Marjorie Baumgarten

Never finding its right tone, Admission uncomfortably founders between the story’s comic and dramatic aspects and leaves behind a lumpy residue that tars its likable leads.

Bamako, with Sissako's poetic blend of the humdrum and the theoretical, is altogether fascinating. Dramatic features born and bred on the African continent are rare commodities on these shores, and the opportunities they offer can stretch far beyond film appreciation and into the realm of world understanding.

A quietly interesting but unusually perceptive story about love and relationships.

Terribly slight but not unpleasant, 5 Flights Up is hardly worth the climb.

What’s clear is that after watching Dolores, this woman becomes an unforgettable figure in the annals of Mexican-American history, the workers’ rights struggles, and feminist legacies.

Campion’s story of a tubercular poet and his lady love recasts the hackneyed old stanza in refreshing new verse.

Corrosively funny yet emotionally devastating.

Director Duke (A Rage in Harlem and countless TV work) rivets our attention with his tightly framed shots and crisp editing that intelligently revives that bygone tradition of jump cuts (though they confusingly disappear completely midway through the movie).

The game footage is as engrossing as the real thing, although it comes at the expense of diminished attention to the teen players and their emotional problems.

Even though there’s a great deal to admire in Ducournau’s debut outing, Raw will mostly appeal to the taste buds of horror connoisseurs. Skittish consumers should consider other dining options.

It all looks crummy, to say the least, but this is clearly the director’s intent. I’m not fully convinced that the technique delivers the kind of veracity the filmmakers were trying to achieve, although it is a creative solution to an intractable visual problem.

It's an endearing romantic daydream, but misses the bus where matters of reality are concerned.

The most originally funny movie to hit U.S. screens in a while.

Though formally astringent, Police, Adjective is dotted with lots of humor.

Despite these quibbles, Django Unchained offers an embarrassment of riches (and actors in tiny cameos).

There’s no denying Pacific Rim is the best film of its kind. It remains to be seen whether the film’s epic clawing and clanking satisfies a pent-up demand equal to its ambitions.

The Wedding Banquet wins fans with its sunny disposition as it turns a contemporary story about a marriage of convenience into a deft bedroom farce and humanist drama.

Music has rarely appeared more essential to the human drama.

Lush, succulent, verdant, aromatic. These are the kind of words that come to mind when describing this new Vietnamese film, a film dominated by textures rather than plot.

Dunst's performance is a thing of calm beauty and mired grit, fully deserving of the Best Actress Award she received for this work at Cannes. The entire supporting cast also proves to be a delight, even in their obstinacy and oddities.

Meticulous and abstruse, Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color is an idiosyncratic film that invites explication but defies total understanding.

Mikey & Nicky is commonly, and unfairly, categorized as a John Cassavetes knock-off, which diminishes the originality of Elaine May's screenplay and this character study she crafted especially for co-stars Cassavetes and Peter Falk. She unleashes the darkest, most mercurial side of Cassavetes, and in Falk finds the actor's moral ambiguity that had been obscured as a result of his then-popular run as TV's Columbo.

Though the soundtrack comes on kind of heavy, the cinematography (by Enrique Chediak) has a beautiful clarity. Yorick's skull or not, Charlie St. Cloud is no Shakespearean drama, but the film should prove to be another solid stepping stone for Efron on his way to a long adult career.

Neither slave nor mammy, junkie nor maid, these dawn-of-the-twentieth century African-American women are an unstereotypical breed unto themselves.

Summer 1993 reveals itself to us as if it were a scrapbook of memories tumbling forth. Some are clearer than others, yet the movie retains a subjective, childlike point of view.

The height of drollery, a cheeky ode to the liberating power of popular culture, and a fascinating look at an old dog learning some new tricks.

A quietly searing drama about morality, priorities, and absolute truth. It’s told in a matter-of-fact manner that eschews melodrama, yet is loaded with haunting human moments and circumstances.

The movie is slight but transfixing.

Peter Weir made this unsettling, atmospheric film early in his career, and it is still one of his most successful projects to date.

Despite its probe of deep moral questions, Woman at War (a multiple award winner on the festival circuit as well as having been Iceland’s entry for Oscar consideration last year) maintains a light feel and concludes with a sense of uplift as we watch human beings forge ahead despite the floodwaters rising around them.

The film is slapdash entertainment not meant to be further contemplated after leaving the theatre.

With Bad Education, the great Almodóvar delivers the finest movie of his career.

Flight's pat closing sequences are at odds with the complexities presented earlier on. They travel the conventional route and threaten to vastly simplify this story into one of an addict's redemption. Perhaps it was inevitable that the drama on the ground could never equal the excitement of the action that occupies the movie's beginning sequences.

One of the cinema’s very best car-chase sequences – set amid the hilly, windy San Francisco streets – caps this quintessential Steve McQueen policier.

Ultimately, it may be the case that Guggenheim is a better instigator than filmmaker, as the debate about our educational system appears to be on the upswing at present. For this, rather than all the specifics of its argument and what it leaves out, Waiting for 'Superman' is essential viewing.

Director Patrice Leconte (The Hairdresser's Husband, Monsieur Hire) again displays his keen observation of the minute details that transpire between people, though Ridicule doesn't share the same mordant perversity as his previous American successes. It does prove that certain games that people play never go out of fashion.

Of course it helps tremendously that Willem Dafoe plays Pasolini. Just as he did with 2018’s "At Eternity’s Gate," in which he embodied the artist Vincent van Gogh, Dafoe brilliantly captures the essence and a more-than-reasonable resemblance to the real figures.

Adults may have a hard time swallowing this toothless tale of PG-rated bloodsuckers, but kids may relate better to its lessons.

In an inspired bit of casting, Lyle Lovett plays the dad of the goofy-looking Diz/Gil. That these two could be related might be the only believable touch in this whole misfired thing.

Campanella’s script (which is adapted from a novel by Eduardo Sacheri) bogs down, however, when the focus of the story is on Benjamín, who is dogged by his memories and his inability to make a play for Irene.

Good Time demonstrates an admirable daring in its technique and willingness to go against the grain, but its payoff isn’t equal to its challenges.

Post-JCVD, we'll never again be able to think of Van Damme as just another kickboxer turned actor. Van Damme is an actor, pure and simple, and proves that he is just as deft and accomplished as the movies in which he appears.

Leisurely unfolding, much like a fat novel, this turn-of-the-century Swedish drama has a warm, enveloping feel. It's flawlessly steeped in early 20th century atmosphere, costumes, and culture, but a gripping page-turner this family saga is not.

The story is much less about its resolution than the experience along the way. At its best, Central Station is a movie of small textures and fleeting moments, the intangibles that pass between people.

"We, the people" have never been big fans of movies about the American Revolutionary War. The Patriot, however, appears to be the movie that will break that historical jinx.

Ultimately, this is a movie that’s more about the Ottoman Lieutenant’s Woman than The Ottoman Lieutenant himself – another example of the film’s epic misdirection.

Household Saints restores one's faith in miracles while teaching us how to invent them ourselves. That, and also teaching us not to worry about getting stigmata on the carpet when Jesus comes to visit.

It would be difficult not to be swept away by the dramatic intensity of Incendies.

Cast aside any preconceived expectations you might have regarding this documentary and remember simply this: Winnebago Man is one of the best films you're going to see all year.

As disturbing as it is well-made, this low-budget indie is a thoroughly original piece of work.

On the whole, A Bronx Tale is an impressive work and it's easy to see why De Niro connected with Palminteri's story.

I have to report that I, personally, just don't get it. I intellectually understand what occurs in the movie; I just can't make the leap into calling it a humanistic treasure about life's big questions. Slow and monotonous, the film moves at a deliberate pace and culminates in a meta-fictional moment that is either infuriatingly trite or enigmatic.

There’s no grand plot outline in American Honey, and at two-and-a-half-hours' running time, the film certainly rambles.

All this is not to say that the Coens' True Grit is an awful film; it's just that these filmmakers have set their own standards for excellence, and True Grit falls short.

There's a comment in here somewhere about leadership and authorship, and it's not that we're laughing too hard to fully comprehend it. In von Trier's world, the laugh is often ON the audience, not WITH the audience.

Jim Jarmusch applies his minimalist style to the margins of Memphis as seen through the experiences of three sets of foreigners. Great casting and occasional moments of grace.

Ingenious in its simplicity.

Overall, the “you are there” footage lends the film a more journalistic than artistic tone, yet the emotional effect is intimate and unforgettably gripping.

This criminal tale excited audiences and landed the kinetic Cagney on the movie map. Now a classic, this is the movie in which Cagney famously crams a grapefruit into Mae Clarke’s face.

There is plenty here to enjoy for beach bums and fans of bikinis and six-pack abs, but others are likely to find themselves hopeless wet blankets.

A challenging concept conveyed here most impressively onscreen.

Crowe has created a genuine love song for all those who've ever felt their lives to have been saved by rock & roll.

Lady Chatterley is the recipient of six César Awards, France's equivalent of the Oscar. Although the film is capable of sustaining our interest throughout, the viewer may find it lacking in some of the transcendence Lady Chatterley's lust is supposed to inspire.

Occasionally, the unevenness of the performances in Star Maps becomes distracting and the dastardliness of the characters' dysfunction impinges the bounds of dramatic believability, yet you will be hard-pressed to find another directorial debut this year that equals the narrative and structural audacity of Star Maps.

What Desert One does accomplish in shining a light on this epic national failure is to celebrate the American can-do spirit and a noble willingness to go down trying.

Langella is terrific in a small but critical role as CBS president William Paley, although the one essential problem with the film is that it never clearly delineates the jobs fulfilled by the cluster of other newsroom employees that are always huddled about.

The film is sure to be of interest to anyone who wants to learn more about the beginnings of the California folk-rock scene. Crosby’s reflections are interesting, if not always illuminating. Crowe asks probing questions, yet the answers Crosby provides don’t dig very deep.

Echoes long after the movie ends.

California Typewriter wanders a bit in its curiosity, but it is hardly a piece of ephemeral nostalgia.

A movie that amply delivers on the epic promise of its title, entertaining, enlightening, and emboldening viewers with its deceptively simple premise and execution.

Although there are shades of "All About Eve" here, the resonances lean more toward the fluid identities of the actresses in Ingmar Bergman’s work or even Assayas’ own "Irma Vep."

Stays remarkably true to a kid's-eye perspective and dormant fears.

Although the villainous parts of this Tarzan are a bit hazy and the animal attraction between Tarzan and Jane a bit chaste, the film, nevertheless, works both for children and the adults.

It is easy to describe what occurs in Le Quattro Volte; less easy, however, to explain it. Calculatedly meditative yet casually metaphysical, Le Quattro Volte (The Four Times in English) is austere, funny, beautiful, and transfixing.

Ultimately, Frost/Nixon may be stuck in time – but, oh, what a time it was.

With great subtlety and knowing humor, Eat Drink Man Woman emerges as one of those unforeseen treats.

Although little is ultimately “solved” or demystified in The Piano Teacher, the movie allows a chaperoned peek into the mind of one of civilization's “discontents.”

As long as underdog sports stories hold a place in the cinematic universe, Eddie the Eagle, despite its shortcomings, will soar into moviegoers’ hearts.

A marvelous achievement that refuses to avert its gaze from the poetry and the insane savagery of the hopeless.

Yes, it's a coming-out film, but it breaks that mold by being thoroughly unpredictable. It's a coming-of-age film, too, and by virtue of of telling the story of a young, black lesbian, Pariah also ventures into novel territory for a motion picture.

Nabokov’s satire is sensationally cast, with Winters and Sellers delivering some of their best work ever.

A smart, funny, and youth-savvy relationship film.

Only Ruben Blades as President Calles and Bruce Greenwood as American Ambassador Dwight Morrow get out of this film with their acting dignity intact.

This multi-Oscar-winner nails its characters, time period, and locale so perfectly that it becomes even more compelling as time goes by. Fueled by two riveting character studies and its exposure of New York City's seamy underbelly, the movie screams “contemporary” and “eternal” at once...It's one of those rare movies that comes together just about perfectly, so check out this theatrical release while you can.

The cast is game and Siemen’s trenchant observations are the mark of a filmmaker with something to say – an increasing rarity in this day and age.

Broken Flowers is as elliptical as the haunting jazz music by Mulatu Astatke that permeates the soundtrack.

Silence is Scorsese’s mode of sharing the Holy Communion. To that, every cinephile will say, “Amen.”

Maybe we won't fully understand Eastwood's film until we see the second part of this project, "Letters From Iwo Jima," his companion film seen from the Japanese viewpoint expected in 2007. On its own, however, Flags of Our Fathers merely flags.

Watching and listening to these two is a charming experience; their conversation has the ring of veracity, and rarely does the viewer's interest stray.

Look at Me marks the character's shift from being the object of attention to the subject of her own dreams.

Virtually flawless performances and directorial execution render The Fighter one of the most thrilling movies of 2010.

The atrocities against children begin to acquire an unwelcome redundancy in their relentlessness and threaten to inure the viewer.

An epic biopic, over three hours in length, Gandhi captures the spirit of the man and his struggles.

Contemplative, though riddled with humor, After Life reveals itself gradually.

Frame's story is told with an intriguingly naked honesty but one that never drags the viewer into emotional prurience. It creates a fascinating portrait.

Ultimately, Buster Scruggs is lesser Coen, despite the movie bearing many of the filmmakers’ trademarks. Both silly and serious, it’s a hodgepodge in spurs, a horse opera with nothing but arias.

Definitely a film that marches to its own drumbeat.

Favreau keeps the picture throttling forward with a carefree charm.