Spall and Meaney are mesmerizingly watchable in a film that’s 40% gruff dialogue and 60% seething silences.

A fun, well-assembled and -performed slice of life that requires no special affinity with the subject matter in order to -- ahem -- get one's groove on.

True, the melodrama on display here can't compare to the likes of Larry, Moe, Curly, and the cannibals, but then this goofily charming quartet of Western outsiders is far more real than reel.

Quantumania goes big, but it never forgets that Ant-Man is our guy.

The spirited interplay between Goodman and Crystal is both wacky and, dare I say, charming.

Badham, however, keeps the whole thing up and running expertly -- it's interesting to note, also, that this Americanized version contains far more big-bang explosions and an elevated body-count than the French source material. Big deal. In a story as well done as this, a few extra bullet-hits only add to the delightful mayhem.

A simply flat-out fun film.

Balibar and Depardieu make a compelling duo who exude an animal magnetism that's undeniable.

While the film may lack the conventional sociopolitical framework needed to locate it in the broader Australian experience, Newell and her subjects are a constant source of empathy and education.

As Marston once put it, “Frankly, Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who, I believe, should rule the world.” This reviewer concurs.

The performances in this costume drama are wonderful.

Remember that meme format about how “men will literally x instead of going to therapy”? That’s arguably the elevator pitch for Riders of Justice, a spiky, sensitive, lewdly humorous, and sporadically violent meditation on obsession, vengeance, and statistical probability.

Part drama, part civics lesson, part entertainment, it sustains our deep curiosity despite the forgone knowledge of how things turn out.

Bridges makes this sozzled and desperate ex-desperado – a cliché by any other name – as fresh and vital as one final shot at cowboy-poet redemption. It may sound crazy, but it's true.

There is enough intrigue to keep it interesting, and if it ever feels too slow, try counting the number of people who get betrayed.

At times it feels almost too busy with plotting. There's so much going on, and so much to take in, that it leaves you winded. But that's origin stories for you. No one ever said setting up a savior would be simple.

This film's intelligence and uncompromising originality commend it to even moviegoers with zero tolerance for top hats, parasols, and crap English accents.

Franco brooks no quarter in New Order, and the businesslike tone and lean economy of the film make for an incredibly unsettling experience. He also layers the film with an ambiguity that keeps the viewer off balance.

For all the pratfalls, this is a grim, dispiriting work. It dares not to be liked, and there’s a lot to like in that daringness.

Denise Ho: Becoming the Song offers an affecting timeline of a political awakening of a person, of a movement, and of a generation utterly frustrated with the machinations of oppression.

Maintains a breezy charm throughout and contains many extremely funny sequences.

It's a call to arms, a call to pick sides in the deepening cultural, political, and spiritual schism between the two Americas of the 21st century.

A tour de force of modern cinema.

This is basically a Whitman’s Sampler of poor taste, and a tastier one at that.

The Yes Men’s bravery and unflagging sense of optimistically doomed humor – which comes across as a quixotic version of Monty Python by way of Upton Sinclair – is to be applauded and, wherever possible, acted upon.

After 2023’s exalted Asteroid City, as raw and ragged with grief a film Anderson has ever made, anything was going to feel like a comedown. More charitably, The Phoenician Scheme is a palate cleanser – a lovely lark, a spirits lifter.

Sure, Rosie Perez's greedy Muriel is a cartoon and her voice, always at full drill-bit whine, is wearing, but the warmth and graciousness apparent in every frame keep this movie touching and sweet. Give yourself over to this giving film and see what happens.

It’s only in the last quarter of the film, when Wang strays from her own family’s touchstones to explore a case of separated twins, that One Child Nation loses just a touch of its urgency.

Considering how lame the bulk of teen movies made in the late Fifties and early Sixties look in retrospect, Where the Boys Are stands up respectably well.

Like the analogous "Before Sunrise," Weekend manages to ride the line between character study, comedy, drama, and a host of other genres without feeling cramped.

The film animates a number of Escher’s creations, smoothly explaining his methodologies.

Some have remarked that The Post is the story of Kay transforming into Katharine Graham, which is pretty on the mark.

Despite its short running time, Being Elmo is an engrossingly layered documentary.

It’s a fun watch, and familiarity with Los Angeles isn’t required to get a kick out of these toe-dips into Koreatown and Tehrangeles and all the other micro-communities that make the city a macro-paradise for eaters.

Butler's film hopes to confront our national battle fatigue so that we may move on.

This is a family story – of a time, a place, an event, a community – in all its rich and quiet nuance, with all the members, related by blood or by affection, given their space.

Having sat out the first sequel, returning Magic Mike director Steven Soderbergh has made an entertaining enough movie, but it’s the weakest of the series.

Don’t expect any hokey scare tactics here. Under the steady hand of Oscar-nominated director Abrahamson (Room), the film is a calculated slow burn, one that plays a cunning head game with those viewers willing to be entranced.

If Tears is indeed too weird to take America by storm – Miramax bought the film after Cannes and shelved it until it is now being released by Magnolia – it should neither be considered a cult item, approachable only to film nerds (though they will appreciate it best).

Two of Us traverses familiar beats about caring for elderly and disabled loved ones, romance impeded by unclear boundaries, and coming out to family members who may reject you. But by encasing those narratives in such genuine characters and shooting them with compassion and subtlety, Filippo Meneghetti’s feature debut imbues a painful story with necessary warmth.

It’s a cliched happy ending, one you’ve seen countless times before, but never in this way.

This, uh, wonderfully directed and near-perfectly cast iconic heroine female empowerment story is so similar in tone and feel to Marvel Studios’ "Captain America" that I was waiting for Stan Lee to show up, possibly as a eunuch.

The entire cast is marvelous and capable of conveying continents of emotion with a furtive smile or arched brow.

Smart, quick, funny, and economical, Attack the Block is an alien-invasion movie that is a breed apart.

If there’s a complaint to be made about Look Back, it’s that there’s not enough of it: Adapted from Chainsaw Man creator Tatsuki Fujimoto’s one-shot manga of the same name, the story it tells is purposefully contained.

Jackie has a nightmare vibe to it that’s palpable and unsettling, and Portman’s performance as the widowed first lady is a tour de force of conflicting emotions brought on by the impossibly ghastly reality bookending that sunny day in Dallas.

Moments of black comedy break up the melodrama – a newsreel depicts the song's "victims" and a Nazi secretary rages against her Duden grammar manual – but the overall tone is still that of a four-alarm weeper.

At times, it looks as though Broken Embraces might be the love child of Douglas Sirk and Alfred Hitchcock, with its dramatic broad strokes, iconic reds, and teasing narrative clues.

Hey, hey, it’s the monkeys that rule this particular spot on the Earth, and watching them monkey around is a G-rated trip and a half. And with Tina Fey’s enthusiastic narration, you might even learn something, too.

The Fight is an endlessly engaging look into the often labyrinthine legal apparatus, and the film seamlessly moves between the cases with such incredible skill that the team of editors deserve all the accolades afforded to them.

Beyond the title, the elegant, calm, and unnerving La Llorona has nothing in common with the bland big budget namesake. If it has real cinematic kin, it's the much harsher and more grotesque "A Serbian Film," or the darkly comedic "Cold Sweat" - even (and especially in the trial sequences) Costa-Gavras' "Music Box."

The script, and Byrne’s suitably breathless, solipsistic reading of it, give the audience every reason to not simply dislike Linda but despise her.

The overall tone of this rocket-paced updating is exhilaratingly giddy, making it by far Disney’s best animated film since "Mulan."

A disturbing, spare story and a return to Polanski's earlier thematic grounds; it's not Knife in the Water, but it does feature fragmenting marriages and a big boat.

This is the antithesis of a sequel for sequel’s sake. Instead, it’s second verse, even catchier than the first.

It’s nowhere near as soulful or questing as "2001" or "Moon" – but as popcorn entertainment, it’s surprisingly provocative.

Unlike Alfonso Cuarón's critically-lauded "Roma," which somehow managed to reduce its indigenous protagonist to a passive observer in her own life, Song Without a Name never loses sight of Georgina's pain or her agency - or its limits.

A center ring extravaganza of smackdown movie entertainment

In a startling, last-reel freeze frame, the male ego pops like a balloon, and I wanted to pre-book for the next Trip right away.

It's a finely-crafted puzzle box that speaks as much to the heart and the head, with a simple but poignant message that we are only ourselves if we are complete.

American Animals is as much an exercise in objective truth – or the lack thereof – as it is the retelling of a single series of events.

While the climax is admittedly something of a letdown after all the build-up, it's a hopelessly, helplessly original film, all guts, no glory.

It’s one of Roberts’ best ever performances, not in least part because of how confidently she wears her age and Alma’s secrets, now that her ingénue years are firmly behind her. The woman with the mile-wide smile is no longer interested in courting our favor.

While Raes may not be able to replicate the experience of the show for the cinematic audience, she undoubtedly leaves them with a new perspective on the curator's calling, and the work of Vermeer himself.

Should be required viewing for prospective parents still sitting on the spermatazoan fence; after all, you're going to need a good sense of humor, aren't you?

So great are the charges raised against the Bush administration in the film, and so combustible the current state of geopolitics, that Moore’s film could actually prove to be the first in history to help unseat a sitting American president.

It's an education suitable for both children ready to see the world's shadows, and for adults who may still not comprehend Southeast Asian history beyond the Vietnam War.

If you like your affected character dramas with a healthy dose of weird insanity, you may just find yourself head over hooves.

What makes The Front Room universal is that it’s ultimately about power, about who runs the house.

After spending time with Moretti during the course of this movie, one discovers that he makes an interesting and entertaining companion.

One of the most affecting and certainly the most intimate of the cinematic arguments against the war in Iraq yet made.

It’s a slight film, really a seriocomic tone poem about the absurdities and obstacles we can create for ourselves even when our intentions are for the best, but it brims with ordinary everyday good cheer and feels like just the right movie at just the right time.

The Legend of Ochi is a kids’ movie in all the best possible ways, all the most enriching, magical ways that a kids’ movie should be. It’s also educational, but not in a teaching, preachy fashion. Instead, it’s filled with wisdom and heart, a fabulous tale of the fantastical that will leave your children filled with a sense of wonder about the world.

Taking the concept of the dysfunctional family to a degree that might even boggle Leo Tolstoy's mind, Flirting With Disaster is every son or daughter's nightmare… multiplied.

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

The film’s third-act reach for a redemptive arc plays hollowly, and Harrelson teeters over the line into hillbilly affectation. Still, it’s not enough to erase the memory of Harrelson’s subtler moments, or to ruin what is an altogether worthy adaptation.

What's compelling about Caché is not the answer to the whodunit but Haneke's exacting invocation of palpable tension.

If future films deliver similar spectacle and true, epic filmmaking, then this lengthy sequel can afford to be a prelude.

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

This is the hot-button topic of the moment and audiences will be divided, but there can be no denying the gut-punch power of Andrews’ directorial debut.

I tried to imagine what it would be like watching this movie if I were unfamiliar with the source material. The story may be a bit strange, but certainly no less touching. That’s the thing about classics: Each reiteration, if done properly, puts us closer to the story at heart.

Everywhere in America these days, people pay lip service to the idea of conducting open and honest conversations about race. Due to a fluke of timing and its entertaining quality, Top Five should help get the ball rolling.

The Shrouds is arguably Cronenberg’s most introspective film. His earlier work was driven by fascination, fetishization, and a puckish humor. All those elements are present here, but muted, restrained, and ultimately under an overwhelming sense of futility, as Karsh uses the shroud tech to retain a detachment from his grief.

There's not as much bombast here as there was in Parker's Commitments, but then Frears is an entirely different kind of director. He prefers the ensemble to the character study, and here he does a wonderful job of it.

Is it classic cinema? Perhaps not, but then again, American shores and citizens have never been lacerated by atomic weapons. What do we know?

Civil War’s main battle sequence is so effective because it’s six-on-six, and we’ve spent the past decade getting to know the combatants.

Nearly a decade before the supper-table racial detente of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Kramer mined the subject matter of racial divisiveness in the groundbreaking The Defiant Ones, which paired Curtis and Poitier as hunky prison escapees unhappily bonded to each other by means of metal chains and the mutual need to survive.

Summer 1993 reveals itself to us as if it were a scrapbook of memories tumbling forth. Some are clearer than others, yet the movie retains a subjective, childlike point of view.

There's still too much punching down, but especially too much peddling in stereotypes and xenophobic clichés.

Wonderstruck’s portrayal of deaf experiences and its adult treatment of childhood mysteries are original, and the way Haynes weaves it all together with gossamer strands gives this movie wings.

"They have their Mardi Gras; we have ours," the explanation goes on both sides, but everyone seems to realize it's just a rationalization aimed at covering over Mobile's docile perpetuation of segregation.

"The Cross and the Switchblade" it’s not; this is the reality of Ukraine today, and Crocodile Gennadiy is a badass man on a mission … from God.

A hilariously silly comedy based on an absurd true story.

The provocatively titled indie film Gook is both incendiary and lyrical.

And yet, it works, so much so that after two and a quarter hours, I was startled – and not a little disappointed – when the closing credits kicked in.

Wild lands some hard punches, but it can’t sustain the impact. Some of that lies in its inherited arc: Strayed found some peace – the whole point of the trek – but arriving-at-peace is less provocative than the struggle, at least in a movie.

A spirited and eye-popping stealth charmer.

Lively’s performance grows more engaging as her facade finally begins to crack, and Huisman serves as a sufficiently handsome foil throughout, but if anyone rises to the occasion, it’s Harrison Ford as a former flame reunited with Adaline through a perverse twist of fate.