Kimberley Jones

Mostly it's just terribly funny and sad and beautifully acted and terrifically feel-good for being, you know, a cancer comedy.

A lovely, quietly thrilling thing.

What struck me more was the film’s interpretation of Bailey’s coming of age not as something to be mourned or that comes on too soon. Instead, it’s an activation.

Neville’s film isn’t making a case for canonization. But it is a call to action.

Grief doesn't exactly sound like a promising starting point for a love story, but, really, what a bounty Mills presents to us of beauty and buoyancy and possibility.

Owen’s story is unique, and deserving of singling out.

And yet that is what is so very remarkable about the film: In a slim 72 minutes, it heart-tethers us to these teenagers, paying tribute to their unique and private selves while allowing the audience to see its own reflection in them.

The Dogme pedigree rarely distracts; there is too much emotional investment to care much about dogmatic fidelity.

The sum is something deeply profound: about awkwardness, culture clash, failed connections, and – ultimately – the strength that comes from surviving a trial by fire.

The Immigrant is two hours long, but I stayed even longer in my seat, through the credits, still in thrall to it all. The title is singular, but the scope is not so easily quantifiable.

The film can feel a touch overscripted, but Polley and her actors effect true-to-life rhythms of speech.

There’s humor here – Mike Leigh has always found something darkly funny in our shambling human condition – but Hard Truths is not an easy watch.

Funny and sweet and guaranteed to flood you with good feeling.

Blisteringly entertaining.

It’s thrilling.

In its cinematic incarnation, Sex and the City has lost none of its bawdiness yet gained a more profound sense of soberness. Parker, especially, who in the last season of the show bordered on insufferable in her affected squeaks and shrieks, is allowed to go to very dark places – to be, in fact, quite unfabulous.

A dense, challenging piece, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat is more associative than explicative.

I can't remember the last time I felt so seduced by a film.

Odom Jr. won the Tony for his performance here, a fact that’s been somewhat dwarfed over the years by Miranda’s tsunamic success, but the neat trick of this filmed version is to time-machine viewers back to an extraordinary moment in American cultural history – to put us, to borrow from Miranda, in the room where it happened. It feels like such a gift.

Pattinson is fully committed to the performance – performances – and his impact subtly evolves from giggling to genuinely moving. That same evolution applies to the whole of Bong’s film, which dances so close to the edge of grand folly, the effect is exhilarating.

By film’s end, my cheeks were wet with feeling so many feelings for these young people just getting going. I am in awe of their boldness.

A film that wants you to get happy.

Shot on location in Northeastern Massachusetts, chilliness hangs in the air of every frame, but Sorry, Baby – a uniquely special thing – is suffused with warmth.

With American independent film teeming with so many shaky-cam snarksters, what an electric riposte to the status quo is Nichols, whose films are classically constructed and deadly serious. In his short but potent career, he’s mastered a wide-vistaed eye for the epic and the elemental.

A restless, nervy actor, Hardy seems to get a kick out of tying one hand behind his back. He dominated "The Dark Knight Rises" even with a modified ball gag obscuring most of his face. Here, locked behind a steeling wheel and a conceptual gimmick, he only has the upper half of his body to work with. No surprise to anybody who’s been paying attention: Half a Hardy adds up to a hell of a lot.

I don't know if the many plot swerves withstand a second viewing, but I suspect the meat of the matter – the swooning visuals, the expert choreography, the teasing love story – does.

The movie moves episodically, leisurely, through roughly a decade, and that feels like a gift: to nestle in with these extraordinary, ordinary people and get to know them.

The film’s greatest strength is its unabashed sentimentality. The look on these artists’ faces – their obvious pleasure in being in the room with their heroes, making great music? It’s not just good on the ears; it’s good for the heart.