Sheila O'Malley

Both Sides of the Blade is a romance, a love triangle, a marriage drama, an infidelity narrative, all familiar ground, but Denis' approach is her own.

The Film Critic takes a light and knowing tone, spoofing the sacred cows of the critic world, and cramming every scene with visual film clichés that act like a "Where's Waldo?" of cinema.

There are moments of emotion and triumph, especially during the sequences of discovery, but the mood overall is understated, quiet, thoughtful.

The film Shackleton wanted to make clearly wasn’t a passion project coming from his deepest soul. It’s not like he’s Orson Welles yearning for the unfairly butchered “Magnificent Ambersons.” “Zodiac Killer Project” is fairly thin in both conception and execution, but it is very much “my kind of thing,” particularly his dry, humorous tone. He makes a good and entertaining guide.

Captain Fantastic treats the situation (and Ben) so uncritically and so sympathetically that there is a total disconnect between what is actually onscreen and what Ross thinks is onscreen.

Director Greg Berlanti, who has helmed a string of hit television shows as producer and writer, uses the familiar teenage romance genre to tell an LGBTQ story, and in so doing makes these tropes feel fresh, fun, entertaining.

Always Shine is an immersive nightmare of merging, over-identification, and projection. Its strangeness (and I yearned for more strangeness) is part of the fascination.

Scheinert smartly does not hammer home these themes, or sum things up with a monologue about what we've all learned. We haven't learned anything except ... if you find yourself in Zeke and Earl's situation, do exactly the opposite, start to finish.

There are conflicts in Princess Cyd, but they're on a low boil. One of the pluses of Cone's approach — if you're open to it — is you are sometimes confronted with your own preconceived notions about people.

7 Boxes is both a tense and frightening crime film as well as a sometimes-dreamy evocation of life in the sprawling underclass, its hallucinatory aspects, its chaos and violence, its fantasies.

The strength of Nine Days is not so much the scenario (although that is imaginative and well-constructed) but the mood Oda sets, the clarity with which he establishes this world, how it operates, its rules and traditions.

The Mad Women's Ball is part psychodrama and part melodrama, and it wears those mantles proudly and confidently. Each scene throbs with urgency and emotion. Nothing is unimportant. At the same time, the film is highly controlled, with a taut assured script.

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.

A sweet film with a purity of purpose and intent, elevating it above other films portraying similar struggles.

The Great Invisible is strongest when it focuses on the micro rather than the macro. How the spill impacted individuals in the region is the real story of The Great Invisible.

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.

Baghadi and lead editor Grace Zahrah piece together the footage into a collage of yearning, ambition, and what can only be called gumption. It's inspirational, of course, but it's also thoughtful and meditative.

A Compassionate Spy is strongest in digging into the archives to give audiences who might not know this cultural history a real feel for what was happening.

Bayona's film avoids many of the mistakes made in earlier versions (particularly Frank Marshall's 1993 film), but Ebert's cautionary words remain true. There's something elusive in this story, something which eludes expression.

None of this is easy, and not much of it is fun. But “Die My Love” is a wild and worthwhile ride.

This is a stylized affair, and the care taken with every choice—the apartment interior, the furnishings, the color of the curtains, Julia's red sweater and red tights, etc.—is meticulous. The film crackles with icy dread.

Madeleine (Adele Haenel) does not know that she is a character in a rom-com. She thinks she's in a war movie. Or, better yet, a dystopian post-apocalyptic movie. Anything but a rom-com. She does not smile until an hour and 20 minutes into Love at First Fight.

The film is thought-provoking, visually arresting, and occasionally very self-important.

In 1966, film critic Pauline Kael reviewed "Funny Girl," announcing: "Barbra Streisand arrives on the screen, in 'Funny Girl', when the movies are in desperate need of her." She could have been talking about Jessica Williams.

Sometimes I Think About Dying feels like it needs one more "act" to complete its arc. It's an unfinished bridge. The film attempts an eventual catharsis, but there's just not enough information to get us across the river. We're left hanging.

Thankfully, Eileen doesn't betray its source material by turning Eileen into something more palatable and sympathetic, but the film loses something in the transfer.

Ghosts and spirits appear, and weird things are indeed summoned, but Brooklyn 45 is really a meditation on grief and the unfinished business of war as experienced by a group who struggle with adjusting to peacetime.

Catch the Fair One is a revenge-thriller, and a satisfying one, since the evil on display is so total. However, the satisfaction is hollow. Hopelessness is the dominant mood.