You might say the lack of a Hollywood narrative arc is both a strength and a weakness in this film, because Lipitz isn’t entirely clear about what story she is trying to tell.

The club scenes, initially exciting, are ultimately wearying, and the movie meanders about much of the time.

The acting is uniformly great, as strong an ensemble performance as you’ll see. Franz’s direction is assured.

The movie’s best moments are the small ones.

It is intelligent, moving and wholly original.

My interpretation is that it’s a scary, funny film with a lot beneath the surface. And it’s certainly preferable to watching the news.

It doesn’t always make sense. But it is fascinating — and fun — to watch.

Once it's done, you feel terrible for these people, for their lives, for their daughter, especially. Is that entertainment? To each his own, but it is compelling and, yes, rewarding.

The movie just hits the nail on the head: that sense that we're just going through life, trying to navigate it the best way we can in each moment. There are a lot of things to love about Truman — including the dog — but that could be one of its best and biggest attributes.

We are daily reminded of the importance of a free media, of free speech. The Dissident is a reminder of how far some governments will go to suppress it.

Top Five is a funny movie, but Rock has his sights set higher than lowbrow, and for the most part, he succeeds.

Yes, the latest Pixar offering involves a journey to the Land of the Dead, which by definition requires people to, you know, die. That's always sad. But there's joy here, particularly in the animation and the cinematography; the Land of the Dead is a beautiful place, which is kind of comforting

Hanks could do this kind of role in his sleep; luckily he doesn’t. Like Spielberg, we probably take him and his gifts for granted. Between the two of them, they make Bridge of Spies a movie that works as a period piece and a timely commentary on how we live now. If that sounds like faint praise, it shouldn’t. Because it’s not.

Shaun the Sheep Movie manages to be smart, moving and hilarious without the inclusion of a single word of dialogue.

Miller maintains control over the proceedings at all times, which is impressive enough. But where he really soars is in the performances he gets from his three lead actors.

A delightful film - gentle, playful, creative and ultimately happy - though it's a tricky journey.

Calling Jackie, director Pablo Larrain’s absorbing film, a construction project is not to demean it but to praise it.

There are a few examples that illustrate what makes “Turn Every Page — The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb” such an exciting documentary. Yes, seriously, exciting.

Raw is a lot of things: a terrific feature debut by a promising filmmaker; an effective metaphor; an acting showcase; and, not least of all, a gross-out horror film.

Inherent Vice is an aggressively weird movie, which you should take not as a warning but as a compliment and an invitation to see it, to let its stoner vibes wash all over you.

What’s as striking as the violence is Fargeat’s confidence as a filmmaker. She risks absurdity at every turn, fearlessly daring the audience to accept unlikely scenarios. Take that challenge. However difficult “Revenge” may be to watch at times, it’s worth it.

It’s a heartbreaking journey with moments of real triumph, including Turner playing to a crowd of 186,000 in Rio and the audience clearly adoring her during a curtain call at the musical based on her life. But every triumph here is offset by the sense that there are scars that never fully healed.

The genius in Wright’s performance and Jefferson’s direction lies in how they don’t succumb to the temptation to overplay anything. Wright gets Monk’s rage just right — it’s internal, though at some point a pressure cooker has to blow.

Whatever you like or hate, or like and hate, about Quentin Tarantino's movies, is in full display here. It's long (too long) and bloody, profane and gleeful, with movie-genre references stuffed so tightly into each scene they practically spill out onto the theater floor. Restraint is not his strong suit...Entertainment is, and Django has plenty of that.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a terrific film, if you give yourself to it. You should, because, with Amirpour's blending of influences and pop culture, she has created a true original.

Peele’s visual audacity is at times breathtaking, and always serves a greater purpose. There is a beautiful overhead shot of the family walking along the beach, carrying their supplies, casting long shadows. There’s no way to know in the moment you’re admiring this that it carries meaning that informs the rest of the film. That’s just terrific filmmaking.

The Big Short manages to entertain you while making you really, really mad.

What it lacks is magic, or at least a decent amount of it.

I love movies like The Wailing. Na Hong-jin’s film is like a genre buffet, with horror as the main course, but a hearty helping of mystery, crime drama, black comedy and family relations on the menu, as well. Don’t forget the side dishes of religion, superstition and ritual. It’s a full meal.

Shadow is a terrific film — gorgeous, violent, Byzantine, inventive, just a joy to watch. Once it gets going.

The great success for Mendes and Craig, however, is that while Skyfall obviously has a great fondness for the past, it's not trapped there. It also anticipates Bond's future. In this immensely satisfying movie, so do we.

The film doesn’t need to make a case for Marina’s basic humanity and smartly avoids clichés of persecution storytelling, instead ceding the floor to Vega’s magnetic presence and soulfulness. She is a marvel, and if one doesn’t come away loving her as Orlando did, it’s no shortcoming of the film.

Melancholia is an intense, exhausting experience. That may not sound appealing, and for some, it won't be. But nor should it be off-putting. Proceed with caution, perhaps. But proceed nevertheless.

Like the elements of a good hit song, it all comes together and seems fresh. It may sound like something you’ve heard before, but it also sounds new.

It’s all a neat trick. Or exercise. Or brain-teaser. Whatever you want to call it, Upstream Color is like nothing you’ve ever seen before. But once you have seen it, once isn’t going to be enough

Long story short: Hunt for the Wilderpeople is a terrific movie and you should do whatever you can to see it.

This timely movie is a must-see.

Good movies create their own worlds, and that’s certainly true of Goodnight Mommy — even if it’s a world you wouldn’t want to live in.

The enormously appealing thing about Glass Onion is watching the cast have an obviously good time with their characters and with each other.

It’s a film entirely lacking in pomp, but there’s a certain bravado in its delicate reservation. A tender and spare meditation on family unfurls in the stillness of a sleepy, sun-soaked Spanish summer.

It's almost as difficult to sit through Starred Up as it is satisfying to watch it.

A delicious trifle for anyone who has ever dreamt of bantering about the cinema with Luis Buñuel or lounging at the piano to hear Cole Porter sing "Let's Do It."

But it’s Atwell who steps up the most. Like Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” her motives are fluid, which makes her more fun.

It’s ambiguity without engagement, art you can admire but not feel.

A mix of comedy, science fiction, nostalgia, adolescent wish-fulfillment and beer, beer, beer, its parts shouldn’t fit together as neatly as they do. But somehow Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg have again managed to make a movie that is knowing, touching and hilarious.

Weinstein normally directs documentaries, and Menashe has a fly-on-the-wall feel at times, particularly in the warmly believable interplay between father and son.

The metaphor is plain yet elegant: Ai is the clever cat busily devising ways to push through the barriers physical, cultural, mental -- that make humans less than free. And in China, of course, the biggest of those barriers is the one-party state.

It’s behind the wheel with Miles that Ford v Ferrari becomes a well-oiled entertainment machine, a thrill ride with a driver’s-eye view of the world’s most exciting track. Everything that doesn’t work is just a distant speck in the rearview mirror.

For a movie that seems at times to have no idea what it's trying to do, 'Silver Linings Playbook' is compulsively watchable. ... Throwing together so many movie tropes and blending them is both a brilliant idea and a scary one, but one that Russell proves well capable of handling.

The film is nakedly candid, but Stritch is also a ham who is almost always aware of the camera.

The Proposal makes for a fascinating and not-a-little-morbid piece of artistic trolling.

As a substitution for the tour that never was, this concert film within a documentary does a brilliant job of bringing "Western Stars" to life.

Waves is definitely not a film for everyone, but it has hidden depths that will reward the patient.

[An] enormously entertaining movie.

It’s fun, it’s smart and yes, it actually does have something to say. Delivered in this way, I think people are more inclined to listen.

The Testament of Ann Lee is a biographical film about a real person, though one about whom a great number of details aren’t known. It runs up against some rough patches during the telling of the story, but overall it is immensely enjoyable, an unflinching (and nonjudgmental) look at faith, no matter how bizarrely we may think it’s practiced.

It's not a short documentary, running just shy of two hours and 21 minutes. But it never quite feels like it's dragging, owing in part to the offbeat sense of humor but also the sense of discovery.

If a heartfelt summer comedy feels like something that the doctor ordered, then a healthy dose of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is just what you need.

The Secret in Their Eyes never lets you forget that you're watching a movie - and never lets you wish you were doing anything else.

Pattinson is what helps us keep pace. He completely inhabits Connie with his jittery, twitchy efforts — he can’t stand still, so neither can we.

Rogowski carries the film, and it is quite the performance — one whose appeal is difficult to work out in your head, which makes it all the better.

The Queen of Versailles is funny, sad, infuriating, instructive. It's the American Dream inflated to ridiculous extremes, until it bursts.

The cinematography is outstanding, revealing the harsh beauty of the land. And the acting...is terrific. The burden rests on Eid’s shoulders, and he more than carries it. He’s a natural, showing us Theeb’s curiosity, loyalty and ingenuity while still retaining the innocence of a boy who has been sheltered from the world outside the desert.

Villeneuve's telling of her story - and of her children's - is painful, searing and something close to brilliant.

It’s good — funny, smart and contemporary. By definition it can’t be as groundbreaking as the first film, but never does it feel like a cash grab.

Civil-rights movements are never really over because they're never really won. She's Beautiful When She's Angry doesn't overtly make that case until its closing minutes, but when it does, it's made all the more powerful by the footage that preceded it.

Gleason is disturbing, brave and compelling, which is exactly what it needs to be.

Ad Astra is one giant leap for telling intimate stories on a grand scale.

A great movie exists in Love & Mercy, side by side with a pretty good one.

American Honey is a remarkable movie, which doesn’t mean it’s perfect — its imperfections, in fact, are what help make it so urgent, so vital, so real.

A gorgeously shot, well-acted Western that resonates more the more you let it settle.

A Hidden Life is less a story than an experience, a spiritual journey made accessible through light and sound. Malick doesn’t transcend cinema. He sanctifies it.

Along the way, Koichi and Ryunosuke grow up a little bit; Kore-eda isn't opposed to letting reality intrude on their lives. It's not sad, but more wistful -- the young actors make it so. They are delightful. So, too, is I Wish.

Maysles gets to the heart of what is important to Apfel: truth, in a world in which it's in increasingly short supply.

What Abrams has done is find and return the ingredient crucial to the original three films in the franchise that was sorely lacking in the second round: fun...There are some laugh-out-loud moments here, but also some touching ones. Happy, sad, exciting, silly — all that is included, along with the original sense of Saturday-morning-serial abandon that made what became known as “A New Hope” so wonderful all those years ago.

At times the film threatens to become relentlessly bleak, but never fully so, thanks in large part to Plummer’s performance. And cinematographer Magnus Nordenhof Jønck finds beauty in the most desolate places; even flashing police lights set against nightfall are inviting.

At the beginning of the film, you want Hong to work through the scenes faster. By the time it’s done, you’ll wish they lasted longer. That’s a kind of magic, too.

Aida's Secrets starts out as a fairly straightforward documentary about reuniting two long-separated brothers, but directors Alon and Shaul Schwarz don't stop there.

It's Gerwig’s movie, Gerwig’s take on childhood and the patriarchy and feminism and love and death — boy, death — all wrapped in a package that continually surprises. So yeah, it’s not what you think it is. It’s better.

Strange Darling is an original, well worth seeing — and then talking about.

What is so impressive is how deeply Abreu makes us feel what Cuca is experiencing.

It is undeniably fun to see such a great movie sliced and diced and put back together in so many ways. Too often when we see a movie we like, we just say it’s good, recommend it to someone and leave it at that.

The Eternal Daughter doesn’t scare you in the traditional sense as much as it moves you, and that’s every bit as powerful an achievement.

One is left wanting to know more about Mr. Rogers, but the film reduces him to little more than a kind of superhero family therapist.

Compartment No. 6 takes people and places you might wish to escape on first blush and makes you glad by the end that you’ve spent time with them.

Lucky is one of Harry Dean Stanton’s last roles, a rare leading performance, and it is a treasure.

The best thing is that Nichol doesn’t adopt a luddite stance. He doesn’t try to impart the evils of technology, at least not much. (Some people in the film lean that way.) He’s more inclined to chronicle the joys of a fading delight, one click-clack at a time.

Demon is a powerful film, one that makes us wonder what greater films Wrona might have made.

In Too Late to Die Young, Chilean writer-director Dominga Sotomayor excavates details from her own memory to unlock a hidden bonus level of starkly original cinematic beauty. This spare coming-of-age story is a slow-burning stunner, despite hardly having a plot at all.

David Lowery’s film is about as quiet and patient as what is ostensibly a caper movie can be. Yet its engine never idles, in large part because Redford, at 82, remains a movie star, someone to whom we are drawn, even as he is politely robbing a bank with a note, a gun and a smile.

The storytelling in Linoleum isn’t simple, but the joys of its discoveries are. It’ll make you think, and ultimately it will make you smile.

As with "The Central Park Five," you come away from the film impressed by the storytelling but enraged by the facts. It's outrageous that this kind of thing happens, but Berg does an outstanding job of showing us how it does.

Come see Wildlife for Jake Gyllenhaal and Carey Mulligan, but stay for the young actor who plays their 14-year-old son.

Kapadia does an outstanding job of getting at what Senna meant to Brazilians and to his sport. The man himself was a tougher nut to crack, but maybe that's best. A little mystery suits a good story, and Senna is definitely that.

This is not an anti-religious polemic, though it easily could have gone that way. Instead it is a much more thoughtful film and in some ways more troubling. No one is trying to do the wrong thing here, but, as with most things in life, it becomes increasingly hard to know what the right thing might be.

A heartfelt, moving and bracingly honest document of a famous man as he fades away.

There is a sad sweetness to the whole affair, for lack of a better term. Or maybe it's a sweet sadness. But O'Brien's outlook on life (he thinks his use-by date may be approaching), and Hawkes' portrayal of it, elevates the film beyond what's on the page, making what's on the screen a lot more satisfying.

The movie is as gorgeous as it is disturbing, and that’s a powerful combination. It may be about the beginning of the end of the world or the beginning of something else entirely. I’d be lying if I said I understand every aspect of the film, but I was engrossed trying to.