Marc Savlov

The good news is Craig, who was riveting as a London pharmaceutical salesman in the recent Brit import "Layer Cake," is equally mesmerizing here.

A pure distillation of the great director's ongoing themes of the frailty of the human psyche and mankind's willful inability to accept the inevitable, whatever that may be.

Diehl’s performance is a model of restraint; he more often imparts information by a look, a glance, the slump of his shoulders, than he does with a spoken word.

Still, as a nostalgia trip that knows exactly what die-hard Star Wars fans want and then layers in some memorable new characters, The Force Awakens is exactly what it needs to be: an old-school Saturday afternoon sci-fi matinee writ big.

Its adult themes of familial separation and societal betrayal are head and shoulders above much of the director’s previous popcorn work -– more hurt, more heart, more unassailable hope.

Castle-Hughes and Paratene are nothing short of remarkable in their roles.

Lean on Pete is a methodical and memorable film primarily because director Haight, adapting from Willy Vlautin’s novel, keeps a distance from his characters, never taking the easy route, and never, ever letting the movie enter the killing fields of the corny or cliched.

It's not the crowning achievement in Steven Spielberg's oeuvre, but Minority Report stands on its own sturdy sci-fi legs, and there's no sign of that little imp Haley Joel Osment, to boot, thankfully.

Perhaps the best way to sum up Boy and the World is by saying it is what it is and what it is, is absolutely remarkable.

Bizarre and beautiful, this French take on the madness inherent in independent filmmaking rivals Tom DiCillo's Living in Oblivion as the most realistic depiction of the myriad trials and tribulations that accompany the creation of a new film.

Director Miller, thankfully, keeps his pacing quick and his touch deft -- Lorenzo's Oil rarely becomes bogged down in interdisciplinary conundrums or the unwarranted heartstring-yanking that so often occurs in Hollywood MedFilms.

Human Resources, which gets my vote for most sarcastic title of the year, isn't a stand up and cheer kind of film.

The Polish/Israeli co-production picked up the Best Horror Feature award at Fantastic Fest 2015, and it’s a shame that Wrona is gone, but at least we have this superlative example of his cinematic brilliance.

Like the character of Rocky, it's got heart to spare, and is by turns one of the sweetest of the sweet-science pictures as well as one of the most doleful. Fighters fight, it's what they do. And Balboa, god bless him, fights on.

Falters in small but important ways -– the suspense, carefully ratcheted up throughout, just plain goes busto in the film’s final moments -– while Malkovich stays resolutely behind the camera, a consummate professional who, this time, misses his mark by the merest of degrees.

Both interesting and insufferable.

Michael Lehmann's "Heathers" followed the same sort of story line to much better effect in 1989, and Clueless leaves you itching to race over to the video store in search of just that.

Morrone is superb in the part, exuding a sort of saintly solitude while caught up in the midst of turmoil from within and without. Even at its most dire, Mickey and the Bear is tinged with an almost holy hope for all involved, a rare and remarkable feat to pull off so well for a first-time director indeed.

The spirited interplay between Goodman and Crystal is both wacky and, dare I say, charming.

Ultimately, I’ll Be Me is both an unconventional tribute to this American icon and a deep-down cri de coeur for more research on viable ways to retard the progression of Alzheimer’s and perhaps one day find a reliable cure. No one’s getting any younger, after all.

It is with immense pleasure that I can report that Disney's Muppet reboot movie is an absolute delight.

The real star of Red Rock West is the convoluted plot, as twisty as any backroad out south of Bakersfield and with a hell of a lot fewer p(l)otholes.

Scrappy, powerful, and shocking.

Some people might find Chunhyang a chore to sit through, including me. Despite all of its accumulated period gorgeousness, or perhaps because of it, the film moves at a snail's pace, telegraphing plot twists miles before we actually arrive at them.

Immensely entertaining, Coriolanus is chock-full o' gore and the contemporary trappings of a man and a land divided, both from without and from within.

A fearless sort of melodramaticism that might have seemed silly if it weren't for the impeccable EVERYTHING on display here, from the lush, sexy camerawork of director of photography Yorick Le Saux (Swimming Pool) to the throbbing, atavistic score by John Adams. It's not silly or, at least, rarely so, and Swinton's nuanced, aching performance is downright revelatory.

Fantasies and phantasms aside, Fincher proves himself yet again to be a better cinematic psychologist of (in-)human nature than almost any other director alive. It’s another squirmily excellent date movie from hell, courtesy of contemporary cinema’s most overt nihilist.

It's an audacious, affecting, and unexpectedly hilarious debut, and most definitely the most original film I've seen all year.