Roger Moore

The first great movie of the year.

Dazzling, scary and sentimental.

Ron Howard has made a sublime movie.

North Circular is geographically and emotionally evocative, just gorgeous to see, to hear and to immerse yourself in, enveloped in an ancient city’s lore via its music.

Stunningly-detailed, with an A-list cast up and down the line, it’s a gorgeous and gloomy dip into the dark side, immersive and bleak from start to finish.

In Fabric takes a while to settle in, and that goes for the viewing experience, too. It takes a few minutes for us to surf the wave Strickland wants us on, to get in sync with the vibe he’s going for...But rare is the horror movie that finds off-the-rack laughs in everything from ’70s fashions and consumerism to ’70s British sex and slang, and does it with haute couture style.

Writer-director David Midell cast this well, turned in a script with a bitter, metallic aftertase and never wastes a second of screen time, giving us two points of view — outside and inside that door — letting us stay one step ahead of this slow tumble off a cliff.

An imaginative, scary and wonderfully rendered stop-motion fright.

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.

Scorsese — narrating and appearing on camera — makes it both a personal essay on what their films meant to him, how he experienced them as a boy and student and the ways he’s incorporated their themes and styles into his own work, and a Master Class in understanding and appreciating the cinema of two of the medium’s greatest innovators.

Best of all is the man who stands front and center, thinking, smoking and expounding, off-the-cuff, about a subject he spent his career and life mulling over, fuming over and struggling to understand in depth.

It was never going to be “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” Reserve that honor for the film that inspired it. But Saving Mr. Banks is still one of the best pictures of the year.

It’s an intimate, quiet and slow-paced romance, a simple, richly rewarding movie in the classic style of India’s greatest filmmaker, the late Satyajit Ray.

If I’ve seen a better performance in recent years than Stewart’s in this “fable from a true tragedy,” I can’t remember it. She’s stunning.

It’s a touching story, and a deflating one. And Johns (“Fishermen’s Friends”) makes Daniel Blake Everyman and Everywoman, stoic and hard-working, overwhelmed by a system that’s been rigged to prevent claims, to make the “safety net” not all that safe at all.

A dialogue-free romp that is a shear delight, shear perfection, if not quite a master-fleece.

If you love movies and think you know the medium’s history, prepare to be overwhelmed.

Of all the scary guys Michael Shannon has ever played — sociopaths, murderers, hell, even General Zod in a Superman movie — none is more frightening that his character in 99 Homes.

Gerwig’s concocted a fresh, frothty and fun take on a timeworn classic, the perfect family film for the holidays.

By turns glorious and thrilling, revealing and well — mythic and fictional — Martin Scorsese’s “Rolling Thunder Revue” joins the ranks of epic concert tour documentaries, capturing an epic moment in American roots music and the icon who conjured it.

A newfangled old-fashioned movie about glory, honor, sacrifice and a martial code that crosses into fascism, homoerotism and homophobia at the same time -- there are plenty of turn-off buttons in this one. But by Zeus, this is a ripping yarn, told with limb-rending gusto, an iconic ancient battle as seen by an iconic comic-book creator, Frank Miller.

This Mission unfolds at a near dead-sprint -- frenetic editing, whiplash camera pans, all hiding an intentionally under-explained plot and generic action beats that will be familiar to anyone who has ever seen a ticking-clock thriller. But if Mission: Impossible 3 is the first pitch of the popcorn-movie season, just two words come to mind -- butter up. [5 May 2006, p.8]

The direction, by Marc Forster (Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland), is breathless, with lovely grace notes — he uses silences to end his action beats. And if this incarnation of Bond still doesn't inspire affection, he does command respect, awe, a sense that a real man is risking life and limb for queen and crown.

Van Sant, a legendarily sensitive filmmaker, never fails to see the difficulties in Callahan’s journey, the spirit it takes to overcome them or the fact that they were all difficulties of the man’s own creation. That lifts this “uplifting” story above the twelve steps that are its natural starting point and into the realm of something more challenging than the genre conventions it otherwise adheres to.

So far, in Monroe, where white folks interviewed in the film Always in Season lament the reenactment and gripe about “leaving the past alone,” nobody’s talked.

It’s also overlong and sentimental. But it’s a vivid, warm and amusing portrait of a real man, someone whose life began in darkness, experienced the light of a great love and has collapsed into a pit of self-pity.

The Evening Hour may lean into stereotypes of Appalachia and the lawless dead end many find themselves driving into. But King, working from Elizabeth Palmore’s script, humanizes the character “types” and the “statistics” to make one of the more compelling dramas set in this world and its struggles.

Locke will hold your interest as it presents a side of the burly, bluff “Dark Knight” villain we have never seen before on screen.

There’s no sense being modest at this phase in his Oscar-winning/Oscar producing career, but even as he’s feted, from Montreux to Stockholm, New York to Washington, there’s a refreshing lack of pretense to the sharp-dressed octogenarian at the center of all this fuss.

It’s engrossing, violent, frightening and funny in the ways it captures the way kids speak with no adults around, and the way kids act when society’s rules take a back seat in time of war.

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!

Even if it is too brief and leaves too much out to be “definitive,” it serves up heaping helpings of Mifune’s film work and bits of home movies and the like to create a fascinating man-behind the stoic face/samurai icon below-the-topknot portrait of Mifune.

It’s not a whole meal, but Abe sits easy on the palette and leaves you wanting more.

The actor/director and his co-stars more than do justice to this fascinating moment in Cold War history and one of ballet’s transformative figures.

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.

It’s still a welcome, entertaining and overdue delivery of credit where credit was and is due.

Fuji’s performance is the highlight here, a man of science and obsessive Ham radio buff struggling to communicate what he’s going through but failing to soften his personality as his memory, and the self-control it might contain, fail.

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

Its the laugh-out-loud brazen chutzpah of it all and Huppert’s cocksure, casual and lie-on-the-fly amorality in the title role that gives Mama Weed her buzz. Huppert has never been sunnier or funnier.

The energy, humor and wit of the early scenes carry it. And the pathos of the later scenes, along with a burger joint break down and the fun in discovering the secret to any rapper’s success as a novelty act (rapping about “my mom”) make even the slow jams go down easy, leaving a warm, fuzzy afterglow that makes LA seem nicer and maybe a trifle less superficial than its image.

A film that shines a light on those who would be a candle in the midst of the Medieval darkness of modern, white Southern American Christianity.

Scott and his collaborators find the ugly human foibles underneath the armor, court finery and gowns and make this story from an age when the one percent had the power of life and death over everyone else, when women were literally “property,” topical and timely.

As we watch David Osit’s documentary Mayor, we see a public figure who is sweating the little things because the big things are all but off limits to him.

Bull is a magnificently malevolent creation, on the page and in the flesh.

For all the appetizers, the endless array of main courses and diabetic coma desserts we see dished-up here, Anh Hung Tran gives us a meal that is more overwhelming in its scope than wholly satisfying in its consumption.

Leto makes us wish for a Russian “Summer of Love” that never was.

It quietly takes hold of the viewer with patience, a gripping story that has plenty to say to audiences all over the world, especially those with under-policed police, accepted corruption at the highest levels, where a “War on Women” is a political policy, even if it’s never been declared.

There’s a humility and generosity of spirit in their work here — testy as it sometimes is — that plays like a breath of fresh air in an era of “cancel culture” and those hellbent on testing it.

Liyana is still a wonder, and the story the kids cook up themselves every bit as epic as the one Disney plagiarized for “The Lion King.” This effort turns out so delightful that somebody should hire these children as focus group consultants the next time Hollywood wants to tell a tale of Africa.

“Bombardment” pulls you in, and like the worst videos from Russia’s murderous invasion of Ukraine, doesn’t flinch from showing us the heartbreaking slaughter of war and its frantic-search-for-survivors aftermath.

Businesses destroyed, lives shaken to their core, the cars of bystanders crushed, cops helpless to stop it — it’s awful and tragic, sure. But it’s something to see, man.

The writer-director has made a personal work of emotion and power, but with an indulgently slow, patience-shredding pace.

The cameos and third act actor introductions turn this into an all-star romp — of sorts — further lightening the tone.

It’s a compact, perfect performance in a tight, tense genre picture that manages just enough twists and surprises to separate it from the hired-killer-movie pack.

The smart, subdued finale is the only one that we’d believe and accept — logical, and damning and thought-provoking, not unlike the thriller than precedes it.

In just 70 minutes, Hymanson has shown us what “soul mates” look like, and leveled with us about the best possible outcome for our final years, months and days. Not bad.

Millie Lies Low is a next-level cringe-comedy from Kiwi Country, a New Zealand goof on the Deep Fake lives the savvy among us can live on social media when our real lives are coming off the rails.

This is “Southern Gothic” that lives up to its name.

On Body and Soul isn’t as linear in its storytelling style or as results-oriented in its plot as a Hollywood or Western European film wrestling with these themes might be. That’s why the foreign language Oscar category is so valuable. It insists that viewers at least take a shot at seeing the world through another culture’s eyes via challenging films.

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.

The film is an emphatic re-branding of the the “legalize pot” movement, putting suffering children’s faces front and center in the fight, with weeping parents and increasingly defiant doctors, most of them in states where medical and/or recreational marijuana is already legal, making case on the kids’ behalf.

Her sound, her look, her fashion sense and her politics are discussed and marveled at by those interviewed, who see her as a woman decades ahead of her time whom the passage of time has largely validated and exonerated.

Even the shortcomings in this documentary suggest it’s just another part of a long-overdue “moment” for two most-deserving musicans, still not in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but “Closer to Fine” than ever.

X-Men: First Class still sings the praises of Marvel Studios' marvelous quality control of comic book movies. It's good, clean summer movie fun where the money they spend is up on the screen - with actors and effects - so that we won't mind spending our money on it.

It was always going to be a chilling, emotionally deflating film. Kurzel and Grant double-down on that by not showing the murders and not focusing on the victims. And they finish it off with a coda that doesn’t let the way this slaughter impacted Australian society get sugar-coated, the way it’s often discussed in the US.

Comedy is the most subjective film genre, and all this menstruation, abortion, Catholicism and Meeting Mr. Wrong won’t be to every taste. I found Saint Frances a real indie comedy shot in the arm (first-timer Alex Thompson directed). And I cannot wait to see what O’Sullivan comes up with next.

An engaging take on a drifting character at an age when we’re all adrift.

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.

The Sisters Brothers sneaks its messages in the back door, how a world built on justifiable fear and firearms makes life cheap and souls hollow, how the amorality and violence numbed one and all and how lives back then could be just as angst-ridden as they are today, no matter how quick the “hero” is on the draw.

“Cheerful” and “triumphant” aren’t words that come to mind when you think of Alzheimer’s, the debilitating illness that destroys memory, mind and body. But darned if country star Glen Campbell doesn’t manage that in Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me.

It’s not about the game, or even “how they played the game.” It’s how the game shapes who they are or will become, for good or ill.

A Love Song is a lovely, valedictory film for two of the best actors of their generation, so it’s worth the effort you make to track it down. Any time a movie maker crafts something this gentle and fine for two wonderful players who rarely get the spotlight is to be celebrated.

The lack of organization keeps this from being a complete film, or a great one. That Summer is a footnote to “Grey Gardens.” But for those wholly engrossed in the history, the tragedy and the “real Beales,” before “Grey Gardens” set their personas in stone and made them immortal, it’s a fascinating artifact and another piece of the puzzle of who they were before the caricatures took over.

If you know “Ikiru,” you remember how all this plays out. And Ishiguro’s script hits not just the same notes as Kurosawa’s original screenplay, but the right ones.

The situations are painstakingly set up and downright painful to sit through. So enjoy, or endure the appetizers, because with this Dinner, dessert is truly the topper.

A stunningly-realistic, pulse-pounding punchout at the climax of Kin Long Chan’s Hong Kong noir Hand Rolled Cigarette (Sau gyun yin) joins the list of tussles that come close to topping “Oldboy.”

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.

Yelchin doesn't generate the same warmth or passion that Jones does. That is partly by design, as this whole affair was her idea, after all.

There are stretches in this movie, which I saw in a crowded preview last night, where you literally could hear a pin drop. The silence on the soundtrack is breathless, the held breaths of the audience deafening.

The laugh-out-loud appearances — not just performing music but “performing” interviews — more than compensate for missing “It used to be about the MUSIC, man.” That makes “Devo” a delight, even if you were never into the band, even if you weren’t in on the joke.

The musical comedy whimsically and often cleverly revisits the characters, their shtick and and the TV show and movies that made them most famous.

But what sticks with you are the beautiful shots of kelp forests and otters, ponds seen from the bottom up, Africa and South America both threatened and, when “corrected,” healed. That’s the upbeat message that Carroll identifies in the opening moments of the film.

Incendies is occasionally compelling, but also overlong and vexing in the ways it draws out a "shocking" conclusion that we unravel long before the characters do.

Mensore gets it right and tells a story validated by journalism and every trip through the region and everybody you know who lives there.

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 Descendants lets Payne show us the Other America and the Other Americans - little lives caught up in small but epic problems far away from the La La Land of Hollywood hype, sex and violence.

This may not be the “definitive” Capote biography. Perhaps PBS will be the one to get around to that, some day. Burnough’s still made an entertaining and generally brisk overview of the career and the life of the most famous writer of his day.

Mr. Holmes is an elegiac, understated tale of The Detective in Winter, a rare thing in its own right.

Zeroing in on Carr as the movie's "hero" was a smart move. He comes off as smart, confrontational and unconventional.

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.

In a genre - the animated holiday film - already overflowing with the sentimental, the silly Arthur Christmas is a most welcome treat to find stuffed into the cinema's stockings this holiday season.

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.

A low energy romance, a movie that rewards a filmgoer with the patience to let this affair play itself out. Sink or swim, Connie and Jack will come out of this changed. And so will we.

Many moments will make you avert your eyes.

Jennifer Bagley’s debut documentary is an upbeat portrait of best friends propping each other up, urging acceptance on each other’s families and ensuring that even as they transition, the road to “it gets better” is a short one.

The film’s unblinking and unfiltered look at the indignities and horrors of ALS and its impact on a loving marriage is without parallel.

Ahed’s Knee isn’t as sexy, satiric and light as its Felliniesque opening promises. But Lapid manages to make a lot of points about the creative person’s life in modern Israel, the sensitivities triggered and the moral quandary a thinking Israeli finds her or himself in.

Havelka’s not-quite-farce reminds us of how important “rules” are,” and how bad actors can bend them into obstruction, how important civility is and how pointless it is for a gay man or anybody else to try and explain “solidarity” and group action to the dogmatic, the dim and the determined-to-do-nothing.