Marjorie Baumgarten

Joy Ride slides comfortably into the tradition of hard-R road-trip movies while also demonstrating that American culture still has many areas to open up in terms of representation.

Take Shelter is a deeply unsettling movie. Writer/director Jeff Nichols (an Austin resident and director of the award-winning 2007 feature "Shotgun Stories") doles out information as strategically as a government official.

Like his previous feature, "Eagle vs Shark," Taika Waititi's Boy tells a mere wisp of a story, yet both films are filled with compelling characters, situational color, knowing observations about youthful behavior, and quirky bits of oddball and fantastical humor.

Rises above the usual underdog sports cliches to become something quite affecting and distinctive.

Thunder Road has received oodles of festival awards, including the Grand Jury Award at SXSW. The film is a singular work. Even though it doesn’t always live up to the promise of its opening sequence, Thunder Road is an exhilarating ride.

Sicario is at its best when its borderlines are fluid and indistinct.

Succeeds as a moody, evocative, and pleasing film, one that underscores its indie roots in sentiment as well as style

It's a giddy blend of horror and comedy.

Dunye's film is smart, sexy (the interracial lesbian lovemaking scene prompted an infamous little ruckus over at the NEA a while back), funny, historically aware, and stunningly contemporary.

The movie's tone concurrently embraces melodramatics and wry humor, a twisted suburban Oedipal knot seen through a sardonic, yet deeply involved, eye.

You simply want the story to go on and on. Let's hope that Holofcener's movies do: Her peregrinations through the lives of contemporary women know few screen equals.

Complicity is the offense under investigation in The Assistant, the first fiction film of the #MeToo era that indicts the system along with its colluders, willing and unwilling.

John Wick: Chapter 2 also has a very good humor about itself.

Though the history and the palace intrigue are not at all difficult for Westerners to grasp, a tighter running time would probably help this epic reach more eyes in America, where it has received the biggest release ever for a Bollywood

In many ways, Not One Less resembles the socialist-realist dramas of the early Communist regimes.

This Japanese film by that country’s preeminent surveyor of contemporary familial relationships explores humanity’s ambivalence regarding the matter.

The subtlety and restraint in the way Reichardt links the vignettes is also commendable. It’s as if she’s reminding us that we’re all part of the grander scheme of things but at the same time disconnected from one another.

Mixing faded rock glory with Nazi-hunting and American road-tripping creates an odd hybrid that is completely transfixing, although some viewers are likely to find this film an awkward mishmash. The drama, however, is consistently offset by comic underpinnings, which are well-played by the actors and seamlessly presented by Sorrentino.

If nothing else, the performances of Connery and Hepburn are welcome delights.

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.

Endless Poetry is an oblique road map as much as it is a guiding aphorism. It is also a pretty decent summary of what this film has to offer.

There is no surprise or justice or sense to the whole thing. Just sadness. And a sense of all the lonely people and where they all come from.

This comic Disney Western is at its best when Don Knotts and Tim Conway are onscreen as the bumbling bandits who try to steal from a bunch of orphans. Few people remember anything about this movie apart from the hilarity generated by this scene-stealing duo.

Gleeson is triumphant in this portrait of a complex man who is concurrently sensitive, boorish, brilliant, singular, and unforgettable.

Yet, like it or not, the MPAA ratings is a system in which we all participate – which makes this film important to see if anything is ever going to change.

The film is a sharp and keenly etched study of a man who would be the sidekick to kings.

Chi-Raq constantly shifts tones from comedy to drama and back again, while most of its dialogue is delivered in rhyming couplets. The transitions can sometimes be bumpy, but never when Samuel L. Jackson pops up as nattily dressed and off-color one-man Greek chorus.

It's definitely quite the spectacle as directed by the modern-day king of epics, David Lean. The movie is something that should be experienced by everyone at least once in a lifetime.

Smith gives the appearance of wanting to provoke, but along with his smuttiness, he wears his heart on his sleeve.

The film is also comic, mysterious, and structurally ambitious, while offering numerous points of entry and perspective.

Despite its reliance on some overworked symbolism, the screenplay by David Tranter and Steven McGregor is smart. However, the intercut flash-forwards and flashbacks do little to aid our understanding or appreciation of the story, and seem like artistic frippery.

Celebrate Father's Day in grand movie style.

Invades theatres with its fangs bared for action. It's bloody hell and we love every minute.

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

You get the sense that this elegant, tough-guy jazz caper is a movie Clint Eastwood might have been proud to make.

More than any other filmmaker making movies about the new “kids” generation, it seems to me that Araki -- with both Doom and Totally F***ked Up -- has his finger tuned most acutely to the human pulse and not just the lens shutter.

All the players deliver performances that kill.

One of Linklater’s greatest filmmaking instincts involves his casting decisions. Newcomer Emma Nelson is a real find as Bernadette’s daughter. Although Blanchett’s performance seems a bit mannered and slightly reminiscent of her Oscar-winning performance in "Blue Jasmine," these are hardly flaws when the outcome is so riveting. Wiig beautifully toes a difficult line between drama and comedy. It’s a line similar to the one etched by this film: an emotional crisis mixed with laughs.

Although Eska’s story is fairly simple (and created prior to "12 Years a Slave"" and "Django Unchained," which made slavery-era films part of our contemporary dialogue), it’s an emotionally rich tale.

Filmed primarily in desaturated colors and oblique shadows, the look of J. Edgar is spot-on. The time frame jumps around, spanning decades in a single leap, but it doesn't strain the structure. Eastwood and DiCaprio have delivered a nuanced story about a man, a mythos, and an institution that relies on the facts rather than the legend.

Instead of entering the jungle to find the heart of darkness, Stiller (the director, co-star, and co-writer of Tropic Thunder) goes in to take aim at the Achilles heel of Hollywood: its utter pomposity and self-importance.

Its doomed portrait of guileless dreamers may be found lacking in plot activity and empathetic characters. But for anyone interested in a movie that wipes clean the grungy patina of self-delusionment, Jackpot hits solid pay dirt.

An emotional triumph.

On the Rocks is light-hearted and, ultimately, more a story about a girl and her father. The good and the bad of that parental legacy and the task of disentangling from it forms the subtext of On the Rocks.

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.

The kind of quiet, effective film that burrows under the viewer's skin and takes root before you've had a chance to realize that it's permeated your constitutional makeup.

Pamela Gray's script and the way these actors bring the characters to life are the film's real treasures.

Since so many of De Palma’s films have become part and parcel with the American cultural consciousness of the last 50 years, I can’t imagine this filmmaker’s insights not providing every viewer with some memorable takeaways.

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.

Until things devolve into a stormy conclusion, Dheepan is a sharply observed drama about identity and separation, strangeness and commonalities, and making do while hoping for something better.

A compendium of really neat stuff and nifty sequences, and it will just have to do until Vol. 3 or reunification comes along.

The film is wickedly hilarious but more in a droll and knowing kind of sense than a har-de-har-har manner.

The poverty that is at the heart of the situation is in prominent relief, yet there is a happiness about their lives that defies sheer gloss. Here is a brother and sister who truly love each other and are bonded by their complicity.

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

Seemingly taking its cue from Belfort’s shenanigans, the film is completely without modulation. It starts with all the knobs cranked up to 11 and remains that way for the next three hours. While what’s onscreen is never uninteresting, its unrelentingness is exhausting.

While Hidden Figures is likable and illuminating, it is, nevertheless, routine and predictable.

With its period-perfect recall of Seventies fashion and cocaine consumption, Chuck’s rise-and-fall story bears greater resemblance to "Goodfellas" than "Rocky" or "Raging Bull."

Mehta and her cameraman Giles Nuttgens capture the area's rich interplay of light and color, land and water, and riches and poverty.

Unlike any coming-of-age movie you've seen before. Equal parts sweet and perverse, this Scottish film is unpredictable in places where it might be twee, and subversively fanciful in others where it might be punishing.

As romantic comedies go, Danish helmer Susanne Bier’s follow-up to her Oscar-winning "In a Better World," percolates more than it froths – but that’s a good thing.

This is the main movie that built the house of Troma, Lloyd Kaufman's production company devoted to low-budget camp. The Toxic Avenger tells the humorous story of a geeky weakling who is turned into a superhero when he is slimed by some toxic waste.

It's a winning formula, and when done right like it is here, it transcends the clichés and moves audiences.

What's most memorable about Wilde is Fry's near-perfect encapsulation of the artist. It's a performance equal to the legend it portrays.

Still, for a film that is so much about the healing power of words expressed and feeling brought into the light of day, Monsieur is strangely reticent.

Before lapsing into the land of the insipid,... John Hughes actually made a few movies that shined some light on the trials of modern adolescence. The Breakfast Club is one of them.

Good performances elevate the material.

Williams' shape-shifting, gag-spouting, celebrity-impersonating Genie is truly a hurricane in a bottle. His manic energy and hip humor are so exhilarating that the rest of the movie risks grinding to a halt whenever he's not onscreen.

DreamWorks has gathered for the movie and for these extracurricular projects an amazing collection of voice talent that complements the film's stunning technical achievements.

August: Osage County is not for the timid or those who prefer family reunions without histrionics. This film is like a long day’s journey into another damn day.

Goodbye to Language is the kind of cinematic essay that Godard has come to specialize in; it’s really a montage of thoughts, aphorisms, and images, and not a story, although there are some consistent characters (often naked – and how better to hold our interest in their philosophical queries?) and one dog.

Favreau keeps the picture throttling forward with a carefree charm.

No background material is going to help the viewer who isn't already aware of why a Fugees reunion is such a cool thing to witness, but it's impossible not to get caught up in this party's good vibe.

Chef is filled to the brim with the kind of heart and vivacity that makes up for the film’s familiar storyline.

The Cove exposes the dark secrets that underpin the world’s dolphin mania, whether it’s our enjoyment of the animals performing circus tricks in aquariums, the swimming-with-dolphins industry, or the government recruitment of the sea mammals’ intelligence, communication, and sonar abilities for military applications.

The film provides a window into the conversations and debates that occurred among soldiers on military bases and while in country, opinions shaped and altered by first-hand experiences and knowledge.

The narrative and its attendant lessons about how one rotten ape and/or human can spoil the bunch are engaging, although I found myself drifting during the battle sequences.

With a concluding chase/shoot-out episode that might even make Hitchcock jealous, Carlito's Way is a dandy piece of entertainment. If the story needs a bit more depth and reason, who really cares? There's hardly time to notice.

A work that shellacs itself into your consciousness.

This beautifully acted and gradually revealed drama is a quiet discovery. Not one to blare its own horn, Middle of Nowhere is the kind of little indie film that gives little indie films a good name.

If Wadjda, this Muslim girl, calls up film memories of adolescent Marjane Satrapi in "Persepolis", whose Western-loving lifestyle is uprooted by Iran’s Islamic Revolution, or the young women in Jafar Panahi’s "Offside," who countermand the rules that forbid them from entering stadiums to watch men’s soccer matches, you wouldn’t be far off the mark.

As much as Bardem is an expressive instrument for parlaying Iñárritu's somber worldview, so too is cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, whose stunning compositions find the poetry amid the sorrow.

Tsai’s drama is something like a mixture of Robert Bresson and R.W. Fassbinder, as God’s bedraggled souls struggle with the desires of the damned, and nobody wants to go into that good night alone.

As usual, Oscar-winner Frances McDormand delivers a rich, physically detailed performance that leaves as much under the surface as above it.

The story is bizarre, unique, and thoroughly unpredictable, while its images resemble some kind of bastard offspring of the linear realism of George Grosz and the fantastic foreboding of Edward Gorey.

The movie will not be for all tastes. Its seedy lifestyles, nonjudgmental attitudes, nonlinear narrative, and central character whose problem is his lack of emotions is definitely nonstandard fare.

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.”

God Loves Uganda and recent events make it seem like the time is right for a 21st century raid on Entebbe.

Even when The Tree of Life does not achieve the heights for which it aims, it soars boldly and fearlessly.

If, at times, Shine's luster reveals more elbow grease than internal radiance, the movie is still a moving tribute to the human capacity to overcome all odds.

The film's closing may be less than conclusive, yet The Son's Room must be admired, at least, for its unsentimentality.

Most striking is Macdonald's deft use of music and Marley's lyrics (many of them obscure) to illustrate the film's points. So thoughtful is this counterpoint that it almost makes up for Macdonald never showing any one song in a complete performance.

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

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.

The Good Dinosaur may not be as revolutionary as 1914’s “Gertie the Dinosaur,” but as Jurassic World already demonstrated this year, we never tire of these prehistoric critters.

Despite the buildup of these horror expectations, there is no predicting how deliciously enjoyable it is to witness the macabre dance performed by Moretz and Huppert, two of the best actresses working in today’s movies. They play their game of cat and mouse with claws out; by the end of the berserko film, their characters are practically swinging from the rafters. Everyone appears to be having a grand time in Greta, and it would be crass for us as viewers to not respond similarly.

The film's politically correct repudiation of the familiar black-and-white characterizations of the white and red man is ultimately undermined, however, when the pendulum swings too far in the other direction.

Despite its compelling nature, Greenaway’s film is not always an easy one to sit through.

Cheech & Chong's first movie is still their best. The duo wrote the genial script about the never-ending search for great pot, and a good supporting cast co-stars.