Peter Debruge

The situation Rasoulof depicts is hardly limited to Iran. There are echoes of Nazi Germany and modern-day China in the way average citizens submit, while the pressures to inform on one’s neighbors recall pre-perestroika Soviet policies. Rasoulof’s genius comes in focusing on how this dynamic plays out within a family, which makes it personal.

Tomlin’s terrific in this mode. The script is as bland as the “cardboard” they serve in her rest-home cafeteria, but she manages to inject it with vinegar and attitude, while embracing the realities of aging.

"Toy Story" ushered in the era of computer-animated cartoon features, and the fourth movie wraps up the saga beautifully. At least, for now.

Beautiful, yet flawed film.

Malta and Laudenbach have crafted an entertaining, kid-friendly toon whose power lies less in its plot than the surprising insights into human behavior revealed along the way.

Like its source, the movie is a blast, one that benefits enormously from being shot on the streets of Washington Heights.

Ultimately, the filmmaker invites the world to feel loss in a new way, and in letting go, liberates something fundamental in all of us.

With such awe-inspiring artistry, designed so as to never distract from the material it serves, Kubo and the Two Strings stands as the sort of film that feels richer with each successive viewing, from the paper-folded Laika logo at the beginning (an early taste of the stunning origami sequences to follow) to the emotional resonance of its final shot.

While Lowery’s actual method of delivery may not be scary, it’s sure to haunt those who open themselves up to the experience.

I'd gladly take the legend over this dreary pseudo-historical mumbo jumbo.

Ultimately, Boys State works because the “characters” are so compelling.

The entire scenario, contrived to within an inch of its life, takes Poelvoorde’s appeal for granted. Marc’s anxiety becomes our own once he realizes what he’s done, though Jacquot makes it much more compelling to watch his characters fall in love than it is to see them writhe and twist amid its complications.

It’s a remarkable accomplishment: a film with the confidence to pose big questions, and the humility to leave them unanswered.

Rankin may have conceived Universal Language in the spirit of homage, but there’s something undeniably original about the end result. Don’t be surprised if that translates into a modest cult following and more creative ideas in the future.

The Children Act is that rarest of things: an adult drama, written and interpreted with a sensitivity to mature human concerns.

The Blue Caftan dares to imagine a world where there’s room for both appreciation of the old ways and room to evolve.

The helmer shows exquisite control of the world he has created.

Memory invites debate, rather than imposing a specific interpretation. It’s also a film that lingers, shifting and expanding in significance, even as the details start to blur.

Legrand’s achievement — his integrity, one might say — is that he’s managed to cut to the marrow of the situation while remaining keenly sensitive to how such things play out in the real world.

Two half-stories about fathers and sons on opposite sides of the law do not a full movie make in The Place Beyond the Pines, the overlong and under-conceived reunion between “Blue Valentine” director Derek Cianfrance and lookalike star Ryan Gosling.

It all blends together beautifully, a marriage of Pixar’s square, safe, feel-good sensibility with what could be described as the “real world” — and one that, much as “Inside Out” anthropomorphized the mind, will leave audiences young and old imagining their own souls as glowing idiosyncratic cartoon characters.

The tragedy here doesn’t stop with a white woman shooting her Black neighbor, but the underlying belief that she felt she could and still get away it.

Irresistibly cute and thoroughly unashamed of its own silliness, Turning Red may be second-tier Pixar, but the emotions run every bit as deep as in the studio’s best.

Few directors could get away with giving audiences so little context or plot, but the Zürchers succeed in piquing our curiosity, which is all one really needs to sustain a film.

Turns out there are a lot of things that have gone unsaid in movies until now, and Saint Frances goes there in a way that’s not only enlightening, but entertaining as well. This exceptionally frank, refreshingly nonjudgmental indie was written by and stars Kelly O’Sullivan, a “girl next door” type whose no-nonsense approach to issues facing both her gender and her generation leaves ample room for laughter — à la Amy Schumer’s “Trainwreck.”

For most of its running time, this personality-packed docu is nothing short of absorbing as it recaps the essential role African-American background singers played in shaping the sound of 20th-century pop music.

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller irreverently deconstruct the state of the modern blockbuster and deliver a smarter, more satisfying experience in its place, emerging with a fresh franchise for others to build upon.

With Crossing, writer-director Levan Akin wants to open our eyes to the easily overlooked.