Steve Persall

Nunez handles Ruby's fragile personal growth with a loving concern that might escape most male filmmakers.

It's a story languorously told in three chapters, the first two in the late 1980s and the third 15 years later. Each could be a movie unto themselves. Together they prove Cianfrance to be an effectively unobtrusive storyteller, crafting without artifice what book critics would call a page turner.

Sure, Arnold's movie is aimless, at times frustrating, like its characters. It's also a harshly poetic reflection on what being young must mean today.

As a wisely devised teenage drama, The Spectacular Now treats kids and adults respectfully, even their foolish weaknesses. That respect extends to the audience.

Green studies characters, allowing scenes more time to expand personalities and usually knowing when to cut. Stronger is his most conventional, audience-friendly material ever but is still a movie of such quiet intimacies.

Arau's style is an aphrodisiac at 24 frames per second. [11 Aug 1995, p.2B]

The most gratifying takeaway from He Named Me Malala is how ordinary Malala is shown to be, when she isn't lobbying the United Nations and visiting beleaguered countries.

There's much more to the adventure, a deft balance of fantasy and teen angst that never loses its contemporary sense of humor.

The Death of Stalin is explicit content music to the ears of comedy buffs, a torrent of gutter wordsmithery unleashed by a bawdy ensemble.

Quirky to the brink of exhaustion, the latest from Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a live-action Looney Tune complete with Acme contraptions and wily coyotes.

What is missing is some balance; Pauline and Juliet are portrayed from their own idealized point-of-view, while parents and others who object to them are as silly, pompous and uncaring as the girls obviously perceived. Crime doesn't pay in Heavenly Creatures, but it's rationalized in expert, provocative fashion. [6 Jan 1995, p.7]

Warrior is a surprising gut punch, a modern-day "Rocky" saga with two mixed martial arts pugs trying to beat, choke and kick the system.

Despite wild deviations in spiritual themes and execution, nothing in Noah approaches sacrilege or surrender, making this an acutely sensible biblical epic. It may simply be too strange for the masses to notice.

While the villains are standard issue evil, Wonder Woman is remarkable in the genre for its early 20th century setting and Gadot's galvanizing performance.

Plenty of secrets are uncovered before the fadeout, plus another nugget dropped midway through the end credits that may render nearly everything beforehand to be false. That's the nature of intimacies submerged so long then revealed.

The plot is a piffle but Ozon's presentation is gloriously romantic.

Superbly directed by John Huston and acted with extraordinary charisma by Caine and Sean Connery. [14 Mar 2002, p.19W]

There's no way to make this a feel-good movie, and admirably the Duplass brothers don't try. Cyrus finds its humor in dark places, through characters bringing out the worst in each other.

As a director, Clooney makes his most straightforward movie yet, although it's static at times due to the stage origins of Willimon's material.

Trevorrow hits all the right, respectful beats, as a protege should; you can sense a desire to please his mentor, with several amusing references to Spielberg's 1993 original, and a climactic, triumphant nod to another of his works.

James Schamus makes an impressive directing debut with Indignation, an oasis of summer movie intelligence.

Bridge of Spies is solid work but feels like Spielberg's best intentions as a filmmaker and world conscience on cruise control.

It's good to know Solondz hasn't lost his ability to shock, or his indifference to anyone thinking he goes too far. Wiener-Dog is gentler material than usual for him, sweet, even goofy at times, yet no comfier than a sandpaper hug.

Stoker operates in a perpetual state of dread, a sophisticated Southern gothic that starts out confusing and winds up as a perversely humorous coming-of-age yarn.

They're an entertaining foursome, and Estevez guides them through lovely scenery, clever sight gags and personal confessions with leisurely skill.

With everything it's doing all over again, The Book of Life often finds fresh ways to do it. That's all it takes.

It Follows has an impressively sustained sense of dread, less explicit gore than measured tension. Mitchell slyly inverts the conventions of dead-meat teenager flicks, although not with wink-wink comedy like the Scream series. This movie is serious about creeping out viewers, and Mitchell is just artistic enough about it to create a minor masterpiece.

Horror is an impatient person's game these days, and Crimson Peak isn't hurried at all. It seduces with creepily erotic atmosphere, and performances in perfect tune with the script's melodrama.