Matt Zoller Seitz

This is a drama that prizes journalistic or documentary values, as well as the "epic naturalism" of films by directors like Terrence Malick and Chloe Zhao in which the camera might be as interested in flowing water, a sunset, a flock of birds, or a line of silhouetted horses as in whatever the characters are doing or saying.

The movie is put together with the no-fuss confidence of Soderbergh's best entertainments, staging comedic banter and suspense sequences with equal assurance, even playing sly perception games with the audience by making you wonder how smart or dumb the characters (and the movie) actually are.

This is a movie about people whose successes and failures originate in the same places: a tragedy shot and edited like an action comedy.

This is one of the best surprises of a still-young movie year: a comedy that takes nothing seriously except fun.

This is a fun movie if you love the band, and maybe even if you’ve never heard of them before. The interviews are thought-provoking, funny, and moving; the filmmaking is superb, and the music kicks ass.

Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street is abashed and shameless, exciting and exhausting, disgusting and illuminating; it's one of the most entertaining films ever made about loathsome men.

Guy Ritchie‘s In the Grey offers what fans expect from the director: relentless but nimble editing; breathtaking locations (Spain, Saudi Arabia, the Canary Islands); clothes, shoes, and hair to die for; the self-mocking machismo and playful insults of male bonding; and a character’s verbal summary of a plan intercut with shots of the actions being performed.

It's torment in cinematic form, made comprehensible and engrossing by its focus on a singular experience, and the performance that anchors it.

I can't imagine anyone who liked the show not enjoying this film, even though the first half is stronger than the second, which spirals into a frenzy of double- and triple-crossing that's less engaging than watching the characters reconnect, awkwardly but with feeling.

I don't think Kimberly Levin's debut feature Runoff entirely works as a story or a statement. But as an experience, it's amazing — so unlike most other recent American independent films in its style and mood.

Kourosh Ahari's The Night, about a couple confronting their personal demons in a haunted hotel, is a knockout debut feature—so assured that it stands on its own as a filmmaking achievement apart from its historical significance, which is considerable.

Let It Be Morning is a quiet film that builds to a powerful ending.

Life itself, that loaded two-word phrase, is what Roger really wrote about when he wrote about movies.

I’m not convinced that “Friendship” is the corrosive comic masterpiece that early festival raves primed us for. But it’s impressive, not just for the leaps it makes but the assurance it displays.

You almost never get to see material of this sort play out at length in a film set in the American West.

It pays attention to issues of racial, religious and gender discrimination without wavering from its main objective: giving us an entertaining film about a couple of guys who are in way over their heads.

Interstellar is still an impressive, at times astonishing movie that overwhelmed me to the point where my usual objections to Nolan's work melted away.

The premise is innately powerful and offers a lot of room to bring the world beyond the arena into the arena, expanding the horizon of the sports picture. There isn’t anyone anywhere who can’t relate to “Tatami” on some level, even if they’ve never competed in sports.

A work of melancholy enchantment, by turns sweet, funny, scary, sad, and—in the manner of all good science fiction movies—thought-provoking.

An engrossing and frequently extraordinary feature.

Rogue One is a letdown in other areas, and there are creative decisions so ill-conceived they take you out of the story. But somehow these aren't enough to sink the movie, which manages to succeed as both super-nerdy fan service and the first entry since the 1977 original that will satisfy people who have never seen a "Star Wars" film.

Superboys of Malegaon, about film buffs obsessing over films and then making one of their own, is one of the most accessible and entertaining movies about the creative urge that you’ll see.

It's bracing in its simplicity. It's a character portrait, period.

The film ultimately runs up against the limitations of its own nature.... But it’s still an exhilarating ride, filled with archetypal characters with plausible psychologies, melodramatic confrontations fueled by soaring emotions, and performances that can be described as good, period, rather than "good, for 'Star Wars.'"

Adapted by screenwriter Shaun Grant from the novel by Peter Carey, and directed by Justin Kurzel, "True History" is a dream, or nightmare, about Ned, his family, Australia, manhood, womanhood, and how hard it is for poor people to escape the class they were born into.

This is a delightful, thought-provoking movie that’s about a lot of things at the same time. It’ll make you see the world with fresh eyes, and probably wonder why there isn’t more art in it.

It seems clear that Corbine wanted to make a personal movie, not a history lesson or morality play aimed at hypothetical white viewers, and it's impossible to look at the finished product without feeling that he succeeded.

The movie is a throwback to an earlier era of documentaries, when filmmakers did not feel obligated by commercial pressure to give their film the shape of a thriller, a sports film, a mystery or anything else, but instead simply brought their cameras into people's lives.