and exuberant film wins you over by focusing on the enthusiasm and enviable good spirits of the smart and engaging young people who compete in “the Olympics of science fairs.”

As he did in "Unforgiven," "Mystic River" and "Million Dollar Baby," Eastwood handles this nuanced material with aplomb, giving every element of this complex story just the weight it deserves. The director's lean dispassion, his increased willingness to be strongly emotional while retaining an instinctive restraint, continues to astonish.

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

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.

What makes Look at Me such a deeply satisfying experience is its ability to combine insightful character portraits like this with wickedly funny situations that slyly skewer all-too-human weaknesses.

Leisurely yet intense (Sayles does the editing himself), Lone Star reveals a director whose mastery does nothing but increase. Perhaps now his audience will as well.

For director Lou Ye, who also co-wrote the script and was a student in Beijing during that crucial year, Summer Palace is the story of his particular lost generation, a story he felt so deeply about he risked his career to tell it. Search out this vivid film in a theater. Don't let the sacrifices he made be in vain.

Drive is a Los Angeles neo-noir, a neon-lit crime story made with lots of visual style. It's a film in love with both traditional noir mythology and ultra-modern violence, a combination that is not ideal.

The rousing The Fighter tries a number of risky maneuvers and manages to make them pay off in the end. The movie initially feels like more of a near thing than the filmmakers anticipated, but as in boxing it's only the final decision that counts.

A complete original. This ingenious, almost indescribable film won't remind you of anything else because there's nothing else like it.

If Asian martial arts movies interest you even a little bit, you're going to want to see Iron Monkey. Not only that, you're going to want to see it more than once.

In its examination of what is fleeting and what remains, "After Life" is not only perceptive, it leavens everything it touches with a surprisingly sly sense of humor. Few films about death, or about life for that matter, leave you feeling so affirmative about existence.

Using their great ability with comic dialogue (the film won the best screenplay award at Venice), the Coens exaggerate and subvert familiar western tropes to gleeful comic effect.

Colliding Dreams is a film of ideas and a film of history, a thorough and engrossing look at the root causes of the tortured relationship between Israel and the Palestinians.

Though Iron Man is diverting enough in the comic-book-movie mode, there is one thing it doesn't have, and that is dramatic unity. Unlike the irreducible element that is its namesake, Iron Man the movie is an alloy, a combination of several different and disconnected components that don't manage to unite to make a coherent whole.

Think of Control Room as a through-the-looking-glass movie. Like Lewis Carroll's Alice, viewers of this remarkable documentary will be disconcerted by a glimpse of a world where everything is reversed.

This documentary provides an elegant, enthralling peek behind the curtain and into the you-won't-trust-your-eyes world of this celebrated contemporary conjurer.

Provocative and engrossing.

As well done as much of Selma is, it periodically falls from grace with moments that are either emotionally flat or excessively agitprop in nature. Consistently the most ineffective scenes are those that involve powerful but obstructionist white people, especially the unhelpful trio of Johnson, Alabama Gov. George Wallace (Tim Roth) and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (Dylan Baker). The deftness with acting and character that can be this film’s strength simply deserts it here.

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

That all these characters and then some have distinct personalities is all the more remarkable because no one uses actual words, instead making do quite nicely with assorted grunts, groans and indefinable grumbles.

"Dawn's" vision of masses of intelligent apes swarming the screen as masters of all they survey is even more impressive than it was the last time around and reason enough to see the film all by itself.

It is sweet but not saccharine, an intimate film that doesn't stint on the desperation and anxiety that go along with the search for love.

Because Into the Arms of Strangers is as much a story about childhood as it is about the Holocaust, it's an especially moving and effective piece of work.

A riveting encounter with the woman who was Hitler's secretary...In a daring and successful stylistic choice, directors Heller and Schmiderer include almost nothing in the film but Junge.

Germans and Jews is too sophisticated to provide a glib answer, but it shows how deeply involving just asking the question can be.

Every moment on screen may not be enthralling, but the moments that are are such knockouts they make the enterprise essential viewing.

Macdonald has never starred in a film until Puzzle, and her delicate but deeply felt performance, along with the work of top Indian actor and costar Irrfan Khan and the rest of the cast, make this gentle, thoughtful yet pointed film the undeniable success it is.

A transfixing, emotionally complex Israeli drama.

One of the most successful, provocative and intensely contemporary of Israeli films, so much so that to watch it is to feel the country having a passionate argument with itself.

This masterful celebration starts off slowly, even uncertainly, giving no hint of the rich and elegant exploration of love, jealousy and animal attraction it will in all good time become.

Directed by Ra'anan Alexandrowicz and winner of the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, this is the second superb Israeli documentary (after "The Gatekeepers") to come to town in less than a month and deal fearlessly with an aspect of that country's legal and political system.

As essential in its own way as Anton Karas' celebrated zither work was to "The Third Man," Lola's music is perfectly suited to the film's aims and just about addictive in its throbbing, insinuating rhythms.

Not just any kind of trash, it's high-art trash, a kind of "When Tutu Goes Psycho" that so prizes hysteria over sanity that it's worth your life to tell when its characters are hallucinating and when they're not.

This is a taut psychological study, based on a true story, of the complexities of personal power relationships that begins with the kind of shattering revelation that would be the conclusion of most films.

Misunderstandings and hilarity ensue, as does a largeness of spirit that typifies Leisen's approach. [15 Nov 2012, p.D3]

It takes two to be sisters, two to have a rivalry, and two exceptional actresses to turn Hilary and Jackie into a compelling look at the most intimate and troubling of family dynamics.

Indignation tells a very particular story, one that’s bittersweet, heartbreaking and bleakly comic all at once, and it gets it right.

A film that is genuinely mind-expanding, an exhilarating intellectual gantlet that tells a remarkable human story.

In the end, the great thing about “Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould” is that rather than creating a desire to meet this formidable individual, it makes you feel as if in some way you actually had.

One of the pleasures of Enough Said is watching Louis-Dreyfus and Gandolfini, two well-known performers only Holofcener would think of putting together, come alive both as individuals and the two halves of a relationship.

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

Ly’s considerable skill aside, what makes Les Misérables such an immersive experience is the crackling sense of authenticity that is the film’s birthright.

Insomnia shows an equally welcome ability: a gift of creating intelligent, engrossing popular entertainment.

An impeccably acted character drama revolving around a mother and her teenage twin sons, Private Property shows how strong and how terrifying the bonds within families can be. Directed by Belgium's Joachim Lafosse, it etches the line between love and hate with a savagery that is almost unprecedented.

Unlike documentaries that tie things up in a tidy bow, Supreme Price wants viewers to understand that the status of democracy in Nigeria remains very much in flux.

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]

Intelligent, involving and conspicuously adult, Starting Out in the Evening is almost shocking in its distinctiveness, its ability to create high drama from an unlikely source.

Amore satisfying use of the medium would be difficult to imagine.

Impeccably made, uncompromising in its implacable vision of the deranging power of love, sex and controlled substances, this savage and staggering film knows how to take our breath away.

One terrific concert film.

Exquisitely made with a mesmerizing sense of style, it shows the wonderful things that can happen when traditional material is both handled with care and adroitly updated.

All of this romantic back and forth unfolds gradually and in charming ensemble style. As the characters think about seducing each other, as they inevitably complicate their lives without being able to help themselves, the film is simultaneously seducing us.

What A Bug's Life demonstrates is that when it comes to bugs, the most fun ones to hang out with hang exclusively with the gang at Pixar.

Willem Dafoe's performance in Shadow of the Vampire is so irresistible it not only breaks that cycle but turns an otherwise just adequate film into something everyone will want to take a look at.

This is a surprisingly dull and tedious affair where nothing is even remotely plausible, the romance and the sex least of all.

The Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside of the Arkansas governor’s presidential campaign, with Carville playing Huck Finn to Stephanopoulos’ Tom Sawyer, these lively presences lit up Clinton’s drive to the White House and turn The War Room into a tiptop political documentary that offers a candid and entertaining backstage look at a most unlikely electoral Juggernaut.

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?

A transcendent, transporting experience, a trance movie that casts a major league spell by going deeply into a monastic world that lives largely without words.

A gripping psychological drama based on events more than half a century old, it has inescapable contemporary echoes. Laced with intensely emotional situations, it refuses to force the issue by pushing too hard. And it proves, yet again, that though moral and spiritual questions may not sound spellbinding they often provide the most absorbing movie experiences.

Del Toro is almost alone in his ability to re-create on screen the wide-eyed exhilaration and disturbing grotesqueness that is the legacy of reading comics on the page.

With her new film, the poignant and funny Please Give, Holofcener is at the top of her game.

Lumumba is potent stuff. Complex, powerful, intensely dramatic.

Truly, there can be nothing as complex as the simplest human relationships, and nothing as satisfying as a film that understands that as this one does.

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.

Without doubt this strong documentary sheds a powerful light on this particular case while emphasizing the ultimate unknowability of absolute truth.

Though Waterworld has some haunting underwater visual moments, the film's impact is weakened by flat dialogue, an overemphasis on jokeyness and a plot that, despite all those screenwriters, does not satisfactorily hold together at any number of points.

What makes High Flying Bird so welcome and unexpected is its combination of immediacy and drama, its provocative creation of here and now energy and smart dialogue around the unlikely subject of professional sports in general and pro basketball in particular.

In the mythology of personal growth, liberating yourself leads invariably to increased happiness. Yet what characterizes the seekers in the powerful One of Us is nothing that straightforward.

It leaves you stirred and uplifted not only by its music but also by the determination and courage of the people who sang and danced it on the way to a freer life.

This is a film that insinuates itself deeply into our awareness. It's that rare pulp story with something on its mind, an unnerving, socially conscious thriller with a killer sense of narrative drive.

Charming and outlandish by turns, this misfit love story of disconnected people trying to find one another in an antagonistic world is a comedy of discomfort and rage that turns unexpectedly sweet and pure.

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.

This is a gentle comedy, both funny and melancholy, about a timid soul who discovers the necessity of embracing life in all its absurdity and unlooked-for joy.

Coppola decided that he really wasn't making a horror film after all, but rather a love story, a comic burlesque, a costume drama, a piece of erotica, whatever. But no matter what else you do with it, a Dracula that cannot manage to be more scary than silly is as pitilessly doomed as that elegant old Transylvanian himself. [13 Nov 1992]

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

An art film to the core. If it's an epic, it's an intimate, dream-time epic, an elliptical, episodic film, dependent on images and reveries, that treats war as the ultimate nightmare, the one you just cannot awaken from no matter how hard you try.

The Counterfeiters demonstrates that no matter how many Holocaust stories the movies tell, there are always new and unexpected ones waiting to be revealed.

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.

Potent, persuasive and hypnotic, The Dark Knight Rises has us at its mercy. A disturbing experience we live through as much as a film we watch, this dazzling conclusion to director Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy is more than an exceptional superhero movie, it is masterful filmmaking by any standard.

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.

Shrewdly imagined and persuasively made, Ex Machina is a spooky piece of speculative fiction that's completely plausible, capable of both thinking big thoughts and providing pulp thrills. But even saying that doesn't do this quietly unnerving film full justice.

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.

[Lee's] work is less strident here, more controlled, less in-your-face explosive than for instance “Do the Right Thing,” but for all of that, no less penetrating, no less troubling. Given his passion, there’s no way it could be otherwise.

This one-of-a-kind film cycle has become as comfortable and reliable as an old shoe, providing a degree of dependability that's becoming increasingly rare.

Has both bark and bite. Its low-key but sharp and amusing sense of humor is a nice fit with the frenetic world of competitive dog shows.

De Bont and his team have turned in a visually sophisticated piece of mayhem that makes the implausible plausible and keeps the thrills coming. [10Jun1994 Pg. F1]

What makes Non-Fiction stand out is the adroit way it keeps everything in balance. The writing and the acting, the questions about contemporary society as well as personal relationships, they all exist in enviable harmony to create an incisive snapshot of the present moment.

It feels like a blessing to have this production at all and we are fortunate it turned out as well as it did.

A work of striking beauty and affecting emotional heft enhanced by an Afghan-themed score by Mychael Danna & Jeff Danna, The Breadwinner reminds us yet again that the best of animation takes us anywhere at any time and makes us believe.

Epic and intimate, historical and contemporary, moving and thought-provoking, the impressive The Princess of Montpensier has something for all and sundry but especially for those who like to believe that films can be as boldly intelligent as they are entertaining.

In a sea of one-note symphonies, this touching feature is bleak and comic, heartbreaking and affirmative, romantic and tragic, gimlet-eyed and sympathetic, all at the same time.

Drunk and disorderly on the pure joy of making movies. A frantic, flawed, fascinating film that is both impressive and a bit out of control, often at the same time.

Emotional and analytical by turn, The Case Against 8 is a thoroughly engaging documentary.

Chases, crashes and explosions are thick on the land in the second half of this movie, but though they are expertly done, their size, frequency and increasing disconnection from what was once a coherent story leave you feeling pummeled rather than exhilarated.

While you don’t have to be crazy about cats to enjoy this documentary, it would certainly help.

Maneuvering shrewdly within the boundaries of the traditional canon and aided by the impeccable performance of Ian McKellen, Bill Condon directs an elegant puzzler that presents the sage of Baker Street dealing with the one thing he's never had to contend with before: his own emotions.

A fascinating film that is as thorough as it is idiosyncratic.

Gathering its forces slowly, this careful, thoughtful film, quietly but deeply moving, is dramatic without seeming to be.

If you believe that bringing the questionable virtues of "American Idol" to Afghanistan would do that beleaguered nation no favors, the remarkable documentary Afghan Star will change your mind in an instant.

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.

the first techno-misfire from Walt Disney Pictures, an over-elaborate film that leaves you feeling harangued, harassed and assaulted.

Becomes unfocused as it stumbles over all the points it wants to make.

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.

Tickling Giants surprises us on several levels. It reveals Egypt’s familiar Arab Spring experience through a lens, that of satiric comedy, which is very different from the way we usually see it. And it has the personal element of Youssef’s involving story, showing what can happen when your dreams come true to a completely unexpected extent.

Self-conscious about its heroism with portrayals that lean toward the glib and the professionally uplifting, the film milks our sympathies too readily to be emotionally convincing.

Though the Meru climbing and outdoor footage is spectacular, it is the personal struggle of each of the climbers, and the candid way they talk about them on camera, that give this film its considerable impact.

An ambitious film that aims to examine the human equations behind the abductions. But for all its good intentions, it's not as subtle as it might be, and it's finally pitched too broadly to achieve the level of emotional truth it aims for.

Lots of documentaries these days will tell you to be afraid, to be very afraid, but few will scare you as coolly and as convincingly as Command and Control.

A lot of this is quite well done, but Bromell has a tendency to have too schematic an aesthetic agenda for his story: treating film noir like kabuki is not necessarily the best way to go, no matter how beautifully you do it.

No matter what you've been used to, Idaho is something completely different, a film that manages to confound all expectations, even the ones it sets up itself. [18 Oct 1991]

Tainted or not, Hughes' life was a remarkable one, and, flawed or not, Scorsese's film version deserves the same accolade.

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.

Bleak childhoods make for the best cinema, and Ratcatcher stands at the head of the class.

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

Because no one compensates for a thin concept like the people at Pixar, there is a lot to admire in the animated “Dory,” including stunning undersea visuals and an ocean full of eccentric and engaging aquatic creatures. But, as the 13-year gap between “Nemo” and “Dory” indicates, this was not a concept that cried out to be made.

No film with as many elements as Happy Feet is successful with all of them, and the romantic-emotional elements of this story feel overly familiar. But the music and dancing are fresh and new, and this strong an ecological message has not been seen since Hayao Miyazaki's "Princess Mononoke."

Shows and tells an astonishing story, a disturbing and provocative tale of obsession, bravado and self-invention that leaves you open-mouthed for all kinds of reasons.

A compelling piece of work that turns out to have unexpected relevance to the current world situation.

Even if you don't fancy raw fish, "Jiro" is a captivating film.

To see The Wind Rises is to simultaneously marvel at the work of a master and regret that this film is likely his last.

That bland, opaque quality is a disadvantage here; whatever else [Depp] is capable of, making audiences feel his pain is not at the top of the list.

It's a film of exceptional technical virtuosity that could have used some help in the dramatic department.

Intelligent, involving and serious, it is as honestly emotional as Hollywood allows itself to get, a story of the search for wartime truth whose own concern for the genuine makes all the difference.

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]

Stands out among creative bio-pics for an ability to show art being made in a way that's as realistic and exciting as it's ever been on screen.

This modest film has virtues that come out of nowhere. It takes familiar material and develops it with such tact and skill that we find ourselves moved and sort of amazed at the same time.

This is a blistering drama, intense, disturbing and inescapably thought-provoking, a film that gets its power from a merging of potent opposites.

Memories in popular music are notoriously short, and if you’ve forgotten how extraordinary a singer Linda Ronstadt is, how wide a range of material she’s explored and how deep her commitment to the art and craft of music is, Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice is a potent, mind-expanding reminder.

Like the best of dreams, familiar yet wondrously different, On Body and Soul adroitly mixes recognizable cinematic tropes with extraordinary ideas that are very much the filmmaker's own.

The more things change, the more we have to laugh if we are to have a prayer of remaining sane, and the Pythons are the best possible step in that direction.

The powerfully disturbing Red Riding trilogy will haunt you waking and sleeping, night and day. If you survive the watching of it, that is, which is no easy thing.

The film is never more real than when Jimmy unloads his anger on someone close to him, a frequent occurrence. Eminem is an actor with a rare gift for rage, and movie careers, even big ones, have been built on less.

By choosing to bludgeon the audience with ever-worsening tales of woe, Once Were Warriors paradoxically blunts its power, though the truth is that people may be too shell-shocked to notice. [03 Mar 1995, p.F1]

Wading through blood is too much of a price to pay for Sugar Hill’s pluses, and it’s a shame the movie business has made it difficult for them to be experienced any other way.

The Ghost Writer is the kind of impeccable adult entertainment, able to alternate edge-of-your-seat episodes with bleakly comic moments, that Hitchcock used to specialize in and that Polanski himself realized so successfully in "Chinatown" and "Rosemary's Baby."

Like the remarkable films Eastern European countries turned out regularly during the Soviet era, it marries a character-driven story with social concerns, in this case a deft parable about the kind of corrupt privileged society nominally egalitarian Socialism created.

By turns sweetly amusing and surprisingly unnerving, crammed with story, song and computer-generated visual splendors, it's such a model of modern crowd-pleasing entertainment that it brings to mind a celebrated quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald about filmmakers who were "able to keep the whole equation of pictures in their heads."

This may not be exact history, but it certainly makes an impression.

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.

Self-aware, funny and articulate, blessed with a first-class temperament, Ferencz is front and center telling his own tale, which includes being the key player in what’s been called the biggest murder trial in history.

Using all his resources, Hedlund has created Mike Burden whole on screen in all his tormented awkwardness. Confused and conflicted, incapable of doing the right thing without recidivism and backsliding, this is hardly a conventional hero. Siding with the angels can seem like a snap in films, but Burden has the grace to show how difficult and wrenching a choice that can be.

This delicious satire about aging hipsters and their discontents is everything we've come to expect from the best of Noah Baumbach, as well as several things more.

It's clear that an exceptional body of work is coming out of this country at this particular time and place. It's not necessary to categorize these films to enjoy them, it's just necessary to go.

This comprehensive and charming film not only recalls those days exactly, it also manages the wonderful trick of taking us back there along with it.

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.

A performer of formidable self-absorption, Johnston has inspired a film with the same trait, and the results are about what you might expect.

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.

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.

A ferocious psychological drama with the pace of a thriller, Child's Pose combines, as have the best of the Romanian new-wave films, a compelling personal story about mothers and sons with an examination of socio-political dynamics in a way that is both intense and piercingly real.

Ulee's Gold stands out for its sureness, its quiet emotional force and writer-director Victor Nunez's ability to find and nurture the mystery and power in the events of an ordinary life.

Caesar Must Die shows us in the starkest possible terms the electric power of drama to move and touch not only audiences but the actors who bring so much of themselves to their performances.

Benda Bilili! earns its exclamation point. It's a feel-good movie that actually makes you feel good, a story that will have you shaking your head in astonishment and moving your feet to some unstoppable rhythms.

It is the achievement of Gerhard Richter Painting to shine a light on that hidden, private act as few other films have done.

Though amusing enough to avoid absolutely drowning in schmaltz, it's sad to see a film with potential lose its way in the late innings.

A wholly unexpected film, as heady and surprising in its humor as in its emotional texture.

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.

With her unblinking but nonjudgmental eye, Spheeris doesn't shy away from the horrifying, at times violent messes these kids make of their lives, but she is always sensitive to the pain behind everything, to the unhappy futility of squandered potential.

Once the stage is set and the more intense plot elements of Black Souls kick in, the film's emphasis on character and setting pays off, just as the muted nature of the storytelling adds to its considerable power.

The Wave adds credible writing and effective acting to gangbusters special effects, resulting in a white-knuckle experience a bit higher on the plausibility scale than what we're used to from Hollywood versions of the genre.

If The Hudsucker Proxy is a triumph, it is a zombie one. Too cold, too elegant, too perfect, more an exhibit in a cinema museum than a flesh-and-blood film, "Proxy's" highly polished surface leaves barely any space for an audience's emotional connection. [11 Mar 1994, p.1]

Though all these technological trappings are newer than new, the human needs for happiness, applause and emotional connection are classic. The ability of People’s Republic of Desire to show these familiar desires playing out in futuristic surroundings is invariably surprising and never less than compelling.

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.

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.

No concept in the critical lexicon has been more devalued and debased than "inspirational." The term has been so misused, it's just about lost all meaning. A film that makes that word real and vital has to be special. The Interrupters is such a film.

Audacious, bracing, uncommonly timely, Bob Roberts would seem almost impossible to pull off. So it is very much to Robbins' credit as a filmmaker that he manages to do so while rarely getting preachy and never neglecting the importance of movement and excitement in keeping an audience involved. [04 Sep 1992, p.F1]

While success is not guaranteed, Sea of Shadows dramatically demonstrates how and why the battle continues to be fought.

Dench is not the only reason to see this unapologetic crowd-pleaser, but she is the best one.

The Danish director, whose film Pelle the Conqueror won the best foreign-language film Oscar, has turned out a thoughtful and accomplished piece of filmmaking, skillfully acted and beautifully put together with a kind of discreet elegance that the biggest budget (roughly $10 million) in Swedish film history made possible.

It's a wonderful documentary look at an astonishingly successful public-school chess program that manages to be more moving and heartening than you expect. Which is saying a lot.

While this carnage is defensible in theory, and while the filmmakers have taken pains not to linger on the horrific brutality Logan and his terrible claws inflict, the gruesome situations presented, including more than one beheading, work at cross purposes with the film's more serious intent and reminds us that a scot-free escape from the strictures of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is not in the cards.

A marvel of a documentary, a clear-eyed and affectionate film that tells a remarkable story with both visual and personal sensitivity. More impressive still, it's largely the work of one man.

Brougher has taken material that sounds contrived and potentially exploitative and used her gift for careful observation and restrained emotionality to give it surprising authenticity.

A surprisingly vast and involving topic.

A delicious and delicately funny look at the residents of a Copenhagen neighborhood coping with the befuddling complications life tosses at them.

Has an engaging warmth and an effortless sense of life. It also has an instinct for the humanity and universality of situations that are comic, romantic and quite seriously dramatic by turns.

In its ability to let us hear firsthand what life-and-death combat does to the human body and spirit, this film has few peers.

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 its plot frequently falls back on coincidence, so much so that the characters joke about it, Career Girls has the almost magical ability to involve us emotionally with these women even though there are points when we would've sworn that wouldn't be possible.

Front and center in all of this, though he clearly would rather not be, is Cunningham himself, a man of enormous good cheer who gets riled only when he fears his creative prerogatives are being infringed on.

Because the footage of Szegedi was filmed over a number of years, the documentary reveals different stages of its subject's thinking.

Even if some things have changed, spending time with an artist who's concerned, as he's said in interviews, with "the permanence of temporary objects and the temporality of permanent objects," is always worth the journey.

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

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

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

Unapologetically emotional and impeccably made in the classic manner, it tells the kind of potent, many-sided story whose unforeseen complexities can come only courtesy of a life that lived them all.

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.

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.

Smartly plotted by newcomer Russell Gewirtz and smoothly directed by, of all people, Spike Lee, Inside Man is a deft and satisfying entertainment, an elegant, expertly acted puzzler that is just off-base and out-of-the-ordinary enough to keep us consistently involved.

Murphy is back, and both his old gifts and some new ones are on engaging display in the rowdy, raunchy, inescapably funny Dolemite Is My Name, a gleefully profane biopic and a passion project the star has been nurturing for years.

Blessed with a loose, anarchic B-picture soul that encourages you to enjoy yourself even when you're not quite sure what's going on, the scruffy "Guardians" is irreverent in a way that can bring the first "Star Wars" to mind.

At its heart Lore qualifies as a coming-of-age story, but it is far from the ones we usually see.

A recklessly emotional film that is so committed to feelings it occasionally overflows its banks. Which may be a little messy, but it's a lot more welcome than the drought-stricken alternatives.

A rehash of plot conventions from a slew of mismatched movies. A Perfect World will remind you of any number of previous films, but almost everything it attempts to do was done better the last time around.

A wild at heart, anarchic comedy that believes in living dangerously.

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

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.

James Mangold directs it with such energy and passion that it's as if he didn't know it's all been done before.

With Fassbender's charisma igniting his costar as well as himself, these sparring interchanges, both captivating and entertaining, are where this Jane Eyre finally catches fire.

Wolf Children is rather an odd story, told in a one-of-a-kind style that feels equal parts sentimental, somber and strange.

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.

"Monster" is almost too ambitious to be completely realized. But when it works, which is most of the time, its story has a power which lingers in the mind.

Their Finest is a treat that has something on its mind, a charming concoction that adds a bit of texture and bite to the mix. Genial and engaging with a fine sense of humor, it makes blending the comic with the serious look simpler than it actually is.

Life's a Breeze is a small film with a considerable amount of charm. Comic and idiosyncratic, it takes a warmhearted view toward its protagonists while still seeing them for exactly who they are.

A fearless and ambitious piece of work, made with equal parts passion and calculation, an unapologetically entertaining major studio release with compelling real-world relevance, a film that takes numerous risks and thrives on them all.

A fascinating hybrid of a film. Even though its purpose couldn't be more serious, its style could hardly be more pulp.

Dreamgirls is the entire musical package, a triumph of old school on-screen glamour, and we wouldn't want it any other way.

A more impartial filmmaker might have understood the need for other voices to balance against all that attitude, might have understood how hungry the film makes us for even a single non-adulatory moment.

A solid, often engrossing film that doesn't engage us overall the way Denzel Washington's work does.

Because of its strong dialogue and convincing acting, 99 Homes stays on point for quite some time, artfully disguising the film's increasing reliance on plot devices.

What French writer-director Mia Hansen-Love has created is an extraordinarily empathetic humanistic drama, a film of love, joy, sadness and hope that understands how complex our emotions are and does beautiful justice to them.

One thing that makes Lunchbox so strong is that a touch of melancholy hangs over its sweetness. Finally this is a film about the wheel of life, about what helps us cope with its turns and find our way in its unforgiving labyrinth.

Citizen K uses Khodorkovsky’s story as a way to guide us through the thickets of modern Russian history, a tangled, through-the-looking-glass world that the film surveys from the days of Boris Yeltsin in 1991 to today’s increasingly autocratic reign of Vladimir Putin

Though replete with amusing situations and clever lines, its strongest suit is the delicately pitched comic performances of its actors, most especially star Kevin Kline.

Shine a Light may not be the last Rolling Stones movie, but it's likely to be the last one with a touch of the poet about it.

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

If the key to price in real estate is "location, location, location," the key to success in vérité-style documentaries is "access, access, access." Which is what Cartel Land has in compelling amounts.

A sleek, accomplished piece of work, meticulously controlled and completely involving. The dark end of the street doesn't get much more inviting than this.

A vibrant and joyous new documentary.

You may not respect What’s Love Got to Do With It, but enjoying it is inescapable. A high-energy mixture of spectacular music, vigorous acting and cliched situations, this is a rough-and-rowdy fairy tale with a feminist subtext, and if that sounds perplexing, Love so pumps up the volume you won’t have much time to think about it.

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.

Midnight Special announces the arrival of a filmmaker in total control of his technique as well as our emotions. A bravura science-fiction thriller that explores emotional areas like parenthood and the nature of belief, it's a riveting genre exercise as well as something more.

Though The Unforeseen has a few too many clips of Robert Redford, its environmentalist executive producer, its strength is its realization that these unforeseen developments are making few people happy.

Because Bay of Angels reveals rather than moralizes, because its concerns are character and psychology, it's a potent showcase for Moreau's gifts.

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