Todd McCarthy

An impudently comic, stylistically aggressive and, finally, very thoughtful manner.

Unusual for this sort of thing, Snitch is a film after which you remember the characters and actors more than the big action moments.

Upstream Colors certainly is something to see if you’re into brilliant technique, expressive editing, oblique storytelling, obscuritanist speculative fiction or discovering a significant new actress.

The violence of the inter-American drug trade has served as the backdrop for any number of films for more than three decades, but few have been as powerful and superbly made as Sicario.

As a contrast to Gosling's deliberately deadened, emotionally zoned-out turn, Ford almost single-handedly amps up a film otherwise intentionally drained of character vitality.

Exploding Raymond Carver's spare stories and minimally drawn characters onto the screen with startling imagination, Robert Altman has made his most complex and full-bodied human comedy since "Nashville."

To say 13th is stimulating and thought-provoking is the understatement of the year.

An ultra-smart-mouthed comedy about a planned adoption that goes weirdly awry.

On balance, this is a meaty, strongly realized dramatic work of considerable accomplishment.

This is a documentary both tragic and poignant, not to mention maddening in that only a few underlings, and not the perpetrators, will pay for the crime committed in Istanbul. The evidence is all here for the world to see.

Rare proof that a gigantic production in contemporary Hollywood can possess a distinctive personality and its own approach to storytelling, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World proves as bracing as a stiff wind on the open sea.

An amusing look at the perils of film production, Living in Oblivion is an inside joke with a generosity of heart that makes it accessible to anyone who would take an interest.

Deftly playing Tina Fey's feminist-icon mother, Lily Tomlin all but steals Admission, a knowing but uneven comedy about the neuroticism of the college-admission process on both sides of the equation.

A feel-good Cold War melodrama, Bridge of Spies is an absorbing true-life espionage tale very smoothly handled by old pros who know what they're doing.

Sam Mendes' much-anticipated second effort after his Oscar-winning "American Beauty" finds him working in a very different key while displaying an even more pronounced attentiveness to tone, genre variations and artistic niceties.

A well-acted and crafted character piece that's a bit too calculated and cutesy for its own good.

Mesmerizing in its incremental layering of a bizarre, tragic and thoroughly warped character study, Foxcatcher sees director Bennett Miller well surpassing even the fine work he did in his previous two films, Capote and Moneyball.

Breaking through any period-piece mustiness with piercing insight into the emotions and behavior of her characters, the writer-director examines the final years in the short life of 19th-century romantic poet John Keats through the eyes of his beloved, Fanny Brawne, played by Abbie Cornish in an outstanding performance.

Baker does an amazingly sensitive job with the ticklish part and is joined in this by Read, who is superlative as his inquisitive young son.

Friday Night Lights is the "Black Hawk Down" of high school football movies. As exclusively as Ridley Scott's picture was about combat, this film concerns football and nothing but.

Only fitfully does the film manage the kind of lift-off as that achieved by Pynchon's often riotous 2009 novel and, most disappointingly, it offers only a pale and narrow physical recreation of such a vibrant place and time.

Only Tarantino could come up with such a wild cross-cultural mash, a smorgasbord of ingredients stemming from spaghetti Westerns, German legend, historical slavery, modern rap music, proto-Ku Klux Klan fashion, an assembly of '60s and '70s character actors and a leading couple meant to be the distant forebears of blaxploitation hero John Shaft and make it not only digestible but actually pretty delicious.

To kill time between action set-pieces, del Toro has done an above-average job of avoiding tedium via some flavorsome casting, passably interesting plot contrivances and, above all, by maintaining strong forward momentum. Unlike so many similar crash-bang action spectaculars, this one feels lean and muscular rather than bloated or padded; the combat is almost always coherent and dramatically pointed rather than just splashed on the screen for its own sake.

The ultimate effect of [Östlund's] studied techniques is more restricting than beneficial, which, combined with a protracted running time, faintly self-righteous air and a perplexing, misguided coda, produces a sense of letdown at the end despite the strength of much that has come before.

On their own, individual scenes are effective enough in semi-farcically portraying the ignorance, avoidance and/or downright denial by the practitioners of bad loans. Together, however, they are wearying in their repetitive nature.

A film that is continuously enjoyable from its action-filled opening to the dazzling final shot, one that offers a very generous welcome to newcomers to the play, and reminds those familiar with it of its heady pleasures. Only real drawback, and not an insignificant one, is pic’s visual quality, which is unaccountably undistinguished, even ugly, especially considering the sun-drenched Tuscan location.

Dramatically gripping while still brandishing a droll undercurrent of humor, this beautifully made film will certainly be embraced as one of the best Bonds by loyal fans worldwide and leaves you wanting the next one to turn up sooner than four years from now.

Last year's "The Prisoner of Azkaban" seemed dark, but this excellent fourth film derived from J.K. Rowling's books is the darkest "Potter" yet, intense enough to warrant a PG-13 rating.

Almost too much of a good thing, Peter Jackson's remake of the film that made him want to make movies is a super-sized version of a yarn that was big to begin with, a stupendous adventure that maximizes, and sometimes oversells, its dazzling wares.

Resourceful filmmakers Bud Friedgen and Michael J. Sheridan have come up with a bang-up third anthology of Golden Era musical highlights that capably holds its own with its predecessors.

Palmason boldly risks audience disenfranchisement by pushing his disturbing story to unexpected lengths dramatically and stylistically, thereby winning a creative wrestling match with a potentially intransigent narrative.

Some years from now, Starred Up, a rough, violent and, to American ears, half-indecipherable British prison drama, will be remembered as the film that announced a new star, Jack O’Connell.

Darius Khondji's cinematography evokes to the hilt the gorgeously inviting Paris of so many people's imaginations (while conveniently ignoring the rest), and the film has the concision and snappy pace of Allen's best work.

The film’s lively dynamics owe much to the bristly nature of nearly every relationship and interaction in the film.

This absorbing drama provides Denzel Washington with one of his meatiest, most complex roles, and he flies with it.

The director and screenwriter downplay the conventional melodrama inherent in the situation in favor of emphasizing how practical problems should be addressed with rational responses rather than hysteria, knee-jerk patriotism or selfish expedience.

Rourke creates a galvanizing, humorous, deeply moving portrait that instantly takes its place among the great, iconic screen performances. An elemental story simply and brilliantly told, Darren Aronofsky's fourth feature is a winner from every possible angle.

Considerable intelligence and strategic finesse have been brought to bear on this handsomely mounted adaptation of Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which was hardly a natural for the bigscreen.

Artistically on a plane with or near the vet filmmaker's best work, this period drama about a woman slowly discovering her metier is an artisanal creation par excellence.

Montenegro carries the film su-perbly with her portrait of gritty strength being worn down to a state of tattered vulnerability, while newcomer de Oliveira, a shoeshine boy who won the role over 1,500 other aspirants, is engagingly natural and happily doesn't beg for viewer sympathy.

Has some emotional pull and isn't stuffy and dull.

Craig Zobel effectively sets all its surface parts in motion but, crucially, doesn’t sufficiently develop that turbulent undercurrents of tension and intrigue that are called for in the hothouse circumstances.

After building up some cockeyed charm through the first half, Nancy Savoca’s third feature peels off into obscure and particularized religious mysticism, leaving the viewer grasping in vain for a handle to hold onto for the second hour.

A seductively structured and superbly acted suspenser that breathtakingly piles swindle upon scam without giving away the game until the very end.

Boosted by central characters that remain vastly engaging and a deep supply of wit, Incredibles 2 certainly proves worth the wait, even if it hits the target but not the bull's eye in quite the way the first one did.

Craig comes closer to the author's original conception of this exceptionally long-lived male fantasy figure than anyone since early Sean Connery.

This unlikely collaboration between actors Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott is extremely well directed, making for a smartly made, delightfully acted period piece whose sensibility neatly straddles art films and the mainstream.

A "GoodFellas" with heart, A Bronx Tale represents a wonderfully vivid snapshot of a colorful place and time, as well as a very satisfying directorial debut by Robert De Niro. Overflowing with behavioral riches and the flavor of a deep-dyed New York Italian neighborhood, the film also trades intelligently in pertinent moral and social issues that raise it above the level of nostalgia or the mere memoir.

Unfortunately, Barthes brings nothing new to the familiar story.

Well-made and acted Coen Brothers remake lacks the humor and resonance that might have made it memorable.

Unfortunately, instead of embracing the weighty moral, religious and political components of the story, Malick has alternately deflected and minimized them.

Baumbach’s film for Netflix is more conventionally conceived than some of his best work but benefits from sterling turns from a wonderful cast, most notably Dustin Hoffman and, no kidding, Adam Sandler.

An intensely imaginative piece of conceptual filmmaking that also delivers the goods as a dread-drenched horror movie.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens pumps new energy and life into a hallowed franchise in a way that both resurrects old pleasures and points in promising new directions.

Harmless, but also, unfortunately, almost entirely mirthless, this putative comedy about an unsuspecting man obliged to transport a pachyderm cross-country aspires to a winsome charm that never crystallizes, leaving what’s onscreen to wilt before it ever blossoms.

May be a shade too serious and contemplative to completely enchant the thrill-seeking masses, while simultaneously seeming too mainstream-minded and genre-bound to be entirely embraced by highbrows.

Nutty, arcane and jaw-dropping in equal measure, this is a head-first plunge down the rabbit hole of Kubrickiana from which, for some, there is evidently no return.

There’s no question that Hanks is perfect in the part, as the actor’s amiability and unquestionable sincerity make for an ideal match with the unique television personality. Marielle Heller's film itself, however, is a rather more modest achievement, sympathetic and yet entirely predictable in its dramatic trajectory of making a believer of an angry, cynical journalist.

A vital chapter of mid-century history is brought to life concisely, with intimacy and matter-of-fact artistry.

Like a crafty predator, the Danish knock-out Holiday lays patiently in wait as long as it needs to — in this case nearly an hour — before stunning its prey, the spectator, with a shocking scene that catapults the film to a whole different level.

Binoche and Stewart seem so natural and life-like that it would be tempting to suggest that they are playing characters very close to themselves. But this would also be denigrating and condescending, as if to suggest that they’re not really acting at all.

The film makes plenty of mileage from trading on the charm of a good bad boy, and Redford’s long experience in playing such roles serves him beautifully here; he knows by now he doesn’t have to push his attractiveness to be ingratiating. His work here is natural, subtle, ingratiating and doesn’t miss a trick.

Swings, even if it doesn't always soar.

Wellesians will vigorously debate the aesthetic results of this torturously achieved accomplishment but, to the credit of those who, against daunting odds and nearly a half-century's worth of obstacles, arduously pushed this project to completion, the end result feels like a plausible fulfillment of the style Welles himself established for it.

Frank Langella's meticulous performance will generate the sort of attention that will attract serious filmgoers.

The script dares to go deep and confront what is going on in the hearts and minds of all three family members, but it does so articulately and without hysteria.

Feels lavish by normal documentary standards and will have great appeal in such F1 hotbeds as Europe and South America.

Clever and jokey in a vaudeville sort of way, but lacks the heart and sheer imagination of the company's best work for Disney, "Toy Story 2" and "A Bug's Life."

At once entirely frank and downright cuddly in the way it deals with the seldom-visited subject of the sex lives of people with disabilities, this well-acted and constructed film will, at the very least, turn the spotlight on this unusual topic.

A breezy, keen-to-please attitudes prevails, and director James Bobin (The Flight of the Conchords, Da Ali G Show for TV) moves things along with good cheer.

"Big Night" meets "The Sopranos" in Dinner Rush.

To be sure, the climax delivers copious amounts of blood and guts and tension and look-away temptations. But there are enough interesting surprises, in addition to the narrative promise, to provide for the presumed, and now quite desired, sequels.

The clear-eyed film dedicates itself to breaking through the debris of cliched, one-dimensional public impressions of vets, bikers, immigrant wives and kids and trailer-park lifestyles as it fashions an involving portrait of a deeply scarred man sustained by certain rituals and an unextinguished sense of empathy for others’s problems.

A tough-minded, bracingly blunt look at the sometimes debilitating cost of doing business that casts an unblinking eye on the physical, emotional and moral bottom line.

A sharply made, perfectly cast and unfailingly absorbing melodrama. But, like the director's adaptation of another publishing phenomenon, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, three years ago, it leaves you with a quietly lingering feeling of: “Is that all there is?”

Lively, sometimes funny and, inevitably, provocative.

The main performances are powerful, the visuals are bold and vivid, the final effect one of the gut having been punched and the mind stirred.

Working in his typically idiosyncratic and episodic vein, Jim Jarmusch has nonetheless pitched the film slightly more toward mainstream tastes than usual for him, using excellent thesps in the service of accessible material.

Nichols has delivered a timely drama that, unlike most films of its type, doesn’t want to clobber you with its importance. It just tells its story in a modest, even discreet way that well suits the nature of its principal characters.

Silence, more successfully than not, artfully addresses the core issue of its maker's lifelong religious struggle.

Story was originally conceived as an episode of Tales From the Crypt, and that is perhaps what it should have remained, as the thinness of the conceit shows throughout, painfully so in the first half.

Hitchcock/Truffaut is a resourceful, illuminating and very welcome documentation both of filmmaking and the making of film history.

Ambitiously tackling his biggest canvas to date, Clint Eastwood continues to defy and triumph over the customary expectations for a film career in Flags of Our Fathers.

Witty, thoughtful and illuminating.

While pic remains sympathetic and appealing, the endless dialogue and repetitive settings become wearing through the couple's one long night together, and the artifice of the premise may contribute to the difficulty the film has in coming to romantic life.

So it's a fun, if not exhilarating, ride, one sped along with the help of a wonderfully assembled cast.

The necessity of circumstances dictates everything anyone does here and you can only react with varying degrees of outrage, anger, disgust, pity, empathy and, if you're a blind optimist, hope for something better.

Part sincere and part smarmy, part amusing and part windy nonsense, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs plays like an old Western-themed vaudeville show featuring six unrelated sketches of drastically differing quality.

Ever-eclectic director Jon Favreau, who briefly pops up onscreen as a Stark minion, maintains a brisk but not frantic pace, and, in concert with lenser Matthew Libatique, production designer J. Michael Riva and the first-rate visual effects team, has made an unusually elegant looking film for the genre.

Only Lovers Left Alive is an addictive mood and tone piece, a nocturnal reverie that incidentally celebrates a marriage that has lasted untold centuries.