Moira Macdonald

The performances feel wonderfully lived-in, particularly Jackson’s weary, noble Doaker and Deadwyler’s brave, watchful Berniece, a widowed mother determined to make a good life for her daughter and leave the past in the past.

Mostly, we watch Binoche’s face, in eloquent, mesmerizing close-up; pain and grief engulf her expression like water flooding into a still pool. She has few words. She doesn’t need them.

The familiarity is part of what makes The Dry tick along so nicely; it reminds you of other good movies even as you enjoy its own special flavor.

On this wintry landscape, with its endless plains and biting wind, it seems as if everyone — even the quietest — has a story, if you take the time to listen to it.

Unfolding like a thriller but uncomfortably real, September 5 is a haunting portrait of a time when seeing terrorism live on television was something new and strange — and a reminder that, sadly, things may not have changed all that much. But it’s also a stirring depiction of people simply doing their jobs, making decisions in the moment as best they can, trying to do things right when there’s no playbook and hundreds of millions of people watching.

It’s a feel-good film about dreams, about obsession, about believing in yourself when nobody else seems to be doing it for you, and Hawkins carries it with effortless ease.

A Quiet Place is brief, taut and often quite terrifying. And it creates in its audience a fascinating relationship with sound.

Often beautiful, never pretty, occasionally creepy and perpetually surprising, Poor Things lives in Stone’s fiery eyes; her performance is, to borrow Bella’s words, a changeable feast.

Close owns this movie, from beginning to end; it’s a performance of such intelligence and subtlety that only when the movie is long over do you start wondering about whether the plot holds up.

Do yourself a favor and go see The Crime Is Mine, a delicious bit of French froth from master director François Ozon.

Outside In is about connection, and about two remarkable actors telling us a story.

Shot in soft black-and-white, with color occasionally peering in at the movie houses where Buddy spends rapt hours, Belfast is brief, tidy and lovely; a heartfelt story of family and home, and how where the former is, the latter resides.

Shi and screenwriter Julia Cho present a sweet, graceful ode to growing up.

A Private Life is a murder mystery only on its surface; at its heart, it’s an exploration of a lonely woman’s extremely active mind, and an unexpectedly moving story of becoming more present in one’s real life, rather than one’s imaginary one.

It’s a film about heroism and the right to love, told without stirring speeches. Instead, it unfolds movingly in the tiny moments between Richard and Mildred.

Yes, this is a standard rom-com, in all the best of ways — both playing with the genre’s well-trodden tropes, and letting us enjoy how much fun they can be.

Despite a plot twist you’ll see coming all the way from Vancouver, The Wedding Banquet is a worthy successor to Ang Lee’s classic, and a chance for a group of actors to shine together and separately. There’s plenty of silliness, but also time to be moved by quiet moments.

Restless Creature isn’t a mere celebration of a great artist; it’s a moving portrait of what happens when that artist confronts the possibility of not being able to make that art any more.

History almost erased Joseph Bologne; this film lets him live again.

Barry Jenkins’ beautiful Moonlight seems to have more in common with poetry than with a typical narrative film. It’s less a story than a collection of moments, which leaves its viewer feeling moved and changed, as if you’ve spent time in someone else’s dreams and woke up understanding who they are.

It’s Hall’s performance that jolts Christine, carrying the movie on her slumped shoulders.

As a movie, The Good Liar is just so-so, but as a master class in performance and star quality, it’s a pleasure.

This stranger-in-a-strange-land mood piece has an appealingly serene pace.

All of this silliness is actually great fun, particularly the bantering chemistry between Johnson and Statham, who spend much of the movie squabbling and calling each other names.

While A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is charmingly filmed (I loved the animated depictions of the toy Neighborhood, and the way Heller switches camera formats to give a more old-school portrayal of Rogers’ TV show), it didn’t quite have the emotional wallop I expected.

Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale is as good as it needs to be, though like the other movies it’s probably a complete puzzlement to anyone not already familiar with the franchise, and creator/writer Julian Fellowes can’t resist having someone earnestly intone something about Things Change And We Must Change With Them every two minutes.

Novitiate is a fascinating, unblinking yet respectful look at a time and place — a women’s community where a visiting archbishop (Denis O’Hare) can act like he owns the place.

Sky, despite its Hitchcockian beginning, is no thriller; instead, it’s a character study of a woman seeking a second act, and of a landscape that gradually transforms from foreign to welcoming.

It’s an artful, moving and often beautiful film, but be careful about showing it to young children; nightmares could ensue. (It haunted me, and I’m quite grown.)

The result is a stylish, inventive film that kept me intrigued, even as its story twisted so mightily I feared it might snap.

It’s a film that effectively combines two distinct — and very different — pleasures.

You can see clearly in the final scenes where “Creed IV” might be headed; you can also see that Jordan as a director shows promise well beyond this film. “Creed III” works as well as it needs to, and for the umpteenth film in a franchise, that’s more than enough.

Not a perfect movie, but a truly moving one.

For the most part, the movie finds a family-friendly balance between stunning scenery, hold-your-breath action and animals having goofy conversations with each other.

You watch “Glass Onion” relaxed, feeling like you’re in good hands; everyone on-screen is clearly having a wonderful time, so you can’t help but join right in. The plot’s a clever, multilayered caper, echoing the elaborate structure the movie is named for, and Johnson fills the script with funny name-dropping . . . and lets the cast happily ham it up.

If “Fast Six” is as much guilty-pleasure fun as this edition, directed within an inch of its life by Justin Lin (even the occasional subtitles are excitable), it’ll do just fine.

Raimi can’t resist letting things get wildly over the top at times (there’s a lot of blood and vomit in this movie), but ultimately Send Help is a fascinating study of what happens when a power dynamic suddenly shifts — and when a skilled and charismatic actor is given space to try something entirely new.

The likable tale of a real-life friendship, Green Book lets us spend two hours in the company of two electric actors.

Is it as good as the book? No. Did it make me happy? Oh yes, and how nice to be reminded what a gift a joyful rom-com can be.

The film goes on longer than it needs to, and as with so many in its genre, its director loses control by the third act. But “Blink Twice” is a promising debut that’s haunting for its performances (Ackie gives a vivid, vulnerable star turn; Tatum finds, behind his good-guy smile, an eeriness he’s never shown on-screen; Geena Davis pops up to steal a few scenes, as is her right) and for its feminist sensibility.

It’s an agreeably generic mishmash of every old-guys-pull-one-last-heist movie you’ve ever seen.

Its message is of a young woman’s empowerment, and of how love can save a family — and if the special effects sometimes overwhelm that message (such as a glorious field of flowers that takes flight in a colorful frenzy), it rings through loud and clear by the end.

It’s a raunchy comedy, with a plot that ends up hinging on a very R-rated video. And, most surprising of all, it’s also a conventional and rather sweet rom-com.

None of these stories feel monumental, and all of them resolve themselves neatly in a quarter-hour or so. But they have a kindness to them; a way of seeing people as they are, with their flaws and their goodness.

Nocturnal Animals is, I think, a beautiful mess, but I might have to watch it again to be sure.

It’s a remarkable story, told in a movie that doesn’t always quite live up to it; except for a few crucial scenes, The Zookeeper’s Wife feels a bit too soft-focus for the devastating story it tells.

Florid but warmhearted — much like the man at its center — The Happy Prince is a haunting portrait of the aftermath of betrayal; of how the master of comedy became a tragedy.

Candles illuminate faces in the dark; a curving staircase looms like a shadow. And the actors pitch their roles perfectly: Kidman’s breathy calm; Farrell’s charm, just hinting at something dark within it; Fanning’s way of prettily arranging herself, showing off Alice’s newfound power; Dunst’s quiet melancholy.

There’s nothing remotely fresh about Juror #2, but that’s what makes it fresh — it’s simply a story about neither heroes nor saints, but a group of people trying hard to do the right thing.

Life, as a character in Babes points out, isn’t always like a Nora Ephron movie, but it’s a pleasure to watch these two stumble toward their own happy ending.

Barker has a knack for jump scares — and for making a wildly fanciful story feel real.

It’s a nice message, told with charm aplenty. And as always, the Pixar magicians create a wonderfully populated world.

It’s hard to get too excited about Sing, which takes a bit too long to travel its familiar path, but it’s also quite impossible to dislike it.

Stronger, ultimately, leaves its audience feeling a little stronger; we fall with Jeff, and we stand with him.

The bottom line, for any movie that purports to be a thrill ride, is whether the end result is thrilling — and I’d give a definite yes to that.

Roman J. Israel, Esq., isn’t as good as the performance at its center, but perhaps that’s inevitable.

DaCosta whisks us through the story with plenty of wit, particularly from Kamala’s family.

The Little Stranger is a haunted-house movie, but not one with cheap scares. In fact there are few scares at all — it’s mostly just an atmosphere of lingering, musty dread — and horror-movie fans should be warned that it’s all quite subtle. But it’s haunting, in its quiet way.

It’s a pleasant Christmas-season offering; both mild (read: family-friendly) and sweet.

The film’s strength is its cast, and each of them finds moments of truth.

Dinklage isn’t a strong singer, but it doesn’t matter a whit: his swaggering but vulnerable Cyrano, reveling in words but aching with love, will break your heart

Colman, on whose face the film frequently rests (does anyone in cinema have a more open, guileless smile?), quietly holds the drama in her hands. Her Hilary is fragile, yet touchingly determined to will herself toward the light.

It’s part of the strength of Parker’s film that the current controversy doesn’t entirely overshadow its impact — and that Birth of a Nation immediately becomes part of another crucial conversation, about race.

Girl on the Train isn’t likely to haunt its shivering viewers the way the “Gone Girl” movie did. Blunt, however, makes the ride well worth taking.

A conventional but thoroughly entertaining film.

Hayek plays her role with such gentle conviction, the movie quickly becomes something else: a sort of tragedy of manners.

The Gospel According to André leaves you wishing you knew a little more about this complex, elegant gentleman and his lifelong love affair with style.

Drop gets the job done, and even throws in an excellent cocktail-piano rendition of “Baby Shark.” Go see it on a first date, if you’re brave.

It’s a movie full of small pleasures.

The film is an absolute triumph for Adams, who attacks her role like — yes, sorry — a dog with a bone.

It’s a moving and engaging film about finding truth, told through the perspective of two people who are very, very good at their jobs.

If tense man-against-nature arm-wrestling is your jam (think Robert Redford in “All Is Lost,” but with snow and Mads Mikkelsen) this film makes for a compelling hour and a half; you know where it’s going, but you never quite believe it’ll actually get there.