Stephanie Zacharek

The magic of Summer Hours is that even in its elusiveness, it gives us something to hang onto.

Talk to Her is much better than Almodóvar's "bad" movies. But it never soars as freely as his best ones do -- it has a very trim, manicured wingspan.

Gripping, and it's moving, but it isn't particularly subtle. There's a strong thread of tabloid drama running through its core -- but at least it's sensationalistic storytelling with a heart.

It's a performance that screams "Look at me!" louder and bigger than an elephant dick. And every bit as subtle.

Sentimental Value is a drama about one family, but it could also be a message in a bottle for the greater world. Larkin, a proto-punk, poked fun at the way humans, just by procreating, pass their worst traits to their children and beyond, through infinity. Trier has much more hope, and his tender punk manifesto echoes something the English clergyman and historian Thomas Fuller said more than three centuries ago: Charity begins at home, but it shouldn’t end there.

To live with, and in, All of a Sudden is to match heartbeats with these two women for a few hours. There are worse ways to spend your time.

Whatever allure The Son has lies in its very remoteness, in its resolute refusal to show us all but the most delicate emotional vibrations. It also moves very sluggishly.

His (Miyazaki) stories, and often his character design, just leave me cold. I know I'm supposed to be magically transported by his fanciful tales and his whimsical grandiosity, but they make me listless.

Part of the movie’s understated triumph lies in its casting: Hawke is an actor who clearly cares, and worries, a lot–the tree of life is practically etched into his forehead.

Wright has orchestrated every swerve and near smashup—and one glorious foot chase—with precision, a rarity in action filmmaking these days.

As co-director LeBrecht, himself a Jened attendee, puts it in the film, “This camp changed the world, and nobody knows this story.”

This is a big movie served up in a surprisingly small, intimate package.

No Other Choice is both too dully observed and too aggressively slapsticky to hit its mark. It’s a missed opportunity dressed up with proficient filmmaking.

Something of an odd bird, a cross between a documentary, an art film and a personal reflection on aging.

It's the perfect marriage of music and animated movement. But even when there's no music playing in Waking Life, the movie's lyricism is sustained by the way it looks and feels.

Lowery (A Ghost Story, The Old Man & the Gun), in addition to fleshing out the story, puts his stamp all over it so confidently that the results could be annoying, if they weren’t so enchanting.

A great action movie, exhilarating and neatly crafted, the kind of picture that will still look good 20 or 30 years from now.

The movie's final moments are the equivalent of the half-jubilant, half-mournful thrill you get when you close the cover of a book you've savored.

The economics of star casting aside, what would Take Shelter have been like with James McAvoy or Mark Wahlberg or Jake Gyllenhaal at its center?

Peele succeeds where sometimes even more experienced filmmakers fail: He’s made an agile entertainment whose social and cultural observations are woven so tightly into the fabric that you’re laughing even as you’re thinking, and vice-versa.

This, possibly, is the best kind of movie, the stealth achievement that has been hiding in plain sight all along.

A surprisingly seamless biographical documentary, one that, even though it's been constructed largely from found elements, feels gracefully whole.

You’ll learn a lot from Varda’s narration, about filmmaking, about life, about her. If you want to know how to turn scraps into gold, this is the masterclass for you.

A beautifully shaped piece of work: There are no slack patches, no gratuitous feel-good moments -- if you walk out of Knocked Up feeling good, that means you've earned it.

Scorsese didn't need to remake "Infernal Affairs," but what he has done with it is a compliment rather than an affront to the original: The Departed reimagines its source material rather than just leeching off it, preserving the bone structure of the first movie while finding new curves in it. The story has been clarified; the ellipses of the original have been filled in with just the right amount of exploratory shading. This is a picture of grand gestures and subtle intricacies, a movie that, even at more than two hours long, feels miraculously lean. It's a smart shot of lucid storytelling.

The movie's intricacy, and the way it finds its way into the emotional lives of its characters via (and not in spite of) that intricacy, is what makes it extraordinary. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy challenges audiences to believe in craftsmanship again.

It’s simply blissfully restorative, a movie that gives you back something you didn’t realize you’d lost, one that might even make you forget what year you’re living in. Its pleasures run quiet and deep.

Heart of Gold is a sweet, gentle picture, if not a particularly exhilarating one.