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

The great strength of The Sower is that it doesn’t try to do too much. It zooms in on its microcosm with a tender urgency that offers a glimpse of complex humanity without reducing the story to some sort of pithy takeaway.

There is no denying that the environmental message is heavy-handed.

It is a fascinating document of making a comeback record — sorry, Tanya — while balancing the hard work and the gentle coaxing and cheerleading required when working with a complex talent like Tucker.

A really entertaining effort, aided by some terrific performances.

It is a brutal, beautifully shot movie that starts out to be about revenge but then becomes something more, something even more primal and disturbing.

What makes this film work is that it is exactly as advertised: a chaotic romp through a fantasy world that has enough structure to be believable. But the key here is that we don’t get bogged down in details over which race or land is which. We don’t care nor need to know all the details of this world. We just go along for the ride.

These characters are more than willing to risk their lives to further advances in science. That’s a passion and dedication that fuels Europa Report, and Cordero makes the most of it.

In The Disaster Artist, James Franco proves himself a good director, a really good actor and something of an alchemist.

Colossal is a monstrously imaginative movie with a premise so bizarre it’s amazing it ever got made. But it’s a good thing it did.

There’s a great journalism movie hidden in Bad Education. Forgive the biased viewpoint. Luckily, there’s also a really compelling, breezy comic crime drama — with a terrific performance by Hugh Jackman — sitting there in plain sight.

Brown is a sick man, but Harrelson makes him so interesting, so charismatic, so ... watchable, that you can't look away, even if his actions make you want to (and they will).

Through it all, you can’t stop watching Ben, Mortensen’s character. At some point, though, you realize it’s no longer because you admire him for his ideals but want to strangle him for his undying adherence to them.

The Joker’s superpower is his resentment, his narcissism, and Phoenix cultivates these methodically in his performance, slowly transmuting the character’s awkward fragility into a kind of raging charisma — aided and abetted, of course, by all the tricks of art direction, sound design and editing that a journeyman filmmaker has at his disposal.

One would expect a film about French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir to look beautiful, to be shot in warm, sumptuous colors. And one would not be disappointed in Gilles Bourdos’ Renoir.

By the end of the ride, we’ll see glimpse of happiness, sadness, joy, heartbreak, maybe even tragedy, if cell phone-shot recollections are to be believed. All bases are covered, in other words, in one late-afternoon ride, a ride Gondry and his cast will make you want to take.

If you’re a student of history or a Wikipedia devotee, some aspects of the film, particularly its conclusion, might bother you. But they shouldn’t. Watch a documentary if you want straight facts. Watch what Kreutzer and Krieps have come up with here for something more.

It's stunning (and amazingly well done) and hard to believe.

Writer and director Sarah Adina Smith’s vision is so confident, so sure, that it’s worth trusting her to see where the story goes. Plus, you get Rami Malek at no extra charge.

The story is intriguing enough to make Mud a good movie. Led by Sheridan and McConaughey, the performances make it something more.

It never feels contrived, never panders to our illusions. When the ending comes, it is neither expected nor a twist. It’s just what happens.

For less patient viewers, the film might play out like an endurance test, a two-hour documentary on wind. But as unforgiving as the glacially paced film is, it's nonetheless utterly absorbing - a cool pink tongue flicking against an open wound. [18 Oct 2012]

“Never Rarely” is not strident, it doesn’t preach, it doesn’t harangue. Instead it relies on confident direction, brilliant acting and a deceptively straightforward story to make its point. Really, you probably haven’t seen anything like it.

Call it a battle-of-the-sexes comedy set in a devout Orthodox community in Jerusalem. But, in its own quiet and friendly way, the film goes deeper than that, looking at how conservative religious views can clash with more moderate ways.

You don’t lose yourself in the film the way you might like, but there is never a second in which Oldman is not riveting.

The Babadook is a terrific horror film.

What matters is creating, and “Eat That Question” turns out to be a stirring look at the creative process examined, however reluctantly, by someone who created a lot, and exceptionally well.

What makes the movie so good is Williams' absolute refusal to play along.