Michael Phillips

It's a small story set in a memorably desolate location. The actors, all quite magnificent, enlarge it, just as cinematographer Mikhail Krichman illuminates the vistas and roadways and even the furtive kitchen table glances between clandestine lovers.

Most films would take pains to spell out the answers, eventually. “Aftersun” works more obliquely and poetically, leaving prosaic touches to other filmmakers.

Swift, vicious and grimly imaginative, the zombie film 28 Weeks Later exceeds its predecessor, "28 Days Later," in every way.

Bone-dry but completely assured, both in its visual strategy and its wry deconstruction of the workplace comedy genre.

The new film works. It's rousing.

McKay has worked mostly in episodic television in recent years, and “On the Seventh Day” marks his confident, neatly ordered but freshly observed return to feature filmmaking. He’s working with nonactors here, in a fruitful halfway point between documentary and conventional fictional narrative.

For some of us, Anderson's LA lamentation is a siren song, and there's no more ardent and poetic chronicler of California mythology.

Matt Damon narrates, and I do wish the narration didn't end on such a generalized, throw-the-bums-out note, over footage of the Statue of Liberty.

In relation to the well-made and sensitive confines of "The Messenger," Rampart required a more unruly visual approach. Beginning and ending with Harrelson, this sophomore effort is full of malignant life.

It is a fine little old-school thriller.

This filmmaker has earned the right to make a movie about why he makes movies the way he does. And with Williams and Dano, especially, he gets performances that can match the technique.

BlackBerry doesn’t sermonize or push the comedy or falsify the dramatic dynamics of wildly contrasting personalities. It’s a small but quite beautiful achievement, which you could also say about the smartphone that could, and did. For a while.

Dafoe never begs for attention or sympathy; he’s there, like the seasoned, craftsmanlike actor he is, as a conduit and a sort of medium.

It feels fresh and unpredictable, as quietly strange as the remarkable musical score from first-time feature film composer Mica Levi.

It’s a modest film, but a very good one, and by the end I was quite moved by its valiant belief in decency and in the duo’s eternal appeal.

Black Bag may be modest, and frivolous, but it’s sharp-witted. Every performance feels right.

That’s Blindspotting all over: an exuberant, brightly colored, zigzagging portrait of a city, an uneasy transformation and a friendship.

Amuses and unnerves in equal measure.

While the protracted third act doesn't kill the two-hour, 23-minute picture, "Casino Royale" remains the best of the recent Bonds, with Skyfall just a notch below it.

Everything about Kung Fu Panda is a little better, a little sharper, a little funnier than the animated run of the mill.

The film is a master class in reactivity, and Calamy manages it with perfect dramatic pitch.

It’s an unnerving portrait in forbidden desire and matched wills, sometimes acting as one barely controlled organism, often at fierce odds.

It's an odd, hermetic and fascinating picture.

Whether Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One turns out to be a massive hit or merely a hit, it’s certainly the franchise action picture of the year, the one that truly knows what it’s doing, front to back.

This is the second feature from Maoz; his first, the superb “Lebanon” (2009), is one of the essential war pictures of the young century. Foxtrot qualifies as a war film as well, and as in all such pictures made by, and for, grown-ups, the psychic battles are no less intense than the literal carnage.

The movie proceeds in quiet, reflective tones, subtly energized by a fully realized visual environment and a clever variety of editing rhythms. Nine Days transcends the potential limitation and occasional strain of its premise.

Best of all: the musical score by Alfonso de Vilallonga. It's terrific — witty, symphonically lush and shrewdly informed by flamenco strains throughout.

I greatly prefer this cleverly sustained and efficiently relentless remake to the '73 edition. It is lean and simple.