Rene Rodriguez

The fact that that character happens to be so repellent -- and yet so endlessly fascinating -- is one of the film's many strokes of genius.

Spotlight is simply a great story exceedingly well told, through characters whose fingers are perpetually stained with ink.

If Close-Up is not much to look at, it certainly enthralls the mind. [09 Feb 1996, p.16G]

A model of pitch and modulation and craft. For two hours, the Coens hold you in their grip so tightly that for long stretches it feels a little hard to breathe.

There's a mean little Hollywood satire squirreled away within Hollywood Ending, but you have to look hard to find it.

In The Act of Killing, director Joshua Oppenheimer pulls off the impossible: He confronts great, incomprehensible evil and puts a human face on it.

Jackson's dazzling vision turns the story into a real movie-movie -- one that, unlike too many fantasy films today, is genuinely transporting.

It’s a cry of despair and soul-shaking desperation, leavened with shades of Dostoyevskyan angst.

A worthy and delirious final chapter to this hallowed animation franchise.

More than once during The Fast Runner (Atanarjuat), it's easy to forget you're watching a movie.

It's a sign of just how much Coppola respects her characters that she doesn't make us privy to that final line: It is only meant for them to share. But like the rest of the ethereal Lost in Translation, you don't need to have it spelled out in order to feel it.

Full Grown Men marks the feature debut of director David Munro, who was born and raised in Miami and shoots Florida like a native.

Her argues that sometimes, crazy can be wonderful.

The movie itself is a nominee for Best Animated Feature, and it's good enough to pull a surprise upset over the beloved Finding Nemo. It's a mad masterpiece.

Succeeds where so many other recent horror pictures have failed: It consistently scares you silly.

Waltz With Bashir isn't only a harrowing anti-war plea, it is also an eloquent and deeply moving argument that it is critical to never forget human atrocity, lest the past be repeated.

A unique bond still develops between the two outcasts, leading to an unexpected resolution that ends this subtle, deeply humane movie on an ambiguous, but unmistakably hopeful, note.

Although it is technically a sequel, Before Sunset stands perfectly well on its own. In fact, the new movie plays better if you haven't seen the original for a while, so its details have grown appropriately fuzzy.

The movie puts Jasira -- and the audience -- through the wringer, but it also makes the ride worth it.

With Mad Max: Fury Road, director George Miller delivers the sort of jumbo-sized entertainment that makes you spontaneously break out in appreciative laughter: The breadth of his imagination and showmanship makes you giddy.

The Queen taps into the universal curiosity the world shares toward royal families -- an element of the movie that Frears wisely mines for gentle humor.

It's a small victory, but Punch-Drunk Love knows how to reap epic delight from the most precious of details.

What Bloody Sunday lacks in clarity, it makes up for with a great, fiery passion.

The sexual content may be excessive (the movie could have gotten by with just one scene instead of three) and the running time a bit indulgent, but Blue is the Warmest Color grows in power and intensity.

American Splendor reminds you that sometimes, simply getting out of bed each morning can be the most heroic of acts.

It's the filmmakers' refusal to sugarcoat their tale's darker subtexts that makes Finding Nemo such a resounding piece of storytelling.

A joyous, amazingly detailed paean to imagination and personal expression that dares -- and succeeds -- to illustrate one of the most mysterious enigmas of all: the creative process.

This is the most impressive directorial debut since"Reservoir Dogs." Being John Malkovich is weird, all right-- the best kind of weird, the kind you haven't seen before.