Marjorie Baumgarten

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.

Perception is key and Control Room should be required viewing for anyone within reach of a TV signal.

If only the movie that encases this character were as sharp and distinctive as Harriet.

The film is hypnotic, which lends it an addictive sensibility that complements the need Adam and Eve have for their bloody fixes.

Ju Dou is a juicy and stylish potboiler that keeps the pilots turned on full blast.

Although Selma is dramatically uneven overall, the film is a commendable historical drama that sidesteps the pitfalls of adulatory biopics and great-man approaches to encapsulating bygone events.

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.

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.

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.

The first-time feature director, co-writer, and star of Caramel, Labaki, can be forgiven the commonness of her dramatic setting because of the gracefulness of her storytelling and the strength of her vision.

As far as I'm concerned, the fact that Bergman is finally getting around to asking himself questions he now realizes he should have asked long ago is not sufficient enough premise for a movie. The answers may be news to Bergman, but the rest of us might just want to opt for divorce.

Most important, Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary makes us wonder, in a very human sense, about the various blinders we all adopt to make our peace with life.

Life of Pi, ironically, soars when it confines itself to land and sea; when it grasps for the celestial, the film goes beyond its reach.

That is really the reason to see this movie: the lovely performances of Macdonald and Khan.

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.

It's all pretty involving and sweetly ingratiating in a Charlotte's Web-by kind of way.

Fill the Void is almost more like an ethnographic film than a fictional narrative in regard to our rare observational perspective. Yet Shira also shares attitudes in common with Jane Austen heroines, whose worlds are dominated by their marital prospects and domestic matters.

As long as Sing Street stays on this sweet, sentimental path, the film is an agreeable toe-tapper. Scratch the surface too deeply and you’ll find some historical inconsistencies, idealized events, and a depressing environment roiling in Conor’s familial home and nation.

Lodge Kerrigan is one of the great, though largely unheralded, filmmakers of our time, and with Keane, his third feature, he finally shows himself to be in full command of his uncompromising talent.

Visually inventive cartoon is complemented by clever, whimsical narration and 11 songs from the Beatles.

Its warm humor and love for its characters ultimately wins us over to its side.