Marjorie Baumgarten

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.