Michael O'Sullivan

It’s a small film made larger by Ahmed’s ability to take something so interior — hearing loss — and make it so visible, so palpable.

Fascinating and transgressive love story.

Under the direction of George Tillman Jr., these two young performers exercise remarkable restraint, never milking the material for unearned tears.

The movie takes place in Iran, yet it’s really situated in the crack of daylight that separates truth from a lie. It’s a tight squeeze, Farhadi seems to say, and one whose pinch this tragedy of the everyday makes us feel, acutely.

Snitch is protein-and-starch filmmaking at its utilitarian -- and belly-filling -- best. Johnson brings the steak; Bernthal the sizzle. The father-son drama is served up as sauce on the side. But as long as the beef isn’t too overcooked, who needs the A1?

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

Blade Runner 2049, the superb new sequel by Denis Villeneuve (“Arrival”), doesn’t just honor that legacy, but, arguably, surpasses it, with a smart, grimly lyrical script (by Fancher and Michael Green of the top-notch “Logan”); bleakly beautiful cinematography (by Roger Deakins); and an even deeper dive into questions of the soul.

Uprising is loud, packed with impressive effects and propulsive — or as propulsive as a car with no brakes going downhill — but it lacks the heart of del Toro’s original.

It’s not the familiarity of this setup that irks, but its silliness.

What this movie could use a little more of is the rigor and self-discipline to pull off all the imagination and originality in a way that does more than leave you gobsmacked.

Truman avoids preachiness as scrupulously as it evades certainty.

Jamal Khashoggi was a complex, even contradictory human being, and his death an affront to freedom and decency. Does the world need two documentaries about him, coming in rapid succession? Maybe not. But you wouldn’t go wrong by watching either one.

With elegant, clockwork construction, Smith has transplanted his novel of greed, betrayal and getting what you deserve to the screen, where it is told by director Sam Raimi with a spareness befitting the whiteness of its snowed-in setting.

Admission is not especially funny. The trailer can’t seem to make up its mind. On the one hand, it looks like a satire of academia. On the other hand, it could be a gentle rom-com. In truth, it’s neither.

The progression of the story is steadily downward, and at times the style flirts with melodrama, the mood with moroseness. But in the film’s third act, masterfully staged by filmmaker Karim Aïnouz (who co-wrote the screen adaptation with Inez Bortagaray and Murilo Hauser), it takes a giant leap, both temporally and emotionally.

A lean and hungry thing. With the sparest of storytelling, the French filmmaker ("35 Shots of Rum") devours her audience, swallowing us up in a yarn that is as enigmatic as it is engrossing.

It's uncompromisingly steamy, in a way that seems designed to make people who are uncomfortable with a physical relationship between two men even more uncomfortable.

Part of this success is due to the exquisitely cast ensemble-composed of actors, not movie stars. To a man, woman and child, the unforced performers are spot-on.

Honest because it gets a paradoxical truth: There's more to life than football, even when there isn't.

There are plenty of left turns (and the occasional dead end) here, but Riders of Justice is no waste of time. The mayhem is mixed with unexpected thoughtfulness.

It’s a haunting story of love between two misfits who shouldn’t be together. In its doomed yet somehow hopeful spirit, it’s closer to the noir sensibility of “Let the Right One In” than the pop-horror of “Twilight.”

In the end, Shadow suffers from a kind of shallow narcissism. Yes, it’s beautiful. Sure, it’s hard to take your eyes off it, with all the slow-motion action, enhanced by an ever-present, photogenic drizzle. But in an ironic departure from the theme of the balance, it too often emphasizes style over substance.

Your Name is still highly watchable, even when this mystical Young Adult love story cloys — or confounds.

The film suggests that it doesn't really matter whether Harris ever gets back in uniform. He's forever carrying around a piece of unexploded ordnance in his head.

Like the infamous “talk” that opens the film — the conversation that many black parents feel forced to have with their children about how to behave when you are stopped by the police — it is a movie that feels both essential and terribly, terribly sad.

A mostly unsentimental little gem.

Charlie St. Cloud, like its star Zac Efron, is a gorgeous, unblemished thing. Both would be much improved with a tiny flaw or two.

It’s a masterful example of genre filmmaking’s ability to transcend its limitations, leaving a viewer not just frightened, but also changed.