Michael Phillips

Is Black Swan high-minded? I'm happy to say: No. It is extremely high-grade hokum, which is to say it offers several different and combustible varieties.

It’s a provocative, serious, ridiculous, screwy concoction about whiteface, cultural code-switching, African-American identities and twisted new forms of wage slavery, beyond previously known ethical limits.

At 85 minutes, it's a tight, sharp achievement, yet one of the things I love about it is simple: It moves to a relaxed rhythm, in sync with its slightly otherworldly subject.

In every good way, thanks primarily to Wong and Park and their chemistry, Always Be My Maybe is pure commercial product, yet it feels authentically alive where it counts.

The movie feels both expansive and confining, depending on the story chapter. Anderson’s visual facility by now has become so intuitive, so fluid and effortlessly right, if you’re at all susceptible to the allure of a moving camera you’ll fall headlong into Phantom Thread.

Be warned: Thirst is one of those pictures that tacks on another chapter just when you think it’s wrapping up.

The film is gripping---an honorable and beautifully acted addition to the tradition of homefront war stories.

The film goes pretty easy on the royals in the end, and it's a flattering portrait of Blair. But it's not credulous. Frears may swim in the political mainstream with The Queen but he does so like a champion channel crosser.

An unusually strong crime thriller, Eastern Promises comes from director David Cronenberg, a meticulous old-school craftsman of a type that is becoming increasingly rare.

Yes, May December exists in an uncomfortable realm. Haynes isn’t afraid of that, and American movies are better for it.

Turns out to be every bit as deft, witty and, yes, moving as the first one.

It's good for the soul, and composer Joe Hisaishi's themes are so right they sound as if they came straight out of the ground with the girl in the bamboo.

Like "The Notebook," but with an elephant, the unexpectedly good film version of Water for Elephants elevates pure corn to a completely satisfying realm of romantic melodrama.

Wasikowska is wonderful here, unaffected and affecting, but then she has long been a young actress conveying a rich and shadowy interior life on screen. She humanized the Tim Burton "Alice in Wonderland," so clearly she can do nearly anything.

Modeled on Martin Scorsese's engaging first-person documentaries on the cinema, this one has its own avid personality and scholarly charm. Whoever you are, you'll learn a lot.

Mordant in the extreme, and often hilarious, The Death of Stalin somehow manages to acknowledge the murderous depths of Josef Stalin’s regime while rising to the level of incisive, even invigorating political satire.

Except for the tractors, and the tanks in the later desert battle sequences, Flanders could be taking place centuries ago. Or centuries from now.

The picture's visual style is clean, exact and beautifully photographed by Yorgos Arvanitis.

Seeing "Dragon" in 3-D really is a must. Its formidable realm of Vikings and dragons and nerds (oh my!) should be enjoyed to the fullest extent theaters allow.

Above all, there’s Collette, who sometimes can overdeliver a dramatic moment or an aghast reaction, but in this storytelling context she’s fabulous. It’s a fierce performance with a human pulse, racing one minute, dead still the next.

Lavant is splendid in the film, and he's essentially the entire film - and yet, Holy Motors is somewhat more than a contraption built for a fearless performer.

The story lurches forward in spasms. We’re fully in the head space of a messed-up, hollowed-out psyche. Backed by Jonny Greenwood’s sinister wash of a musical score, You Were Never Really Here feels like a waking nightmare.

It is a better, more fully felt and moving picture than "Blue Valentine."

The tone of Dope is very interesting — funny, but rarely stupid-funny.

Besides being the best American film of our new year, writer-director Kitty Green’s drama The Assistant confounds expectations and has the strange effect (on me, anyway) of simultaneously chilling and boiling the viewer’s blood.

An impressive, often enraging feature-length debut from director Robert May, deals carefully and well with the so-called kids for cash scandal.

For the first time in a long time, I came out of a DC comic book movie feeling ready for a sequel. It feels right, at this actual historical moment, when men made of something less than steel are bumbling around trying to run things. Paging Paradise Island!

In the best way, this is a tough movie to shake, and while it believes in the kindness of strangers, Lean on Pete never forgets every other human failing, impulse and circumstance.