Stephanie Merry

Some of the characters make more of an impression than others, and the vignettes aren’t always entirely thrilling or well-acted. But Panahi’s movie remains a political coup considering his significant constraints.

Boynton’s most impressive feat in Big Men is how she takes an impossibly convoluted scenario, makes sense of it and tells a story that’s riveting on its own but also serves as a parable about greed and human nature.

The Overnighters is commendable for many reasons, not the least of which is the way it allows complex issues to remain complex.

National Gallery could have used a few more edits; its long run time may limit its appeal. But the film is remarkably engaging and, with close looks at so many important pieces of art, bursting with beauty.

Hoss’s breathtaking portrayal, especially in the film’s final minutes, makes it clear why director Christian Petzold has made a habit of working with her.

The drama is a realistic and methodical meditation on family obligation, personal sacrifice and — of course — the power of architecture. That makes Columbus as lovely to look at as it is to ponder.

A charmer from its first action-packed frames to its over-the-top jailhouse-musical scene during the end credits.

Details count in this movie, whether it’s well-executed camera work or the affecting score.

The movie masterfully crystallizes the unruly, episodic nature of memories, re-creating the way certain small things stay with us while other, much larger events recede into a haze of cigarette smoke.

Haute Cuisine provides no huge revelations or profound messages, but it is sweetly and consistently engaging — a tasty treat that’s not entirely filling but perfectly enjoyable all the same.

In truth, the story is practically beside the point with all the spectacular visuals. The steampunk aesthetic might be overdone, but there’s still a lot here worth marveling at.

Editing these unwieldy stories into a cohesive, meaningful way must have been a massive undertaking. Editors Jenny Golden and Karen Sim did such an impressive job that even at two hours — an eternity for a doc — the movie never feels too long.

Much of the humor derives from how despicable these characters can be, and Jude doesn’t so much push the envelope as turn it into a paper airplane and let it fly.

There’s never any question where this is all headed: a huge blowup argument and a tidy resolution. That being said, the cast is excellent.

For the most part, Gloria is a day brightener of a character study about finding someone new and making the same old mistakes.

Ixcanul is, among other things, a movie about the resilience and savvy of women who are continually disparaged by their cultures.

Most footnotes don't get a passing glance, but this one proves worthy of careful study.

The Second Mother feels lovingly handcrafted. All the elements of the story fit impeccably together for a humorous and occasionally wrenching examination of relationships.

Unfortunately, the movie’s second act tends to drag, getting bogged down by uninspired twists, while the first flies by with witty dialogue and a steady stream of novel details.

The Age of Adaline works best as a simple story of boy meets girl; girl falls in love; girl mulls whether or not to reveal that she’ll stay young forever. Everything else is just a lot of unnecessary noise.

Embrace of the Serpent has some of the most vivid images captured on film in recent memory, and also some of the most haunting.

Writer-director Alain Guiraudie takes an all-natural approach to his material, and not just because most of the men spend the movie in the buff. He takes long, lingering shots, never rushes a scene and uses no score, just organic sounds.

Every scene of calm, potentially, is trip-wired for an explosion. But for all its chilling tension and horrific imagery, Sicario is also a beautiful movie.

Experimenter’s most striking quality is the way it encourages us to think deeply, from the first frame to the last, even if it’s just to consider what on Earth an elephant is doing on screen.

Not only is it a wholly original story, but it also honors a culture that’s so often overlooked by the movie industry. That alone might have made it a hit, but Coco has so much more to offer.

5 Flights Up is far from perfect, but it’s also undeniably touching.

Closed Curtain is at times slow and constantly puzzling. It doesn’t carry the impact of some of Panahi’s more conventional films. It’s not his best movie, but the fact that he’s making a movie at all is remarkable.

The movie is more than an admonition for the living; it’s also an achingly bittersweet love story about caregiving.

Morality is hardly the main concern of The Ottoman Lieutenant. Instead, it’s content with hackneyed romance and soaring strings.

All of The Last Days on Mars feels like it’s been done before.

What starts out trivial gradually turns into a drama about big ideas: mortality and the meaning of life; the value of relationships and the vulnerability they require.

Olivier Assayas’s drama is intriguingly ambiguous and strangely constructed, and there seems to be symbolism lurking in every shot. Yet, despite acting that dazzles and no shortage of artistry, the movie is more fun to ponder than to sit through.

The victims are impossibly brave as they sit for interviews, revisiting the worst moments of their lives. Their stories are the strongest part of the documentary, making up for uneven pacing and some otherwise strange editing choices.

The romantic comedy boasts two winning leads in Jason Sudeikis and Alison Brie, as well as some sweet, funny moments amid the Aaron Sorkin-esque dialogue — courtesy of writer-director Leslye Headland — that’s a little too clever for its own believability.

Cernan is proud of what he accomplished, calling himself the luckiest man in the world for all that he got to see. But he also expresses regret at having done it at the expense of his family.

There are slow bits, as Baumane delves into stories that are less interesting than others. But overall, her family history is rife with complex characters, and she brings them all to life in a loving, if scrutinizing, way.

Results is a smooth transition for Bujalski from the fringes to more commercial work. It’s heartening that he didn’t give up his calling-card observational humor to do it.

In an effort to make Fawcett a logical, upstanding guy, the story never fully convinces us of his obsession with returning to find the lost city.

For all its simplicity, Tracks the movie is a poignant, deeply emotional story.

The movie was nicely shot with flashy graphics to explain the data that does exist. But in the end, this film will persuade only those who already believe.

Like any good Sherlockian case, the stories interweave into a satisfying conclusion. And the cinematic elements fit together as neatly as the plot lines.

Davies is a master of the slow build, lyrically evoking the dreaminess and gravity of his subject and her verse.

The acting, especially by Costa, is first rate. Exuding both a childlike openness and a tendency toward the recklessness of young adulthood, the actress backs up even her character’s most questionable choices with conviction.

The human scale of this story about a very real threat to one Norwegian village makes the movie more tragic and also more chilling.

Starving the Beast is still a worthwhile documentary.

One of the delights of the documentary is hearing Terry tell stories. Watching the movie feels as if you’ve sat down in someone’s living room to hear tales of other legendary jazz musicians, such as Count Basie or Miles Davis.

It’s a lovely tale, even if it’s not quite the Cinderella story you might expect. The documentary also brings up some interesting points about how the Internet — the land of vitriolic trolls — can draw two very different people together to create great art from odds and ends.

A riveting, moving and beautifully animated film.

The whole endeavor runs a high risk of drowning in melodrama. But the movie avoids that pitfall, because nothing about the story or characters is easy or straightforward.

99 Homes isn’t just a straightforward drama. It’s a suspense movie.

Stronger isn’t always easy to watch; Jeff makes bad decisions and life gets messy. But it does feel like a realistic depiction of one man’s life.

What’s most fascinating about Afternoon of a Faun — and what the movie could spend more time delving into — is ballet’s grueling and fleeting nature.

For all the spectacular weirdness, Jodorowsky manages to generate real emotion.

Kids for Cash proves that the abuse was both more nuanced and more tragic than the public understood.

The Punk Singer, like the best documentaries, captures more than just its subject, fascinating though she may be. Anderson manages to capture the feel of an era and the excitement surrounding a fresh feminist voice.

Dark Horse is earnest, sweet and told with sentimentality, featuring shots of horses frolicking in fields set against beautiful string music by Anne Nikitin. Surprisingly, the effect isn’t melodramatic or overbearing, but disarming and endearing.

The movie sometimes dillydallies, but the unhurried rhythms ultimately have a hypnotic effect.

There’s something refreshingly realistic about the director’s approach. The movie has an unhurried pace, letting the camera linger over long conversations.

The movie is a tremendous accomplishment, especially considering that the cast had never seen cameras before — much less movies — yet still agreed to star in the drama. Their performances are as stunning as the setting, and that’s truly saying something.

The story it tells is conventional, chronological and straightforward. And that’s enough. With a story this charming, who needs bells and whistles?

The documentary transmits plenty of positive vibes, but it offers nothing fresh about the Fab Four.

[A] sometimes fascinating, often convoluted, movie.

For fans of dance, Ballet 422 will produce plenty of pleasures. But as with great ballet, great movies always benefit from a little drama.

The animated comedy-adventure has a sweet and very modern message, plus strong characters. More important, the movie blends the music-minded mentality of yore with the more recent ambition (thank you, Pixar) of truly appealing to all ages.

Even if at times its structure feels overly complicated and the B-roll seems silly, the movie makes compelling points. More important, the film suggests both long-term and short-term solutions.

While the movie can feel disjointed at times, bouncing around to cover so much territory, the climax of the kids’s ballroom competition makes up for any quibbles. If nothing else, it’s heartening to see the kids so transformed.

Miss Hokusai is more adept at delivering beautiful visuals than anything deeper. That’s perhaps not all that ironic, given that the movie’s portrayal of Hokusai is as a man who valued art above all else.

The movie has an unhurried pace, lulling the teens — and by extension the audience — into occasional complacency with the regular rhythms of each chugging train.

Subtlety isn’t the strong suit of Queen of Katwe. But beneath the hackneyed aphorisms, there’s a thrilling story worthy of our attention.

Comedy today is less about punch lines and pratfalls and more about eliciting that laugh-gasp hybrid. And those jokes come constantly in Appropriate Behavior.

Under Riklis’s direction, the film’s first act lulls the audience into a sense of familiarity, before plunging into a darker reality. The effect is shattering.

The performances remain subtly powerful, especially Karam’s. Tony is a man whose unpredictable rage can be sparked by one wrong move, but Karam infuses the character with pathos through the subtlest gestures and facial expressions. El Basha, who is also moving in his role, was the first Palestinian to win best actor at the Venice Film Festival.

There is an obliqueness to In Bloom. Writer Nana Ekvtimishvili, who directed the movie with Simon Gross, doesn’t spell things out, and the complete story never comes into focus... But when the truth is so troubling, sometimes part of the story is more than enough.

Knappenberger’s documentary is smart and focused, homing in on a recurring theme of independence.

The acting ensemble has a believable, brotherly chemistry, especially Teller and Taylor Kitsch, playing a troublemaker who initially teases Brendan brutally before the two warm up to each other, forming an adorable bond.

Brown seamlessly blends the emotional, intimate stories of people with bigger pictures, using the explosion as the starting point for a ripple effect that just keeps growing.

We get Albert’s side of the story, and that’s clearly problematic. How much faith should we put in the account of someone who tells such massive whoppers? That question constantly hovers over Jeff Feuerzeig’s documentary, which is by turns fascinating and unseemly.

Writer-director Stephen Bradley may make some missteps, but he capitalizes on this underdog story’s inherent thrills.

What’s true in Pakistan turns out to be universal: Misconceptions can prove as dangerous as any disease and are even harder to eradicate.

There are no huge revelations here — certainly nothing that would shock superfans. The movie offers a taste of the go-go-go pace of touring the world, which led to exhaustion and frustration, but mostly focuses on the happier times.

In some ways, this dramedy, directed by Bradley Cooper, is a familiar story about midlife crises and marital dissatisfaction, but it quickly swerves in a fresh direction, resulting in a movie that’s both resonant and hilarious.

The movie is inspiring and tragic, and, directed by street artist One9, it’s captured in an artful, emotional way that will speak to an audience beyond rap fans.

The filmmakers invite the audience to get close enough to feel the pain without having to relive the depths of the real-life horror.

The story itself never wavers when it comes to portraying the truth.

The actors make the movie’s memorable characters all the more indelible, even when Love at First Fight loses its sense of originality.

The Kill Team is expertly edited, at one point overlaying interviews with the men who participated in the war crimes with B-roll of infantrymen milling about, weapons in hand. And it’s all set to a brilliantly spare and evocative soundtrack. It’s a beautiful way to lose faith in humanity.

For all the story’s cosmic echoes across the ages, the pacing just feels off. Still, the approach is inventive.

The latest film adaptation of Far From the Madding Crowd will delight fans of period dramas. It checks off the required boxes with solid acting, gorgeous cinematography and all the frustrating, glorious emotional restraint that you expect from a romance set in Victorian England.

Girls Trip accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do: shock and amuse. Along the way, it reminds us how important old friends can be.

Remote Area Medical is an in­cred­ibly tragic movie. It’s also an important one, reminding viewers that America is more than its coasts and cities. There are corners of the country we all too easily forget.

Despite its missteps, The Farewell Party feels special in the way it covers the Big Stuff — love, death, friendship, family — without losing its playful streak.

“Strangers” offers an inspiring look at creative people from very different walks of life who nonetheless communicate beautifully with one another. They don’t need to speak a common language: Their dazzling music says it all.

The whole thing is so inconsistent, with intermittent slow motion and curious motivations, that you have to finally just accept things like a disappearing narrator as par for the course.

In a jovial, if superficial way, he offers some perspective on the men behind the banana hammocks.

The movie, not to mention the company, deserves praise for showing the challenges as well as the triumphs; Dior and I doesn’t shy away from conflicts when they arise. This isn’t marketing material. It’s a real look at a fascinating line of work.

With its exquisite depictions of suffering, The Broken Circle Breakdown is not always easy to watch. But, as in life, sometimes there’s beauty to be found in the pain.

The documentary is a compelling indictment of the way commerce drives the art market. But the movie’s methodology is hit-or-miss, jumping from one interview to another, to jarring effect.

The Bronze is just another movie about overcoming arrested development. It’s not as funny as it tries to be, but, for a few, fleeting minutes, it leaves an impression.