Roger Moore

[Schumer’s] made this woman real, flawed, funny and carnal.

Apte is the riveting center of it all, making sense out of nonsense, and when she can’t, just bluffing and bullying her unfiltered way towards enlightenment, or something just short of it.

Our writer-director has conjured up a full, flesh and blood life. And our star transforms Emily from a repressed Yorkshire artist who channeled her passions onto the pages of one of the Great Romantic Novels into a human being of sexual passion, love and heartbreak, and a thing for Men on the Moors.

It’s a simple, cheap and limited concept beautifully executed. The players, especially Tena, tell us the story with their faces.

A solid, engrossing docudrama — staged and acted — not, as its director claims, a documentary. That still doesn’t rob the film of its simple power, the suspense of wondering just who will turn on whom, and if elephants will be killed in the bargain.

Director Scooter Corkle fails to find the frights in this. And it’s not like Damien Ober’s script sets anybody involved up for success.

Origin is noble, high-minded, moving and eye-opening. But as difficult as it was sure to be, shaping these themes, threads and characters into a movie, the film should have been sharper, tighter, poignant but more to the point.

Bloodlight and Bami may be mostly for her most faithful fans, but it makes for an interesting, just-revealing-enough portrait for those who only know her from the image she’s created and the music that rarely made it out of the clubs, back in the day.

“Let’s Play Two” doesn’t re-invent or for that matter add anything to the concert doc genre. But for fans, it’s a lovely time capsule, a bunch of 50somethings, still sporting the torn jeans and well-worn t-shirts, leaping about, playing with feeling and getting a joyous job done.

It’s a fun movie right up to the sobering reality that even the best moments are going to have sadness injected into by the cold, cruel world.

Director and co-writer Gabriel Mascaro (“Neon Bull,” “August Winds”) keeps his film anchored in harsh realities of a present doomed to drift into an even uglier future, even as he traffics in allegories and parables and tropes of mythic trips of self-discovery dating back to Homer’s “The Odyssey.”

It’s alternately wacky and bleak, and despite stunning Korean scenery and a passable chase or two, it feels small-screen. It’s also obvious, with an ending you can guess in the first ten minutes.

Grant and director Natasha Kermani (“Imitation Girl,””Shattered”) package their “message” into a pretty clever if not all that ambitious thriller, with Grant our stoic heroine, fighting the good fight, night after night, plainly able to “go it alone” but maybe wondering if it’s worth it.

Longtime fans of one of China’s greatest living filmmakers won’t want to miss this one. It isn’t every day that Zhang Yimou jokes around. You’ll want to be there for every bloody punchline.

Jokier and more obviously derivative, Mission: Impossible-Rogue Nation is the funniest “MI” picture, and maybe the worst of the series.

There’s no drama, no conflict, and apparently no one told director Jody Lee Lipes that even documentaries require some of that to be rendered watchable.

A diverting and picturesque romance that will have you dreaming of a French vacation and the lovely sights — human and otherwise — to be seen there.

There’s wit and whimsy in this 53rd Disney cartoon, a distant cousin of Hans Christian Andersen’s classic fairytale, “The Snow Queen.”

Hatching, titled Pahanhautoja in Finnish, is a sins-of-the-mother creature feature parable played out in blunt, gruesome strokes in director Hanna Bergholm’s film, based on a script by Ilja Rautsi.

And The Good Liar lapses into being “The Poor” one in a movie that’s become both more far-fetched and utterly conventional.

The film only picks up with its finale, and even that grand, murderous and visually stunning spectacle is somewhat spoiled by a preachy epilogue.

Auction is good, underhanded fun, and even the loose ends that Bonitzer leaves hanging — perhaps this had a longer cut at some point — leave one uncertain about how this high-stakes poker game will play out or who might upend the table with not-quite-all-their-cards on it for that final hand.

Skeleton Twins may not be a wholly fleshed-out character study, and nobody here takes a flying leap out of his or her comfort zone. But the timing of this tale of depression, suicide and how vulnerable we all are to our past, our demons and our shortcomings, is enough to recommend this engagingly melancholy comedy.

Mandibles is a shambolic, sometimes funny and always-silly amble through the South of France.

The screenplay sings a song of silliness and conspiracy, start to finish.

She Rides Shotgun is a compelling, gripping B-movie ride, a picture that reaches for highfalutin “Trojan Horse” allegories when what it does best is a lot more obvious.

For all the cans of worms it almost opens and doesn’t quite, it still tugs at the hearstrings as we remember the awful crime and the child who survived nearly a year of abuse, hunger and living under an abusive fanatic’s veil.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl isn’t deep. But this sure-to-be-a-crowd-pleasing laugher/weeper reminds us that there’s nothing wrong with a romantic comedy that reaches for inspiring and cathartic between the laughs.

For all the vivid combat sequences, the gritty adjustment-back-home touches and a couple of genuinely emotional scenes, it feels incomplete, choppy and something of a cheat.

Satire, parody, racist skewerings of racism, sacred cows slaughtered, silly slides down the slippery slope into Anti-Semitism. And breasts. Lots and lots of breasts!

A funny, thought-provoking teen romance/sex comedy in French, a light romp that never quite romps and doesn’t quite touch or delight.

Although Citizen Ashe covers the highlights of a life and career that has drifted from the public consciousness in the nearly 30 years since his death, it doesn’t get all that close to its subject.

The performances are of the meaningful, lingering stares variety, everybody working out what everybody else’s game is.

"It was a perfect tabloid story," the Brit Peter Tory, who covered it, remembers. "Kinky sex, religion, kidnapping, a beauty queen."

With its lesser-known cast, The Kid Detective was always going to get lost in the cinematic shuffle, with or without a pandemic closing most theaters. But Morgan and his new muse have concocted a whodunit that could give Hercule Poirot a run for his money in a contest for the year’s best mystery.

Young Onata Aprile makes Maisie a passive wonder, a sweetly poker-faced, nonjudgmental and hopeful child, even as she’s being ditched at bars, forgotten at school or passed back and forth like a prize, or a bad penny.

A terrific film, not as moving or damning as this year’s Amy Winehouse expose, but a warm piece of cinematic scholarship.

Giroux makes the possible love affair so mild-mannered that there aren’t a lot of sparks when these cultures clash, just a “You’re strange, WEIRD,” vs. “I’m not strange. YOU are!”

Deer has made a richly-detailed debut feature about an ugly piece of Canadian history, and it’s to her credit that she lets young heroine see the escalation from both sides, and lets the viewer see what this does to her.

There’s a whole lot of “bizarre” going here, but it’s easy enough to follow and its meaning and message are simple enough to understand.

I’ll admit I was probably too sober watching this to appreciate its finer points — or ignore how much the picture slows down in the middle acts. But for me, Ninja Badass runs out of gas at about the “half-assed” point.

Khoury’s light touch with a serious-minded script keeps the stakes low but intensely personal in what is essentially a story of a kid who risks his scholastic career, his good relations with his family and his “future” to impress a girl.

Tanne has crafted a winning film of smart, probing conversation that plays like an affectionate going away gift to the Obamas.

Seligman and Sennott serve up a timely and bracing counter-punch and counter-narrative in the ongoing culture wars, a fun poke-in-the-eye at gay bashers and stereotypes that amuses almost as much as it transgresses.

As he did with “The Dallas Buyers’ Club,” director Jean-Marc Vallée covers this inner and outer journey with a minimum of fuss. The flashbacks and their revelations, filling in the puzzle, are sparingly doled out. The stunning scenery Cheryl hikes through is barely noticed.

Even if you do know how this story ends, it’s beautifully touching seeing and hearing somebody who’s been through the fame, celebrity and cocaine wringer, just grateful at the victory lap her biggest fan provides for her.

But “Story” plays out a bit like the band itself. It peaks early, hits its giddy stride during the blur of sudden fame, notorious personal appearances and all-for-a-goof excesses, and then fizzles out utterly.

There’s madness afoot, and Demoustier ably captures how overmatched a mere interviewer would always be with Dalí. And the various actors playing Dalí indulge in grand vamping of the genius in a script that only occasionally hints at his sense of his own mortality.

Neither the subject nor the movie is for everyone. But On the Count of Three is a fascinating variation on a dark comedy theme, and its light touch with hidden depth is one of the most worthwhile farces about “the only serious question,” as Albert Camus famously put it — “whether or not to kill oneself.”

Charm and humor are in shorter supply than you’d hope. There’s barely a funny moment in it, even though there are English-accented attempts at jokes about how often sailors say “Yarrrr,” and a cute baby beast is introduced, right on cue, in the later acts.

“Raya” is a pleasant enough kids’ adventure — “Raiders of the Lost Ark” meets “Mulan” who is now a “Tomb Raider.”

Seriously, for a movie about garbage, Wasted! (Anna Chai and Nari Kye co-directed it) is awfully appetizing.

Director Trevor White is more known as a producer (“Wind River” and “Ingrid Goes West”), and he’s not bad at maintaining suspense in producer/screenwriter Andrew Zilch of Youtube’s “Good Mythical Morning” somewhat predictable script.

Burning Cane has great regional cinema bonafides, a bit of film festival hype and the rhythm of poetry in its images, human connections, monologues and gloom.

Only in Canada would an artist this fascinating, home-grown and maniacally uneven continue to draw the subsidies, attention and loyalty from his fellow Canadians now big Hollywood stars to get his increasingly unhinged thrillers made.

The Burial makes an entertaining story about standing up to legal mistreatment, sticking up for the Little Man and punching up at predators who never seem to run out of ways to misuse and overcharge the grieving at their most vulnerable.

The gimmick and the satiric target here are broader and the punches miss the mark far more often than they land. But if you’re blitzed enough…

Like taking a peek into the many influences Rowling synthesized into her Potter world.

When My Old Ass works, it’s comically judgmental, droll in the ennui the older feel about the young and sentimental about what you’re missing out on by focusing on the impulse of the moment.

Jackass Forever is a valedictory victory lap for the scruffy little troupe of “stunt” dudes who risk almost certain injury — and certain humiliation — for laughs, lowbrow fame and cold-hard-cash.

Inception is an elegant, portentous ride, though I’m not sure Nolan is any closer to visualizing the real (dream) deal than Hitchcock was.

Martin Bourboulon’s two films more than hold their own with Hollywood’s best versions of this classic cloak-and-swordplay mystery, preserving the surprises and adding a few fresh ones to iconic, noble-hearted “All for one, and one for all” heroics.

The fights are furious and bloody. Don’t get too attached to anybody. Or any body part.

Some of the subtexts director/provocateur Luca Guadagnino (“Call Me By Your name,” “Suspiria”) suggests, in this adaptation of what is allegedly a more darkly comical novel (by Camille DeAngelis), have been given short shrift in creating a film of gruesome shock value, another startling performance by Mark Rylance, and little more.

There’s a trick to making first-film-in-a-franchise films, and while the sweep of this one is every bit the eye candy fans could hope for, Villeneuve, the screenwriters and I must add composer Zimmer don’t so much stick the landing as let their picture peter out.

Michael Larnell’s flinty and uplifting film of the early days of Lolita “Roxanne Shanté” Gooden, the Queen of Queensbridge, a mid-80s fury who became a years-in-the-making “overnight success” and role model, lives on grit and heart and some terrific performances by Chanté Adams, Nia Long and Oscar winner Mahershala Ali.

Every Little Thing is a documentary as delicate and magical as its subjects.

How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies is a sweet, sad and sentimental Thai end-of-life melodrama titled and set-up like a greedy-family farce.

A fine and fun film tribute to the milieu, the men, women and machines in a sport that was never deadlier or more glamorous than its Disco Decade incarnation.

Touching and funny, awkward and wistful, it’s also evidence of a Hollywood crime.

It's a treat for children making their first trek to the multiplex and for parents and grandparents with fond memories of the Hundred Acre Wood.

It’s an oddly unaffecting childhood odyssey, and that’s only partly due to its obnoxious sixth grade artist, Paul Graff, played by Michael Banks Repeta.

Knightley and West create spectacular friction in these roles, two people who loved, collaborated and rubbed each other the wrong way and the right way, and from that, a great artist was created, shaped and immortalized — with a little help from her lawyers.

Even without big revelations or surprises, it’s not without its charms. “Little Sister” levitates above the trite and banal, even if it never quite takes flight.

The story is comic book childish in its simplicity . . . But the execution is dazzling and kid-friendly.

A finely-acted tenterhooks drama about religion, sexuality, tradition and isolation. It is a movie grounded in a rigid hierarchy and ritual, but with a cruel undercurrent of despair.

Deborah Haywood’s Pin Cushion is an easy film to laud, a hard one to warm up to.

It’s a documentary concocted out of decades of film and TV interviews — some confrontational, some awkward, often quite funny.

In Woman of the Hour, an infamous piece of ’70s serial killer lore becomes a suspenseful and disheartening thriller in the hands of director and star Anna Kendrick.

Dapolito gets at what Radner represented to those who followed her, and what Radner recognized in herself, that play-acting comedy let her “be prettier than I was, be people I could never be…Comedy allowed me to be in control of my situation.”

Warm and witty performances by Spencer, Hensen and Monae, the stoic moral stature Costner plays and unlikable-until-they’re-reasonable turns by Dunst and Parsons make Hidden Figures a winner, a piece of unknown history rendered flesh and blood funny, uplifting and never less than entertaining.

Sylvie’s Love comes off like a novel idea given every chance to shine, but let down by a maudlin TV movie script that needed polish.

White, who did “Ask Dr. Ruth” and a “Serena” documentary, is very good at getting the blood boiling over the injustices at every turn, the feigned outrage of North Koreans trying to bully their way out of blame and Malaysians who let the world know that they know who was involved and how, and just what they were willing to do about it.

Tell me you don’t see echoes of “A Beautiful Mind.” Nelson lets us see Crowley’s fleeting dream of filmmaking glory, this ache to tell a story he believed in above all else, consume him.

Sand Storm builds a sense of dread into the proceedings. It’s not literal “head cut off” violence that we fear. It’s the victims getting nothing out of all this acrimony and negotiation. It’s knowing this film will never deliver “a Hollywood ending.”

Shults has concocted a nightmare within a nightmare, a test of nerves and a wary mystery.

Farmiga directs and plays this as a woman with questions. Thus, the tone is a bit all over the place - frank discussion and depictions of sex, but with an equally frank embrace of Christianity, talking the talk and walking the walk.

The milieu may be familiar, and the third act revelations and actions are both predictable and somewhat clumsily handled. But Sennott wraps herself completely around this character, giving us vulnerability behind the cocky facade, worry and responsibility in a profession not known for producing the stable and well-adjusted.

It's the best heist picture since "Heat."

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints feels like a fresh and poetic treatment of a prosaic story that should be utterly worn out by now.

The combination of a flexible, funny cast, an amusing situation and a style of movie-making that embraces every happy, nasty accident make this if not the funniest, then certainly the most uncomfortable comedy of the summer.

This “Corn” sat on the shelf during COVID lockdown, but we can’t say it went stale during the delay. This was cynical in conception and rotten in execution long before the masks came out.

Father Soldier Son can be compared to the controversial Vietnam era doc “Hearts and Minds,” as well as the sober WWII’s aftermath “The Best Years of Our Lives,”in its focus, its intimacy and its politics.

The lost art of slapstick — physical comedy — is so rarely practiced that when true masters of it show up on screen it’s like a surprise smack right on your funnybone.

In focusing on the lives lived AFTER living through a genocide, co-writer/director Kean has made a most accessible documentary, one built around compelling characters giving eyewitness testimony to both the worst moments in human history, and some of the most inspiring.

Sully might not rank among Eastwood’s greatest films, but it shows his canny skill at deciding how to tell a story in which everybody knows the ending. That he manages to make it suspenseful and downright moving shows him at his professional best.

Whatever its length and melodramatic third-act touches, Interstellar is a space opera truly deserving of that label, overreaching and thought-provoking, heart-tugging and pulse-pounding. It’s the sort of film that should send every other sci-fi filmmaker back to the drawing board, the way Stanley Kubrick did, a long time ago in a millennium far away.

Benson, who turns 87 on Dec. 2, comes off as an adorable Scots curmudgeon in Justin Bare and Matthew Miele’s film.

Doueiri has brilliantly and simply put a compassionate human face on a part of the world where ethnicity still trumps education, class and achievement, where even the successful face, at best, second-class citizenship in their own country.

The film doesn’t judge, either. Viewers who might cringe at the subject matter can decide for themselves if the sweeping changes in the culture that the ensuing decades have brought have been glorious, catastrophic or a seriously mixed bag.

Simien focuses too much on the character played by his star, Williams, which seems a mistake. Scenes are underscored with classical music chestnuts, a trite way of suggesting “academia.” And the ending is an eye-roller.

In a film with righteous outrage yet limited violent action, it takes a great performance to make us root against meeting violence with violence. Isaac and Chandor make that come off.

As crass as it is, I’ve seen worse.

It’s as interesting a failure as I’ve run across this year, a hollowed-out holiday wallow in regrets that wear into scar tissue, the only thing that dulls the depression and justifies the fatalism of seeing all your deferred dreams and delusions, bad bets and poor choices come home to roost in a single day.

The performances anchoring American Woman are some of the finest screen acting we’ll see this year.

Peixota has made a spacey film that is almost neutral on its subject, a soft-spoken pastel-colored meditation on Scientology that never wrestles it into the larger thesis of the psychology of “belief” he might have been aiming for.

Though other films have followed the drama of those earliest days there — “In the Same Breath” and “76 Days” — Chang’s film takes the unusual tack of personalizing the pandemic, and humanizing the first population trapped in it.

This thriller begins at a crawl and finishes with a sprint. The foreshadowing is obvious even if the next twist rarely is.

The film may be commenting on the cushy way the rich and famous coped with Covid. But it’s insufferable at depicting insufferability.

Thanks to a brisk script and the masterful editing of future director David Lean, “Aircraft” clips along, serving up genuine suspense, dashes of wit and limited bravado as the combatants put themselves in the hands of people who risk their lives to save them.

40 Acres is a tense, violent and generally satisfying survivalist thriller.

Crazy Rich Asians puts its emphasis on “Crazy Rich,” and “Asians,” when a little more “Crazy” would get us through its glitzy two hours with less tedium and more style.

Skarsgard has carved out a wide niche for his varied and colorful acting career to inhabit. He’s stoic and unflinching here, a man on a mission.

Thanks to the distinct look of films from Cartoon Saloon, this Nora Twomey (she also directed “The Breadwinner”) project plays and feels like a fairytale that has a bit more going on than sight-gags and punchlines.

It’s adorable, finding laughs (look for the Bond joke in the finale) and connecting with shared sentiments. It’s one last feather in the cap of a filmmaker who always touched as he entertained, who often wore his heart on his sleeve and made damned sure his actors did as well.

Emotional shortcomings aside, Touch still pulls you in, an immersive story of alien worlds — the 1960s, Iceland and Japan — sympathetically and patiently told, a lovely two hour break from the world and the fresh waves of bad news that stain even the best of times.

What Ozon flirts with is the superior adaptability and endurance of those who can let the past be the past, and the costs of not getting over to those who won’t.

The frights are muted, but the air of dread that hangs over Irish writer-director Kate Dolan’s debut feature makes it an immersive experience, one anybody with “mother issues” will quickly identify with.

“Raise Hell” is a movie of laughs, because nobody ever popped the balloons of political pretense like the hard-drinking, chain-smoking six-foot permanent “outsider” Molly Ivins.

It’s a fun film, not quite as lighthearted as the similar “Knuckleball” documentary of a short while back, but amusing enough.

A screenplay that doesn’t add up to the sum of its parts, it’s a picture that stumbles along rather than progresses in any strictly linear sense. But that sometimes frustrating unconventionality — sometimes funny, often not — and the riveting presence of Nic Cage on center stage recommend it, in spite of everything else. Or maybe because of everything else.

All this piling on turns Ghost of Peter Sellers into a “pathography,” the nickname given biographies that torch the reputations of the dead. And frankly, it’s deserved.

Even though the film is period-perfect, using actual locations and accurate costumes (hoop skirts are good for a laugh), “Wild Nights” suffers from a cell-phone video flatness in its cinematography, a little too “Drunk History” for its own good in that regard.

It’s manipulative and overlong, too loud and “Incredibles” action-packed for the very young. But the manipulation errs on the side of mercy, compassion, sacrifice and humanity.

The “hair” with a murderous mind of its own is more funny than scary.

Will & Harper became a hopeful, upbeat snapshot of a nation struggling with its own transition, just a couple of pals in a collectible Jeep, experiencing the “real” America — diners, dives and Walmarts and the wide array of folks who inhabit it, at least some of whom are starting to “get it.”

Eat Pray Love isn't a bad movie -- just a spiritually dead one, wearing and wearying.

In French with English subtitles, is a showcase for Anne Dorval in the title role. Over the course of this overlong melodrama she wins our understanding and occasionally our sympathy as she struggles to get and keep a job, find a man and keep her maddening, monster of a son (Antoine-Olivier Pilon) under control.

Washington gives one of his great performances as King, a man comfortable swinging between two worlds with diverging ways of thinking and even talking.

The most interesting portion of this film is footage itself, much of it quite grim, and the search for these German cannisters of film, seeing snippets of how it was gathered up and edited by editor, actor and later director Robert Parrish, among others (mentioned in a letter of Stuart Schulberg’s read in voice over) and was used in the Nuremberg court.

Coming to a too-obvious conclusion aside, if there’s a better minimalist parable for “living online,” I’m hard pressed to think of it.

For the Love of Spock is everything you’d hope for in a biography of one of the most universally beloved characters and character actors of all time.

Miranda gives us a revised but affectionate, intimate and respectful adaptation of a stage show about one man’s deadline-obsessed creative process and how impossibly difficult it is to write and mount a musical and launch your career in the priciest, cruelest crucible of them all, The Big Apple.

Schrader lets her players do the heavy lifting, and to a one, they don’t let her down. The women of this scandal and this movie about reporting it make She Said a thoroughly engrossing account of how one of the touchstone stories of our time came to light, one door knocked-on, one tearful recollection at a time.

Cute and quippy, Merry Little Batman is an adorably silly holiday goof on DC/Warner Brothers’ most valuable comic book franchise.

Duncan Jones, director of the very fine and very paranoid "Moon," makes this seemingly silly situation work, building tension over 93 minutes.

Beast is hard to watch at times, from its graphic crime-scene photos to the pitiless way a rabbit is dispatched. But as cryptic as it aims to be, it’s not hard to follow.

First-time writer-director Nia DaCosta may have filmed her Northern Plains tale on the outskirts of Austin, Texas. But she has a firm grasp of the loneliness and hopelessness of lives left behind by a boom in a state where working class women’s career and OB-GYN options are limited.

Joe is the movie that will make you remember how good Nicolas Cage once was and can be again.

Jay Myself paints an affectionate, curmudgeonly documentary portrait of one of New York’s greatest photographers. Jay Maisel was a star of ad photography during the “Mad Men” era, an art photographer of great renown after that and a portrait photographer whose work graced profiles and album covers, such as Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue.”

Grisi has made a simple parable for life on Earth and the consequences the most remote people face from climate change, and a film that’s worth rooting for as Utama is Bolivia’s submission for this year’s Best International Feature competition at the Oscars.

It’s a trifle hard to categorize. It has a light-enough tone that you feel it’s aiming for laughs, but those are few and far between. At least the message is clear, no matter how much meandering goes on as it’s being delivered.

That’s Hutton’s gift of “Lapsis,” a puzzling picture that challenges, leaves out “all the answers” and serves up Tony Soprano-lite as our intrepid, in-over-his-head tour guide through a hell of our own creation.

There isn’t much to “the story,” and certainly little in the basic situation that we haven’t seen in movies about Italians, Greeks, Spanish, gay or young or old characters. But the musical novelty numbers absolutely make the featherweight Musica come off.

It’s even dumber than the earlier installments, but it knows it. And the result is some good, clean kid-friendly fun, save for the odd profanity — Odin is known for his curses, after all. Even the killing seems to lack fatal finality.

Queen & Slim is an African American art film channeling a 1970s blaxploitation, on-the-lam-from-the-law road picture vibe. As its riveting, rambling, geographically-inept two hours roll by, lurid visions of the blaxploitation cinema of that era bubble through an indie spin on “Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry,” “Sugarland Express” and “Vanishing Point.”

Novitiate is very much a mixed-bag of a movie, condemned by the fanatic at The Catholic Legion of Decency, but too revealing and realistic to discard outright, too heartfelt to fail to move, at times.

“Heaven” isn’t exactly an infomercial, but it’s not much deeper than that.

A simple tale, sharply drawn and smartly told, a portrait of a people, a place and a centuries-old conflict that this wise yet myopic citrus farmer cannot get his mind around any more than we can.

The tone ranges from testy to distraught, but always “adult” in the insistence on talking this out.

An alternately searing and scalding piece of family history that doesn’t spare the beautiful narcissist doing the examining.

Here’s a clever, sideways take on the grimmest of human horrors, a clever parable that delivers the same heavy message, but with mordant wit and originality.

It’s a seductive, amusing and beguiling turn, with perhaps an Oscar nomination in it. And it’s message is clear, to our director and her muse. When the persona becomes legend, play the legend.

The performances are good, the wrestling thrillingly-shot and cut together. But with a meandering message and an ending that is almost a parody of the “paradise” these boys reach for, it’s forgiveable to consider “The Iron Claw” — scripted and acted to the limits of what the script serves up — as little better than a draw.

The acting can feel flat and unpolished, and the intimacy of the story is both an asset and a limitation to its ambitions. But any horror fan looking for the next “came out of nowhere” genre phenomenon need look no further. It’s not the “Citizen Kane” of witch movies, but it’s creepy and DIY fun and well worth tracking down.

“Change” finds humanity, a sweet moment or two (rare) and some good-natured laughs at the misperceptions and misunderstandings that occur when on-the-spectrum meets off-the-spectrum, and even among people all on the same wavelength.

An intimate piece of romantic folklore with breathtaking geographical ambition, The Tale of the King Crab comes to theaters feeling familiar, but startling in what it shows us and where it takes us.

Rust and Bone doesn't earn the ending it delivers.

Robinson’s purpose here is to cut through the lies, propaganda and rhetoric and look at what all those folks so anxious to ban and even burn books are trying to cover up.

More a movie that you appreciate and ponder than one you embrace and enjoy. Whatever its intellectual pretensions, I am looking forward to never seeing it again.

Eye in the Sky is a tasty ticking-clock thriller parked at the intersection of politics and propaganda, military technology and combat morality. It’s not the first movie about the ethics of drone warfare. The low-budget nail-biter “Drones” beat it to the punch by a couple of years.

A myopic, tense dystopian thrillers go, Concrete Utopia reels us in, jolts and even shocks us and gets the viewer thinking, at least a little. Not every action film or disaster movie can make that claim.

While lawyers read, in one montage, from their mountains of hate mail, there’s not a lot of balance to the film, aside from snippets of Fox News opinionators praising this or that Trump extra-legal executive fiat.

Zeroing in on Robin’s disease, his decline and what she and a few others close to him observed, with plenty of medical explanations, make this brief film feel complete, in its own way. What they’ve made is a solid, medically sound and emotional final chapter in a life that touched many, one that deserves to be remembered for how he really lived and what truly caused his death.

An oddly-dated, obvious and overwrought melodrama about gender roles and the toxic masculinity of Wall Street hedge funders, “Fair Play” is practically a parody of decades of women in the workplace romantic thrillers.

Allen has long been an actress with perfectly expressive eyes, and wearing her years with grace has been a hallmark of her recent work. Yes, she gets to show Nora still has “some fight” left in her. No, Nora doesn’t come off as reasonable when she does.

If the Northern Irish are still learning from the ancient Greeks, maybe the rest of us should give them a listen, too.

You watch this film and never, for a second, do you forget you’re seeing art in motion.

It’s overlong and rarely surprising, but Nair skillfully plays the limited board this story gives her, a queen among filmmakers making all the right moves.

Smith has made a film that’s not unlike Wham!’s hits — bouncy, light and frothy, nothing that demands anything of the viewer and listener other than a smile.

Laughs are few and far between here, but a movie about the emotional RED ALERT that heralds puberty is bound to produce a few.

13 Minutes is a taut, smart and straightforward bio-drama of this largely forgotten early figure in German resistance to the Hitler regime.

And nothing in this raunchy romp through excess registers or delivers a laugh. Shore is still annoying, but funny never figures into it.

But as we follow the back and forth of a newly-empowered Britney Spears in battling her father, any documentary that takes up the cause of an embattled public figure, even one long dead, at least leaves us with hope.

The picture is thus a mixed bag, rather like “Hobbs & Shaw” and “Deadpool 2,” and Leitch’s “Bullet Train” — funny, but leaning on Gosling’s twinkling charisma and inside-the-movies jokes and pratfalls to come off, which it does just often enough to recommend.

This picture should have passed by in a sprint, not slogged past like an overlong, overbudgeted Macy’s Parade with Music that would test the patience of anyone, including that toughest PG audience of all — kids.

Straight America can finally get to know the name of Dr. Frank Kameny, a very smart man with a very big grievance against the government, one he was willing to endure mockery and the loss of his original career to settle.

It is the most American movie of 2019, wearing its optimism in every gilded, rain-speckled, sun-flecked frame.

Sollers Point isn’t really about the plot, or advancing it. It’s all about the place, the sorts of people in it and the good and bad support systems that could sink or swim our hero. Thanks to Lombardi, we stick around for the answer.

Even though I couldn’t imagine the endurance contest of experiencing the show in person in real time, this documentary — which identifies via graphics the songs and their earlier-than-you-realized dates of composition — leaves you wanting more. As dazzling as this highlights sampler can be, one hopes more of it will be released in bite-sized servings.

Hoffman is merely the first among equals in a stellar cast.

Here is THE must-see documentary for a world living under quarantine. Spaceship Earth is about can-do cooperation, art and science coalescing, about “learning by doing” and recognizing that “small groups of people are the engines of change.”

The World is Yours isn’t an out-and-out farce, but the Guy Ritchie plot, cast of characters and even editing strategy finds laughs left, right and every which way in between.

Not Going Quietly lets us see a fierce, and dying, advocate for health care show us what John Lewis meant by “Good trouble.”

It’s just French enough to feel novel, after decades of Austen adaptations, biographies and the like, a “fresh take” that isn’t all that but does no shame to its titular novelist and the iconic bookseller who figures she “wrecked my life.”

Lovely as it sometimes is and impressive as the cast may be, it holds too few surprises and dramatic peaks to make it a stand-out in a genre that’s fast-becoming old 19th century hat.

Killing of a Sacred Deer is grim-going, too long for the thin parable it is built upon. But Lanthimos orchestrates these performances into a perfectly-matched pitch, before lighting a match against this chill for an emotional climax that, like the picture before it, moves you even as it leaves you cold.

[Renner] and Sheridan and some terrific, under-used supporting players...give Wind River a somber, grim grace and the relentless forward motion of a thriller.

Air is a beautifully featherweight triumph of “on-the-nose” casting.

Like many such films, the subject seems more fascinating than the Far Out Isn’t Far Enough’s treatment of him.

John Wick, Chapter 3: Parabellum still gets a bloody job done, and still merits all the fan-murderer adulation our anti-hero gets every time he meets a new hunter hoping to cash in that reward money.

The scenery is still stunning, but there’s little of the brio of a filmmaker who went on to make “Deliverance,” “Excalibur” and the glorious “Hope and Glory” in it.

Beyond the Lights is another pain-behind-the-music romance. But it’s so well written, cast and played that we lose ourselves in the comfort food familiarity of it all.

Any documentary that points to a way out of the agonizing, expensive, life-extending trap of “The American Way of Death” is worth a look. This one, affectionate and atypical, poignant and privileged, grates almost as often as it moves.

Goldblum is always best at being Jeff Goldblum, and his oily/silky charm tends to unbalance the neat, brittle little tragedy we’re watching.

Five Fingers for Marseilles is a modern day Western, a tale of revolutionary South Africa and its aftermath, a world of blood, revenge, “stepping in” to right a great wrong, and fighting back. It’s a Sotho “Shane,” brutally beautiful and iconic, fraught with symbolism, harrowing in its violence and its consequences.

Levine writes and shoots enough scenes in inventive ways to make this mildly-frustrating melodrama work.

Jeffrey Wright plays the world weary library director trying to keep the peace and hold on to some semblance of the institution’s core mission — a fact delivering, education supplementing bastion of learning, civic responsibility and civility. That’s one thing The Public absolutely nails.

In Wang, we see a stoic Everyman, straining to defy time like the rest of us, working so hard he sometimes forgets to dye the gray out of his hair, trying to keep his head about him even as his agent breaks down in tears.

The slapstick doesn’t slap — not that often, anyway. And the one-liners don’t land. Even the “funny” voices aren’t funny, and the wacky character design seems lacking in the wacky.

Busan doesn’t reinvent the zombie movie so much as make it work well enough that you buy in — good performances, a nice selection of moments of “sacrifice,” the usual “What are they THINKING?” twists.

Cooper, to his credit, rarely flinches, never chest-thumps and never loses his cool, even when Kyle is starting to lose his. It’s a masterful interpretation of a man with a lot more on his mind and blood on his hands than he was ever inclined to let on. And it’s a performance worthy of Eastwood himself — 50 years ago.

Contrived as it often seems, The Last Right is just unpredictable enough to pass muster, just cute enough to charm and just romantic enough to get by.

It’s a meditative movie, as one underscored with Beethoven’s solo piano pieces “Moonlight Sonata” and “Für Elise” would have to be. Brodsky isn’t the first to get across what it feels like to experience the world without hearing it, so she doesn’t dwell on that, even if it is her central thesis.

If you’re tempted into the woods by this film, maybe you’ll be a little more open to the idea of “individual rights” gathered in number to battle “corporate rights” in search of a more sane and sustainable way of looking at the forest, and the trees within it.

True Spirit doesn’t add anything fresh to the genre, just fresh faces and Aussie pluck, with even the tunes . . . pretty much on the nose. But that’s what “feel good” movies often are, comfort food, with the occasional surprise, a “darkest hour,” a little pathos and a lot of heart.

It’s not entertaining. It’s discomforting at times, and at others obtuse and downright icky. But it does leave you with a little to chew on, if somewhat less that its creator presumes.

Kline presents us with a coming-of-age story, or an artist finding his voice tale, and never quite delivers either.

It’s not a bon bon or a comic delight. But Bourgeois-Tacquet and her muse Demoustier give coquettes, gamines and manic pixie dream girls (a Hollywood staple) the kind of butt-kicking all those people who misguidedly hated poor Amelie for decades ago longed for.

Musician Dave Grohl and music mogul David Geffen wax enthusiastic. But leave it to Bruce Springsteen to find the poetry of the place.

Like the pod Holloway is trapped in, the movie’s mostly just adrift — limited power, with time running out. Not fast enough, it turns out.

The lives themselves are interesting, even if we only get a glimpse of them, even Cass’s. But truth be told this never really ties the Cass story to the immigrant story (he did the same sort of work in his day, we surmise, and might be prejudiced) and never amounts to much more than a selection of snapshots.

But pretending this is anything other than pleasant, time-killing filler for the next Marvel marvel is laughable. Changing up the story removes some of the onus of comparison to the first Tobey Maguire/Sam Raimi “Spider-Man.” Not when it comes to romance, suspense, guts and heart, however.

Von Sydow paints a compelling and very entertaining portrait of a showbiz original who found a niche, made his mark with an act famed for its shock value, and yet dabbled in most every musical style to come along after he broke big because he could and would try anything.

It’s a “Waiting for Godot” set in the solitary work and lives of two highway line-painters.

It is Banderas who brings home the tocino and serves up the whole jamon when the situation demands it. Which in the case of the immodest, flamboyant and recklessly brave Puss-in-Boots, is pretty much every moment he opens his mouth in his delightful, and perhaps final romp as the character.

They made a historical drama so close to the truth and polished that it holds up to this very day.

A regal, majestic and downright arty take on this teacher, champion and philosopher whose life spanned much of the twentieth century.

This waking nightmare from the "Nightmare on Elm Street" creator is a puzzle with no solutions, a tale with a twist that isn't a twist at all.

Writer-director Karen Leigh Hopkins has lots of fun with this surreal set up, and only really loses the thread when reality intrudes.

If the only martial arts movies you’re seeing are “Crouching Tiger” pictures, it’s good to know that they’re keeping up with the state of the art, even if they’re not actually inventing it.

"Raiders!” will make any movie buff laugh out loud at the sheer chutzpah and kiddie problem-solving that it took to, for instance, recreate that boulder chasing Indy out of a South American temple.

The jokes are treacly, the situations warmed-over from scores of better movies and the whole thing plays kind of 1943.

Clooney? When he has a comical moment, he makes the most of it. His attempts at heartfelt epiphany left me cold.

Honey Boy just tells us one story, with judgement and compassion, with an honesty that surprises and moves us. And it leaves it to us to decide if it was all worth it, if indeed the end justifies the means. You will never look at a child’s performance in a film or TV show the same way after this.

Charles Shyer, who co-wrote this with a Netflix house hack (“Dangerous Lies”) blows too many of his shots at “charming,” never quite nails down the “romance” and dithers away the “mystery” in this flavorless variation on formula.

Mr. Roosevelt isn’t a laugh right. “Quirky” pops to mind a lot more often than is healthy for a movie grasping for our love. But it is funny enough, and alternately sweet and caustic as it depicts, in quick sketches and sharp observances, the LA of our nightmarish ambitions and the Austin of our hip, homey fantasies.

Watching unhappy, uncertain children grow in confidence as they learn, bond and then run loving, yipping, straining sled dogs is incredibly touching.

Results is a comedy that never offers more than unsatisfactory ones — results, I mean.

Slay the Dragon became the rallying cry of the Michigan and now national grassroots campaign to end this partisan practice. But as hopeful as the movie wants to be, it can’t help but make obvious how many steps “the people” are behind those Project RedMap masterminds.

It’s the best Almodovar movie Almodovar never made, a riotous, gory farce that might be the funniest movie of the summer, and surely is the coolest.

The racing sequences here are next-level intimate, putting us in the car better than most any film that preceded this one. The crashes in that no-rollbar, pre-seatbelt era are horrific.

In the hands of Tom Hanks and his “Captain Phillips” director, Paul Greengrass, this adaptation of a Paulette Jiles novel becomes a parable for these “troubled times,” a story of race and unrepentant racism, men of violence who won’t give up that violence and the power of a free press to rectify that.

Good Boy makes the humans all but superfluous as its star delivers some of the most realistic reactions to the unexplainable this time-worn genre has ever seen.

The latest from writer/director Ruben Ostlund, who created the masterly and more coherent “Force Majeure,” it plays like a performance art piece that outstays its welcome.

Rage lets us see where all the money was spent — on Cage, and on a noisy, metal-rending car chase through scenic Mobile. It’s head-slappingly dumb, it’s dull and even the novelty of filming outside of the over-filmed Los Angeles adds nothing.

Loser has flashes of empathy and a high mindedness about literature and philosophy and book learning in general. It’s just that it’s light on “heart,” and has a touch of what the Bard labeled “lackwit” in its banter and the ways its few funny lines are played.

This quiet, dread-filled combat picture works, sketching in the men beyond the “types” in impressionistic scenes that relate history, advance the story and break the heart.

Tom Hardy manages the brilliant trick of playing two physically, emotionally and intellectually distinct mobster brothers in Legend.

This Juliette Binoche drama has heat and hurt and a whiff of intrigue as Denis (“High Life,” “Beau Travail”) peels away layers of background that reveals more and more of the true nature of her characters.

Good Grief is sober-minded, considered and almost sweet.

And by casting the hard-not-to-be-adorable Steve Carell as the self-promoting “male chauvinist pig” Riggs, they’ve produced a picture that’s alternately giddy and touching, with its heart coming from a budding romance and many of its laughs from the naked, reflexive sexism of the era.

Ghost Protocol is the most action-packed, most jokey and self-aware, most James Bond-ish of all the Cruise Mission films.

It just takes a very long time to get going. Apparently seventh grade doesn't pack as much potential for amusing, scarred-for-life trauma as sixth grade.

The result is a love triangle that feels invented, theatrical and artificial and a musical history that we never, ever believe.

Vreeland’s film, wallowing in the Beaton vision of beauty via his images, his art and his screen work, does a marvelous service in reclaiming this dandy’s dandy/designer’s designer and iconic photographer from obscurity.

“Happiest Man” gets at what makes Flanigan the perfect brand ambassador for the theme park, the “Happiest Place on Earth” that’s smart enough to employ “The Happiest Man on Earth” for decade after decade, a guy who isn’t shy about going above and beyond to “bring the magic” to everyone who visits, every single day.

Land of Gold is a sweet immigrant’s odyssey road picture that walks the fine line between “cute” and “cutesey” all the way from LA To Boston.

The Inspection is best appreciated as a showcase for Woodbine and Union, each taking her or his best big screen dramatic role in years and bringing it home in scene after scene.

There’s style and a vivid sense of place in this most unusual movie, a film of future tech and sonic booming jets and unelectrified farms where the work is still done by hand, the way it has been for hundreds of years. That makes this “Walk” long, but rewarding in the end.

I’m a longtime Palmer fan, and she’s almost never been this dull. She and SZA needed an edgier script to sparkle.

It’s a reminder that making pretty pictures out of painful history is just a tentative step toward actually grappling with that history, no matter how hard politicians and revisionists fight to keep that from happening.

A Royal Affair...is a lovely history lesson, but a film without the spark of invention that makes this modern parable feel modern.

Sure, it’s a Canadian indie dramedy by a Chinese-Canadian filmmaker. But writer-director Johnny Ma brings an outsider’s view and respect for Korean manners, mores and Kimchi to this wistful fish-out-of-water romance.

None of it, not Welles’ flirtation with his Lady Macduff later Lady Macbeth (Ashli Haynes), not Welles’ domestic problems, not the cast’s various burdens and foibles, is scripted or acted in ways as compelling as the real story, which has been related, in great detail, by every Welles biographer.

Sure, he’s proven all he ever needs to prove, and then some, on the road. He’s dominated Broadway. Sold millions of records in his day. But this film and his last one, a doc about a C&W bend in the road on his musical journey (“Under Western Stars”) feels stiff, stale, self-serving and self-conscious.

It’s a fascinating period in music and an equally fascinating story of promise, talent, expectations and failure. But you can’t help but feel that Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me won’t settle the most important argument of all to the unconverted — Were they as good as the hype?

A great movie like Dark Waters reminds us of what happened, of just what the “system” failed to do to safeguard us. And it reminds us of what a legal crusade looks like — a years-long grind of discovery, depositions, evidence and trials, and to be thankful for dogged, dull pluggers like Robert Bilott who stopped a mass murder in progress, armed with only a degree from “a no name law school.”

For the Birds unfolds its increasingly bittersweet story and we see the problem and the destructive nature of the solution to it, one can’t help but wish there’d been a tad more attention paid to “What’s going through the bird lady’s head?”

The film, which stretches history to its breaking point in some cases and finds deeper truth in others, looks at how the expediencies of war and the nature of tit-for-tat guerilla conflicts dehumanizes even the humane.

The best “wake up” call documentary of 2020, a movie filled with warnings discussed by the very smart women sounding those warnings, the very smart women doing something about this very real threat.

Mulligan — drawn, wan and yet steely here — and Fiennes’ lightly-laid-on sturdy working class polymath turn make The Dig touching and richly rewarding, as entertaining as any movie about archeology could be without a bullwhip.

Athena becomes a mural of magnificently orchestrated chaos painted over a penny-plain story of brothers in conflict, and one of the most gripping action pictures to come out of France in recent memory.

'Twilight' of the Body Snatchers, without much urgency or sexual heat.

Mark Jarrett’s amiable road picture has a morbid whimsy and a coming-of-age hook.

This Ukrainian Crocodile Preacher makes an arresting subject, someone you’ll want to meet just to hear his story and see the past that put him on the path to being his country’s “Catcher in the Rye,” saving children from an ugly world and a doomed future.

Here’s a “feel good” film that puts us through our share of feeling bad before it delivers its triumph.

This is an intimate epic that alarms as it sprints out of the gate, settles into a lingering tension and even as it is winding down, manages to keep the viewer frightened and on tenterhooks. That’s what living under a fascist regime is like.

Jones has a winsome screen presence and a pleasant, lilting voice that may not sell Ruby as “Berklee School of Music” material, but thin or not, it gets by. As does CODA.

It’s all cute enough, campy enough and bawdy enough to pass muster. But when you title your film Fire Island you’re not just going where other films and series have gone before. You’re so “on the nose” that nothing we see will surprise.

The contrast between Eichner’s polished, breathless, amusingly angry riffs and the acting around him calls attention to itself. He’s not an inviting presence and the performance lacks the acting tools that let the viewer in and make us warm to this relationship and root for this couple.

The kids are collectively adorable and talented. The adults could not have been cast better, with Riseborough and Graham relishing every over-the-top moment as the Parents from Hell — or at least Hemel Hampstead — Lynch shimmering as a teacher with a heart and Thompson giving us a seriously Soviet vibe as the fireplug-shaped ogre Trunchbull.

Ammonite is an explicit and seriously sexy sex scene wrapped in a dull period piece that illuminates neither the characters nor the titular fossils that bring them together.

Moselle’s second film to focus on a fringe-dwelling “pack” but first to be a narrative, fictional feature, has an intimacy that the novelty of a free-range family of raised-by-themselves boys did not.

It gives Buckley fans lots of the music and some of the details and color of the life that Buckley lived.

It’s not the most ambitious, original thriller or dazzling writing-directing debut. But Galluppi makes his covenant with the genre and the audience, and fulfills his obligations in a solid and satisfying roadside diner drama with moments of suspense, blasts of violence and enough dark dry laughs to remind us it’s supposed to be fun.

Fremont is a droll comedy about the immigrant experience that only has to hint at the trauma such uprootings often involve, and about how residents of the host country generally don’t have a clue about what this newcomer is dealing with, or how to help.

It all adds up to a terrific, if biased on the side of the winners (Dre and Cube) history lesson, and a thoroughly compelling, very American and utterly modern musical biography.

The two sisters one is the cleverest, the two albinos one the most unfathomable and “The Flea” the least inscrutable. See it for the eye candy, the vivid recreation of an Italian “Once upon a time,” all of it done without computers and digital fakery.

Juror # 2 is competently cast, acted, shot and put together. But the script is melodramatic to the point of “hackneyed,” with a couple of unintentional laughs thrown in for good measure.

An earthy, funny and sometimes poignant portrait of a family that could only exist in the fantasy of the movies.

Few movies grab the lonely, lost and timeless suck of freshman year at college as well as Shithouse, the debut feature of writer, director and co-star Cooper Raiff.

Richard Linklater’s Boyhood is an amazing achievement in telling an unremarkably remarkable life story.

Domino is a drab, implausible and melodramatic terrorism thriller showing his ongoing interest in the post 9-11 world of “Redacted" (2007). Drab, that is, until he gets to one of those famous set-pieces.

Great filmmakers remember that cinema is a visual medium, that you never say something with dialogue when you can show it with an image. That’s how Clio Barnard tells the story of Dark River, a quiet, tense and beautiful tale of brothers and sisters and abuse set in Yorkshire sheep country.

Christmas with the Campbells is a soft-and-squishy Christmas rom-com that tries ever-so-hard to be “edgy” when it oh-so-obviously isn’t.

Moore’s performance is unfiltered and fierce, manic at times, a tour de force turn and maybe even her career best.

Scott and Plummer conspire to give us the ultimate portrait of greed, pettiness and the deep psychological holes in the souls of those obsessed with acquiring wealth and maintaining it.

It’s no “Babadook” or “Mama,” but for a horror movie for people who won’t realize they’re watching a horror movie, it’s not bad.

The lack of dramatic tension that knowing the ending before you being creates isn't a huge drawback.

Veteran TV writer and director DeYoung lures the viewer in and leads us in amused, faintly contemptuous but always nervous laughter.

Scary Movie 5 comes up short in every way imaginable.

Truth be told, J. Edgar drags, even when it pays homage to the widely discredited urban legend that the guy liked to dress in drag.

She’s not unattractive, except when the movie goes out of its way to make her so. But Bell’s screen presence isn’t warm or engaging and the script’s jokes aren’t good enough to transform that.

The movie is a bit of a female empowerment muddle, with promising young actress-turned writer-director Emerald Fennell rearing back as if to deliver a knock-out blow, and only grazing what she’s swinging at, often as not...But she makes Promising Young Woman so consistently dark and foreboding that we never let our guard down, never get our hopes up and brace for the next moment that comes when “it’s time to pay the piper.”

Its message is well-worth repeating in a time of economic upheaval.