Nicolas Rapold

Cronin thrills as ever to luscious gross-out scenes.

A trade-off for this fleet-of-foot adaptation is the full range of the play’s philosophical soundings and emotional palette. But their “Hamlet” surges with its own energies — palpably a matter of life and death.

For a movie about two people going through a wobbly patch, Fantasy Life glides with a sneaky storytelling ease.

The first installment’s critics might think this sequel further desensitizes viewers to violence along national or religious lines. It’s a movie of the current moment, which isn’t exactly a comfort.

Mordantly comedic, Two Prosecutors is deliberately paced but makes a tightly conceived addition to Loznitsa’s work, which rides deep into the long, dark nights of Russian history with fiction, observational documentary and immersions in the Soviet archives.

It’s an unexpected illustration of how psychiatric challenges can turn one’s life into a “shrinking world,” as Jennings puts it, and how to keep going.

Tucker wisely front loads clips of Jordan (with some texts spoken by Alfre Woodard in voice-over). Jordan seems to be speaking to us today as a voice of conscience and reason in a nation in crisis struggling to fulfill its promise.

Kramer quietly but forcefully recognizes that the conflict cannot continue as it has.

The battle scenes and one-on-one combat roar with energy, blending Rajamouli’s C.G.I. artistry, staging and inventive showmanship. The militarized kingdom of Mahishmati has the grandeur of silent-screen epics, and although romantic sequences with the rebel warrior Avanthika are scaled back, the film’s flying-ship song set piece is a candy-coated delight.

As Denji and his adversaries converge on and above city streets, it’s possible to enjoy the combat on the level of pure sensation. Here, the rapturous ability of anime to isolate and prolong movement and emotion within a frame is on full display.

The film, which could definitely focus more on the multiple-Grammy-Award-winner’s music, peters out around 2024, a year before Ye released a song called “Heil Hitler.” But Ballesteros, who started the project when he was 18 years old, does his best to portray a reflexive iconoclast without excusing the inexcusable.

The film’s often frenetic editing tends to weaken this strong story. But this hopeless history does have the flair to deploy Depeche Mode’s “Never Let Me Down Again,” capturing the tragic absurdity to Goudreau’s ambition.

It’s a film of sensations and mystery that feels like it’s wafting toward us from another century, like much of the Quays’ work, channeling uncanny realms of Central European puppetry.

Checkpoint Zoo portrays a caged and dependent menagerie that bewilderingly experienced humans at their worst and, fortunately, their best.

A little of Sunlight, which she directs and co-wrote with Allen, goes a long way. But there’s still something to seeing a performer go for broke, purging a character’s shame and despair through a screwy, confessional sense of humor.

What clinches the portrait is the sure-handed direction and Kana’s organic performance of a daunting character. Dramatically, Yamanaka finds unpredictable ways into and out of scenes, and she has an eye for the poignant details amid the angst.

It’s a film that maintains that Julie’s story is available only when she’s ready to tell it.

Despite comic touches, the story stays in the shadows of heart-to-heart talks and ruminations, with contemplative cinematography that sets faces like gems in the darkness and conjures heady visions of Long in Vietnam.

Pritzker directs genuine performances and has an ear for conversations with the ring of everyday emotion.

The four stories are almost overwhelming to witness all packed together, but the mission to communicate them to a larger audience is admirable.

The most moving entry might be Etimad Washah’s Taxi Wanissa.

Love poem, restless dream, troubled history, alchemist’s scrapbook — Leos Carax’s It’s Not Me is pure cinema as it dances through its dense 42 minutes.

William Goldenberg’s feature directing debut comes to life more often as a conventional family drama than as a conventional sports movie.

Impressively, nearly everything was shot by the documentary’s subjects. Yet although their double duty is an awful fact of life in Ukraine, the film lurches between its varying components and tones.

Shot in a present-tense vérité style, it stitches together micro-stories into a larger narrative in which negotiation can’t undo exploitation.

Cousins’s attuned eye and ear keep us interested afresh in the Hitchcock magic.

The moths remain a puzzle of data that awaits analysis. Dutta and Srinivasan’s understated approach shows research and nature in action without pretending to make a forest give up its secrets.

Blink keeps escaping any pat framing to tap into a deeper ache.

It’s less a slam-dunk nail-biter than a matter of can-do self-determination, or as Jimmy’s friends say: stoodis (“let’s do this”).

The documentary tends to linger on some assertions about sexuality in Lincoln’s era while papering over others. But the general effort of bringing to light (and potentially to history books) an underrepresented part of American experience remains vital beyond defining Lincoln’s identity.

The van’s familiar interior has a way of underlining how many other millions across history have had to escape military aggression. Hamela’s work as driver and documentarian reflects that reality while offering a spirit of resilience.

In the end, Dandelion feels like one artist’s emotional prequel, leaving us wishing for even more.

The shifting story, written by Paltrow and Tom Shoval, complicates the act of commemoration and dwells on the moral quandaries and uncomfortable resonances that result from the events.

Any deviations from the film’s obligatory timeline tour are very welcome, like a mortifying studio recording of Murry holding forth, and it’s a treat to hear the esteem for Brian among the Wrecking Crew, the storied group of session musicians.

Pine wisely avoids winks to the audience. But he whiffs at making the mystery especially gripping, leaving one instead to savor the moments, like a note-perfect Bening calmly talking Pine’s befuddled pool man through his latest setback.

Viewer beware: Between the uplift and the cringe, this movie may cause whiplash.

Even as the movie is lampooning one trope, it keeps taking refuge in other conventions in ways that undercut the pop of its premise and make one wish for greater depth to its thought experiments.

The movie (directed by Janeen Damian and written by Kirsten Hansen) skips over Maddie savoring the outcome of her wish, and shifts right into charming comedy around her confusion, including having no memory about how she got engaged.

This is history told through emotions as much as through well-documented events, conveying both the resilience of Sarajevans and the power of pop music (without falling into too much celebrity self-regard).

Rather than come off solely as a grim forecast, the film presents possible alternatives for the country, most notably from the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, the minister and social activist who offers a voice of hope and inclusivity that feels genuinely healing.

Science fiction has become such a mainstay of lumbering franchises that it’s hard not to root for left-field small-scale twists on the genre like the fizzy, funny Molli and Max in the Future.

Landsberry-Baker and Peeler could linger more on details about the people involved instead of the horse-race suspense of vote counts. But who can blame them when freedom is in the balance, and as local media outlets dwindle nationally.

The heroic arc is creaky, but despite the chintzy clichés about Godzilla movies, this one keeps bringing blockbuster brio to heel with a sometimes heavy heart.

[Broomfield’s] announcer-like voice-over and sometimes dishy interviews might evoke a “Behind the Music” exposé, but he seems most like a fan with a rueful sympathy for his devil of a subject.

Stallone’s flair for words — and his references to Arthur Miller’s “A View from the Bridge” and the 1968 dynastic drama “The Lion in Winter” — make one wish he’d talked about much more than his greatest hits and misses.

The bloat saps the fun and intrigue from the film, which can’t navigate between playing up eccentricity and committing to the notion that hell can be other people (even in a one-time refuge).

Jacobson’s account does the necessary work of restating the facts and showing that people can be held accountable for fomenting this kind of terror and harm.

In the end, as a document, it’s undeniable: The unvarnished human detail gives the film a life of its own that escapes any particular polemic or hope.

Whether you believe these phenomena are spiritual journeys or visions created by the human mind (or both), the film loses its sense of epiphany in the lackluster jumble of its moviemaking.

Amid the looming threats to a cherished home, Peck’s accomplishment is to let the Reels family own their emotional space.

Despite the impressively sweeping C.G.I. running battles in Thai fields or seaside settlements, or the gritty “Blade Runner”-lite interludes in crowded metropolises, the story’s engine produces the straightforward momentum of your average action blockbuster — one thing happens, then the next thing, complete with punchy (sometimes tin-eared) one-liners.

The story assembles before our eyes like an illustration in a manual for superspies.

Crafted entirely out of the televised 1985 trial of Argentina’s military junta, The Trial lays bare horrific crimes while showing the courage of victims, survivors and their families.

It’s an intriguing scenario, though not always played out skillfully. For better and worse, we feel Charlie’s confinement fully, as he watches another’s life go by and yearns for a proper home of his own.

The movie doesn’t need to achieve the same levels of sensation as a wildly popular racing simulator, but it should convey excitement and dynamism in its own cinematic way. When the novelty of watching a gamer become a driver wears off, we’re left with an adequate racing drama in a medium built for so much more.

[Abzug's] never-say-die advocacy still inspires, but the film also illustrates the merciless challenges of electoral endurance even for the fiercest fighter.

Uri and Raya (who have disarmingly direct affects) show a mix of insight and innocence that also feels like a faithful rendering of the vulnerability within a relationship.

Davis, a Canadian documentarian, zeros in on how hockey has been a vital part of his country’s identity, and what it has felt like for Canadian players of color who love the game to be told, from very young ages, that they do not belong.

Exploring fictional worlds with Eco for a guide remains a diverting and often enlightening pursuit.

[Campbell's] Audrey does nothing less than enact a kind of communion through voice and image.

This is a refreshingly grounded, deceptively plain picture of crime-fighting as a grind of false leads, workplace fatigue and no closure.

There’s something grudgingly admirable about the voluble star essentially spending an entire film doing reactions. But it’s a disastrous move in a Hollywood satire that already needs to be more than a grab bag of jokes.

Its splashy, curiously filter-free adventures unfold in Italy and Germany during World War II, to sometimes awkward effect.

Reed’s initial overeager stylings fall back to reveal a mature reckoning with love, hurt, independence, and hard-won wisdom.

Baisho gets across the creeping despair that morbidity and the loss of community can create — a sensation that lets Plan 75 double as a consummate entry in pandemic-era cinema.

The film’s sometimes brusque transitions and decentered perspectives are just as transgressive as any of the graphic imagery.

Paik is undeniable, creating despite lean times (and slowing after a 1996 stroke).

It’s all a heady brew that leaves one wanting to know even more about Roberts, who is now running for mayor in Denver. The movie resists encapsulating him, or perhaps he escapes its director’s full understanding.

For a documentary largely about archives, it should be better organized, but its breathless profusion of information underscores the scale of the task at hand.

A House Made of Splinters is made with such aching sensitivity that it’s a marvel a camera was used and not some form of mind-meld.

The film’s biggest trick might be casting Moore, Stan and the positively glowing Middleton and still never quite catching fire.

The ticktock horror plotting muffles the romantic spark that brought Maja and Leah together in the first place — the thrill replaced by a lukewarm chill.

The message of manifesting your goals reigns supreme, which is great, but it’s worth mentioning that Watson’s willpower benefits from the privileges of financial security, family support and a curmudgeonly-turned-selfless coach.

Pathaan is in some ways a save-the-world superhero movie without suits, and while less self-serious, the hefty length can lag. More is not always better — though the gusto of Padukone speedskating to the rescue at one point goes a long way.

It’s all a reminder of the labor and risks that go into creating and preserving essential imagery of the past, even for the most notorious events in history.

A serviceable slab of possession horror.

It can’t fail to trigger shudders of recognition as well as feelings of release, but the filmmaking lacks a certain drama.

Bahrani’s film (which he narrates) beetles along without fully exploiting Davis’s ample entertainment value, which is counterbalanced by accounts of his dubious actions and sometimes unseemly opinions.

As edited, Moreh’s interviews prize policy analysis and haunting candor over gotcha moments or grandstanding.

It’s boosterish and jam-packed, like many pop-culture documentaries (not just ones produced by Disney about Disney).

The writer-director, Andrew Bujalski, zeros in on the delicate dances and negotiations between the people in these two-handers, which percolate with sly humor, decency, curiosity and sheer nerve.

The shrewdly observant film sticks with one Afghan general, Sami Sadat, to tell an emotional story that feels as significant as any analysis of troop numbers.

The actors’ chemistry feels brittle, and like many road movies it has trouble mining drama out of disparate episodes.

The film’s skimping on economic and social issues echoes one description of Biden’s own messaging by some pundits: low-key to the point of obscuring the full picture of his efforts.

Plan A never quite rises to the challenge posed by this remarkable chapter in history.

If only the story of Hinterland felt as engrossing and alive as its setting.

With his feature, Davenport stakes out his own vantage point on the world, one that leaves a viewer wishing to hear his thoughts elaborated even further.

A wistful beauty and a delicately imaginative sense of craft set Vesper apart from most post-apocalyptic stories.

Decency prevails in a somewhat ludicrous finale involving an army of children and a train containing a high-ranking officer. It’s an ending so tidy as to undercut the effort to broach a shameful side to the American war effort.

“Four Winters” offers an enduring warning amid today’s global struggle with authoritarian forces: As one speaker explains, her neighbors were already antisemitic before the war, but with power, they became vicious.

Getting peeved at Mottola and Hamm’s easygoing efforts would be like getting mad at a cat for sleeping too much.

What makes the film’s episodic approach flow is the pulse-sensitive camerawork. It’s worth singling out, because it is the kind that is often described as “intimate” but rarely pulled off with such Maysles-esque aplomb.

The caper, directed by Moon Hyun-sung, isn’t as fun as it insists it is, playing up the crew and its exploits à la “The Fast and the Furious” and “Baby Driver” but never hitting its stride.

You couldn’t ask for richer reading material, even if the film doesn’t quite live up to the promise of its premise.

The movie’s charms are limited by what comes to feel like a coddling conceit.

It’s hard to argue with that message, but one doesn’t have to accept the ho-hum experience of watching this movie.

The film’s dramas are ornately costumed but often stilted and lacking the verve of the battle staging. Even the glories of war can turn stultifying when you’re shown one too many thousand-yard-stare reaction shots by military leaders.

Hunting’s documentary catches up with where many people are finding their dreams realized, and understands that sometimes the dream is simply to be yourself.