Works best when it seems like it's not working at all.

Director Candler acquits herself nicely in her third feature-length film, never allowing the agonizing narrative to drown in self-pity. She keeps the film’s head above water despite the occasional contrivances in her screenplay.

Even in the hail of bullets, shrieking needle drops, and blinding lighting effects, John Wick: Chapter 4 still works as a cohesive, linear film with a strangely philosophical heart.

The strangest biographical film ever made is also one of the most charming, melancholy and quirkily humorous films of the year.

Las Vegas may demolish its own history, but The Last Showgirl will break your heart by showing you a woman clinging to the rubble of her life.

Final Account is about today as much as yesterday, and that makes it perhaps the most urgent World War II documentary of them all.

The Duke of Burgundy doubles down on the genre conventions and ends up being all the better for it. That’s thanks in large part to the score by the UK group Cat’s Eye, the two flawless lead performances, and cinematographer Nicholas D. Knowland’s keen eye for creating a more-than-acceptable simulacrum of Franco and Rolin’s hallucinatory, dreamlike vibes.

DreamWorks has gathered for the movie and for these extracurricular projects an amazing collection of voice talent that complements the film's stunning technical achievements.

Director Lane and screenwriter Thom Stylinski take a lighthearted, folksy approach to telling Brinkley’s life story, using fairly unsophisticated animation and twangy vocalizations in the spirit of the man’s carefully created image.

Most importantly, Sherman and Abbasi deflate the myth that has dominated the last decade, that somehow Trump is some kind of aberration from the historical Republican Party, perverting it to his will.

August: Osage County is not for the timid or those who prefer family reunions without histrionics. This film is like a long day’s journey into another damn day.

Goodbye to Language is the kind of cinematic essay that Godard has come to specialize in; it’s really a montage of thoughts, aphorisms, and images, and not a story, although there are some consistent characters (often naked – and how better to hold our interest in their philosophical queries?) and one dog.

Living in Emergency, then, is like a hard slap to the face: There is nothing remotely romantic about this grim depiction of two missions in Liberia and Congo in the mid-2000s.

As in his previous documentaries, Brügger’s actions and tone are shot through with pitch-black gallows humor and dizzying moments of absurdist farce, equal parts Hunter Thompson, Michael Moore, and the great, self-effacing British journalist Jon Ronson.

I laughed, I cried, I longed for a pet dragon to call my own.

Favreau keeps the picture throttling forward with a carefree charm.

No background material is going to help the viewer who isn't already aware of why a Fugees reunion is such a cool thing to witness, but it's impossible not to get caught up in this party's good vibe.

This film is a pleasurable experience, but it’s a frustrating one as well. There’s a nagging feeling we should expect something more from this guy. To borrow the most quotable line of dialogue from "The Room" (bellowed at the top of the lungs): “YOU ARE TEARING ME APART, FRANCO!”

It's a rattling, heartrending performance (Moore) in, yes, a long, hard slough of a film – one that is well worth the journey, if not a repeat trip.

Winger is as good here as she’s ever been, and Letts, an actor whose face you know but whose name you can never quite remember, is terrific, communicating his lust for Lucy with dry aplomb.

Chef is filled to the brim with the kind of heart and vivacity that makes up for the film’s familiar storyline.

For the most part, though, Nothing Bad manages to hold a tight grip, evocative as it is of Lars von Trier’s similarly unflinching "Dogville" and equally bound to start some conversations among those willing to stomach it.

As for Johnson's grasp of the era in tech firms, it's astoundingly accurate, so much so that you'll swear you can smell the switch from the Sprite-and-sweaty-T-shirts years to the days of chrome and corporate art.

What's so intensely pleasurable about The Artist, however, is not its predetermined seriocomic trajectory but the endless parade of smartly creative and self-referential gags, which include all manner of sly, silent delights; the inevitable Jack Russell; and even an extended orchestral cue of Bernard Herrmann's, cribbed outright from "Vertigo."

The Cove exposes the dark secrets that underpin the world’s dolphin mania, whether it’s our enjoyment of the animals performing circus tricks in aquariums, the swimming-with-dolphins industry, or the government recruitment of the sea mammals’ intelligence, communication, and sonar abilities for military applications.

It's another tour de force performance from Jenkins, in the same week as his headturning performance as the pater familias of a clan of grifters in "Kajillionaire."

It's a period piece about the origins of psychoanalysis and the sexual confusions of its progenitors that is eloquent and handsomely made, if never quite revelatory.

Timecrimes is a tremendously entertaining bit of Kafka that whirlpools down into "The Twilight Zone."

Absolutely one-hundred-percent ridiculous, this is comedy of a higher order, and more maniacally inspired than almost anything released in years.

Hundreds of Beavers works because everyone involved knows to deliver the whimsy with a straight face, treating knitted fish, puppet frogs, and the Wisconsin snowdrifts in which it was filmed all as equally real.

A wily, hard-hitting slab of old-school action badassery.

The film provides a window into the conversations and debates that occurred among soldiers on military bases and while in country, opinions shaped and altered by first-hand experiences and knowledge.

He even slips in a moment that will make fans of his transgressive masterpiece "Ichi the Killer" squeal with nauseated delight.

Indeed, much like the Academy that created an animated features Oscar just to keep cartoons away from "real movies," Paint Vs Pixels often falls into the trap of believing that animation should be kid-friendly. Yet it still provides an incredible viewpoint from the artist's side of the wonder of American animation and its rich legacy.

It's 99 and 44/100% pure Mamet all the way.

There are blood-red visual motifs all over the place, but The Devil’s Candy isn’t particularly bloody in and of itself. It suggests acts of terrible evil far more than it shows, and is all the more intense for it. Highly recommended.

The film's messages of accepting others and following your dreams are well-worn tropes to be sure, but the pace and the style of E&C, not to mention it's wonderful attention to detail, lift the film from being merely sweet to being something special.

Sweet-spirited and sometimes meandering but always working in the service of its young protagonists’ perspective, We Are the Best! might come off as slight if you aren’t paying attention, or you pay too much attention to the too-cute closing credits montage.

It's also a doozy of a comedy, matching the dark wit of Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer novels to the stylized theatrics of Matt Helm-era Dean Martin.

As in Richard Linklater’s lovely "Before Sunrise," the film’s principal pleasure comes from watching two people connect as they get to know each other over the course of several hours.

The narrative and its attendant lessons about how one rotten ape and/or human can spoil the bunch are engaging, although I found myself drifting during the battle sequences.

There's an undeniable boldness to Capobianco's decision to channel a biography through the medium of stop motion, but it's perfect for the untrammeled exuberance and boundless ingenuity of Da Vinci.

Pray maintains a steadfastly objective viewpoint, and it's a testament to his film's success that it can accommodate the audience's inevitably shifting allegiances from one family member to the next.

With a concluding chase/shoot-out episode that might even make Hitchcock jealous, Carlito's Way is a dandy piece of entertainment. If the story needs a bit more depth and reason, who really cares? There's hardly time to notice.

It has the resonant feel of myth, buoyed by simultaneously vicious and compassionate performances from the men on both sides of the bars.

As he did with his previous doc, 2018’s John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection, Faraut finds and obsesses over the rhythm of bodies in motion, using repetition and cross-cuts of the team’s training footage and gameplay with anime sequences and textile manufacturing. These collisions, set to music from Portishead and Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle, are the heart of Witches, hypnotic patterns of serene velocity.

A work that shellacs itself into your consciousness.

This is the first Spike Lee Joint that feels more like a mainstream Hollywood cops-in-the-'hood picture and less like one of Lee's recurrent soapboxes.

An open, honest, and crystal-clear explanation of what it is like to live with Parkinson's: much of it painful, with no off-ramp.

This beautifully acted and gradually revealed drama is a quiet discovery. Not one to blare its own horn, Middle of Nowhere is the kind of little indie film that gives little indie films a good name.

Secret Mall Apartment – a seriously fun film – commits in kind.

This opulently romantic celebration of American imperialism certainly presents the contradictions and is one hell of an epic.

Phoenix mines a Hitchcockian vein, but it is Hoss' sensitive performance and Petzold’s intelligently paced direction that makes this film shine.

While 12:08 East of Bucharest could take more than one viewing to truly appreciate, it's worth the commitment.

Watching Priscilla feels much like reading a book, with images of white pills pressed into open palms and home-movie montages enhancing the text. Once again, the younger Coppola demonstrates she is as accomplished a filmmaker in her own way as her father.

Suicide Squad just never quite has the heart of Guardians.

Faultlessly truthful in its observations.

We know that we have turned rivers from mystical places into resources, but in its sumptuous 75-minute delivery River allows us to see the flow of that narrative. And it is beyond gorgeous, as visually dazzling (if not quite as stomach-churning for acrophobics) as Mountain: luscious landscapes of quiet streams, poisoned fish and angular dams presented as abstract patterns, and the quiet joy of swimming.

A lively action picture with a spirited sense of humor, Broken Arrow is a great deal of fun, even if it isn't exactly a return to form for its celebrated director, former Hong Kong action auteur John Woo.

If Wadjda, this Muslim girl, calls up film memories of adolescent Marjane Satrapi in "Persepolis", whose Western-loving lifestyle is uprooted by Iran’s Islamic Revolution, or the young women in Jafar Panahi’s "Offside," who countermand the rules that forbid them from entering stadiums to watch men’s soccer matches, you wouldn’t be far off the mark.

Broad, sharp, hysterical, witty, and perfect for everyone who likes their Valentine’s hearts with candy or carved, still beating out of their chest.

The Wandering Earth is as much a love letter to disaster films as it is a worthy entry in the genre itself. That, combined with some truly eye-popping visuals, makes it a film that should be seen on the biggest screen possible.

With "50/50," his last stint in the director's chair, Levine upended convention to make a feel-good cancer movie. He's still defying expectations: In animating the inner workings of the undead, he's made a movie that is both clever and heartfelt.

In their feature documentary debut, which had its world premiere at the 2024 South by Southwest Film & TV Festival, Gale and Olson bring a stoner energy to the proceedings, funny and a little hyper, amplifying Swamp’s stories with titles dropped into the footage and animated bits à la Mike Judge’s totally excellent series Tales From the Tour Bus.

In its mix of angsty formalism and sing-along fun, Annette may be the closest that musical cinema has come to when Brecht and Weill put a knife in Macheath's hand for The Threepenny Opera.

As much as Bardem is an expressive instrument for parlaying Iñárritu's somber worldview, so too is cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, whose stunning compositions find the poetry amid the sorrow.

The concept of loss, and the sorrow that shadows it, is not what you'd call an uncommon theme in films, but rarely is it handled with such uncommon eloquence as it is in Maborosi.

I bet Samuel had the time of his life making this, 'cos it shows. It’s violent. Holy crap, is it violent. It’s unrelenting. It’s bleak. It’s also entertaining as hell.

It has that bygone style, in which impossibly innocent ingenues suddenly break into blissfully tuneful song.

Its affection for this prince among putzes is infectious: Within the first five minutes, you’ll find yourself liking this man despite hardly knowing him.

Cyclo is a rich, gritty, and ultimately distressing feast for the eyes. It's a dark and dirty dream that stays with you long after you leave the theatre.

Tsai’s drama is something like a mixture of Robert Bresson and R.W. Fassbinder, as God’s bedraggled souls struggle with the desires of the damned, and nobody wants to go into that good night alone.

As usual, Oscar-winner Frances McDormand delivers a rich, physically detailed performance that leaves as much under the surface as above it.

After the facile mysticism of Silence, the tone-deaf anti-union cant of The Irishman and the self-indulgent cutesiness of Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story By Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon feels like the work of a filmmaker who is doing more than just ticking off boxes on a decades-old wish list.

The film further establishes the Philippous as some of the best directors of young actors working today.

In fact, I liked wrestling with Nine Days, liked feeling the act of moviewatching as an active, not passive, one, and the way Antonio Pinto’s strings-forward score nudged my brain to stop churning long enough for pure emotion to kick in

The result is a film that looks like no other in recent memory.

With Calvary, John Michael McDonagh (who wrote and directed "The Guard" and is the brother of Martin “In Bruges” McDonagh) has crafted a darkly hilarious and deeply ruminative update on the passion play.

The story is bizarre, unique, and thoroughly unpredictable, while its images resemble some kind of bastard offspring of the linear realism of George Grosz and the fantastic foreboding of Edward Gorey.

The film, for all its archness and theatricality, is essentially a warm and welcome love story of two people, navigating a world that really doesn’t know what to do with them. It’s new. It’s old. It’s the same old tale of love versus oppression, but through the wonderful performances and the gloriously erudite script, Wild Nights hums along in the manner of the best of Dickinson’s work. This film is alive.

It's a strange and electrifying brew of Hollywood genre tropes recalibrated for a globalized sensibility.

Honestly, this movie is so pure. Take a couple hours out of your weekend and go feel good.

The movie will not be for all tastes. Its seedy lifestyles, nonjudgmental attitudes, nonlinear narrative, and central character whose problem is his lack of emotions is definitely nonstandard fare.

Although little is ultimately “solved” or demystified in The Piano Teacher, the movie allows a chaperoned peek into the mind of one of civilization's “discontents.”

God Loves Uganda and recent events make it seem like the time is right for a 21st century raid on Entebbe.

Even when The Tree of Life does not achieve the heights for which it aims, it soars boldly and fearlessly.

Like the best UK drawing room dilemmas, Separate Lies is more tart than bitter, with Fellowes, the Cambridge-educated son of a diplomat, acquitting himself grandly of cinematic boorishness.

Eloquent, it is surprisingly moving and beautifully structured.

Forget divining who’s predator and who’s prey. Everybody’s chum here.

In a world of blockbuster franchises and micro-budget horror – where movies above a certain budget seem to justify their own expense by adopting a detached irony – The Pope’s Exorcist is the kind of goofball sincerity so many of us hunger for. It’s not going to work for everyone, but if you are the kind of viewer who ends up on its wavelength – by god, what a ride.

By the end of this affable little film, you’ll likely crave a bowl of fresh-made pasta in seafood sauce, a glass of Frascati, and a room with a view on the Amalfi coast. (Sigh.)

If, at times, Shine's luster reveals more elbow grease than internal radiance, the movie is still a moving tribute to the human capacity to overcome all odds.

It’s odd and unfortunate, however, that The Return of the King just barely misses the eye-misting emotional wallop of the series’ previous installment, The Two Towers, which had a lyrical subtlety underpinning the vast vistas of growing chaos (and Christopher Lee hardly hurt matters) and hobbits-in-peril.

Still, it takes a special someone to sell this larger-than-life character onscreen, and to make you forgive how the galloping script glosses over some crucial beats.

Deliciously dry and wry, Lucky Grandma invokes unlikely chuckles because Chin embraces her surly nature.

There are two powerful movies here, unfortunately, they don't coexist easily. Lee has to fight his way out and he opts for narrative stopping violence when perhaps he should have continued the dialogue. He's a man on a tightrope and it's hard not to watch him without worrying about him.

Terribly tender, good-hearted picture.

Thelma is a beautiful and heartbreaking film that is an impressive addition to the coming-of-age story. A lady bird, indeed.