Michael Phillips

I can't imagine Anvil! not appealing to anyone interested in any aspect of showbiz, and the drug of fame, and the lives people lead in pursuit of the next fix.

Schwartzman’s film is a strong, cogent examination of outrage, coolly and carefully documented, one text, tweet and reckoning at a time.

This movie’s religion, if it has one, is the Church of Performance, and Giamatti, Sessa, Randolph and company make it worth attending.

The film is an anomaly — a confident, slightly square, highly satisfying example of old-school Hollywood craftsmanship, starring a major movie star brandishing a briefcase, and a handkerchief, rather than a pistol.

Jenkins and The Visitor”make lovely music together. It’s a case of a veteran character actor slipping on a leading role like the most comfortable pair of pants in the world.

This is a poetic-realist vision with grace notes of wit and surrealism. It is a calm, visually assured statement of shared rage.

One of Morris' swiftest works, yet also one of his saddest, Tabloid reveals among other things what happens when one person's definition of ordinary healthy romance is undone by another's.

This is a film driven by what makes its characters and conflicts tick. It’s freely fictionalized, and some of it’s overpacked. But “The Woman King” feels human-made, not machine-learned.

Without playing with anyone’s life, A Photographic Memory makes beautiful sense of the connections between mother and daughter, work and love and other mysteries.

Here's what I most appreciate about Shannon's work with the writer-director Jeff Nichols: the subtlety.

A true feat of daring and one of the craziest films of the year.

The movie is tightly packed with incident, maybe overpacked, but Saxon’s fairy tale is an intense, lived-in experience, its centuries-old folkloric atmosphere dotted with all the usual intrusive elements of progress.

Lowery creates a spiritual cousin to Shakespeare’s Prince Hal, torn between taverns and common folk and his highborn destiny. There’s a lot here, either on the surface or bubbling beneath it. In its Christianity vs. paganism square-off, The Green Knight lands on a note (and an event) very different from the poem’s.

The best material, however, keeps returning to the unstable power dynamic between Q-Tip and Dawg.

Here's one of the strongest feature film debuts in a long time, in any genre.

Movies about reckless, chemically addled men rarely have the nerve to go whole hog with the bad behavior, because it makes for alienating company. Still: Blaze comes closer than most to an honest look at this sort of troubadour and this kind of life.

Chalamet is excellent, saving his purest acting for the killer final shot several minutes in length, when we finally see what these weeks with Oliver have meant to him.

Mainly it’s a very solid dance picture, which is the point.

Here's a funny, poignant oddball of a movie, existing on a galaxy far, far away from the likes of "Pacific Rim" or "World War Z" or anything whose computer-generated actions speak louder than words.

The movie finds what solace it can in giving voice to those who escaped this church's grasp.

Vivid, assured and extremely suspenseful.

This is an exceptional film about nearly unendurable circumstances, endured. You will come out the other side of it a markedly enriched filmgoer.

Without exposition dumps or pressurized contrivance, Friedland reveals facets of Ruth’s life, scene by scene, in the 85 minutes of screen time.

Strange is a word that pops up frequently in Claire’s Camera, a lovely doodle and the latest from South Korean writer-director Hong Sang-soo. The strangeness extends to and suffuses most of the human interactions, which never go entirely smoothly.

As big-budget comic book adaptations go, this one's a gratifying freak--the right kind of conflicted, as well as quick-witted. It's a lot of fun.

Chomet himself has written the gentle waltz theme and other music. The piece glides by, effortlessly.

I Am Love makes no apologies for its style. None needed: The film, a two-hour swoon, is a cry for romantic freedom, perched on the edge of self-parody, as all good melodramas are.

Muylaert's picture relates to many other South American domestic comedies pitting "the help" against the economic overlords, but this one has the grace to humanize everyone on screen. The results are both smart and curious.