Peter Debruge

Story’s an original, and the film is a revelation — a movie that’s as deep as we’re willing to read into it, and an invaluable time capsule for summers far in our future, assuming we ever get there.

That kind of all-around ineptitude puts the Get Duked! ensemble in the company of such classic Zucker and Abrahams movies as “Airplane” and “The Naked Gun,” and should appeal to lovers of old-fashioned lowbrow farce, provided they’re willing to accept a few lame hip-hop references.

The film is sleek and shadowy, benefiting from the fact Onah chose to shoot on celluloid and driven by stellar performances across the board.

Brazilian director Gustavo Pizzi crafts a warm and wonderfully universal love story that comes across surprisingly unconventional for something so familiar.

Deeply moving but never manipulative, Young Mothers amounts to the brothers’ best film in more than a decade.

This compelling human drama finds fresh energy in the inspirational-teacher genre, constantly revealing new layers to its characters.

One of the year’s most delightful moviegoing surprises, a quality family film that rewards young people’s imaginations and reminds us of a time when the term “Disney movie” meant something: namely, wholesome entertainment that inspired confidence in parents and reinforced solid American values.

The film will get people thinking and talking. The way DuVernay directs it, Origin is a swirling tornado of ideas.

Levinson gives his stars roughly equal time, carefully modulating the sense of balance throughout. His direction seldom seems showy, and yet, we sense the intention behind each cut as power and control shifts throughout the movie.

Inspiration and entertainment can make corny bedfellows, but Longoria pulls it off, to the extent that a moment of faith when Richard and Judy pray doesn’t feel preachy, but a reflection of their priorities.

Black Bag is a reminder of just how enjoyable Soderbergh can be when he’s riffing on well-worn genre material.

The movie absolutely delivers on the sheer moment-to-moment pleasures fans have come to expect, from dynamite dialogue to powder-keg confrontations.

While Antebellum is no zombie movie, it treats systemic racism as a kind of contagion that refuses to die, eating the brains of successive generations. There’s only one way to stop it, and that’s by blowing the minds of all those infected — which is precisely the impact Antebellum achieves.

At times, the dramatic tension is so strong, “Dreams” could almost be a thriller.

At this finely tooled tragedy’s core towers Emilie Dequenne, no longer the feral young thing seen in 1999′s “Rosetta,” but a trapped animal pushed to devastating extremes.

The film is at once old-fashioned and refreshingly, realistically up to date in its take on modern courtship.

At times, A Cop Movie seems unnecessarily convoluted in its structure, but by the end, the brilliance of its design becomes clear: This is nothing short of an existential inquiry into what it takes to be a cop.

For those willing to put in the effort, Annihilation achieves that rare feat of great genre cinema, where we are not merely thrilled (the film is both intensely scary and unexpectedly beautiful in parts) but also feel as if our minds have been expanded along the way.

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.

To get the desired emotional reaction, The Painter and the Thief proves able to deceive in ways that are best discovered for yourself. It works: In a genius final stroke, Ree pulls back to reveal the entire canvas, putting key aspects of this unconventional portrait into startling new perspective.

Villeneuve treats each shot as if it could be a painting. Every design choice seems handed down through millennia of alternative human history, from arcane hieroglyphics to a slew of creative masks and veils meant to conceal the faces of those manipulating the levers of power, nearly all of them women.

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.

Director Michel Hazanavicius finds a poignant way to address not only the horrors of the Holocaust, but the kindness that combated it, crafting an indelible parable destined to be watched and shared by generations to come.

There’s no reason a movie about a devil dress should work, and yet Strickland strikes the right tone, inviting laughter by taking it all so seriously.

[A] sublime, quietly elegiac feature debut.

There’s real wisdom to Chasing Summer, which Shlesinger and Decker offset with a handful of steamier-than-you’d-expect sex scenes.

This splendid satire benefits...from “The Singer” director Giannoli’s gift for striking just the right tone with such tricky material.

Baker’s subversively romantic, free-wheeling sex farce makes "Pretty Woman" look like a Disney movie.