Rene Rodriguez

The movie plays out as a series of memories, so exact and evocative that watching it becomes an immersive experience.

Profoundly hopeful and optimistic film.

Murderball invokes fascination toward its protagonists, because it views them with the same confidence and acceptance they view themselves.

Gravity is a celebration of the primal pleasure of movies: It shows you things you’ve never seen before, transports you out of the theater and out of your head, tricks you into believing what’s happening on the screen is happening to you.

Foxcatcher is too cold of a movie to love, but that chilliness is intentional and transfixing, a parable about the darkest corners of the minds of men that dares to whisper instead of shout.

That broad range of subject matter is indicative of the messy, meandering structure of the movie. But if Moore fails to tie this unwieldy movie into a lucid thesis, at least every tangent he chases down has its own payoff.

The emotional connection we develop with her as the movie unfolds pays off in the final 20 minutes, which is about as happy of an ending as anyone could imagine, except this one really happened.

With a light, sometimes hilarious touch, Look at Me deflates the pretensions and self-obsessed nature of a group of wealthy Parisian literati, but its observations about the effects of fame and success and our natural desire to fan them as high as they can go, apply to anyone within range of reality-TV culture.

Blue Jasmine, which is easily Allen’s best and most powerful movie since 2005’s "Match Point", is filled with terrific performances, including Hawkins as the sweet-natured Ginger.

The Dreamers argues that life must be lived, not dreamt. But it also remembers the confounding pleasures of dreaming with your eyes wide open.

Cotillard, who earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance, plays the character as a woman hanging on by the barest of threads.

By the end, Turtles Can Fly becomes a lyrical and heartbreaking reminder of the human toll of war.

The casting of Hiddleston and Swinton was a stroke of genius: They emanate a particular sort of cool only they seem privy to, accentuating their alienation.

This is an intentionally fanciful, gossamer movie, extremely personal and heartfelt, influenced in equal parts by Michelangelo Antonioni (although never so elusive) and Gus Van Sant (just not quite so self-conscious).

Monsieur Lazhar doesn't send you home depressed. Instead, the film leaves you hopeful, and even exhilarated, that even the most painful wounds can sometimes heal.

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.

There's nothing about United 93 that qualifies as entertainment in the traditional sense: It is an unpleasant, wrenching experience, which is just as it should be.

A big, bold movie that gets at undeniable truths about the way no one, no matter how powerful, is immune from manipulation.

One of the scariest films I've seen in ages, although I cannot in all honesty explain exactly what the movie is about.

By the end of the movie, when all your questions have been answered, you're left with the exhilarating high of having been manipulated by a gifted artist in a diabolically dark mood.

By shunning the clinical mumbo-jumbo, the movie allows the viewer's imagination to fill in the gaps, making Microcosmos a delightfully entertaining -- and often hilarious -- celebration of nature. [27 Nov 1996, p.4D]

It’s ABOUT something, which has become a rarity in Hollywood pictures. Sometimes, the smallest stories cast the largest shadows.

This is a romantic comedy that makes the concept of romantic comedies appealing again -- that reminds you how resonant and transporting they can be when they're done right.

The movie isn’t a thriller, but it still generates a strange sort of emotional suspense - an incredibly intense drama that makes you hold your breath, and it builds toward a total knockout of a final scene in which the story is resolved with hardly a word.

She's such a fascinating, faceted character that halfway through "Christine" you almost forget about what's coming.

In fact, by ignoring its McCarthyist roots, The Crucible becomes more expansive and timely. This tale about the Salem witch trials of 1692 no longer seems harnessed to the now-quaint fear of communism that swept America in the 1950s: And its subject -- the power of lies and the dangers of conformity -- seems more symbolic than ever before. [20 Dec 1996, p.5G]

Almodóvar has never been shy about experimenting with plot structure, but Bad Education is the closest he's ever come to a metamovie, the sort of self-reflective, hall-of-mirrors contraption on which Charlie Kaufman has built his career.

By the end, the movie has pulled off a small miracle: You become absorbed in the lives of these people for who they are and not what they own.