Noel Murray

Blow-Up defies analysis by design, given that it's about an artist who makes messes and cleans them up only in part, leaving behind the splatter that interests him. Antonioni follows a similar methodology, making strict interpretations of Blow-Up pretty pointless, and certainly less enjoyable than soaking up the mod decadence and ennui.

The director deserves kudos for setting her movie during such a gray, dreary Toronto winter. It couldn't have been easy to find a climate that so resembles adolescence.

Berger also shows a dark wit and a faith in old-fashioned melodrama that puts Blancanieves more in the camp of Pedro Almodóvar than Guy Maddin’s golden-age pastiches. (And aside from being silent and a period piece, the movie has almost nothing in common with "The Artist.")

Like a lot of folk tales, Ten Canoes peters out into something more prosaic than profound, but it flows like water, and has a deceptively gentle pull that proves hard to escape.

Even at its most upbeat, The Maid is something of a tragedy.

The multiple perspectives in Hold Your Fire add up to a fascinating look back at a still-raging debate over the true purpose of policing.

Arijon's choice to film the survivors returning to the Andes with their children pays huge dividends, leading to an ending that puts the real meaning of their ordeal in moving terms.

The movie is loaded with moments meant to generate shock and outrage, but it could use more shoe-leather procedural scenes, showing in detail how Ressa’s team goes about investigating the police’s abuses of their constitutional authority.

A slim Richard Matheson story that Spielberg padded into a 90-minute feature by artfully assembling a string of insert shots.

Brunner does a fine job of conveying how the harsh, forbidding landscape where Johannes and Maria live distorts the way they engage with the secular world.

For all its wealth of detail and thematic ambition, The Dissident is a good documentary that never quite becomes great. Because Fogel spends a lot of this film re-reporting a story that was in all the papers, all over the world, for months, watching The Dissident at times feels like hearing someone summarize a bestselling murder-mystery novel, while ominous “true crime” music plays incessantly on the soundtrack.

It's so rare these days to see a documentary that aspires to be cinematic that Beyond Hatred may seem at first to be slightly better than it is.

Wajda makes the murders look horrific and jangled, like something out of "Hostel," then ends Katyn with extended darkness and silence, allowing the audience to mourn for the death of a nation.

I Wish is still amply Kore-eda-esque, full of life, heart, and funny little details about daily existence, as it meanders its way toward moments of real profundity.

The lingering trauma of Morton’s upbringing is an ongoing challenge for him, even with all of his success; and this quietly moving movie examines how the right opportunities or the wrong expectations can make all the difference in who a person becomes.

Director Bennett Miller and screenwriters E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman have thought through every scene and every line in Foxcatcher. Nothing is irrelevant. The film proceeds like a well-constructed argument.

Timberlake himself is a stunner, whether he’s smoothly pirouetting his way through “Suit & Tie” or he’s choking back tears during his stirring set closer “Mirrors.” But his team is well-matched by Demme’s.

The truths revealed in this film have more to do with the North Korean government’s self-consciousness about how they’re perceived by foreigners. Here, they seem desperate to appear productive, congenial, devoted, and above all, happy.

Anyone who enjoys overpowering cinematic sensation and watching people do a job will be predisposed to like Leviathan, Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel’s avant-garde documentary about life aboard a commercial fishing vessel. Leviathan is an immersive experience, plunging viewers into darkness and chaos, amid a rush of vivid color and rapid movement.

In that way, Jarvis is a lot like Arnold: an artist who knows the steps, but doesn't yet have all the moves.

Accepted is remarkably affecting, thanks to the way Chen works his way back to what his doc is really about.

Describing the early stages of their sexual attraction, Bachardy sums up the whole outrageously fortunate arc of his life. "It was exactly what the boy wanted," Bachardy says. "And he flourished."

The tangled plot is ultimately too simple, and the film's sociopolitical commentary too paltry. But Lowlife does have a refreshingly varied and up-to-date cast of characters. With seedy B-movies, just a little bit of ambition elevates the generic.

It’s a bright, lively movie, with a vision of New York as a multicultural free-for-all, where everybody’s always looking to see what they can take from everybody else.

What really resonates are the memories of women helping women by talking openly about the specific economic and health concerns that the male-dominated establishment typically ignored. JANE’s supportive atmosphere opened eyes, showing a possibility of a world where everyone, regardless of social status, could be seen and heard.

Geller and Goldfine have assembled a vital historical document, covering a cultural era now mostly lost, corrupted imperceptibly but permanently when fledgling ballerinas started dreaming about Broadway and Hollywood instead of Swan Lake.

Mikey & Nicky is sometimes dull and sometimes confusing—and it's both at once in the first 10 minutes, when Cassavetes is semi-comatose in a hotel room—but it also features plenty of absurd-but-believable human behavior.

If this gently philosophical film has a lesson for Darious — and for us — it’s that life is long and things change. The choices made yesterday don’t always have to define who we are today.

The original musical holds up well, and Marshall and Condon’s adaption doesn’t wreck it.

The family's few lines of dialogue are so integral to advancing the story that they may well have been scripted, but it's not that important whether The Story Of The Weeping Camel is more fiction than objective ethnography. If anything, the contrast between what's real and what may have been faked only adds to the tension between the natural world and encroaching modernism.

More about well-observed moments of everyday life than it is about heightened melodrama.

The film’s exploration of crime-fighting’s gray areas is familiar; but strong performances, some stylistic flair and a matter-of-fact tone give The Policeman’s Lineage the ring of truth.

Menashe Lustig brings warmth and a lumpen charisma to Menashe’s lead role, giving life to a film based in part on his own experiences.

The World's dull weave of frustrated romances and worker exploitation is far too obvious, and Jia can only relieve the tedium so many times.

Peter Yates-directed cop thriller that relies on McQueen's chiseled features to hold an audience's attention through what's essentially a 45-minute TV show stretched to two hours. Aside from the famous car chase through the streets of San Francisco, Bullitt is primarily watchable for McQueen's performance as a cop breaking the rules to break a case, as well as all the '68 cinema signifiers: lens flares, soft-focus foregrounds, a jazzy Lalo Schifrin score, and vivid location shooting.

Kisses is dreary to a fault. It looks fantastic, with its shadowy Dublin alleys illuminated by the heroes' light-up Heelys. But the writing doesn't have that same glow.

The value of Shake Hands With The Devil is in Dallaire's detailed recollections of what he observed: the anatomy of a mass murder.

Daughter of the Wolf could’ve used a jaw-dropping set-piece or two (or three or four), but Hackl does at least embrace the challenge of shooting outside in the cold, and the movie’s moderately better for it.

The languid pace and barnyard earthiness won't be to everybody's taste, but it's hard to deny Mascaro's vision. Where some look at a rodeo and see sweat and dirt, he sees a poignant struggle, which he illustrates meticulously.

The documentary was shot on film, and Moormann's snappy editing and subtly moving camera match the energy of the jump-blues and roots-rock that Dowd loved.

Wright takes an exhaustive approach to the band’s career, going album by album, talking to collaborators and supporters as well as to the Maels. Throughout, Russell and Ron remain somewhat aloof, perhaps by design. They’re more open about their past and their intentions here than they’ve ever been in interviews, but they aren’t about to give away all their secrets.

Mostly though, the movie feeds off Rourke, who plays a genuinely decent guy who never lets his dawning self-awareness interfere with his responsibility to give the fans a show.

The smartest move that McGlynn makes in Rejoice And Shout is to let those old performances run on at length.

This is an exciting, sweeping vision of American life, which treats crime like the ultimate small business, crushed by the machinations of the truly powerful.

Movies can't exactly replicate the feeling of reading a book, but Jun Ichikawa's adaptation of Haruki Murakami's short story Tony Takitani comes remarkably close.

The big difference is that We Come As Friends is observational, while the institutions Sauper is watching here are actively tampering with Sudanese customs, in the name of improving their economy and living conditions.

There’s nothing especially original about “Assimilate.” But director John Murlowski and a talented young cast — including Joel Courtney, Calum Worthy and Andi Matichak as the plucky high schoolers trying to save their town — do at least keep the action lively and unpretentious.

To an extent, Greenfield tries to have it both ways with her film: she allows us to enjoy the fantasy of being rich, while also letting us see the bastards suffer a little.

The movie winds its way artfully from a straight animal study to something more profound. It's hard to shake the film's astonishing final thoughts and shots, as Bittner nervously contemplates parrot eggs while hawks circle overhead.

If anything, the biggest knock against Totally Under Control is that with a length of just over two hours, it sometimes feels as exhausting as it does exhaustive.

In its overt attempts to balance high-spirited spy adventure with more realistic acting and actio--conveying the realities of government-sponsored murde--Casino Royale is a step in the right direction for the Bond franchise. But it's a small, tentative step.

While Fanon wrote with intense anger, he made his case more on an intellectual level than an emotional one, seeking to use his enemies’ words and logic against them. Olsson prefers to swing wildly.

This is a darkly astute study of how men in big groups can feel obliged to live up to the expectations of “boys will be boys” whether or not they actually enjoy it — and no matter where it may lead.

“Black & Blues” isn’t a straightforward biography so much as a collection of engaging anecdotes and keen observations, meant to spark a renewed appreciation for someone too often misunderstood.

Stone and his crew get the audience hooked on the mystery of this charismatic crank, and then take their time before they answer some of the bigger questions.

It's clear what Breillat is trying to do here in the abstract - and The Sleeping Beauty is never less than gorgeous to look at - but the movie doesn't hang together as a story, and "stories" are what these fairy tales are meant to deliver.

Attempts to look beyond the hysteria and consider exactly how and why a culture that values physical power has internalized the idea that steroid use in sports is a scourge.

The sense of place and character in this film is handled so adroitly that whenever the plot comes blundering back in it’s a distraction — but never one that totally kills the movie.

Has its share of look-at-these-cute-old-commies laughs… But Gabbert mostly avoids making her subjects into hobbling punch lines, or even turning them into one-dimensional heroes.

If you can forgive the persistent corniness of “Supercell,” this modestly budgeted storm-chaser drama offers some surprising surface pleasures.

Roddy and Bereen in particular give fully fleshed-out performances, playing agents of a religious institution they both disrespect in subtle and blatant ways. Clarke and company inject some old-fashioned scares into the context of a deeper moral rot.

The idea of human memory as a kind of time machine is powerful, and writer-director David Gleeson and his co-writer Ronan Blaney make it pay it off well in their movie’s final 10 minutes. It’s the preceding 80 that are the problem.

As with the movie as a whole, the message those scenes deliver is a heady mix of uplifting and devastating.

The effect of Room 237 is intense. It’s a deep dive into the rabbit hole of semiotics, designed to train viewers to become alert to what they’re really seeing.

The movie took a long time to get distribution, but there's no expiration date on filmmaking this strong.

While 7 Prisoners doesn’t pack many surprises, it is remarkably well drawn, featuring gripping performances and a vividly squalid setting.

Tonally, The Band's Visit steps gingerly on the line between “sweetly humane” and “cloyingly quirky.”

Despite how good-natured this movie is, it just doesn’t stand on its own. It has the right kind of soul, but a shapeless body.

As always, Kurosawa masterfully controls his film's framing and sound design, and as always, the painstakingly precise mise-en-scene can feel a little overdone at times.

The word “visionary” gets tossed around too much, but there’s really no better way to describe the spectacularly bleak animated science-fiction film Mad God or its creator, Phil Tippett.

Il Futuro is a playful, soulful movie, affecting because it’s populated by lost children who can somehow sense they’re in a movie, and that in a movie, the only future is The End.

Has about a dozen layers of in-joke, and up to the eighth or ninth layer, they mostly work.

Remember My Name still works magnificently as a tragicomic character sketch.

Aquarela is first and foremost a spectacle. When the Apocalyptica music is cranked up high, and the screen’s awash in dazzlingly sharp, hypnotically swirling images of cresting waves, viewers could certainly take a moment to contemplate the importance of water to our global ecosystem. Or they could just drink it in.

A haunting mediation on water replacing its predecessor’s preoccupation with stars and dirt.

In one of the movie’s most famous scenes, Fox practices with his specially engineered rifle (which has been built into a pair of crutches), and as he takes his shots at a practice melon, he keeps tweaking the aim. It all looks very cool, until Fox finishes his adjustments, and fires a bullet that makes this stand-in for de Gaulle’s head explode.

The result is a movie that's poignant, bittersweet, and true.

Great use of an eerie Southern California landscape and some fine, naturalistic acting emphasizes how the ordinary can sometimes seem threatening — and vice-versa.

It has a cumulative power, as Trobisch focuses on the small details, looking closely at a woman who doesn’t want to be defined by the thoughtlessly inhumane thing someone else chose to do.

West has a lot on his mind with this film; and he’s ultimately less interested in explaining everything happening onscreen than in free-associating about the complicated, lifelong relationship between children and their parents. But Gaffigan’s everyman presence and seeker’s soul make him a great vessel for big ideas.

On its own merits, though, West Of Memphis is a well-assembled, well-argued documentary that shows how America's advocacy model of trial law can lead to government representatives spinning stories they know are probably untrue, then using their authority to stand strong against any alternate theory, no matter how many millions of people believe it.

Aside from the corny title, Anthony Baxter's You've Been Trumped is a fine, powerful piece of documentary filmmaking, using old-fashioned vérité techniques - and more than a little audience manipulation - to show how political influence and media savvy help the wealthy exert their will.

Too much of Dear Mr. Watterson is taken up by Schroeder and an array of non-professional C&H-lovers offering vague praise, with little to no real analysis—aesthetic, historical, or cultural.

Even viewers who know nothing about soccer can enjoy how Rocha captures the beauty of a communal event through editing and shot selection alone.

Even if Eat Drink Man Woman had no plot, it’d be a pleasure to watch.

The movie is sometimes quiet and poky to a fault; a few cheap pulp thrills might’ve made it feel more vital from start to finish. But Kurosawa and co-screenwriter Ryusuke Hamaguchi do gradually build tension and intrigue across Wife Of A Spy’s two hours, while also openly confronting a dark chapter of Japanese history.

While Jonestown lacks the power of revelation, it's a first-rate piece of journalism, as fascinating and thorough as any magazine article.

The new English track is predictably clumsy, but the story and images overcome it.

While The Fire That Took Her offers a broader perspective on these kinds of cases, Gillespie always brings everything back to Malinowski and her family, who led full lives before one reckless moment of cruelty changed everything.

From the jump, She's Gotta Have It announced that it wasn't going to define black life in terms of crime and poverty, just as it wasn't going to bind independent filmmaking to moribund realism.

Photographic Memory is less wry and more melancholy than McElwee's earlier documentaries; it's a lot like his superb 2003 film "Bright Leaves," which was also concerned with family history and the shifting meaning of images.

If nothing else, Hassan Fazili’s documentary, Midnight Traveler, offers a necessary corrective to the widely held contention that refugees have nothing to offer to the countries where they land.