The film becomes a kind of meditative act.

The story is much less about its resolution than the experience along the way. At its best, Central Station is a movie of small textures and fleeting moments, the intangibles that pass between people.

Household Saints restores one's faith in miracles while teaching us how to invent them ourselves. That, and also teaching us not to worry about getting stigmata on the carpet when Jesus comes to visit.

In Passages, Sachs’ enthralling eighth feature, he and his regular co-screenwriter Mauricio Zacharias return to the more experimental bent of Keep the Lights On, echoing that film’s elliptical nature and naturalistic presentation of sex, its dizzyingly destructive relationships and Euro-arthouse affect.

The Queen of Versailles encourages the very worst tendencies in the audience: to sneer at the Siegels, to marvel at their tackiness, to root for their fall from grace.

Sergio Leone and John Ford would likely both recognize Nowar’s film as an echo of their own Monument Valley adventures.

It would be difficult not to be swept away by the dramatic intensity of Incendies.

Well-considered, beautifully made, and often gripping in its narrative, the film epitomizes the best the documentary format can offer.

Less a film than a lyrical, naturalistic tone poem.

Trophy instead holds its subject right up to the light, like a diamond, so that all facets can be seen. It may not rouse the public to action, but it will give us something to ponder.

The action sequences are breathtaking, and the character-driven humor is, as per usual, top notch.

Its core, depressing, and unavoidable question is simple: How did one of the most advanced and wealthiest countries on the planet so completely fail in its response?

Brutally frank, and with a biting sense of humor and an earnest love for her husband, Michel, at least for me, becomes the emotional center from which the film radiates.

The good news is Craig, who was riveting as a London pharmaceutical salesman in the recent Brit import "Layer Cake," is equally mesmerizing here.

Sunny, warm, and so full as to almost split its skin, that's Much Ado. The Bard himself said it, “Ripeness is all.” Here's a hey nonny nonny to that.

Big Night is, in a word, delicious.

A pure distillation of the great director's ongoing themes of the frailty of the human psyche and mankind's willful inability to accept the inevitable, whatever that may be.

Ad Astra lacks the quiet, understated contemplation of "First Man," or the heartfelt ruminations of Steven Soderbergh's unfairly overlooked version of "Solaris." Instead, it's got about as much to say about family, attachment, and belonging as a Fast and Furious flick.

The film is unapologetically sweet and hopeful, but it's said the heart's true home is the water, that its nature is to bob atop the cares of the world like a wooden cradle on the waves.

One wishes perhaps for a more thumping conclusion, but what we have instead is something perfectly in the spirit of the piece, reaffirming that life, big and little, happens in 10 minutes chunks.

As disturbing as it is well-made, this low-budget indie is a thoroughly original piece of work.

On the whole, A Bronx Tale is an impressive work and it's easy to see why De Niro connected with Palminteri's story.

Ultimately, all involved are cast in the shadow of Dano’s wide-ranging performance, capturing Wilson at his most ecstatic and his most hopeless. Already a well-established talent with remarkable turns in "There Will Be Blood" and "Little Miss Sunshine," the young actor has never demonstrated such profound sensitivity as he does here. Some might even say he’s been touched by greatness, or at least does a damn good impression of it.

I have to report that I, personally, just don't get it. I intellectually understand what occurs in the movie; I just can't make the leap into calling it a humanistic treasure about life's big questions. Slow and monotonous, the film moves at a deliberate pace and culminates in a meta-fictional moment that is either infuriatingly trite or enigmatic.

One wishes Beatty would stay out of the epic business, but in that poor man's defense, he's become too large, too much of an icon on the screen to do much else. Perhaps he's doomed to play cartoon characters as he did last time out in Dick Tracy. His Bugsy is not anything close to a fully realized character. Bening, as his starlet/moll, does a better job, but her role doesn't give her much to work with.

There’s no grand plot outline in American Honey, and at two-and-a-half-hours' running time, the film certainly rambles.

Overall, You Hurt My Feelings is a sweet, warm, and funny rumination on the delicate nature of our interpersonal relationships. It’s also full of great performances and asks questions other films couldn’t broach without getting too self-important.

What I learned from Monrovia, Indiana is that I – personally – am bored by mattress shopping, City Council arguments over fire hydrants, and high school band concerts I am not obligated by shared DNA to attend.

Minnelli and Grey sparkle, and the Fosse flash is everywhere in evidence.

All this is not to say that the Coens' True Grit is an awful film; it's just that these filmmakers have set their own standards for excellence, and True Grit falls short.

Jim Jarmusch applies his minimalist style to the margins of Memphis as seen through the experiences of three sets of foreigners. Great casting and occasional moments of grace.

Diehl’s performance is a model of restraint; he more often imparts information by a look, a glance, the slump of his shoulders, than he does with a spoken word.

Even if it beat Videodrome to the screen by two years, it's not quite the same level of must-see programming. It's fascinating, but less coherent, less scathing, and far more meandering.

Full of revelations, all brought to light by Bell's good-natured, Michael Moore-lite dogging of athletes, health experts, government officials, and even his own parents.

Ingenious in its simplicity.

The cult of Iris caught like grassfire, and the film catches this nonagenarian nonpareil, ever in her defining owl glasses and heavy jewelry, at peak heat.

Still, as a nostalgia trip that knows exactly what die-hard Star Wars fans want and then layers in some memorable new characters, The Force Awakens is exactly what it needs to be: an old-school Saturday afternoon sci-fi matinee writ big.

Through contemporary and vintage interviews, animation and live footage, White Riot insightfully and vividly details RAR’s reclamation of young Britain’s soul.

Overall, the “you are there” footage lends the film a more journalistic than artistic tone, yet the emotional effect is intimate and unforgettably gripping.

Its adult themes of familial separation and societal betrayal are head and shoulders above much of the director’s previous popcorn work -– more hurt, more heart, more unassailable hope.

As good, old-fashioned dorkfests go, it doesn't get much better than the National Spelling Bee, with its arcane words, bespectacled competitors, and stinging little bell.

In video segments scarier than any couch-jumping antics on a talk show, actor Tom Cruise salutes the organization’s Napoleonic chairman David Miscavige like a soldier in an army of darkness, and rambles on about a world free of suppressive persons like he’s auditioning for the loony bin. One thing is clear in Going Clear: The man has taken one super-big gulp of the Kool-Aid.

Blending political allegory with the tropes of teen coming-of-age films, White God begins as a tale about a girl separated from her dog, and ends up being the Battleship Potemkin of canine mutiny.

This criminal tale excited audiences and landed the kinetic Cagney on the movie map. Now a classic, this is the movie in which Cagney famously crams a grapefruit into Mae Clarke’s face.

Castle-Hughes and Paratene are nothing short of remarkable in their roles.

What Taylor illustrates in this version of Little Red Riding Hood is a sensitive portrait of guilt, of the difference between people who simply want to bury it and those that are consumed by it.

Lean on Pete is a methodical and memorable film primarily because director Haight, adapting from Willy Vlautin’s novel, keeps a distance from his characters, never taking the easy route, and never, ever letting the movie enter the killing fields of the corny or cliched.

Last and Future Men is a haunting film of melancholic beauty, but hidden within are stubbornly persistent elements of hope.

It’s not frustrating, but then, it’s not quite that engaging. It may spark a little light self-recognition among filmmakers, and that’s all Hansen-Løve seems to aim for.

Barbie, the toy, see-saws in the culture between extremes: Is she an aspirational figure, or the fastest way to f*ck up a kid’s relationship to her body? A gateway to the imagination, or a slammed door? Barbie, the movie – an exhilarating, generous, deeply handmade comedy about a mass-market product – revels in these extremes.

It's not the crowning achievement in Steven Spielberg's oeuvre, but Minority Report stands on its own sturdy sci-fi legs, and there's no sign of that little imp Haley Joel Osment, to boot, thankfully.

We the Animals isn’t the sort of film that much concerns itself with the more usual conventions of filmmaking, such as the passage of time or even plot itself. It’s more of a mood, punctuated by clear whacks of emotional trauma. It’s a little bit like watching a poem.

The movie is like an old honky-tonk song, a little sentimental but full of heart. It torches and twangs without getting too hokey.

Homer's rendition of "spider pig" is comedy gold.

At every point, Strange Darling is a grisly melding of deviously experimental form and terrifying function.

There is plenty here to enjoy for beach bums and fans of bikinis and six-pack abs, but others are likely to find themselves hopeless wet blankets.

A challenging concept conveyed here most impressively onscreen.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is a profound existential adventure, twistedly comic and openly bitter, brought to life by those two maniacs: Peckinpah and Oates.

Perhaps the best way to sum up Boy and the World is by saying it is what it is and what it is, is absolutely remarkable.

Babylon's cultural specificity is what gives it power, putting it as much in a tradition of British alienated youth movies like Brighton Rock and Quadrophenia (not coincidentally written by Babylon scriptwriter Martin Stellman).

There are no hard answers in Room 237, a feature-length, sporadically engaging exploration of the latter (The Shining).

An interpersonal drama shot like a 1980s British television supernatural tale, The Eternal Daughter is a ghost story in the same way that Lenny Abrahamson’s class-riddled gothic fable The Little Stranger is, or Henrik Ibsen’s Gengangere (better known by the mistranslated title Ghosts).

In one of those odd happenstances of cinema, The Beast shares those themes of processing romantic trauma through temporal displacement with Alice Lowe’s Monty Python-esque Timestalker: but La bête lacks its pithiness and humanity.

Lady Chatterley is the recipient of six César Awards, France's equivalent of the Oscar. Although the film is capable of sustaining our interest throughout, the viewer may find it lacking in some of the transcendence Lady Chatterley's lust is supposed to inspire.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood brings that essential essence of Fred Rogers to life. That sense of wonder, of kindness, and most importantly of letting kids – and adults – know that it's OK to have been hurt. Heller and Hanks remember that Rogers was not about being perfect, or pretending that bad things don't happen. It's about liking people just the way they are.

For a while, you wonder whether the movie will become a thriller about the perils of solo travel, particularly for single females. But the intimacy of director Kuosmanen’s Dogme 95-inspired camerawork hints that something more is happening here.

You feel Lucky’s frustration and gloom, how they burden him, without Stanton opening his mouth. But thank goodness he does, otherwise we wouldn’t get to hear him croon the lover’s lament “Volver, Volver” with a backing mariachi band. The moment is sublime – gawdam, Harry could really sell a song – and piercingly poignant.

Bizarre and beautiful, this French take on the madness inherent in independent filmmaking rivals Tom DiCillo's Living in Oblivion as the most realistic depiction of the myriad trials and tribulations that accompany the creation of a new film.

By the time Tawfiq, Dina, and the band’s boy Lothario, Haled (Bakri), commiserate over “My Funny Valentine” in the film’s sublime third act, writer/director Kolirin has created a remarkable world where no struggle is too severe to overcome with a little empathy and the Great American Songbook on your side.

Robbins' direction and script are nearly flawlessly rich. There are no easy answers on death row, and Dead Man Walking makes this painfully, powerfully clear.

Even if you have zero interest in “Crimson” or Crimson, see this lovely film to check out an unbelievable badass who never let the specter of death win (and an extremely cool nun).

Director Miller, thankfully, keeps his pacing quick and his touch deft -- Lorenzo's Oil rarely becomes bogged down in interdisciplinary conundrums or the unwarranted heartstring-yanking that so often occurs in Hollywood MedFilms.

What Desert One does accomplish in shining a light on this epic national failure is to celebrate the American can-do spirit and a noble willingness to go down trying.

There's a narrative of sorts in Mad God, but it's episodic and disconnected. It's less a story than an anthology built around exploration of an ecosystem.

Quite astonishingly, amidst all the chaos – and there's no better word for Tristram Shandy's inspired, breakneck madness – what emerges is a featherlight, moving meditation on new fatherhood.

Langella is terrific in a small but critical role as CBS president William Paley, although the one essential problem with the film is that it never clearly delineates the jobs fulfilled by the cluster of other newsroom employees that are always huddled about.

Human Resources, which gets my vote for most sarcastic title of the year, isn't a stand up and cheer kind of film.

The film is sure to be of interest to anyone who wants to learn more about the beginnings of the California folk-rock scene. Crosby’s reflections are interesting, if not always illuminating. Crowe asks probing questions, yet the answers Crosby provides don’t dig very deep.

It's the astounding score by Eicca Toppinen and his bandmates in cello-metal innovators Apocalyptica that gives the film its structure.

It’s hard to imagine a time when the sea bore a sense of adventure close to outer space.

Echoes long after the movie ends.

California Typewriter wanders a bit in its curiosity, but it is hardly a piece of ephemeral nostalgia.

Shula never confirms or denies being a witch, making the title of the film a strange choice, though that affirmative defense through history has largely fallen on deaf ears and too many women have died to prove it. In short, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

To this day, Dueling Banjoes still gives me the willies.

Although there are shades of "All About Eve" here, the resonances lean more toward the fluid identities of the actresses in Ingmar Bergman’s work or even Assayas’ own "Irma Vep."

Stays remarkably true to a kid's-eye perspective and dormant fears.

The Polish/Israeli co-production picked up the Best Horror Feature award at Fantastic Fest 2015, and it’s a shame that Wrona is gone, but at least we have this superlative example of his cinematic brilliance.

In a drama that depends on its organic structure, the constructed nature is a little too visible under the skin.

If you can tune into its somber, hypnotic wavelength, you may be surprised at the raw emotional impact it delivers in key scenes, and at its ability to provoke your imagination long afterward.

Perhaps the bigger canvas here is a native daughter’s tribute to the resiliency of the people of her homeland. It’s no coincidence that the mascot chicken in this rustic Utopia is named Survive.

The result is a climactic scene that is pretty near perfect: both laugh-out-loud surprising and endearingly inevitable.

If there's such a thing as observational comedy horror, this is it.

Sweetgrass’ unbroken shots of often-repetitive activity have a beguiling quality to them, their very monotony encouraging a deeper absorption and reflection, but hard facts aren’t easy to come by.

The beauty of Redford’s rock-steady performances over the last six decades or so is that he never showed off, and yet always commanded your attention.

Although the villainous parts of this Tarzan are a bit hazy and the animal attraction between Tarzan and Jane a bit chaste, the film, nevertheless, works both for children and the adults.

It is easy to describe what occurs in Le Quattro Volte; less easy, however, to explain it. Calculatedly meditative yet casually metaphysical, Le Quattro Volte (The Four Times in English) is austere, funny, beautiful, and transfixing.

The first 30 minutes of this film feel like a fever dream, as Hannaford and his entourage trade barbs while the film stock (and subjects) change like a child’s kaleidoscope. It is frenetic and a bit unsettling. But once the party settles in at the director’s estate, it becomes mildly coherent.

Ultimately, Frost/Nixon may be stuck in time – but, oh, what a time it was.