Michael O'Sullivan

Binge-watching the first eight installments before you settle into this one isn’t strictly necessary, but I wouldn’t discourage it, either. They’re that good.

It manages the trick of being both an unironic sci-fi action-adventure flick and a zippy parody of one. It’s exciting, funny, self-aware, beautiful to watch and even, for a flickering instant or two, almost touching.

It may not sound like it, but calling this barely 70-minute Swiss stop-motion film “heavy” — as in substantial and almost swollen with feeling — is a true compliment.

Nicolas Cage delivers what may his best, most nuanced performance yet in the gritty, hypnotic and deeply moving Joe.

Van Dormael has crafted a saga that, even at two-plus hours, is endlessly, enormously watchable.

Sure, the animation work is great, but it's the actors and their subtle, complex vocal performances that make us care about these fairy-tale characters. Shrek 2 is all about fantasy, but its characters are rousingly, affectingly real -- not to mention real, real funny.

Many thematic ingredients come together in Farhadi’s rich stew of a story: jealousy, resentment, betrayal, forgiveness, healing. The filmmaker stirs them, with the touch of a master, into a dish that both stimulates and nourishes.

The new film is more expansive, more beautiful, funnier, nuttier and — this is the most difficult trick for any comic-book movie to pull off — more touching than the first film.

If “Infinity War” was about failure, “Endgame” is, ironically, all about acceptance and moving on. After 11 long years, the Infinity Saga is finally, fulfillingly over. There is no post-credit scene. But oh, what a going-away party these old friends have thrown for themselves.

Propelled by Deadwyler’s unforgettable portrayal, Till leaves us with a sense of an indictment still unanswered in 2022.

It’s a movie that, to put it in terms that the film’s screenwriters might appreciate, is Thor-ly needed.

It’s a richly engrossing drama, so long as you understand that it’s aiming for the head, not the gut.

This cinematic Macbeth possesses a terrible beauty, evoking fear, sadness, awe and confusion. Presented with the aesthetic of a dark comic book, it’s also a mournful masterpiece, rendering Shakespeare’s spectacle with all the sorrow and majesty that it deserves.

Rich Hill doesn’t just make you feel like you know these boys; it makes you care about them.

The film's exploration of loss and the gulf of time and memory that separates us from our pasts is beautifully and subtly handled by Kore-eda. But it is his concern with the sometimes insurmountable distance that lies between knowing and not knowing why we do the things we do that is the filmmaker's true -- and most profound -- subject. [2 April 2004, p.T47]

It sounds monotonous, too, but it's not. The succession of passengers he picks up -- a pimply and skittish Kurdish soldier in the Iranian army, a moralistic Afghan seminarian and an elderly Turkish taxidermist -- each react in utterly different and fascinating ways to Badii's unusual request. What it is, though, is a small triumph of filmmaking. Through quiet insinuation, Taste of Cherry evokes sadness without being sentimental, has universal resonance without sacrificing personal immediacy, and generates real drama without resorting to contrivance. [15 May 1998, p.N56]

It's a comic book at heart, albeit a thoroughly, grandly romantic one in the end.

It's a soaring achievement, without ever leaving the ground.

As a portrait, Pain and Glory is less a mirror than an impressionistic painting. It’s an emotional rendering of a person, not a literal one.

There is a quality of enchantment to When Marnie Was There that can’t be faked, and that the studio behind this animated feature is justifiably famous for.

The drama itself packs a powerful -- and timeless -- gut punch.

Beneath this straightforward (if enigmatic) premise, there is a gradual slippage, as if the plate tectonics of Weerasethakul’s seemingly solid medical/mental mystery were subtly rearranging themselves, like puzzle pieces shifted by an unseen hand. As they lose their narrative mooring, the various parts of the whole have the effect of rearranging your own consciousness, in a way that leaves your perceptions feeling profoundly altered, perhaps permanently.

"Kubo" is both extraordinarily original and extraordinarily complex.

The Midnight Sky only looks like a disaster film. Slyly, and by misdirection that cleverly conceals its true intent until the poignant end, it reveals itself to be a story of regret over a lost opportunity for connection.

Enchants on every level: story, voice work, drawing and music.

To paraphrase Sigmund Freud, sometimes a red panda is just a red panda. And sometimes it’s a metaphor for that inner spark of creativity, the flame of originality that is to be cherished, not extinguished. With “Turning Red,” Shi demonstrates that she’s got it, in spades.

The Rescue isn’t just a movie about cave divers, or a recap of a well-reported humanitarian operation. It’s ultimately a film about the triumph of altruism, ingenuity and perseverance in the face of almost impossible odds, by the very people you might initially have dismissed as not up to the task.

The comedy, while unflinchingly honest and prone to bandying about such terms as “intracytoplasmic sperm injection” and “follitropin,” is never really about technology, though. Rather, and to its great credit, it’s always about the people involved.

Like A Quiet Place, Part II is a lean, nearly flab- and gristle-free piece of sci-fi steak.

Dunkirk isn’t comfortable to watch; it never relents or relaxes. At the same time, it’s impossible to look away from it.

The tale, from Brazilian writer-director Daniel Ribeiro, is told with such tenderness, such intelligence and such aching honesty that it takes on the weight of something far more significant than puppy love. Like its subject, first kisses and best friends, it’s hard to forget.

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

As haunting as it is haunted, The Missing Picture leaves viewers’ heads rattling with ghosts.

Who should have access to an artist’s legacy? That’s only one of many good questions that are raised in this mesmerizing exercise in artistic interrogation.

More than a testament to the power of cinematic storytelling as food for the human spirit, The Wolfpack also is a portrait of a family that has had to rely on each other to survive.

Petite Maman is what every film should be: powerfully, even arrestingly original; grounded in emotional truth; hyper-specific; deeply universal; strange; mesmerizing; and not a minute longer than necessary. It is, in short, a small wonder.

The shadow of its past informs the latest incarnation of “Rigby,” a deeply moving, beautifully acted and ultimately mournful meditation on the gulfs that open between people, especially when tragedy falls like a cleaver.

Like the character at the heart of Pig — who is not, as it turns out, a pig at all, even metaphorically — it is smoldering and gentle.

Rashomon has had such a profound cultural influence that there is even a psychosociological phenomenon named after it.

It’s been a long time coming for Incredibles 2, but the punchline is worth the setup.

The combined impact of these scenes, augmented with Robinson’s lecture — which, while deeply informed and informative, is anything but dull or academic — makes for a powerful one-two punch.

It knocks you off your feet and leaves you shaken.

The Quiet Girl is that rare thing: a work of storytelling that speaks most loudly when it is saying nothing.

As the title of the film suggests, it tells a story involving as much human drama as geopolitical maneuvering. It’s a story of personalities and, at times, the fragile male ego.

Like a miniature universe made entirely of millions of tiny plastic bricks, The Lego Batman Movie looks and feels like it could only have been put together by a roomful of mad geniuses, moving in a ballet of well-choreographed creativity: It’s simultaneously epic and humble.

It’s rare that a documentary has the ability to take the kind of long view of events that establishes context and consequence.

War for the Planet of the Apes may have the body of an action film, but it has the soul of an art-house drama and the brains of a political thriller.

Its charms, and they are both subtle and many, emanate like perfume.

As quintessential a story of American ambition as Welles' own "Citizen Kane."

Sean Penn makes a striking screen presence in This Must Be the Place, a smart, funny and original road movie by Italian director Paolo Sorrentino ("Il Divo").

There is so much going on here, yet the director handles the film’s constellation of themes and sweeping emotion with impeccable assurance and an at-times breathtaking sense of the poetic.

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.

Tucci and Firth have never been better than they are here, and they earn every superlative that has been laid on them in early reviews.

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.

“The Mortal Remains” brings all these tales together beautifully, by which I mean in a coda that is somber and hauntingly unsettled, like the last note of a dirge. Its music lingers in the air long after the closing credits.

Far from lazy, it is a fairly brilliant sendup of comic-book action movies, as well as also being an excellent example of one.

Although the cast is uniformly fine, Hoffman shines in a role that demands not showmanship, but a kind of complexity and contradiction that can be rendered only through the kind of dull character details that he excelled in, accumulating them from the inside out.

Gradually, a story of bittersweet beauty and unexpected tenderness emerges.

To its great credit, the movie turns left when you expect it to turn right, taking a route that is less well traveled, yet more plausible.

As overcrowded as it all sounds, “Flipside” never falls off the cliff into confusion or incoherence, thanks mainly to Wilcha’s superb grasp of his theme.

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.

Where Elizabeth really triumphs over its dusty source material is in transforming all this boring history into a real, rip-roaring adventure tale.

Wickedly clever drama.

It is through the genius of Frears, screenwriter Jimmy McGovern and this talented cast that Liam lets no one off the hook, least of all the audience.

It's one heck of a basis for a funny movie.

An elegant drama about power and its frightening uses, The Cat's Meow is the bee's knees.

Filmmaking at its purest and most visceral – a tale full of sound and visual fury, signifying, if not exactly nothing, then something not so readily articulated in words.

Will keep you awake, jittery and perched on the edge of your seat for pretty much the entire flight.

Wickedly funny, jarringly transgressive, obdurately unpigeonholeable and startlingly moving.

An extraordinary film in many ways, the least of which is its unorthodox casting.

A portrait of a sometimes surly, often foulmouthed, always brilliant artist that is at once humane, horrific, hilarious and deeply moving.

By land or by sea, there aren't many movies that can move you like that.

It is difficult to watch, but it's also impossible to take your eyes off the screen. It does not blench at the things that Hollywood routinely blenches at: substance abuse, dying, family dysfunction, love.

All about undertones, obliqueness and expectancy, about the scent, if you will, of something no one can stop

Jack is just one of a dozen enormously appealing personalities in Out of Sight.

One truly, madly, deeply satisfying creep-out.

You'll likely come away from this astonishing encounter between the three corners of a lovers' triangle not just amused but enlightened about such not-so-simple issues as fidelity, betrayal, lust, possessiveness, honesty and forgiveness.

Aniston delivers an utterly un-Rachel-like performance. It's neurosis-free and unmannered, by turns funny, sad and profound.

Spielmann doesn't move his camera much, but he doesn't have to. The uniformly crackerjack cast keeps things electric, yet always believable, even when behaving in ways that are shocking.

Cogent, scary and, at times, sickening.

The Matrix Reloaded is about sensation, not logic. As such, it delivers, in spades, exactly what you should expect from a popcorn flick -- thrills, chills and spills -- plus a little more for good measure, just to keep anyone from whining who might want a beginning, a middle and an end.

With unsurprising irony, the "Sixteen" of the title foreshadows Liam's birthday and even worse calamity, which makes a grim and gripping story all the more heartbreaking.

Fascinating and transgressive love story.

Although the cast is uniformly strong, the real revelation here is "The X-Files' " Anderson, who plays Lily with subtle gradations of emotional depth unexpected from someone who has made a career out of deadpan.

Wise, funny, sweet, sexy and kind.

The plot is far from intricate, but Waking Ned Devine more than makes up for its narrative simplicity with a uniformly engaging cast of Hibernian oddballs.

Mostly, though, it's a film about that hollow feeling that hits you when the tears have all dried up and your face hurts way too much to even crack a smile.

It plays like a baldfaced, brazen insult, but it is a stunningly accomplished one.

With a cast of actors playing some of England's smartest people and with a crackling script by Stoppard -- no slouch in the brains department -- it pays to stay awake.

The disturbing ideas it plants in the soil of the soul need time and darkness ? not light ? to germinate.

His story is sad, compelling and morbidly, tragically watchable.

Part of the spell cast by this magical film is its ability to make an unvarnished political statement about economic reality and social alienation while, at the same time, seducing its audience into believing in the transformative power of love and the almost supernatural beauty of the everyday.

May be a fish tale, but its story of the paradox of love -- knowing when to hold on means knowing when to let go -- is profoundly humane and human.

One thoroughbred of a movie. Sleek, well-muscled and brisk, director Steven Soderbergh's newest offering delivers just about everything anyone could possibly want from filmed entertainment -- except deep thought.

Gorgeously animated and stirringly told, Disney's Mulan is a timeless story that will delight kids and divert adults with its sweeping scope, emotional intimacy and screwball humor.

The fantastic and at times deliciously nihilistic world of X2 is fully, believably three-dimensional.

Neither wholly cynical nor wholly romantic, Kaufman's story is a balance of smarts and sentiment. It's the most fully realized working out of his two favorite obsessions: the subjective nature of experience and the psychological mysteries of pair bonding.

What the movie may lack in "Saving Private Ryan"-style gloss, it more than makes up for in authenticity, or, in other words, heart.

It's a kind of 18th-century "Dead Man Walking" but with that earlier film's foreground arguments against capital punishment pushed to the background here.

A gift for those already in the fold, for those who get the joke and just want to savor it with other like-minded fans.

Psychological suspense at its finest.

Scorsese creates a film so resonant that it is both a work of great art and an anthropological document.

Really, really good -- Yes, it's over the top, giddy and parodistic (God bless it). But it also takes a thoughtful, if surreptitious, look at what eight women might act like when men aren't around.

A small film of surpassing beauty and sadness. Yet its bittersweet flavor isn't artificial, but rather the product of the slow ripening of character.

Their characters' desire (Scott Thomas and Zylberstein) -- no, need -- to repair their fragile bond feels as achingly real as the mother lode of hidden pain that gets exposed by the work of these two great actresses.

Old-fashioned moviemaking at its best.

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.

It is incomplete, contradictory, as multifaceted (and as brilliant) as a diamond.

The events of the movie are filament-thin and insubstantial but, like fine silk threads, they weave together a fabric of surpassing warmth and texture. [25 Sep 1998, Pg.N.63]

Works on two levels. First, it's a pure celebration of riding the waves. -- Second, Blue Crush is a clear-eyed portrait of the unique kind of power that women possess, a power that shows us that victory doesn't always mean vanquishing someone else. Either way, it's thrilling.

Troubling and powerful film, lingering on screen well into the final credits and in the minds of its audience long after the house lights have come on.

In almost every way that I can think of, L'Auberge Espagnole is a perfect movie... It is a film that feels alive.

Tells a tale of fortitude that comes not from muscle but from the ineffable, bungee-like sinew that is the human spirit.

The nail-biting quality of Shackleton's true story outdoes any dramatic fiction on the market.

Maybe Thomas Wolfe was right: You can't go home again

It's part sugar, part spice (cayenne, not nutmeg) and all-around brilliant.

The pretentiousness of acting is a fun thing to lampoon, and “Official Competition” does it with surgical precision.

The problem, as “Table” shows, isn’t that the next meal never comes. It’s that when it arrives, too often it is filled with empty calories.

Known for comedy, Rogen and Silverman are the film's most delightful surprises, and their performances shine.

Gradually, and with the methodical patience of someone unearthing buried treasure with a tiny brush, The Dig reveals itself to be a story of love and estrangement, of things lost and longed for, of life and death — of what lasts and what doesn’t.

By turns sweet, sad, funny and poignant, We Have a Pope is the story of a man who doesn't want to be God's representative on Earth.

Sandler is so good, so committed and so watchable that, despite everything — Howard’s irrationality, a rogue’s gallery of unpleasant characters, the foreboding of a bad, bad end — you can’t take your eyes off the screen, which Sandler seldom vacates.

For a movie that relies so heavily on a single, not especially groundbreaking visual effect — now you see the bogeyman, now you don’t — Lights Out is crazy scary.

An excellent and entertainingly old-fashioned police procedural.

For the first half of this spellbinding — and unexpectedly gut-wrenching — little film, there’s barely any dialogue at all.

Stagnation, collapse, heartlessness — whether on an individual level or a national one — are the true subjects of Zvyagintsev’s film. Its message isn’t subtle, but it is delivered with deadly, haunting finality.

It’s surprisingly wise, funny and affecting, thanks in part to a sensitive script, and in part to a strong ensemble cast.

Immensely watchable and thematically complex tale, which in some ways plays out like a deceptively conventional Agatha Christie-style whodunit.

You People sounds preachy, doesn’t it? Trust me, it’s not. What it really is is a master class on wedge issues and our shared humanity, delivered by comedians who know that laughter can be at once a bitter pill and the best medicine.

It is an engrossing tale, full of betrayal and chicanery, and it casts the Egyptian political-military complex and the religious hierarchy as riddled with corruption.

The point being: Even when questions of life and death loom large, someone still has to make dinner. That observation doesn’t make Ordinary Love a major motion picture event. But it does, in its own quiet, wise way, nudge it just a little bit closer to the extraordinary.

In her latest film, Showing Up, Kelly Reichardt, the director of 2019’s “First Cow” and virtuosa of slow cinema, turns her thoughtful attention to the act of creation itself, rendering both its transcendence and mundanity with equal curiosity.

Life in a Day is, without exaggeration, a profound achievement.

Simon and the Oaks is not merely the story of two boys from opposite sides of the tracks. It's also a larger meditation on life's hardships and what endures: love, art and civilization.

A quietly brilliant study in cognitive dissonance, The Flat is a documentary look at Holocaust denial, but not the kind you might think.

Io Capitano takes a news story that’s mostly about numbers, and puts a human face on it.

It's powerful, gut-wrenching stuff, and it doesn't need tarting up.

There’s lots of hurt, past and present, in “Daughters,” as well as a huge measure of healing and forgiveness. Those feelings are palpable and contagious; they jump off the screen.

Disney’s gorgeously animated, entertainingly told fantasia Raya and the Last Dragon is a visual feast.

Vengeance is an arrestingly smart, funny and affecting take on a slice of the American zeitgeist, one in which both the divisions between and connections with our fellow citizens are brought into sharp relief.

Szifrón handles the tone and presentation masterfully.

The feature debut of writer-director Jennifer Kent is not just genuinely, deeply scary, but also a beautifully told tale of a mother and son, enriched with layers of contradiction and ambiguity.

Leave No Trace is not a sociological treatise. It has nothing grandiose to say about homelessness or PTSD. It does, however, deliver an effective (and deeply affecting) allegory of the inevitable leave-taking that all of us — housed or unhoused, happy or half mad — must undergo with our loved ones.

For much of its brisk running time, It Comes at Night teeters between delicious atmosphere and almost unbearable tension.

The yarn that Lowery spins is rich with incident, but ultimately simple. Its enjoyment lies less in the story, but in the marvelous mystification of its telling.

Despite the seemingly uncinematic nature of this inert, even claustrophobic scenario, the film mesmerizes, utterly.

It’s a wonder how Cutie and the Boxer, in less than an hour and a half, manages to say so much about love, life and art. Movies twice as long are often half as eloquent.

Vikander never goes for the easy emotion, though, choosing instead to play against what conventional melodrama would dictate her reaction should be. This understatedness is always the right choice, and it makes for a far more effective — and affecting — film.

A gorgeous, magical and melancholy fantasia about the joy and pain of human existence.

For sheer inventiveness of story, language, visuals and theme, The Brand New Testament is, quite nearly, a divine comedy.

Arnold also brings to bear a euphoric appreciation for the spirit of freedom and the optimism — if not the innocence — of her subjects, who can seem at once world-weary and hopelessly naive. Call it a form of ecstatic naturalism, one that revels in the ugly paradoxes of life.

McQueen makes the case that its subject was an artist whose clay was clothing. It also, despite giving short shrift to psychoanalysis, reminds us that everything you might want to know about the artist can be found in the art.

The make-believe world of Boy and the World is confusing, scary and gorgeous. But then again, so is the real one.

It’s a voraciously self-aware comedy, one that dines out on the inherent inanity of its own premise as much as it does the movies it’s competing with.

It isn’t laugh-out-loud funny. It simply zigs when you expect it to zag. This is a small, simple story, free from emotional pyrotechnics and, mostly, false notes. It has something to say about the deeper meaning of alone-ness, without being pretentious.

Filmmaker Davis Guggenheim's scathing, moving critique of American public education, makes you actually want to do something after you dry your eyes.

Frantz contains revelations unrelated to the manner in which it protects, and then peels away, its central mystery. Ultimately, it addresses the question: Why go on living when life itself betrays us?

Chandor's film goes a long way toward making understandable - in vivid, cinematic terms - what exactly happened to make that first big domino fall over.

Black Souls has a deep and startling soulfulness that, despite its shocking conclusion, is profoundly moving.

If there’s a quibble with the film, it’s that it glosses over what it’s like to grow up in the glare of worldwide celebrity.

A sprawling yet engrossing documentary.

There are so many things to like about The Lego Movie: a great voice cast, clever dialogue and a handsome blend of stop-motion and CGI animation that feels lovingly retro, while still looking sharp in 21st-century 3-D. But the best thing about this movie... is its subversive nature.

You Won’t Be Alone can be ghoulish at times, but also gorgeous, in the swooning manner of a Terrence Malick film: all grass and leaves and sky and water, captured by tumbling camerawork that evokes the wide-eyed wonder of someone experiencing the world for the first time.

It’s a movie that’s as fun to watch as it is funny. But the real appeal of Big Hero 6 isn’t its action. It’s the central character’s heart.

There’s some very, very funny stuff here. But the laughs gradually give way to a feeling of not just sadness and loss for a quality we no longer seem to see very much of in political life and public discourse, but a sense of creeping despair that we may never see it again.

With a firm grasp on the duality implicit in its title, Little Men is a story that’s neither tragic nor triumphal in the way it resolves itself, but rather one that’s sadly, even satisfyingly true.

Georgian writer-director Zaza Urushadze avoids histrionics or moralizing, relying on a strong cast that expresses the film’s central argument about war’s absurdity largely through taciturn action, not words.

The Muppets is both a delightful family film about the Muppets and a winking, self-referential satire about how lame the Muppets are.

Funny when it wants to be, poignant when it needs to be, and surprisingly effective in harnessing these deeper themes to a character who might otherwise be dismissed as a lightweight laughingstock.

Although Measure of a Man is less gut-wrenching than director Jim Loach’s only previous theatrical film, “Oranges and Sunshine” — about the cruel fate of unwanted children shipped from England to Australia during the United Kingdom’s mid-20th-century “child migrant” program — the British filmmaker shows himself to have an affinity for tales of the abuse of power.

The geometry of filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar’s masterful, moving Parallel Mothers, which follows the stories of two women who give birth almost simultaneously in a Madrid hospital, is really a crisscrossing set of two fascinatingly entangled lines.

The romantic comedy about a divorced couple having an affair manages to be both light on its feet and heavy enough to deliver something of a message.

The film is a sobering reminder that the consequences of limiting access to safe medical care aren’t just theoretical but existential.

A satisfyingly suspenseful apocalyptic thriller with almost enough visual effects to give "The Day After Tomorrow" and "Deep Impact" a run for their money.

In this tale of longing, loss and regret, it isn’t always possible to know who’s deluding oneself, or someone else. But then, it isn’t always possible to know that in real life either.

Many reviewers have compared the mood of In the Aisles to the stories of Raymond Carver, and it’s not a bad analogy. Stuber, who wrote the screenplay with Clemens Meyer (based on Meyer’s short story), is adept at evoking both the ache of unanswered longing and the tiny promise of redemption that flickers still within the human spirit, even when crushed under the weight of soulless drudgery.

It’s nice to be reminded of what old people look like, since they are, at least in movies these days, ever more invisible.

Movie 43 is a near masterpiece of tastelessness. The anthology of 12 short, interconnected skits elevates the art form of gross-out comedy to a new height.

The screenplay by John Aboud, Michael Colton and Brandon Sawyer has a fizzy, pop-culture pizazz, tempered by a distinctly vaudeville sensibility. It’s smart, but not brainy; dumb, but never inane.

The new movie — a sci-fi freakout that, like “Spring,” includes an “it,” but one that’s far less easy to define — is spooky, funny, touching and very, very well made.

The themes of love, loyalty, ambition, honor and legacy that lend sinew to the story are delivered with such a clean punch that they as feel as fresh as they did in 1976.

In viewing the same tale retold from two mutually exclusive vantage points, we become aware of how “Him” and “Her” deepen and enrich certain aspects of the story, adding contrast and, at times, contradiction, to the whole.

"Him” and “Her” make for a remarkably powerful film experiment, retaining the insights into relationships of “Them” while filling in many of its invisible storytelling fissures.

That A War both delivers the results one might wish for and denies a sense of closure is not a failing but its chief virtue.

The horror auteur’s third film is a sci-fi epic that feels both comfortably familiar and fresh.

20,000 Days on Earth isn’t so much a portrait of the artist as a middle-aged man, looking back on his life, as it is a meditation on the art of storytelling.

Surprisingly, it isn’t heavy-handed, moralizing, polemical or sentimental. And you can enjoy the film without knowing any of that.

Part drug comedy, part psychological drama, the movie is slight, but only superficially so. As the closing credits role, we’re left not with a sense of a day at the beach, but of what might be swimming out there, in the dark of the abyss.

Though it takes place in the recent past, at a time when the Bhutanese people were still getting used to such American imports as James Bond movies and “black water” (Coca-Cola), the film has something important to say about the promise and the perils of the present.

It’s upsetting and scary to watch the footage of orca attacks collected in Blackfish, a damning documentary about the treatment of the animals by marine parks.

1,000 Times Good Night has moments of both startling violence and breathtaking beauty.

A refreshing summer cocktail of action-movie staples, The Wolverine combines the bracingly adult flavor of everyone’s favorite mutant antihero — tortured, boozy X-Man Logan, a.k.a. Wolverine — with the fizzy effervescence of several mixers from the cabinet of Japanese genre cinema: noirish yakuza crime drama, samurai derring-do and ninja acrobatics.

"News” is like almost every other western. Still, it works.

McKinney, a woman whose spellbinding and baffling presence - nay, performance - in Tabloid more than lives up to her recent off-screen antics.

Small moments take on larger meaning in this exquisite memoir. That’s as true of the plot — in which nothing terribly significant happens, except life — as it is of the visuals.

Polisse is hard to watch at times, but it's also hard not to.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist will likely make some people mad because of the way it holds the United States responsible for the repercussions of its actions in the world. Like Changez himself, the film has a complicated relationship with the superpower.

It's a kid's Cirque de Soleil, for a lot less money.

A mesmerizing documentary.

Thrillingly told, compellingly acted and beautifully shot.

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.