Walter Addiego

Creating this kind of otherworldly mood takes exceptional talent, and this is a film worth experiencing.

The film is well acted, with especially strong work by Alonso and Zegers. And director Larraín has a powerful knack for depicting human monsters. But he stacks the deck so heavily that at times the film can seem like simple-minded anti-clericalism, and at least some viewers are bound to resist.

The film is cleanly made and moves quickly, which enhances its effectiveness. It raises moral issues that simply can’t be addressed too often.

A melancholy Spanish drama that’s competently made and checks off all the boxes defining a contemporary art-house movie. But it lacks the spark that separates top-of-the-line films from the pack, and watching it becomes something of a slog.

To be sure, Censored Voices can hardly be seen as anything but a political document, one that shares Oz’s views.

This is history of a personalized and meditative sort, and you ought to give it a chance.

With more than a hint of the magazine’s trademark insouciance, the film gives us a close look at how the selection process works and introduces us a to a handful of younger artists, as well as such stalwarts as George Booth and Roz Chast.

In all, it’s a relaxed portrait of a likable fellow.

Hand it to directors Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K. Walker, who could have made the story into a black-hat/white-hat affair. Without soft-pedaling Cobb’s noxious ideology, they implicitly raise questions about how Leith responded to the perceived danger.

There are two main obstacles to enjoying The Last Witch Hunter. One is your ability to buy Vin Diesel as an immortal slayer of evildoers plying his trade in today’s Manhattan. You also have to swallow a by-the-numbers plot buried under an avalanche of fast-and-furious but underwhelming CGI effects.

He Named Me Malala gets good marks as a laudatory piece about a genuinely valiant young woman, but it could use a modest dose of objectivity.

There’s lots of eye candy, and the pace is fast, but somehow the movie falls short. You’re forgiven if you get the idea that “Scorch Trials” suffers from “middle movie” fatigue.

A gripping study of Bobby Fischer, perhaps the greatest chess player ever.

Strict plausibility isn’t necessary in these movies, and while No Escape doesn’t completely throw it out the window, it still inspires the occasional unintended giggle.

Offers some hit-and-miss pleasures, but may finally strike you as pedestrian.

The actor suffered deeply, and however much he’s responsible for that, it’s hard not to feel some compassion for a bright and sensitive artist who, at least early on, seemed full of life.

Like in so many silents, the plot is joyously minimal.

It’s a testimony to how much this is a live issue in Indonesia that some of the credits are listed simply as “anonymous.”

The short, sad life of Amy Winehouse is compellingly told in a new documentary that sidesteps sensationalism and dime-store psychologizing and lets archival footage do much of the work.

Don’t expect profundities on the ethics of cloning. And don’t expect Oscar-worthy acting. Senese’s accomplishment — and it’s done with a certain restraint — is to replicate the look and feel of ’70s horror films, which had become more assaultive on audience sensibilities than their predecessors, breaking taboos and borrowing techniques from exploitation films.

The handsome and appealing Max, by the way, is played by five dogs. For the record, he is a Belgian Malinois, a breed that in real life is often used in police and military work.

The film may work best as a supplement to the underwhelming three-hour-plus extravaganza broadcast in February to celebrate “SNL’s” 40th anniversary.

The film’s depiction of loss, isolation and reconciliation, and the rewards of friendship, grows more touching as the story builds to its highly emotional conclusion.

There are more enigmas than answers in Jauja, an artsy South American Western directed by Lisandro Alonso, an Argentine filmmaker who delights in undermining movie conventions.

Both as writer and director, Farhadi is skilled at depicting the spiraling growth of social malignancies, as duplicity and uncertainties beget confusion, fear and anger. It’s an incisive portrait of a particular society, but it should resonate everywhere.

By showing so many examples of his art, the film attests to Giger’s real gift for startling images. But it’s hard not to see, in addition, elements of repetitive adolescent provocation.

Spinney owns the character, down to the last feather.

The chief virtue of Iris is its amiability — it’s a delight to spend time in Apfel’s company, and thanks to Albert Maysles, we can.

The film has a good cast, and is competently made in a plain-vanilla way, but its greatest appeal will be to those who share its endorsement of traditional religious values.

There’s already a small library of films about the Who and its music, but this is the first I know of that examines the men who almost accidentally wound up managing one of the most incendiary of ’60s rock groups.

In the title role, Kikuchi is impressive, easily handling Kumiko’s comic and more somber sides and never allowing us to settle into a single or simple interpretation of the character.

This is highly skilled filmmaking, but the movie is not for everybody — the relationship involves dominance and submission, sexual games played at a high pitch. This material falls short of pornographic, but still packs plenty of erotic punch.

Suffice it to say that this is good family fare with plenty of decent gags (visual and otherwise), and it’s nicely acted by all the principals. In addition, Julie Walters, Peter Capaldi and Jim Broadbent turn up in smaller but still lively roles.

The movie isn’t really bad, just tepid, and it’s partly redeemed by a good lead performance.

This film is mainly for “Night at the Museum” diehards.

The film raises significant questions about manhood and offers a few gripping sequences, but isn’t fully satisfying.

In all, it’s an absorbing, straightforward look at a truly alien environment. The film could be nicely paired with Werner Herzog’s “Encounters at the End of the World” (2007), a much more idiosyncratic view of Antarctic strangeness.

There’s plenty here to tickle the kids, and that’s what counts.

The quiet machinations of this Frenchman and commodities trader helped win the release of Nelson Mandela from prison and bring an end to South Africa’s apartheid system.

The filmmakers employ an offbeat and effective technique to get Landis to explain himself.

A film of great sadness, but also a galvanizing depiction of heroism.

A potent and disturbing experience. Fortunately it’s much more, offering sharp performances and genuine drama.

Bateman comes off well, humanizing his character with a strain of melancholy that’s one of the movie’s genuinely touching elements. Fey is all right, though she falls back on her patented shtick. Driver makes the most of his hipsterish role, nicely playing off the other siblings’ tension.

For a good, straight-ahead noirish crime thriller, you could do a lot worse than A Walk Among the Tombstones.

My Old Lady is affecting, even if many of the revelations and high-voltage speeches occur at predictable moments. But if you can look past this formulaic side, it's a movie worth seeing.

Earnest and well-intentioned, The Identical is based on a "what if" that straddles the line between ingenious and loopy.

It's a nightmare fairy tale that can be very difficult to watch.

See Love Is Strange for its sensitivity and understated jokes, but mainly for Lithgow and Molina's expertly modulated work, which pulls the movie back when it threatens to stray into melodrama or heavy-handedness.

Moretz is an appealing young woman whose star is rising. She'll probably have an exceptional career, but If I Stay won't be a highlight.

The film is good enough to inspire viewers to learn more about Fela, but it should be better than that.

Questions of politics and policy, even urgent ones, seem pretty dry after watching Henry and the other elderly patients come to life. Those scenes are a revelation.

The new film pokes heavyhanded fun at extreme conservatives and has a "power to the people" sub-theme, but it's full of ultra-violence and is dragged down by standard scare tactics, thin characters and the absurdities of the premise.

It's fascinating stuff, but secondary to Ebert's genuine passion for the movies, which, if anything, grew toward the end of his life. He saw film as a great civilizing force, "a machine that generates empathy," as he says in the film. If that idea appeals to you, see Life Itself.

An intense and affecting report on the experiences of U.S. troops in one of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan.

For a while, you can feel like a part of the golden circle.

Despite the increase in seriousness, the film's mood is buoyant, as it's impossible not to root for these appealing if flawed youngsters.

The Dance of Reality may not succeed, but it may hold some interest to cinephiles as a relic of a kind of extravagant, overheated personal cinema that doesn't exist anymore.

Ida is a rarity, a film both intensely grounded in painful historical reality and genuinely otherworldly.

It's hard to argue with the movie's basic point. Dr. Robert Lustig of UCSF sums it up in three words: "Sugar is poison."

For those willing to overlook its few slips into heavy-handedness, Corpo Celeste tells a compelling story of a 12-year-old girl thrust into a strange new world.

Miserly on food porn but not on prefab characters, it's well short of a cinematic feast.

Offers some memorable stories, but it simply tries too hard.

The filmmaker works with economy and has a knack for creating a sense of foreboding, which is good because the plot is simply a working out of the old saw that violence begets violence.

The resulting film is a rich mix of movements and cultural phenomena that occurred not only in the United States, but several European countries.

The documentary Watermark is close to the cinematic equivalent of a coffee-table book. It relies heavily on visuals and offers minimal context. The project has a pro-environment feeling, which comes across implicitly, not through browbeating or preaching.

An engaging documentary attempt to probe her mystery, and it offers some answers - she was secretive and stubborn, a hoarder of epic proportions who seems to have had fits of instability. She also wasn't always nice to her young charges.

This film doesn't feel obliged to pick a winner or lob easy answers; it aims to observe, with humor and humanity, with penetration and without oversimplifying.

A gripping documentary about the most exacting and expensive scientific experiment ever conducted, and one that may be among the most significant.

You may experience Visitors as more of a sedative than a punch in the guts.

Director Patrick Creadon, who in 2006 made the entertaining "Wordplay," about crossword fanatics, probably errs on the side of advocacy here. But give him credit for acknowledging that idealistic endeavors don't always pay off.

The movie has lots of ironic humor, especially in the earlier segments, and laughter doesn't disappear entirely when the thriller element kicks in.

Tonal inconsistency is the iceberg that sinks The Pretty One. The film is a mashup of wacky comedy, romance and sorrowful elements that would tax a more seasoned filmmaker than first-time writer-director Jenée LaMarque.

the movie comes perilously close to implicitly justifying the killing that sparked the plot - a killing, by the way, that is close to senseless.

The director takes an unpromising premise - the switched-at-birth plot - and gives us something that's touching and unexpected.

Taking a stand would have made the film stronger, and might even have been helpful to young Pug and his peers.

Jia is passionate about his characters, but that never compromises his considerable artistic control.

Despite its worthy subject, this feature by veteran Brazilian director Bruno Barreto has a bluntness that's at odds with Bishop's personality and work.

The veteran filmmakers, siblings Lisa and Rob Fruchtman, accentuate the positive, while acknowledging the obstacles. They also realize Rwanda's trauma can't be denied - a handful of women recount harrowing stories of their experiences during the genocide and its aftermath. Some have parents or husbands still in prison for war crimes.

If you know Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita," you'll be unable to watch The Great Beauty without thinking about it. This gorgeous Italian movie, like its predecessor, balances pungent satire and a more melancholy mood in portraying the dissolute world of the upper crust in contemporary Rome.

It's the story of a young married couple undone by a family tragedy, but the film loses its way, at one point turning into a political harangue.

By the end you can't help but wonder whether it was a good idea to keep the youngsters under camera scrutiny for more than 12 years.

The film is merciless in showing the obstacles faced by a down-and-out couple in strip-mall Florida, but there's a modicum of hope in the genuine love the characters share.

The tales are worthwhile, but it's challenging to find a common thread among them that goes beyond vague generalities.

A modestly entertaining martial arts melodrama with impressively staged fight sequences that help compensate for a stale plot and some less-than-stellar acting.

Well-intentioned but heavy-handed.

The hits just keep on coming in Muscle Shoals, a hugely entertaining, perhaps overlong, documentary about the renowned recording studios in the small Alabama town of the film's title. It's mandatory viewing for fans of the classic rock, soul and rhythm and blues of the 1960s and '70s.

As a grab bag of reminiscences by veteran funny people, bolstered with richly entertaining performance footage, it's boffo.

The movie saves most of its modest number of jolts for its last quarter or so, which makes them all the more intense. They stick in your craw - and be warned, they're not for the squeamish.

A bonbon, not of a full-course meal. Foodies will smack their lips over many delectable shots of victuals prepared by the film's engaging protagonist, a provincial woman chosen to cook for the president of France. As a story, though, it's insubstantial - there's conflict here, but it feels perfunctory.

The characters are mostly likable, and despite some comic sallies the film takes a compassionate stance toward them. But it feels like a glossy, overly neat take on what should be an explosive topic.

A simple story told with economy, Wadjda is a notable example of old-school, humanistic filmmaking. It's also genuinely groundbreaking: the first feature shot entirely in Saudi Arabia, and the first film directed by a Saudi woman.

The joy is in the details - from the animated credits to the perky pop score to the pre-"Mad Man" hair, clothes and general sensibility.

Trying to be provocative with a capital "P," Anne Fontaine's Adore undermines itself by provoking unintended laughs.

While there's a certain staid feeling to the production, it does deliver a solid working-over to the era's gentry.

The film is beautiful but troubled, achieving in stretches the director's signature dreamy mood but dragged down by narrative confusions.

This elegant movie never reduces or diminishes its subjects, and leaves us to ponder a remarkable truth - that Ushio and Noriko have an abiding love that four decades of frustration, resentment and rivalry have battered but not extinguished.

Director Cordero manages the not-bad trick of generating suspense while keeping the overall tone cool and collected.

Although this leisurely tale of an aged French sculptor offers a few other small pleasures, in the end it lacks heft.