Sheri Linden

The ground-level view of New York — high-energy, semi-farcical — avoids clichés while finding its own romantic pulse with Duris' charmer the compelling center of the buoyant and bittersweet storm.

The film flirts with upper-class stereotypes, but in the nuanced writing and the work of the strong cast, led by a terrific Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, it goes far deeper.

The quiet but stirring effect is a dreamscape of eye-opening geography, existential longing and the enduring workaday.

Mehta explores matters more complex and unsettling than movie-tidy, against-the-odds heroism. In Tailang's fine performance, the enormity of Mahendra's mission registers in all its devastating weight.

In unexpected and wonderfully satisfying ways, A Taxi Driver taps into the symbiotic relationship between foreign correspondents and locals, particularly in times of crisis.

Set on a dairy farm in southwestern England, The Levelling is a modestly scaled, superbly crafted drama with a powerful sense of place.

Woody's back on solid ground with his first memorable pic of the new millennium.

What unfolds is a match of artistic intellects, thrilling to behold not just for its dynamic array of topics — religion, the Oedipal complex, revolution and, above all, what it means to be a filmmaker — but also for its public unveiling after half a century gathering cobwebs in Welles' celluloid archives.

One of his most piercing inquiries yet. ... Herzog is the clear-eyed student — at times amazed and delighted, and, at others, skeptical and alarmed. Amid the cryostats and nanoparticles and fiber optics, the clunky gadgets and impenetrable-to-the-layperson diagrams, he summons a wry and lyrical mix of awe and foreboding.

In its genial, low-key way, the film, premiering at Sundance, is a chilling account of cyberbullying, perpetrated on a disturbingly wide scale over many years.

Touch the Sound is at least as inspiring and in some ways more rewarding, thought-provoking and subtly visceral.

At first, the writer-director’s onscreen presence feels like an unnecessary distraction, and it could certainly be pared down. But as his interviews push deeper into the situation — and its overlap with the water crisis in Flint, Michigan — his investigative methods and congenial manner of confrontation prove productive, the results compelling and revelatory.

As the film moves elegantly between past and present, Brooks proves a keen observer of behavior and the pitfalls of overthinking. Finding complex beauty in what would be merely obvious in a lesser work, her delightful feature taps into a rarely broached, generally female coming-of-age dilemma: the fear of losing yourself before you know who you are.

The film is a bracingly romantic drama that's alive with a mature sense of passion and mystery.

These are people at the frontline of idealism in action, working to alleviate suffering, one patient at a time, in some of the most devastated places on Earth.

One in a Million feels both ultra-specific and universal.

A film that breaks the musical biopic mold in ways that are sometimes frustrating and frequently exhilarating.

In Hilma, Hallström delves into the fiery and sometimes messy personal story as well as celebrating, in fittingly enthralled, immersive fashion, the singular fusion of nature and spiritual mystery that drove her.

Neither the screenplay nor the agile direction insists on neat resolutions for any of the characters, and there's a double-edged charge as the foursome make collective and individual progress, slide back and try again: the women recognizing each other in ways they otherwise never would have imagined, the half-sisters slowly becoming friends.

With its intriguing performances, narrative restraint and unanswered questions, the movie delivers a strong pull of yearning as well as tantalizing currents of suspicion and dread.

The place Beecroft stumbled upon is fueled by girl power, and the story she and her collaborators have created is wise and messy, keenly aware of the dark places at the margins as it burns bright with life.

With its sensory immersion in nature and its yearning characters, the gorgeously shot film is a memorable study of solitude and connection.

It comes on like gangbusters and keeps generating belly laughs well past the halfway point, slowing down then to take a GPS-directed turn into familiar romance territory.

Rather than a plot-driven narrative, it’s a collection of keenly observed scenes, and the lack of hyped-up drama, intrigue or sentimentality is one of the strengths of the low-key but visually expressive movie.

A work of powerful humanism.

Lisa Immordino Vreeland deftly choreographs the story in her vibrant documentary Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict, at once a capsule history of Modernism and a poignant personal portrait.

Grossman doesn't step back for a broader, contextualizing view of the Middle East; the film contains a single comment on the 1948 war's ramifications for displaced Palestinians. But as an oral history of the pilots' experiences, it's indispensable.

The handsomely shot, expertly button-pushing scare-fest has the polish and the cast to draw older audiences who grew up on shockers built from performances rather than CGI.