Steve Pond

Buoyed by the performance by Hardy and by newcomer Jason Patel as Aysha, Unicorns pleads for understanding but does it in a way that at its best is contemplative rather than histrionic.

At an hour and 27 minutes, the film has the feel of an exquisite miniature, succinct and evocative.

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.

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.

I Care a Lot may have delusions about being a cautionary tale of elder abuse and the perils of court-appointed guardianship, but let’s be honest: It takes way too much delight in despicable people doing despicable things to really care a lot, or even much at all, about the larger social issues.

The Friend juggles the happy, the sad and the bittersweet while somehow managing not to lose the lightness that has kept it afloat.

The man is certainly worthy of this kind of celebration, and it’s hard to imagine that anybody who watches the movie won’t agree with Ava DuVernay’s push to rename that bridge.

The old footage puts us in the studio in 1994, the new moments supply some valuable context and the ragged nature of the film eventually begins to feel of a piece with the ragged nature of the album.

It wouldn’t be a Western if it didn’t include some kind of showdown, and “The Dead Don’t Hurt” gives us one that is bloody and satisfying without being what you’d expect. Mortensen twists the tropes until the end.

Does it have moments of hilarity? Sure does. Does it run out of steam at times? Hell, yes. Is Appel a workmanlike director who mostly stays out of the way and lets his cast deliver the laughs? Yep, though he does try to get fancy a few times, with mixed results.

It’s not full of revelations about a young woman who has always been frank and open about her insecurities and mental health issues, but it feels honest and delivers some nuance in the way it celebrates and explores its subject.

If you like your superhero comic-book movies with a truckload of angst on the side, The Old Guard might be just what you’re looking for. Or if you like your brooding dramas best when they come with a high body count, this could be the movie for a nice punchy weekend.

Does the film explain “Hallelujah?” Of course not – the song stubbornly resists explanation, because it’s so many different things and because there’s a beautiful mystery at its heart. Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song is smart enough to embrace that mystery and that beauty, and to know that there’s far more to Cohen than can be summed up in four, or seven, or even 150 verses.

The movie sometimes feels as aimless as moments in the lives of the characters it depicts, but that helps give it the intimacy of a story told from the inside, not the outside.

The Western is a genre weighted down with dark history, and Henry is a man in the same position, haunted to a degree that Nelson makes transfixing.

It’s all grand and fun and corny, a musical fantasy that reaches for the sky and gets there often enough to make it diverting but also frustrating.

Despite its access to the words of its subject, this is a low-key, stylish film of interest mostly to Kubrick devotees – but since that includes an awful lot of the people who have any interest in the art of film, there should be an audience who want to hear what the guy had to say.

It’s a gentle journey, and a times a frustratingly uncertain one, so tentative as to almost float away beneath the often luminous images.

The way it rushes from silly to vicious to sappy can put you in a tonal whirl. But it’s also fun, and not insignificant in the way it puts an unconventional heroine on screen and then gives her the agency to act both stupid and smart as she sees fit.

While you can view the film as a companion piece to “How I’m Feeling Now” that is mostly aimed at people who love that album, it also has moments where it transcends that to become is an intimate examination of community in a time of isolation. And in those moments, the film has an impact that reaches far beyond what it shows you about one artist’s music.

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

If “Greece” is the end of the “Trip” saga, as all involved say it will be, it’s a satisfying and even touching way to wrap up a decade-long demonstration of the proposition that all it takes is conversation to be entertaining.

Part fond remembrance of an early-’80s Leningrad rock scene and part glam-rock fever dream, Leto asks an audience to surrender to excess and at times to silliness, and it richly rewards them for doing so.

There are moments of real beauty in the film, which is an unassuming and contemplative excursion into how we love, and why. But like the fireworks that greet Asako and Baku’s first kiss, its pop is a modest one.

Orwell: 2+2=5 is an artful balancing act, one that dips in and out of Orwell’s life and work, but also uses a broad array of reference points as it swings from history to art to the most current of events.

As much as the film makes it clear that she deserves more recognition and appreciation in her own country, it suggests that she deserves it in her own family, too.

At times the storytelling may make the story look and feel more interesting than it is, particularly in an ending that feels as if it rushes to find a bit of forced redemption. But Poe is an assured first-time director who has created a high-school movie that feels distinct from all the high-school movies that preceded it.

For all the battles that Nadia wages when she’s in the water, this is a subdued and subtly powerful look at the unexpected perils of dry land.