Mark Olsen

Baumbach and Clooney have crafted a character who comes to realize his mistakes, many of which simply can’t be undone. Jay Kelly, the movie star, may be in the process of figuring himself out, but “Jay Kelly” the movie arrives as a fully-formed knockout.

Told with an unassuming, gentle simplicity that grows into an accumulating emotional power, the film manages to feel very small and specific while also vast and expansive.

Ruizpalacios creates a visual style that continues to reinvent itself right up to the end, crafting an unpredictable feeling that matches the volatile plotting.

Hit Man makes for an undeniable good time. Sometimes all you really need is a couple of impossibly attractive people enjoying each other’s company, captured by a filmmaker who knows when to stay out of their way. And if that’s not a movie, well, then, I don’t know what is.

The film is pleasantly reminiscent of ’90s neo-noirs in both style and storytelling, but with a narrative fearlessness and visual imagination that makes it totally fresh.

A comedy about learning to live with grief, Between the Temples has a lot going on in its head and heart.

Bayona mixes a sense of survivalist adventure with an otherworldly spirituality — the idea that they were somehow touched by something bigger, but also that the answers to what they needed were there with them all along.

More discursive than comprehensive, the film does seem to capture Thomas’ fierce, swashbuckling spirit.

Though the film is largely driven by Cera’s knowing, unsparing performance, both Gross and Lillis are also given plenty of room to develop nuance.

The film is made with a level of craft and simple competence that has become shockingly rare. A genuine movie star is allowed to radiate charisma and charm, and all the performances have character nuance and emotional depth.

Part horror film, part coming-of-age tale, part romance, the adaptation of Camille DeAngelis’ young adult novel Bones and All is a small marvel, unsettling and heartbreaking in equal measure.

The film is a compelling concept that doesn’t thread the needle of its competing impulses quite as gracefully as it might have, but driven by the imminently watchable Newton and Pine, it makes for the kind of adult-oriented storytelling one wishes there was more of these days.

In part because of the depth of Seydoux’s performance, the film becomes less an allegory of a nation and more a gripping character study, a portrait of a mask of personal and professional regard slowly slipping away.

The misadventures of the eccentrically wealthy may not exactly fit the mood right now, but the new French Exit is so genuine in its mix of arch and earnest, idiosyncrasy and earthiness that it creates a space all for itself.

The most important thing is that it is genuinely great, a singular and moving glimpse of loneliness, community and finding the strength to face another day.

The camera stays close to Dafoe for nearly every moment of the movie and he brings a compelling vibrancy to the screen. He somehow conveys both the tranquility of Tommaso’s current life and all that simmers just under the surface.

Though it is only now receiving a U.S. release, it says something about the ever-prolific filmmaker’s consistency and extremely high level of proficiency that the film still seems fresh and enchanting, by turns delicate, romantic, mysterious, witty and crushing.

Amiably paced with comfortable, lived-in performances, Arkansas isn’t so much a crime drama or dark comedy as a depiction of a world in which illegal activities and their aftermath are simply part of a way of life.

With The Infiltrators there is an audacity, an unrestrained boldness, to both the events depicted onscreen and the way in which they are portrayed in the movie itself.

An ambitious combination of suspense thriller and brooding treatise on existential themes, The Quarry feels like a throwback to the era of late-night cable movies, when art, ambition and genre pulp would often collide.

Always Be My Maybe is pleasant without being particularly powerful, appealing if not exactly transformative.

And so while Gilliam has undoubtedly made better films and certainly greater films than The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, there is something about the ridiculous effort and mixed results that make this arguably the most Gilliam-esque. For anyone struggling with whether to give up, concerned that the result will not match the effort, Gilliam seems to be planting a flag — or more accurately charging a windmill — to say the effort is the reward.

It’s not difficult to decipher where McMurray and DeMonaco’s true allegiances are, but by delivering the story within the framework of genre cinema at its most trashy and garish, the filmmakers convey any message as a bit of rough pleasure amid the kicks and thrills of a movie.

With his latest work, Bong has created a heroine for our times, an indelible movie creature, a story that balances heart and head and a movie that engages with the boundaries of technology both on-screen and off.

Free Fire is a savagely funny and viciously precise distillation of one of the pair’s favorite themes: Men are idiots.

The film's maximalist storytelling, both expansive and precise, snatching specific emotions from its torrid swirl, is best exemplified by the fact that the title card doesn't appear until an hour in.

The film is not quite smart enough to overcome the clichés and stereotypes it acknowledges but can’t entirely dismantle. At the same time, it often isn’t quite outrageous enough, as if it should be more willing to be outright offensive.

For a project that is a showcase for his talents as both actor and director, Bateman never gets too showy on either front, keeping the emotions of the film at something of a restrained simmer.