Walter Addiego

A remarkable study of the corrosive effects of fear and power on an establishment insider who puts duty above all else.

The director has said that, though the story was inspired by the deaths of his parents, he hoped to make a film "brimming with life." He's succeeded.

A documentary with a keen eye, a playful sense of timing and an inquisitive soul.

In the hands of visionary filmmaker Alexander Sokurov, this simple material makes for a haunting drama about war, generational relationships and the human condition.

This Is Not a Film isn't just a film, it's a strong one. It's also an act of political defiance, a moving personal document and a meditation on what film is and can be.

The director is clearly an admirer of Francis (both the saint and the pope), and was able to conduct extensive and exclusive interviews with the pontiff.

The silence captured in this documentary -- a meditative look at life in the Carthusian monastery of the Grande Chartreuse in the French Alps -- may be the most eloquent you'll ever hear.

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

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.

Though the material might lend itself to heavy-handedness, director Ole Christian Madsen is steady, and he gets fine performances from the two leads and Stengade.

Stagecoach both revived and elevated the Western.

A couple of other odd moments to savor: Lucky, seeking a crossword answer, reads a dictionary definition of “realism” that’s perfectly to the point. And listen as he plays “Red River Valley” on the harmonica. Either one is a great way to remember Harry Dean Stanton.

This is a nearly miraculous conjunction of director, material and actor.

It's a bleak, fatalistic tale about rootlessness and the changing moral order in the machine age, but the wondrous details of the film trump any grand thematic concerns.

The bloodshed is somewhat less gory than in many slasher films -- with stress on the "somewhat." [26 Sep 2004]

Timeless, and as fine a depiction of human folly as you're likely to see at the movies.

This is a vision of hell conveyed in a simple, documentary style, far removed from the sumptuous American Mafia fables.

Both very funny and a bit of a tearjerker, with an on-the-money performance from Ricky Gervais.

What Mackenzie has crafted here is a crowd-pleaser with undeniable art-house elements.

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

An old-fashioned prisoner-of-war movie that becomes much more because of writer-director Werner Herzog's admiration for the remarkable true story of its protagonist, Dieter Dengler.

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.

As an antidote to the frenetic nature of a lot of children’s TV of the day, Rogers preferred a measured pace on his show, and even made judicious use of silence. These are just two of the numerous gifts given by this extraordinary man to the children lucky enough to have watched “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”

This is filmmaking of high energy and wit. What it adds up to is debatable. You can view it as a bright twist on the being-a-cop-is-lonely sort of police picture, or as a mini-anthology of quirky not-quite-love stories. If it's hard to say where Chungking Express arrives, the trip is still exhilarating.

Its brazen mixture of the comic and dramatic, the high and low and the emotional and intellectual is positively Shakespearean.

A simple, serene and occasionally humorous film about a subject that is complex, emotional and usually treated with solemnity.

All the women are good company, but in some ways Dench is the star of the show. She laughs often as she kibitzes with the others and seems not at all in awe of herself.

It's no great shakes as a film, but its combination of mild comedy, slapstick, pathos, many photogenic canines and a positive message will make it irresistible to families.

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.

It's an intriguing portrait, but it makes no pretense at objectivity, erring on the side of hero worship.

There's an Impressionistic feeling to all this, and sometimes it plays like a travelogue -- Bush is trying to do an awful lot at once. But the material is so compelling that we keep watching.

Richly inventive.

If you don’t expect it to be something it isn’t, it’s hard to see how partisans of pop music could fail to enjoy Echo in the Canyon. For rock ’n’ rollers of all ages, it’s mandatory viewing.

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

Neatly, and often humorously, summarizes a very unhealthy situation.

This was probably Warren Oates' finest hour, and certainly one of director Sam Peckinpah's greatest achievements. [06 Mar 2005]

A compelling documentary.

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

Transit has a hint of science fiction, and more than a hint of Kafka. And despite the story’s link to World War II, it’s clear that Petzold wants it to resonate with today’s immigration problems.

A new documentary, The Great Buster: A Celebration, shows us why he inspires rhapsodies from critics and film historians, and would be a fine introduction for those who don’t know his work.

This is a film that’s likely to stick with you because of its exceptional intensity. You may find yourself wondering, long after the credits roll, what on Earth is in store for Boris’ unborn child?

No film could convey all the complexities of the case - what Crude does is air the plaintiffs' claims and show the lawyers at work.

Math buffs will appreciate the inclusion of a brief and witty anecdote they may already know involving Ramanujan and the number 1,729. Well done.

Quibbling aside, Free Fire mainly works, as an indulgence in cinematic overkill for moviegoers who realize that sometimes too much is just enough.

Nil by Mouth is slow to get going, and meanders before its impact scenes in the second half. Still, its final intensity can leave you exhausted. If you stay with the picture, it's a powerful experience you're unlikely to forget.

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 movie is a rendering of the internal landscape of a contemporary cowboy, with the complexities and ambiguities left intact. It’s a kind of parable, delivered in a manner that has nothing to do with preaching.

There are odd comic moments, but this is a bleak, nighttime, nightmare world, where the couple seem to have about the same chance at a happy outcome as the accident victims.

Less ambitious than the highly successful "Secrets & Lies," Career Girls has its own modest merits - a real sense of wit, much of it expressed in Hannah's sharp verbal sallies, and a melancholy truth that both women realize.

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.

This documentary about men and women performing brutal work tasks for next to no money is full of arresting and eloquent images. It has little dialogue, and little is needed.

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.

Something of an elegy to modernism.

Director Anthony Fabian lets the story sell itself, and it does so partly on the strength of the lead performance by Sophie Okonedo.

Quiet, moving and beautifully shot.

It’s a fantasia on a short period in the life of the esteemed Chilean poet and Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda — while based on fact, it’s made with a sense of freedom suggestive of poetry.

Waste Land is a film about recycling, but it's far more intriguing than the average eco-documentary.

The story, based on a real incident, may be simplistic, but that's the nature of fables.

Director Corneliu Porumboiu ("12:08 East to Bucharest"), with his deadpan style and probing intelligence, is someone to keep an eye on. Using a minimalist style, and possessing the courage to risk alienating his viewers, he has created a movie full of resonance.

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.

The character isn't just shtick, though. As Billy, Talen has staged many protests in Times Square and anti-shopping "interventions" at retailers, where the managers, to say nothing of the New York police, often have failed to see the humor - he's been arrested dozens of times.

Strel is one strange duck, and you can only wonder that Werner Herzog, with his fondness for captivating weirdos, didn't get to him first.

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.

A heartfelt effort, if at times a bit heavy-handed.

An austere rural landscape, festering hatred, class tensions, terse dialogue - these are common currency in indie movies these days. Shotgun Stories uses them all, but manages to stand out from the crowd.

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.

Some nice performances and modest laughs highlight this amiable British comedy.

Mike Cahill's King of California reminds me of those '70s-era pictures beloved of the counterculture about appealing rebels who go down in flames of moral victory.

Lévy gets expectedly strong work from the veteran Devos and outstanding performances from Sitruk and Dehbi.

Doesn't add up to much, but it's fast and funny and lets a bunch of top-drawer actors exercise their comic muscles.

What stays with the viewer is a sense of a man unraveling from his own mistakes and weaknesses.

A droll, deadpan film, deliberately paced and told.

Sound City is Grohl's first effort at filmmaking, and if it doesn't break any ground as a documentary, it's a heartfelt testament to a place he considers among the most hallowed halls of rock.

Truly a winter's tale.

A film that can be enjoyed by all ages and that insults no one's intelligence.

Will wring some laughs out of anyone but the most humor-impaired.

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.

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.

Except for Patekar, the main actors are nonprofessionals, which works nicely here.

This isn’t the first film to try to deal with the horrors of the Holocaust from a child’s perspective, but it’s tricky material, and this one succeeds because it is direct and forthright.

A lot of what takes place in Roadie feels overly familiar, and the film could have been a wallow in pathos except for the performances, especially that of Eldard.

Some of the movie probably will mystify viewers not steeped in Middle Eastern history and culture, but a good deal of the humor can be appreciated by anybody.

Entertainment made well enough that you can overlook its absurdities.

A potent social allegory told with humor and mystery.

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

Fraulein works by an accumulation of details.

It’s moving but not maudlin, and there’s humor in addition to compassion.

The real acting laurels go to Klein, who is both an adult and a child - by turns smart and not so smart, brave and fearful, caring and full of disdain.

Le Quattro Volte may sound like art-house tedium, but in fact it's a movie of grave beauty, serene pace and surprising humor.

Gripping.

Cunningham's work is about seeing and teaching us how to see, and that should be plenty for us.

This is the heart-rending true story of a man with a seemingly benign preoccupation that turned into something close to madness and brought him to a terrible end.

Mesmerizing documentary.

You need not be a believer to appreciate its humor and humanity.

The Trip to Spain, perhaps isn’t quite up to the series’ opener (“The Trip,” 2010), it’s certainly a healthy cut above the second film (“The Trip to Italy,” 2014).

Because of age and illness, Varda is losing her sight, and Faces Places, which she co-directed, could be her last film. If so, she’s going out on a high note.

A breezy account of a man whose obsession began early.

In general the film is so impressive that we can't leave the theater without wanting more.