Steve Pond

Road Diary takes a Springsteen concert as a template of sorts, which means it mixes joy and dread and love and regret and exuberance and silliness and seriousness; it’s intoxicating and it’s sobering, and it rocks like hell but confronts what’s been lost during Springsteen’s 74 years on the planet.

The film makes a good case for [Cohn's] legacy being entirely negative, leading to today’s cutthroat, divisive and lie-packed politics. But it also, crucially, makes a case for Cohn being a fascinating subject, a bundle of contradictions in a slick and soulless package.

This is a war movie from the perspective of the losers, visually spectacular but by turns infuriating and heartbreaking. “All Quiet” is excessive, but it probably needs to be; the screenplay by Berger, Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell takes a dark story and makes it even darker.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 moves beyond Sorkin the writer of dialogue, or Sorkin the supplier of scripts to the likes of Rob Reiner, David Fincher and Danny Boyle, to Sorkin the filmmaker.

Paints a rich picture of full lives using little more than pauses, glances and a frozen landscape that says volumes without speaking.

It’s both a tour de force for a cast led by Thomasin McKenzie and a sign that Oldroyd hasn’t lost his unsettling touch in the seven years since his last film.

As much as the film celebrates his creativity and gazes unflinchingly at his failings, it also functions as a valedictory, almost a requiem of sorts. Think of it as the film version of the final albums made by Leonard Cohen and David Bowie, who made wrenching final statements that they likely knew would be their last.

Falling is a finely drawn character drama, as you might expect from much of Mortensen’s acting career, and a film that pays attention to small details that bring these people to life.

The pacing is far from what you’d expect in a Hollywood movie with this much action, which can make the film feel longer than its 116 minutes. But that rich languor and love of words is earned, and do you really want to tell Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche to hurry up? No. You. Do. Not.

On the surface a tense investigative piece with Renner as a regular Sherlock of the snow, it also slips in cogent and damning points about the limitations and dead ends virtually forced on many residents of Native American reservations.

A twisted piece of grandly entertaining provocation. ... This is a dark satire that finds a way to make a case for understanding.

Like all of Byrne’s work, it is sly performance art masquerading as rock ‘n’ roll, or maybe it’s sly rock ‘n’ roll masquerading as performance art; definitions are elusive but the impact is both cerebral and visceral, just the way Byrne likes it.

It’s still the story of an anguished man grappling with death, transplanted to a different world and a different time but still exerting a powerful pull on our imaginations. In one way, it’s an abbreviated “Hamlet,” but in another way, it’s a pumped-up one.

Hawkes and Lerman are subtle, naturalistic performers who spin gold out of settings that could easily seem clichéd. You pretty much know that these guys are on the road to understanding, acceptance and reconciliation, but they fill in the details so quietly and surely that the deep ruts put in this road by a thousand other movies barely matter.

Kiss the Future is a portrait of a city and a people who used culture to fight back; it’s also the story of a rock ‘n’ roll band exploring the limits of how its music can impact the real world. Above all else, though, it’s a rich and moving chronicle of the use of art as both a weapon and a means to salvation.

Beautiful Boy is family calamity writ large, a harrowing and horrifying (and yes, overly-long) exploration of the depths of addiction.

Ammonite is spare and hushed. Its pleasures are subtle, but they linger.

The film moves slowly but relentlessly, with each new moment showing just how dangerous the lead character’s idealism really is.

Three Faces is typical of the canny director’s output in the way it’s modest but profound, leisurely but urgent, a portrait of a country disguised as a meandering road movie.

A meditation that measures social failings in the toll they take on individuals, Time builds to scenes that are almost shocking in their intimacy. It stays away from polemic but hits all the harder for its restraint.

Throughout, Kaurismäki shows his usual complete control of a delicate tone that could easily go awry if it didn’t work so well.

To say that we know where the characters in Green Book are going is not to cheapen the undeniable pleasures of the ride.

Sprawling where “Son of Saul” was focused and frustrating where it packed a punch, Sunset is nonetheless an audacious step for a director who prefers immersion to exposition. It’s not easy, but it’ll get under your skin.

It’s a strange, sad, fragile little thing that should make us snicker, but instead it fills the screen with grace and beauty.

A thoroughly fun and provocative time at the movies.

It picks four cases that give a good overview of the ACLU’s work and all carry huge stakes; it follows lawyers who are articulate and interesting guides through the issues; and it gives each of the cases enough time to play out and also add up to a rich portrait of a complex organization

The devastation caused by those Russian soldiers is on full display in “Freedom on Fire,” which can be hard to watch. But the film is less a catalogue of horrors than a tribute to the people who look for strength despite those horrors; it continually finds moments of grace, humanity and even beauty that seem almost unfathomable in these circumstances.

There’s nothing flashy about the way these stories are assembled or told, but the cumulative power becomes overwhelming.