Marjorie Baumgarten

Cross of Iron is a WWII movie seen through the eyes of German protagonists. Incredible montage sequences and another parable about Peckinpah’s embattled position within the film industry can be found within.

A welcome and appropriate treat is the flurry of Bob Dylan tunes that can be heard playing in the background of this northern Minnesota story.

Moments of great suspense are sometimes invested with intrinsic humor, moments of trauma can yield great compassion. Often, these seemingly conflicting tones exist all at once, while the oblique mystery never clearly identifies the correct emotion.

A smart and delightful romantic comedy, yet in the course of creating his new charmer Alexander Payne has sheared off some of the rambunctious edges that made his previous films, About Schmidt, Election, and Citizen Ruth, such marvelous studies in social parody.

A formulaic family melodrama whose craftsmanship and sensitivity to its characters raises it to the level of sublime group portrait.

The story's parallels with the present are sometimes inescapable, as when Saladin's fireballs catapulted at Balian's castle strike an eerie resemblance to the "shock and awe" of the U.S.-led coalition's initial assault on Iraq.

You never really see any of it coming, which is what makes the film such a marvel – and so difficult to discuss.

It’s a query with no answers, a period piece about the present. It’s idiosyncratic, actively noncommercial, and doesn’t follow the rules – like playing a game of chess on a board with no squares.

So fascinating is Brother's Keeper that you almost don't quarrel with things like the biased portraits of the prosecuting team and the Deliverance-like banjo-shuffling soundtrack. Brother's Keeper intrigue factor is enormously high and, it could almost be said, that this movie is good enough to be fiction.

Although it is achingly sad, Rabbit Hole is not maudlin or depressing.

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.