Michael O'Sullivan

Along with his regular co-writer Eskil Vogt, Trier has crafted a profoundly beautiful and strange meditation on secrets, lies, dreams, memories and misunderstanding.

There’s nothing terribly profound about Chef. But its message — that relationships, like cooking, take a hands-on approach — is a sweet and sustaining one.

Code Black is a powerful and quietly damning film. While training his lens narrowly on the heroic workers in a single emergency department, McGarry has made a broad indictment of a system that is badly in need of surgery.

It’s tempting — and not entirely inaccurate — to call this oddly moving little film a comedy-drama, but if so, it’s a dark one at that.

No Sudden Move could also refer to the snail’s pace of social change. But race is just a subtext — albeit an enriching one — in a piece of entertainment that feels like watching, say, Ocean’s 11, but with a social conscience.

Thorpe doesn’t flinch from whatever awkward or controversial findings his subjects offer up, especially when they concern himself. The filmmaker’s curiosity as a reporter is tempered by an unapologetically subjective perspective.

Betting on Zero makes such a strong and effective case that the company does, in fact, engage in shady business practices that it’s likely to leave viewers in a state of Documentary High Dudgeon (that brand of cinematic outrage that is not entirely unmixed with a pleasurable feeling of moral superiority).

Sami Blood is a beautiful, haunting film, anchored by a startlingly accomplished lead performance.

The message of “Deaf President Now!” comes across loud and clear: We will be heard.

There’s something about this Lion King, which, like the original, has its narrative roots in “Hamlet,” that feels so much more Shakespearean and — there’s no other word for it — so much more tragic than the 1994 feature-length animation, in which the story’s darker themes were subliminal, not center stage.

[A] captivating and meticulous new film by Alex Gibney.

Megamind has presentation in spades. But it also has something even rarer than that. It's got heart.

It's a thriller that feels like a documentary.

It Follows sticks to you — yes, even outside of the theater — with a grim unshakability that is at once stylish, smart and deadly serious.

The film is a documentary, pure and simple. But the movie, by director Rick Rowley, plays out like something of a murder mystery.

For more casual consumers of the costumed comic-book superhero’s exploits, mileage may vary. But there’s a whole lot to like here.

Despite its light subject matter, “Phantom” is about something more than an obscure British folk hero (although it is also that). It’s a story about following your passion, not because of the heights this path will take you to, but because it makes you happy.

Things are never exactly what they seem here — but there’s a deeper, more authentic story Reitman and Cody are interested in telling, even when — maybe especially when — the film veers toward fantasy. If Tully is a movie that cheats, even lies to us a little bit, it’s to get at a more real and recognizable truth.

Hawke is good at playing bad, but Hawkins is better, rendering, in Maudie, a portrait of a woman that feels raw, real and revelatory.

There’s plenty to look at while we’re waiting for the titular Queen, and it’s often quite pretty: Shots of rabbits, sheep, deer, yaks, foxes, pikas, bears, other big cats and a miscellaneous assortment of birds abound. But this is not your typical Animal Planet or National Geographic film.

Put in terms that Bob (and perhaps only Bob fans) can understand: This movie may not be the Meatsiah — beef tartare inside a medium-well burger inside beef Wellington — but it’s pretty well done.

Set in 1956, it’s a cleverly twisty crime story constructed of many invisible folds and threads, yet it fits Rylance like custom-made clothing.

Boys State is a portrait of the country in microcosm: divided, but not yet irredeemably lost.

But make no mistake: Hogg’s quirky coming-of-age tale (which teases a forthcoming sequel) is no misty remembrance of bygone days. Rather, it is a clear-eyed reflection on how hindsight — and true art — is always 20/20.

As agenda-driven as Documented is, it also is a deeply engrossing self-portrait.

Cyrano, like the best art its implacable hero celebrates, is full of poetry, romance, terror and truth.

The new story is decidedly, deliciously dark, veined with thin layers of Burton’s trademark macabre sensibility, which adds texture and tartness to the inherent charm of the story (at heart, one about the parent-child bond and the possibility of the impossible).

If you are also an acolyte in the church of chopsocky, samurai swordplay and gunslinging gangsters, you could do a lot worse than John Wick: Chapter 4. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to do better.

Plays a little like a mystery, the central question of which is not whodunit but why.

A kicky, twisted thrill ride, with enough laughs to leaven what can be read, at heart, as a metaphor for the modern marriage.

Its real agenda is rip-roaring adventure, and that it delivers all wrapped up with a bow.

In this modern retelling of the well-known fable, she is one princess-in-waiting who does not need rescuing by any knight in shining armor. [31 Jul 1998, Pg. N.47]

The dynamic between Channing and Stiles is as compelling as a freeway wreck.

Well acted, moodily shot and tautly written, this Tattoo may feel like you've seen some of it (or its ilk) before. Still, its haunting images get under the skin, leaving an indelible impression.

Never preachy, never sanctimonious nor touchy-feely.

What keeps The 40-Year-Old Virgin out of Rob Schneider territory, however, is: 1) the fact that it's pretty darn funny, and in a way that feels consistently real, and 2) the fact that it's actually an excellent date movie.

Touching, funny, unflinching and true.

Shows more hopelessness than optimism but is never less than honest.

Freeman fills Cross's gumshoes with distinction.

Very, very funny, thanks to a lively first script by Mark O'Rowe, who has a good ear for earthy dialogue and a sense of life's absurd little synchronicities.

Manages to take the cerebral act of literary creation and make it exciting, sexy even.

Enormously entertaining.

A gorgeously morbid meditation on the interconnectivity of life.

Under normal circumstances, nothing kills a joke faster than trying to explain it. Yet here, such examination is the film's strong suit and provides much-needed respite, quite frankly, from the exhaustion of constant laughter.

Shakes, rattles and rolls the house, building to a climax that makes you almost forget you're in a movie theater and not a football stadium at halftime.

With its cast of back-stabbing functionaries and desk jockeys, Spy Game makes the sport and hard work of espionage seem chillingly real.

In its heart burns the indomitable flame of the human spirit.

After viewing documentarian Stephanie Black's dour exegesis of the wrecked Jamaican economy -- only the most insensitive vacationer will want to set foot anywhere near the resorts and beaches of Montego Bay.

Subtle it's not. Still, the film, directed by Andrew Fleming ("Dick"), gets large and plentiful laughs where it's supposed to.

More love story than thriller, with the mystery providing only slack tension and the December-December romance that ultimately develops between Regina and Camargo crackling with drama and sexual tension aplenty.

One heck of a tale of deliciously unladylike payback.

Like a haiku, it is not what is said, but what is unsaid, that leaves the most lasting echoes.

It's a love story, yes, but one whose sweetness is cut by honest performances, a sharply drawn supporting cast and a fairly serious, yet never self-pitying, tone.

Visually stylish surrealist drama.

Drew Barrymore has figured out what works, and what works for Drew Barrymore is this: Cinderella stories.

The movie is not for the squeamish, but for those who are unafraid to look at what is, perhaps, their own metaphorical "backyard," for those willing to stare into the long, dark night of the contemporary American soul, its bone-crunching message is worth hearing.

A film whose effects are as hard to wash away as blood.

It's a love letter to the myriad ways, large and small, that mail handlers change lives the world over.

Personal and private almost to the point of self-absorption, the film is ultimately saved from neurotic narcissism by the director's self-deprecating humor and unapologetic honesty about his own dysfunction.

The line between madness and genius is thin. Not to mention more than amply explored in any number of films about tortured artists. But to look at the almost religious ecstasy on Moreau's face is to feel the artist's passion and be inspired by it.

Contrary to expectation, it's neither a movie about religion nor the coming together of enemies. What it is, at heart, is a movie about love.

Short on drama but long on poetry.

In Sheridan's warm and glowing treatment, the moral of the story feels less like a reheated fable than like something utterly, indescribably original.