Sheila O'Malley

The film might have benefited from a lengthier treatment and more exploration of all the themes at work. As it is, "Barber" is a fairly rote crime drama but a fascinating glimpse of a world in transition.

Joy doesn’t work entirely, and the structure set up so clearly in the opening sequence is dropped early on for no apparent reason, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t get carried away at the story of a mop sweeping the nation. It’s a lunatic “Mildred Pierce," without the murder.

Like "Cat People", The Banshee Chapter is both elegant and terrifying.

One of the things that Tamarkin does very well is present the historical context for the present political reality.

There's enough material here to fill an entire multi-part docu-series, but My Psychedelic Love Story is an intriguing and often-humorous look at these crazy events, anchored by Harcourt-Smith's presence. She’s the reason to see it. You can understand why nobody who met her ever forgot her.

What is most unexpected about Permission is its sense of poignancy and tenderness. In its own way, it's quite heartbreaking.

While the mood is that of a gentle and affectionate comedy, the film makes some extremely sharp points about fanaticism, sexism masked as holiness, and tolerance among the faithful.

You feel you are running alongside the characters, trying to catch up with them on their journeys forward.

The film loads itself down with two different plots, one cliched, one new and fresh. This makes "Ezra" a sometimes frustrating watch, but there's a lot here to recommend.

A film like The Invisibles is part of bearing "precise witness." We clearly need reminders, and constant ones, of the end result of "otherizing" an entire group of people.

Agenda-driven films make for dreary viewing and Infidel is never dreary. Aided by excellent performances across the board by its international cast, "Infidel" works best when it's an old-fashioned thriller.

More than anything else, Mekas' footage gives a glimpse of the fascinating aura that Tiny Tim projected.

An engaging and accessible look at one of the most important figures in cinema.

She is an engaging guide, humorous and honest, cynical and wise, with that same sense of innocent joy in her own fame that translated into in photos.

Blue Bayou is sunk, on occasion, by its own symbolism, and how it wields said symbols. It's not enough to use a symbol visually, and let the audience put two and two together. A character needs to have a long monologue where they explain the symbol and pontificate on how the symbol is relevant to the circumstances.

Rounding doesn’t quite make its own case, in terms of the symbolism it throws into the mix, but as a portrayal of a man falling apart from overwhelming stress it works quite well.

Strains to be a psychological thriller but its length (102 minutes) dissipates the tension that should be taut and compressed.

Christine, centered on a riveting and at times unbearably emotional performance by Rebecca Hall, attempts to give a three-dimensional and respectful-yet-honest portrait of a complex woman. Sometimes the film is successful in this, sometimes it's not.

Possessor is humorless, start to finish. Its energy is ponderous and glum, and the provocative ideas are not given a chance to really take on a life of their own. Still, there's much here that is imaginative and fresh.

The cranky old-coot humor between Studi and Cox is a welcome break, and there could have been more of it.

Cats suffers from a problem common in contemporary filmed musicals. The musical doesn't trust the audience, doesn't trust that the dancing in and of itself is exciting enough to hold our interest.

"Stanleyville" is part Stanford Prison Experiment and part MTV's "The Real World." It's part Milgram experiment and part "Squid Game."

The script tries to do way too much, but the film also moved me quite deeply a couple of times, mostly in the scenes between father and son.

Much of Matthias & Maxime is pedestrian to the extreme, and there is a general lack of character development across the board, but the way Dolan chooses to frame things, the visual choices he makes, the way he revels unashamed in the big-ness of the emotions, makes it an entertaining ride.

The quiet character-based scenes are often mesmerizing, as are the dreamy sequences where time seems to stand still. When the plot makes its demands, the spell is broken.

Cohen and West's approach is so adulatory that the documentary becomes a surface-level work of hagiography.

Marianne and Leonard turns out to be a rather run-of-the-mill documentary about Cohen's journey, taking us down well-documented paths.

The movie doesn't quite hold together at times, and some of the darker elements (like what it feels like to be shamed and shunned at every moment of your life) are soft-pedaled. But it has a strange charm nonetheless.