Peter Rainer

Pacino still gets a blast out of acting. His performance in this film about a blocked performer is gloriously unblocked – a valentine to vanity.

As one of Booker's supporters notes, it's a sad day when academic success is used to denigrate an African-American.

Easily the best in the series since the first one.

What makes Get Out more than just a slam-bang scarefest is that, in its own darkly satiric way, it is also a movie about racial paranoia that captures the zeitgeist in ways that many more “prestigious” movies don’t.

Heartbreaking, exhilarating, baffling. In other words, it expresses the performer's persona in its purest form.

Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima is his companion piece to "Flags of Our Fathers" and in almost every way is superior.

This is the second documentary he has made about tragic jazz artists who died young – the first was “My Name Is Albert Ayler” – and he clearly has an abiding fascination with them. But what draws him most of all is the music, and that’s as it should be.

The accounting of his life story, as it unfolds in the film, is grounded in the brutal realities of corporate skulduggery. I’m a big fan of Balzac’s maxim that “behind every great fortune is a great crime,” and if nothing in Jobs’s history qualifies as a great crime, there is certainly a long trail of extreme misdeeds.

The film is laced with lovely moments, from the leads and from Shelly as a waitress friend.

Most of the photographs on view in The Salt of the Earth bear witness to great suffering, and what they exalt is not the photographer’s eye but the fearful humanity that binds us all.

It’s easily the best of the Marvel superhero movies but it’s also a film that foregrounds a cornucopia of powerful black faces, garbs, traditions, and conflicts. It’s a stealth movie: Like “Get Out,” it’s a genre film jam-packed with social relevancy.

Morgan Neville’s movie is more than just a chronicle of Rogers’s career. In some not-quite-definable way, the film itself is all of a piece with Rogers’s principled gentleness. It’s a love letter, but the sentiment and affection that pour through the film is honestly arrived at, even when, near the end, the film threatens to turn into the cinematic equivalent of a group hug.

Blossoms of Fire fulfills the first criterion of any good ethnographic study: It's about an inherently interesting subject.

Sprawling yet cramped, There Will Be Blood may not be the best movie of the year, but it's certainly the strangest. It evokes passing comparisons to everything from "Giant" to "Citizen Kane" but it's impossible to pigeonhole.

It's a marvelous performance in a marvelous movie, one that sneaks up on you while you're watching it.

Despite everything, many of us still think of animation as a kid's genre. $9.99, based on stories by Etgar Keret who also co-wrote the script with the director, is an attempt to use the animation medium to express an entirely adult sensibility.

If the literacy of The History Boys is deemed uncinematic, then give me uncinema anytime.

Sissako, a Muslim, frames his story as a cry against religious intolerance. One of the characters, speaking of jihadism, says, “Where is piety? Where is God in all this?” It is the central question of this movie – and of much more now than this movie.

After seeing this film, try reading Norman Mailer's "Of A Fire on the Moon," its perfect companion piece.

The result is doubly satisfying: We get not only a trenchant political drama but a bang-up concert film as well.

What makes this film different from numerous other such movies is that, in many instances, it utilizes footage never before seen publicly.

The movie is an idyllic view of life as it ought to be, rather than the way it is.

Interviewed in the film, Juárez journalist Sandra Rodriguez offers up this grim summation: “That these people represent the ideal of success, impunity, and limitless power is symptomatic of how defeated we are as a society.”

The Last Station isn’t all that it should be, but whenever these two actors are onscreen, it’s like a great night at the theater.

In the end, the power poetry workshops, as the teachers are first to admit, are not about creating Shakespeares. They are about survival.

A lean, efficient modern Western that is so satisfyingly constructed I’m tempted to say it’s just about perfect. There’s a special pleasure in watching a movie that knows exactly what it’s after and then, in scene after scene, gets it.

Preteen girls – and not just those who are already American Girl fanatics – should be entranced. And why not? Not many movies for that audience are as respectful as is this one.

Sophisticated and nuanced, and every character is bursting with emotional contradictions.

High among the film’s many standout virtues is how fully Kapadia has captured the faces of this trio.

Free speech isn't merely a shibboleth in The Agronomist. As embodied by Dominique, it's a fire-breathing force.

This extraordinary film, which, despite its tragic trappings, is often surprisingly playful, can be appreciated without knowing anything about Panahi or his long-term battles with the authoritarian regime.

Past Lives, the graceful debut feature from the Korean Canadian playwright Celine Song, stands a world apart from most of today’s slick movie fare.

A first-rate zombie movie. The best tribute I can offer is that it makes you want to go out directly afterward and down some expensive single-malt scotch.

Achingly funny movie...Guest has cultivated a stock company of players whose work together is so intuitively sharp that it seems to redefine the boundaries of acting.

Tsunashima gives a deft performance in a role that starts out as caricature but becomes full-bodied. Collette commands the screen virtually the entire time.

Polanski’s strongest and most personally felt movie.

Linklater must have recognized a kindred spirit when he read Belber's play. He's given us a reality-fantasy game, a psychodrama, a harangue, and a detective story all rolled into one.

It’s the most sheerly pleasurable movie I’ve seen so far this year.

Tony Richardson’s 1960 The Entertainer, based on the John Osborne play, is a cultural event of the first importance.

Apollo 10½ is a portrait of innocence untainted by any agenda other than the need to convey as honestly as possible what it felt like to be that particular boy at that particular moment in history. It’s a movie about how we conjure and commemorate our pasts.

Kim exalts nature--life’s passage--without stooping to sentimentality. He sees the tooth and claw, and he sees the transcendence. Whether this is a Buddhist attribute, I cannot say, but the impression this movie leaves is profound: Here is an artist who sees things whole.

Perhaps most heartening about Writing With Fire is how the film doesn’t discount the personal toll on these women. Crusaders though they may be, they voice throughout the film their deep doubts and fears.

At its best, the film compares favorably to its obvious antecedents, "Rififi" (which Melville once hoped to direct) and "The Asphalt Jungle."

The script, instead of being what we tolerate in order to savor the visuals, is a delight all by itself.

“Lunana” demonstrates, as few films ever have, how inspired schooling can break through even the most abject obstacles.

Belzberg doesn't intervene during the moments of violence, believing that the film can force social change only by showing the worst. If she is correct, then this film should move mountains.

Spellbindingly original -- Like the wild orchid, Adaptation is a marvel of adaptation, entwined with its hothouse environment and yet stunningly unique.

R.M.N. is one of the most searing cinematic examinations of xenophobia I’ve ever seen.

It would be too convenient, I think, to write this movie off as a study of untreated mental illness. The performance of Jean-Baptiste (who was so memorable in Leigh’s “Secrets & Lies”) transcends the clinical. She shows us what lies beneath Pansy’s suffering. This woman who can’t abide other people is terrified of being alone.

It’s a truism that actors love playing scoundrels much more than goody-goodies – though Thompson excels at both. Here she goes full out into villainy mode, and she’s a hoot.

The lifelong friends in Fred Schepisi's marvelous Last Orders actually seem like lifelong friends.

A mesmerizing documentary.

The Pinochet Case is a searing album of remembrance from those who, having survived, suffered most.

Beautifully directed by Phillip Noyce, the film -- is a full experience, a love story and a murder mystery that expands into a meditation on the deep deceptions of innocence.

King is above all a pleasure-giver. He wants to heighten the knockabout joys of unfettered high spirits.

The work of an obsessive who has developed a light touch--though some of his more outright themes and pronouncements can be heavy-going.

It would be natural to place this film in the context of America’s ongoing immigration crisis. Certainly it is “topical.” But I think Liu and Majok have transcended its immediate relevance. It’s a human drama, not a sociological artifact. Because of its quality of feeling, and the remarkable performances of its two leads, it will likely outlast its historical moment.

The film periodically risks turning into a swoony fantasy. But it is a fantasy we can favor because it’s one we all can share.

It’s a wonderful movie, and an Oscar nominee for best international feature. It is also proof, if any were needed, that the rhythms of everyday life, no matter how seemingly mundane, can resonate when beheld by an artist’s eye.

Wiseman lets the material breathe in a manner unique to the subject.

Rather than structure their movie as a chronological biography, the co-directors, Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine, wisely focus on the genesis of Cohen’s most celebrated and performed song, “Hallelujah.” This approach allows them to interweave Cohen’s entire career while also avoiding the one-thing-after-another sprawl that often bogs down these kinds of films.

Michel Bouquet's performance makes Anne Fontaine's How I Killed My Father required viewing.

Most of the time we are with Cruise and Foxx, and their interplay is never less than galvanizing.

A film director doesn’t have to shoot the works to hold an audience. If the drama is galvanizing enough, that’s all you need. And what we have here is more than enough: Viola Davis in one of her greatest performances, and the late Chadwick Boseman in his final and most powerful appearance.

The documentary is, in essence, not much more than a record of what happened in Zaire, but it has been assembled with a real feeling for the historical moment. It's literally a blast from the past.

The film is an indictment of a cultural tragedy; a testament to the steadfastness, against all odds, of the Indigenous community; and a plea for healing.

Linklater, whose previous movies include "Slacker," "Before Sunrise," and "Waking Life," may be the most versatile director of his generation. School of Rock is his most unabashedly mainstream movie by far, and yet it’s commercial in the best way.

It’s a magical little movie about a most unmagical subject.

A comedy in the best sense--it draws its life from the pitch-perfect authenticity of its characters.

A flashy, nasty triumph

Coppola both wrote and directed, and there’s a pleasing shapelessness to her scenes. She accomplishes the difficult feat of showing people being bored out of their skulls in such a way that we are never bored watching them.

Up until its final scene, I thought A Little Prayer was an entirely decent and poignant piece of work. But its closing scene between Bill and Tammy, those two self-described kindred spirits, moved me more than anything I’ve seen all year. It’s an infinitely touching expression of the love that one human being can have for another.

The film’s moral issues don’t come across as tacked on. They arise organically and register as both intensely personal to the filmmaker and much larger in scope. The film even offers up, against all odds – and a truly chilling final moment – a measure of hope.

Just when you think you’ve pinned down someone as good or bad, the tables are turned and the complexities thicken. Just like in real life.

Although Neville obviously had the cooperation of many in Bourdain’s inner circle, the film never feels authorized or hagiographic. He allows for Bourdain’s inner darkness.

Directed with deadpan flair by Barry Levinson and based on a memoir by Hollywood producer Art Linson, it's a pitch-perfect sendup of the movie colony with a marvelous cast.

This is not intended as a movie about what a genius must endure on the path to success. Sharad’s story is much more relatable than that.

What it's really about is the euphoria that talent can bring to those who are possessed by it. That euphoria lights up the screen.

Blue Moon may essentially take place inside a single room, but it rarely feels stagy. It captures the connivance and conviviality of theater people – the way they come together, if only for a night, with a spiritedness that is both forced and entirely genuine.

The paradox of Train Dreams is that we are looking at a vanishing way of life that, at the same time, has a startling immediacy. That immediacy is more than a matter of careful observation. In its widest sense, the movie is asking what makes life worth living.

The funniest and most emotionally charged erotic road movie since Bertrand Blier's "Going Places."

It's an elliptical tragedy in which the fate of its characters takes on a larger significance while never losing its intimacy.

The best family films are those that entertain both children and adults. The Sheep Detectives can be enjoyed simply as a funny fable with a solvable mystery at its center. The well-placed clues are hidden in plain view.

A movie that really zips along; it offers some of the same pleasures as the silent slapstick comedies, particularly the Keaton films, with their sense of how sheer velocity carries its own wit.

It's a truly prodigious piece of work, resembling a career summation far more than a maiden voyage.

Modest in scope, it ultimately conveys, at its best, the unifying joy that great music-making can inspire.

What I ultimately took away from the documentary is the deep love that can exist between owners and their dogs. In The Truffle Hunters, both are shown to be the custodians of each other’s happiness.

What reveals Pontecorvo as an artist, and not simply a propagandist of genius, is the sorrow he tries to stifle but that comes flooding through anyway--the sense that ALL sides in this conflict have lost their souls, and that all men are carrion.

What grounds the overflow of incident are the many human touches that personalize both the anguish and the stray glimpses of freedom.

Moodysson captures exactly the preening narcissism and gumption of these frazzled would-be revolutionaries trying to wriggle out of their bourgeois straitjackets.

If Balram was simply a born hustler, his odyssey would not have the resonance it has here. But we can see glimmers of what he might have become if not for his caste.

The jamboree is beautifully shot and directed, by Chris Menges and David Leland respectively, and there is a haunting touch: the presence of George’s son, Dhani, on guitar, looking near-identical to his dad in his twenties.

The power of this film sneaks up on you. It glides from jubilation to heartbreak without missing a beat.

It would be a mistake to regard American Splendor as an anthem for the common man. It is the UNCOMMON that is being celebrated here.

I've never seen another movie that so clearly expresses the sensual sustenance that great folk culture provides its practitioners.

While making his new film, he (McElwee) imagines that his boy is looking back at his screen image from some distant point in the future, when McElwee himself is gone. No child of a moviemaker could ask for a more beautiful bequest.

A crowd-pleaser in the best sense, it overflows with empathy for its beleaguered people.

What's remarkable is how often the photographer's subjects allow themselves to be caught on film; it's as if they understood implicitly that Nachtwey was there not only to agitate for reform but to memorialize their agony. He does both.