Rex Reed

Considering the rest of the summer’s flotsam, My Mother’s Wedding is hardly a waste of time. In an otherwise grim summer, it goes well with air-conditioning.

Sovereign is an ambitious, above-average action thriller with the extra bonus of being a thought-provoking civics lesson.

To miss it would be to overlook a rare and compassionate work of art, not to mention one of the most honest, heartfelt performances of this or any other year in motion picture history.

It’s Deneuve’s movie from beginning to final frame, and she dominates every scene with a gorgeous and contagious charisma that is bewildering.

How refreshing it is when a small film with a big heart comes along unannounced and captures your affection.

Despite the danger of G-rated sentimentality, which everyone involved heroically avoids, The Penguin Lessons is a work of surprising depth and subtle, irresistible impact.

This long-anticipated, patiently awaited film revelation doesn’t tell it all, but almost. What there is tells and shows more than anything you’ll ever see anywhere else.

Sensitively directed by Francis Ford Coppola’s granddaughter, Gia Coppola, it’s a film about a familiar subject, but with a heart as big as the Vegas strip and a style of its own that holds interest from start to finish.

The issues the film raises about journalistic integrity and broadcast morality make September 5 the most rivetingly responsible film about journalism since Steven Spielberg’s The Post. Not to mention the obvious fact that in light of the current political climate, this is a film of gravity that screams relevance and is one of the best achievements of the year.

Maria is not a terrible movie, just a big disappointment.

With a strong cast, tight script, and exemplary direction, The Order is first-rate filmmaking above and beyond the usual expectations of your standard thriller.

If Juror #2 does turn out to be Clint Eastwood’s final film, he’s gone out with fireworks.

There’s no way to avoid the resemblances of this film to one of Keaton’s biggest past successes, Mr. Mom, but it’s consistently more intelligent and original.

Filmed in England, Hungary and Croatia, Lee is a vivid and unforgettable tribute to one of the bold women who devoted her life to the penetration of male dominance to change the way we see the world. Don’t even think about missing it.

Remakes are odious, but Speak No Evil, while thoroughly unneeded and unasked for, is an Americanized remake of a 2022 thriller from Denmark that services its original material well, thanks mostly to a sprawling, contradictory and totally galvanizing centerpiece performance by James McAvoy.

Writer-director Nicholas Tomnay knows how to make maximum use of plot twists that keep an audience on its toes, and Nick Stahl is a skillful master of how to move the gore with exactly the right pace to exude charm in spite of his character’s ongoing toxicity.

This is a feel-good comedy bordering on farce, but [Squibb] makes every scene and every line so natural that when you laugh, you’re reacting to genuine humor, not calculatedly constructed punch lines.

A triumph of sensitivity, humanity and good taste that manages to admirably transcend every tendency inherent to the usual label of “tearjerker.”

There’s so much to look at and think about that it is sometimes difficult to concentrate on the story, but a plot does emerge in the capable hands of Maïwenn, who keeps the facts straight while keeping one of the most shocking chapters in French history alive and kicking.

As a cautionary tale about America’s inevitable self-destruction, the relentless cynicism of its narrative is often preposterous, but as a visionary look at the horrors that lie ahead for a great country on the rocks—and what America has done to itself already—this is one of the most harrowing yet exhilarating science-fiction epics ever made.

Filmed on authentic locations in Poland by meticulous Canadian director Louise Archambault, Irena’s Vow is one of the most astounding true stories to ever emerge from the ashes of the Holocaust.

Balanced and solid, with equal measures of terror and suspense, the movie is Arcadian and I’ll be darned if it didn’t scare the daylights out of me.

Set in the upper-class echelons of Paris and written, acted and filmed entirely in French, the title Coup de Chance translates as “stroke of luck,” and that’s exactly what it is, restoring the masterful filmmaker to his deserved position as one of the screen’s most profound storytellers.

Agreeable, multifaceted Michael Keaton has been away from the screen for a while, but as both star and director of Knox Goes Away, his fresh and sophisticated new crime thriller, he proves he’s forgotten nothing about how to invest an offbeat film with his own unique sensibility and control it with precision and power.

In another in a long line of memorable, effective and inspired performances that resonate with truth, Anthony Hopkins is a magnificent centerpiece.

I’m neither Italian nor Catholic, but I was glued to this massive achievement with unwavering fascination, finding it thoroughly and emotionally captivating.

Directed by Paul Dektor from a disarmingly offbeat screenplay by Theodore Melfi, American Dreamer is fresh, original, unpredictable and unexpectedly funny.

Directed by Jon Gunn with no frills but a lot of suspense that comes out of the story naturally, without the need for any manufactured Hollywood thrills, and co-written by actor Meg Tilly and Kelly Fremon Craig, this is one of those rare emotional sagas “based on a true story” that begs to make it to the screen but seems preposterous when it gets there.