Matt Zoller Seitz

A very funny and observant movie, albeit squirm-inducing, with endlessly quotable dialogue.

Private Property is a terrific example of the spell that a confident film can weave by placing a handful of troubled characters in a confined location, and in the end it does feel like as much of a tragedy as a potboiler.

A solid hangout movie as well as a band-of-buddies film — genres that tend to revolve around young men. It's also a movie that deliberately blurs the line between documentary and fiction: the main characters are all real New York skaters who are playing characters who are very close to themselves in real life.

India's Daughter is a sorrowful and angry movie, yet measured. It seems determined to see a bigger picture without letting one victim's story get lost in the canvas.

There are multiple knockout supporting performances, and the film has a gift for giving you just enough of the supporting characters to fill them out in your imagination whenever Lourenço leaves their presence.

Paddington in Peru is pleasurable mainly for its just-hanging-out-with-friends vibe, which it wears with quiet grace.

If you treat Tomorrowland mainly as an immense cinematic theme park that unveils a new "ride" every few minutes—just as Bird's last feature, "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol" was mainly a series of action scenes—its weaker aspects won't be deal-breakers.

There's something refreshing, at times remarkable, about the sureness of the acting, and the filmmaker's touch.

This movie will be of particular interest to students who want a lively, thoughtful presentation of basic historical subjects but aren't going to get it in classrooms where the curriculum is approved by people who are mainly concerned with avoiding discomfort and preserving the status quo.

Our Nixon seems to be more interested in evoking emotional than intellectual responses.

In the Earth is a film made for midnight showings. It's ominous, brutal, pretentious, and often stirring. Even though some sections feel rushed and it falls apart at the end, every part of it is memorable.

What it definitely isn't is a biography of David Foster Wallace, much less a celebration of his work and worldview.

Hunter Gatherer doesn't look or feel like many movies being made right now.

It's all over the place, and if there was a way to unify all of its disparate elements, the filmmaker never quite figured it out. You just have to agree that it's all of a piece and accept it isn't going to settle into any one mode for very long.

Ford's voice — always deep, lowered an octave by age and one more by William's longing — is even more powerful. This is Ford's best performance since "The Fugitive," maybe since "Witness."

This is a likable, funny diversion, and sometimes more than that.

It can't quite seem to get out of its own way. It is intelligent and sensitive and assembled with a great care, and worth watching just for its images of the jungle.

The Luckiest Man in America is good follow-up viewing for “Quiz Show,” a drama about the 1950s quiz show scandals that prompted congressional investigations and led to reforms in the television industry. It’s also an example of how to make a low-budget movie that immerses you in a long-gone world and the minds of people who lived in it, while maintaining a tight geographical focus on a small number of characters.

Despite its missteps, this is Baker's best-directed film, judged purely in terms of how economically he sets up and pays off each mile marker in the story, often getting in and out of a scene with two or three elegantly choreographed but unpretentious shots.

Gabriel isn't a perfect movie, but it's a great reminder of what movies can do, and used to do often, until American movies decided to concentrate mainly on spectacle and franchise building and leave characterization to TV.

It's often said that when you're presented with conflicting accounts of an event, the one that seems most plausible is probably correct. The movie seems to align itself with that sentiment.

The film is high-strung, nervous and slightly chilly in the New York scenes, but once the action shifts to the beaches of Venice, it slows down considerably, and fittingly.

It takes prodigious comic gifts to make a loathsome, pathetic character so mesmerizing that you enjoy watching him dig himself into a hole for 90-plus minutes. Jim Cummings, the star, editor, co-writer, and co-director of The Beta Test, has those gifts.

It seems more likely that this is a film about discoveries rather than statements, with the camera following people and then abandoning them to seek insight elsewhere, by looking into things rather than merely looking at them.

Much of the film's appeal lies in watching the two lead actors enact subtle, honest moments of observed behavior.

This documentary does a fine job of capturing what made her special.

There is, nevertheless, something to be said for a documentary that tries to do something different and perhaps impossible, even if it doesn't quite get there. And in the end, any flaws or missed opportunities are subsumed by the movie's sincerity and wealth of insight.

Momoa is the best reason to see the movie. He's as alpha-cool, even jerk-ish, as a "maverick" action star can be while also making you believe his character is fundamentally decent and knows when he's gone too far and sincerely feels bad about it. And he's got range.

It's possible to filter out the irritating aspects and enjoy the movie as a raucous, often brilliantly assembled spectacle. But we shouldn't have to. The fact that we do makes an otherwise hugely impressive sequel feel small-minded.

The most surprising thing about director/writer/star Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn is how drastically it departs from its source.

As its subtly confident title suggests, it carries itself as if nobody had ever made a Transformers movie before. It’s so earnest, bringing notes of freshness and innocence to a prequel that, by all rights, shouldn’t have had any.

While far from being a classic, “The Day the Earth Blew Up” is a charming and often invigorating reimagining of key Looney Tunes characters (Daffy Duck and Porky Pig), with a look and sound that links it to past versions without feeling indebted to them.

François Ozon's "Peter von Kant" is an odd, chilly film, even by this director's standards.

It's all so rich—and so richly executed by Ellis, a total filmmaker—that one wishes it added up to more than a series of smart variations on a certain type of film.

The monsters are brilliantly designed and skillfully animated (except for a few shots where Kong looks a tad cartoony), and the army of visual and sound effects artists convince you that that these CGI titans live and breathe and weigh hundreds of tons.

The goofier and more random the movie is, the better it is, and it certainly gets goofier and more random as it goes.

It's a work of fertile imagination that takes every step confidently, even if it isn't certain where it will lead.

The twenty-something drama Waiting for the Light to Change is an impressive debut from director-cowriter Linh Tran. Set in a Michigan lake house during winter, it's a minimalist youth drama with lakefront atmosphere, a controlled, at times minimalist directorial style, and a cast that approaches the material with disarming naturalism.

Annie is light on its feet, frothy, and always insistently, at times provocatively kind, determined to melt grumpy hearts like marshmallows.

A quasi-romantic variant of “After Hours” that perhaps stretches itself a little too far, but it is always enjoyable and sometimes quite moving.

Once in a while you encounter a piece that seems like a premeditated farewell — a conscious summing-up of the life and work — whether or not it was intended that way. Varda by Agnès, a combination autobiography and career survey overseen by the filmmaker, is that kind of movie.

Life After is a powerful movie that examines the political and social structures that surround and control people with disabilities, and comes to a conclusion that will spark many arguments.

Last Stop in Yuma County is the kind of movie where you root for the worst to happen, because every escalation of misfortune makes things more entertaining.

Stanfield is a true movie star, radiating decency even as the character's shell hardens.

What elevates it and makes it special is the attention it pays to local geography and atmosphere, the mundane aspects of working-class Northeastern U.S. life, and the culturally super-specific types of people you'll find in that environment

Camp X-Ray has cinematic and moral intelligence.

While it offers some gripping and/or darkly beautiful images, it's ultimately more about ideas than spectacle, proving (like every previous film by this team) that you don't need a gigantic amount of money to create an engrossing work of science fiction and/or fantasy.

Had The Founder focused solely on Kroc’s relationship with the McDonald brothers, it might have been one of the great intimate, sour character studies of recent times.

Like its hero, Stand Clear of the Closing Doors goes with the flow and has a chaotic and thrilling time but doesn't know where to go or what to do with itself.

What makes “The Wrecking Crew” worth seeing is what the cast and filmmakers do with the material. Simply put, this movie is better than its synopsis suggests, though not good enough to entirely overcome the familiarity of the component parts and the alternately jokey and sentimental tone (which is harder to pull off than studio executives seem to think).

Altogether, it’s a solid film of kind that used to be more common: an earnest, unpretentious Oscar Movie that wants to be seen by everyone, and consequently doesn’t try to be too complex or arty.

This is subtly acted by both leads, especially when the characters fall silent and you see shades of doubt and sadness flicker across their faces.

For all the psychological realism of Carrie and Margaret's relationship, however, this remake has a comic book feeling.

The film's solid grounding in friendship and comic teamwork carries the day. Unpregnant becomes more affecting as it goes along thanks to the sincere, committed, and mostly unaffected lead performances by Richardson and Ferreira.

The action set-pieces are thrilling and intentionally hilarious, though the digital effects and compositing vary in quality.

Jane Giles and Ali Catterall's documentary "Scala!!!" is about a legendary, notorious, hugely influential and long-gone London theater. But it'll appeal to anyone whose formative moviegoing years were defined by eccentric, usually urban or college-town cinemas that programmed whatever the folks who ran the place found interesting and switched lineups every day or two.

As it turns out, this movie has a lot of the virtues of a Sorkin joint, in particular a gift for snappy patter and keen insight into the dynamics of relationships between smart, accomplished, ambitious people. However, it also has some of the flaws, chiefly an overconfidence in its ability to articulate the big ideas and timeless themes that are believed to be hallmarks of Important Drama.

Bill Nighy is a fun, uninhibited actor, but there's an abashed, melancholy quality to him that hasn't been fully explored until Living, a drama about a senior citizen reckoning with his life.

The Last Thing Mary Saw is so effective as a vehicle for performances, atmosphere, and period detail, and so convincing an examination of suffering under the boot-heel of a cult, that one may wish that it added up to more.

Close is aces when it's watching its star move through the world, silently checking everyone and everything out, hiding her mental math until it's time to kill some dudes. The action is frenzied but comprehensible, brutal but not wantonly sadistic.

This is a close-but-no-cigar movie, but so enjoyable for the most part, and so modest in its aims, that its disappointments aren’t devastating. I’d watch the first 90 minutes again anytime.

Whenever Spontaneous starts to run out of imaginative juice, it turns a tonal corner and either puts a smile on your face or wipes it off.

The film's plot is articulated cleanly, if a bit too plainly at times, but as is so often the case in Sayles' movies, that's not where the director's interest lies. Go for Sisters lacks the epic quilt qualities of such sprawling Sayles pictures as "Lone Star" or "City of Hope," but this seems more a matter of intent than evidence of any sort of failure of vision.

All in all, it’s heartening to hear a major figure in American political history talking about the future as if it might actually happen.

In its lumpy-porridge way, this film makes a better case than any other Marvel picture for the notion that quarter-billion-dollar-budgeted, CGI-festooned slabs of multimedia synergy can be art, too, provided they're made by an artist with a vision, and said artist appears to be in control of at least part of the production.

The physical or visceral aspects of the movie might sink into your brain and change how you look at these creatures. It had that effect on me.

If Zootopia were a bit vaguer, or perhaps dumber and less pleased with itself, it might have been a classic, albeit of a very different, less reputable sort. As-is, it's a goodhearted, handsomely executed film that doesn't add up in the way it wants to.

The interviews are the best part of the film, which lacks the sleek, focused, concentrated quality of the best Merchant Ivory movies but succeeds on its own terms as sort of a “hangout” movie, non-fiction division.

Black Sea looks so gorgeous and moves with such muscular grace that you might forget, or never imagine, that it's a relatively small action movie.

The climax of “Last Rites” is as tense and unsettling as you want to be, but it’s also warm and inspiring, because unlike a lot of movies that sell the idea of families being stronger when they all work together, this one totally believes in it and sells it with all the skill and emotion it can muster.

The goofy and charming Klaus probably plays better if you don't know going in that it's a Santa Claus origin story.

All in all, this is a thoughtful, remarkable piece of nonfiction, working in an accessible commercial vein but doing its best not to take the easy way into any aspect of Reeve’s story.

Good Night Oppy may be especially resonant for younger viewers who are interested in science but might not yet realize that there's more to it than crunching numbers and drawing charts.

Jem and the Holograms is one of the weirdest big screen adaptations of a cheap TV cartoon that I've seen. That's praise.

It’s a smart, mostly light movie that will teach viewers a lot about processes they might not otherwise think about. You come away from the movie seeing the world in finer shades than when you went in.

The star rating at the top would be two-and-a-half if I were only judging what's on the screen. The other half-star is for audacity.

The movie is a mess, but it's a rich mess. It has weight. It matters.

Without giving too much away, suffice to say that there's a reason why human beings have traditionally described doing work on one's own psyche as wrestling with demons.

Speak No Evil is a throwback to the 1980s-’90s era of medium-budget thrillers like “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle,” “Unlawful Entry,” and “Fatal Attraction,” in which representatives of supposedly respectable bourgeoisie society were menaced by dangerous outsiders who smelled weakness in them and/or wanted to punish them for their sins, perceived or real.

It's a real shame that "The Beekeeper" isn't the righteous trash masterpiece that it keeps threatening to turn into. There's a great pop hit in here somewhere—probably one that focused exclusively on Adam and the awful people he's going after. But the film is scattered and annoyingly glib at times.

As the pandemic is still raging at this moment, it's obviously too early to tell whether "Together" is one for the ages or another one from that time. It's alternately brilliant and amateurish—a four-star acting masterclass at its best and a two-star ripped-from-the-headlines botch at its worst. Split the difference and you'll arrive at something like a holistic consideration.

Stiller has become a deeper actor with age, and he's perfect here: you know he has a good soul, because this is a comedy, and not a dark one, but he keeps you guessing.

The entire movie feels like something out of a dream, probably one that struggles to work through something real that keeps getting hijacked and twisted by the mischievous unconscious.

It’s simultaneously a parody of American middle-class notions of contentment yet at the same time a disarmingly sweet and sincere endorsement of it.

As a personality portrait, it’s superb. The inherent instability of the filmmakers’ approach fuses with the manipulative charm and psychic damage of their subject.

It doesn't go quite far enough into melodrama to fuse all of its different pieces together into a satisfying whole but it's an engrossing film all the same: intelligent, sincere and unabashedly goodhearted.

It glides along the surfaces of its characters and its world and rarely digs as deep as one might like. But the experience is intense, and the surfaces are beautiful.

As written by Sean Baker and Chris Bergoch and directed by Baker, it's assured and immensely likable, and truly independent in story and style.

Calling Space Station 76 a spoof of 1970s science fiction doesn't do the trick. It's quiet, slow movie that's often funny, sometimes sad, and occasionally uncomfortable.

It’s raw and often powerful—less of a carefully shaped drama than the equivalent of a series of boxes filled with explosive material being slung about.

This is not the kind of film you put on during a holiday when you want something that the extended family can relax and enjoy. This is bitter, sharp stuff, verging on the Paul Schrader film Affliction but without the murder plot.

As an evocation of on-the-ground political reality, The Final Year is a a solid and often entertaining work in much the same wheelhouse as the durable political documentary "The War Room."

This is an unusually intelligent and purposeful movie that doesn't say much, but is full of feeling.

Lively is superb here, giving one of those hyper-focused, action-lead performances that's as much an athletic feat as an aesthetic one.

It's fragmented by nature—a work of impressionistic moments in which intellectual and philosophical ideas are considered, and powerful emotions summoned and then allowed to dissipate.

Sembene! is most illuminating when it is simply showing us clips from the director's features and behind-the-scenes or "making of" footage, with very little in the way of verbal setup, and then letting them play out.

"Cars" and its various derivatives aside, Pixar has never released a flat-out bad film. And this is a good one: pleasant and clever, with a generous heart, committed voice acting, and some of the kookiest images in Pixar history.

If Black & Blues returns to the same melody a few too many times, it doesn't diminish the overall achievement, which feels free in a way that these sorts of films rarely do.