Rex Reed

The result seems to tiptoe around the even juicier chance to tell the dirty behind the scenes stories that could have made this story a real bombshell indeed.

It’s one of the most powerful films about the Arab-Israeli conflict that has ever been attempted on the screen.

After "Enough" and five "Death Wish" movies, the revenge genre is not without its recurring clichés, many of which get defrosted and microwaved again in A Vigilante. The point, if there is one, is that “heinous criminal felonies are acceptable if they are justified by a woman driven beyond the limits of reason.” As one battered wife says, “Every graveyard is full of people who didn’t make it.” The same is true of old movies gathering dust in Hollywood film vaults.

It overcomes inescapable boxing and martial arts clichés and leaves you thoroughly sated, energized and wanting more.

A sobering, documentary-style film commemorating eyewitness accounts of what happened in the aftermath of the tragedy, some of them fresh as a new wound, all of them painful but vital to a deeper understanding of one of the darkest chapters in American history.

Enhanced by a moving, three-dimensional performance by the underrated veteran actress Mary Kay Place, Diane is a thoughtful, well-made first feature by Kent Jones, who programs the films every year for the New York Film Festival.

Soberly and responsibly, a small but significant film called Inhale, starring the underrated, charismatic and terrifically accomplished Dermot Mulroney, has arrived without fanfare or big-budget ad campaigns to capture some well-deserved attention.

Come What May is not exactly a new idea but a sensitive, polished and carefully executed film anyway, extremely thoughtful and well worth seeing.

It’s a perfectly unexceptional but slickly made, sincerely acted, often entertaining, sometimes manipulative and always watchable blend of action on the diamond and bravery behind the scenes that will please baseball fanatics more than movie historians. It’s a good enough biopic to make you wish it were a better motion picture.

Despite occasional flaws, Disconnect is filled with fine performances, informed by an often sophisticated script and directed with passion.

All told, Equals is a feast for the eye that leaves you with a troubling contemplation of the future.

Five Star Day is a respectable and intelligent little film.

Equally touching and disturbing, the French film Standing Tall is an outstanding work of social realism by actress and writer-turned-director Emmanuelle Bercot.

This film is too long for a documentary, and only a true Sidney Lumet fan is likely to sit through nearly two hours of it undistracted. Still, it’s a fascinating exploration of how a great mind worked by allowing the quality of his scripts to determine the style of each film—including not only the inner life but the camera, the clothes, the entire visual approach.

Bizarre, original and loaded with revelatory surprises with every turn of the page, The Menu uses the culture of haute cuisine as a metaphor for the spit-roasted values of high society, with results that are vicious, delicious, and horrifying.

So in spite of its flaws, La La Land has moments of pleasure and satisfaction that are worth the price of admission. It’s not that it’s a bad movie; it’s just not an outstanding entertainment, the way great movies (especially musicals) should be.

The effect is genuinely creepy, but do not even think of seeing Buried if you suffer from claustrophobia.

Movies about coming of age and out of the closet are nothing new, but Love, Simon is so honest, funny and real it never fails to capture your imagination and lift your spirit.

A charming, understated and completely enjoyable frolic about how ordinary people can do extraordinary things that seems doubly startling because, while seeming implausible, it also happens to be absolutely true.

The case is revisited with painstaking detail, and a riveting picture emerges once again about misunderstood outsiders.

You learn things from it that should be required viewing for the screening room at the Pentagon.

The result is the kind of harrowing suspense that doesn’t come around very often, charged and informed by another powerful, galvanizing performance by the great Christopher Plummer.

The actors are so exemplary that it is difficult to imagine this is not a documentary. They might not be household names, but they will be.

In the avalanche of junk about aliens, alternate universes, digital effects and comic-book superheroes, it is a rare treat to see a sweet, low-budget film about real people that is as ingratiating as Lebanon, Pa.

Salinger fans never seem to tire of new revelations about the man or his work, so if this is the kind of material that interests you, it should keep you sated until the next one comes along. I recommend it highly.

As much as I liked it, I have to admit Run & Jump is a work of no action — of love unrequited, feelings unexpressed and goals never reached. Sitting through it requires great patience. I don’t think this is an Ireland that would interest John Ford.

Written and directed by Mike Pavone, with a fine, understated, atypical performance by Ed Harris, it may be a feel-good family picture centered on kids, but it offers talismans to live by for people of all ages.

Special praise goes to Alex Wolff as Jamie and Stefania Owen as his sympathetic, agreeable girlfriend Dee Dee, and veteran actor Chris Cooper makes a complex but astonishingly convincing cameo as the great Jerome David Salinger himself. I went to Coming Through the Rye expecting nothing and left feeling enriched, enlightened and warm all over.