The Mustang, Clermont-Tonnerre’s impressive debut feature, is a slow-burning, tightly coiled character study of felony offender Roman Coleman (Bullhead’s Schoenaerts).

In a genre dominated by computer-generated compositions and design, its old-school simplicity is sweetly anachronistic, while its hand-drawn elegance is often something to behold.

The fault does not lie with Hoffman (who doesn't so much act out Capote's distinctive mannerisms and high-pitched lisp as channel them); his performance is undeniably great. Everything else – solid, satisfying though it may be – falls short of that greatness.

Syriana is the most challenging and uncompromising movie to come out of Hollywood in a long time.

It's a small gem of a movie, disturbingly realistic and profoundly terrifying on a near-primal level.

Veteran Italian director and co-screenwriter Crialese (Respiro, Golden Door) embraces a vivid visual sense here, abetted by Gergeley Pohárnok’s sumptuous cinematography and the Me Decade fashion sense of Massimo Cantini Parrini’s breezy, eye-popping couture. It’s a look that idealizes memory, much like when you conjure up something from the past in your mind and try to make it stick there for a while.

Excellently executed and expertly written, Traveling Light comes to us as a grave, razor-sharp reminder of not what used to be, but still is.

This is witty romantic comedy with barbed social commentary.

You’ve heard of guerrilla warfare? Buffalo Soldiers is all about guerilla capitalism.

Though The Flower of My Secret is not as crazed as "Women on the Verge," the movie marks the return of Almodóvar's delicious humor and a departure from the nastier streak that this Spanish director has been on recently.

This heartfelt portrait, which brings the artist tantalizingly close, will certainly bring greater renown to Dalton. But she remains, stubbornly, unknowable.

Depp’s performance aside, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is pure magic, swimming as it is in a black-treacle riptide of astonishing Oompa Loompa production numbers, an eerie patina of CGI airbrushing (Wonka himself looks downright pasteurized), and some almost too-clever in-jokes, and at least two references to Kurt Neumann’s 1958 film "The Fly."

The year's most viciously entertaining psycho-road-movie-revenge-'n'-wreckage-romance.

Given the rags-to-riches Mafia narrative Piranhas is built upon, it’s no surprise that Giovannesi’s film has received comparisons –  both favorable and unfavorable  – to "Goodfellas."

In its dour and often depressing depiction of environmental struggle, 1970s-set true-life pollution drama Minimata would pair well with Todd Haynes’ Dark Waters.

Lyne's excesses are usually the kind of thing I love to hate, but Unfaithful found me pretty much following along in step with his rhythms and dramatic choices.

With Henry Fool, however, Hartley has made his most dynamic and accomplished film to date.

With a saga this sprawling and byzantine, it makes sense that the emphasis is not on Schiele, but rather on what the sorely wronged Bondi never stopped calling "my Schiele."

Impossible to shake off.

As a first-time feature filmmaker, Beecroft’s storytelling technique could stand greater development, but her sense of place and mood is spot-on. Her film will definitely make you want to scrape the mud off your boots before you leave the theatre.

Pure unadulterated animal fun.

Hungarian cinematographer Marcell Rév puts himself in the top echelons with his kinetic, vibrant work here, smashing Jacques Jouffret's neon-and-blood visual thrills from "The Purge" series into suburbia with a slick and easy violence, and when the world breaks down – as in one of the most brilliant and sickening home invasions ever filmed – he makes the stylish chaos all too believable.

Ultimately, Naked Lunch is more about the act of writing, while the original is concerned with the phenomenon of addiction. Each does what it does well… but differently.

The film is an exhilarating and inventive spectacle that makes every other action film from the last 10 years look as obsolete as the Lumière brothers running that train at you back in 1896.

Wonderfully fun, albeit markedly chaotic and incoherent.

Blancanieves never lags, per se, it’s just awfully in love with itself: with its gorgeous black and white chiaroscuros and whirling-dervish first-person camera perspectives, the Spanish-guitar-scored dance sequences (that include the undeniable dance of the matador in action), and battering winds of emotional extremes. By the end of this sumptuous and sincerely felt melodrama, I was rather in love with it, too.

Come for the epic ass kickings, stay for the silliness of giant monsters battling a huge metal man.

True, Christopher Robin may take a little time to get to those emotions, mainly due to a scene-setting introduction that could stretch the attention of the most wriggly children. But once Pooh and Christopher are once more paw-in-hand, it's just enchanting.

Well worth seeing if you have even the slightest interest in guns and sex and the interplay between the two (and who doesn't?), Burnt Money also has, you'll forgive the pun, style to burn.

Call it odious, call it repugnant, call it downright nasty – just don't call it dumb.

Director Chen and screenwriters Lilian Lee and Lu Wei (based on Lee's original novel) create a tapestry of detail woven with visual spectacle, historical saga and human drama. At over 2 1/2 hours running time, Farewell My Concubine is both too brief and too luxurious.

The movie's critiques of the music industry, the ganja trade, and organized religion still ring true.

Together the cast, the director, and the screenwriter work to make the characters off-centered but realistic, with plenty of room for warmth.

Berserk from the outset, Natural Born Killers lunges for our collective viscera in its opening sequence (surely one of the most brilliant establishing sequences of all time) and never lets go for the next two hours.

The story, though structurally flawed, is an artful portrait of modern life: the 24-hour news cycle, class warfare, and rampant overconsumption leading to crippling anxiety and burnout, even in the young. It’s sadly all too familiar: Too late to be a cautionary tale, it reads more like society’s distorted self-portrait.

The contrast of light and dark, good and evil, enlightenment and ignorance, innocence and corruption is the heart of this absurd, insightful, sincere, very funny fairy tale of a movie. The cast is uniformly superb.

Maybe a dare to Desplechin, in fact: Next time, more Esther, less Paul. She’s still got stories to be told.

In films by the likes of Michael Bay, Paul Verhoeven, and Guillermo del Toro, machines are shown to be the nightmarish enemies of human beings, so it’s refreshing to find the machines in Trash Dance working in harmony with their human operators.

Duris and Demoustier are excellent in a pair of exceedingly complex and emotionally fractious roles, and Ozon’s supremely confident directorial hand and clear affection for these characters transforms The New Girlfriend from a could’ve-been psycho-thriller into a smart, humanistic examination of identity reshaped in the shadow of grief.

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

Parmet’s ability to repackage a story that oftentimes can feel exploitative and gritty through a more mature and compassionate lens is quite sincere – a challenging film that’s worth the effort.

Never less than enchanting, constantly surprisingly exciting, and with a burning sense of optimism that maybe, sometimes, hard work and vision can really win the day, Pompo: The Cinéphile is a tribute to everyone who colors within the lines but make those colors all their own.

There's more at work in this gorgeous and affecting picture than simple culinary sex appeal.

Isn't Lee's most personal piece, but it may very well be his most mature.

You've got to hand it to Reynolds, director Cortés, and screenwriter Chris Sparling; they milk every single frisson of nail-ripping anxiety from a stunningly simple – yet universally recognized and dreaded – conceit and then cap it with a payoff of molar-pulverizing intensity.

Mines the traditional Western genre and infuses it with fresh, frequently hilarious life.

Carrey is a bit of a conundrum: He's the best and worst thing about Lemony Snicket.

My advice? Relinquish yourself to this hazy tapestry, and let the film take over. Squares need not apply.

I Went Down is a small, unexpected treat that promises full satisfaction.

By the time it's over you find yourself wondering why more films don't have the chutzpah to delve deeper into the battle-weary heart.

Surprisingly effective for what could easily be labeled a “gimmick film,” Chaganty’s debut feature suspenser unfolds entirely onscreen on screens.

It's challenging not to see shades of Robin Williams, who was not just Belushi's equal in talent and predilection for pharmaceuticals but also his friend. Williams admitted more than once that it was Belushi's death that made him get sober, the ultimate wake-up call.

It's all patently ridiculous, but it's also ridiculously fun.

A gorgeously crafted love poem.

Elgort’s performance is more mannered than Woodley’s open-faced, direct line to the heart, but it works.

To be fair, this isn't The Killer. Woo's unique penchant for over-the-top male bonding is basically nowhere to be seen, but then this is, after all, a very American story, despite Woo's name at the top.

A remarkable film. From its performances on down to director of photography Roger Deakins' sun-baked, dirty-ochre cinematography, the film is all of a piece.

Mamet's layering of issues -- academic freedom, violence to women, political correctness, materialism, elitism -- is masterful, as is his use of broken dialogue -- the sentences stretch out here like a row of jagged stones.

Through talking heads over archive materials, Pollard deftly explains why the tapes exist and how the inflated claims about national security were no excuse for them being recorded.

This film no doubt planted the seeds for more good ol' boy action pics (White Lightning, Smokey and the Bandit), but while many of those vehicles relied solely on high-speed hijinks, Mitchum's story and charismatic screen presence make Thunder Road a ride to remember.

Becker's tight, streamlined direction, along with Nicholas Pileggi's (GoodFellas) excellent script and Cusack's wonderful turn as Calhoun take City Hall far above the standard genre fare. Like real mayoral politics, it's a descent into a snakepit, with no easy answers in sight.

Leisurely unfolding, much like a fat novel, this turn-of-the-century Swedish drama has a warm, enveloping feel. It's flawlessly steeped in early 20th century atmosphere, costumes, and culture, but a gripping page-turner this family saga is not.

Truly, this is some kind of wonderful. (Horrific, hilarious, disturbing … but wonderful.)

Old Joy is an accurately observed slice of that moment between postadolescence and parenthood, when friends cling or scatter, and circumstances force buried feelings to the fore.

The story is as humorous and raunchy as a good blues refrain, and the way Lazarus and Rae react to each other almost resembles the classic call-and-response structure of the blues.

These characters have become so dear; I longed for something more climactic, more cathartic for them. Still, for the time we have with them, they make terrific company.

What takes The Theory of Everything into the cosmos is Redmayne’s extraordinary performance. The disciplined precision with which he progressively embodies Hawking’s failing body is nothing short of astonishing.

The filmmaker has created a haunting movie, one that connects on a visceral level that defies easy explication. The unembellished performances by Cotillard and Schoenaerts exude a raw authenticity that anchor the film's grander melodrama and embed the characters in the viewer's memory.

Many have already heralded Poirier as the cutting edge of the new French cinema, and while that may be overstating things a bit, it's worth noting that this is a road movie unlike any other you've yet seen.

The current media discussion over whether or not this is a racist film misses how much this is a classic hard-boiled detective novel, the Japanese functioning as an almost faceless evil.

Night Moves doesn’t give us much reason to like or empathize with its protagonists, but neither does it discount their activism. In this way, the film spurs contemplation. If it’s food for thought you’re looking for, you won’t go hungry with Night Moves.

Goodhart’s film is a winner – sweet but not sentimental, tart without turning sour. The studio-produced romantic comedy may be flatlining, but who cares, so long as snappy indies like this one step up to fill the void?

Ultimately, I’ll Be Me is both an unconventional tribute to this American icon and a deep-down cri de coeur for more research on viable ways to retard the progression of Alzheimer’s and perhaps one day find a reliable cure. No one’s getting any younger, after all.

Immensely entertaining, Coriolanus is chock-full o' gore and the contemporary trappings of a man and a land divided, both from without and from within.

The Guy Movie to end all Guy Movies, a ridiculously overblown summer testosterone blowout right down to the Wagnerian strains of the soundtrack and its stunningly high body count. It's also a hell of a lot of fun.

The neo-noir Cold in July operates at a steady sizzle. A body turns up dead before the film’s opening credits: It becomes the opening salvo that propels the characters into a confusing vortex of guilt, revenge, corruption, and vice.

Much like the experts drawn to Landis’ paintings, Art and Craft effectively invites viewers to question the honesty of what’s been placed inside the frame.

The film's greatest strength undeniably lies in Gosling's revelatory portrayal of Danny.

The filmmakers’ decision to stay out of the way and shape the story largely in the editing room bears different returns – a less mediated, more immersive, and ultimately quite moving portrait of hopeful youths headed into a harder adulthood.

Crammed to bursting with the director’s trademark magical realism. Occasionally marred by budgetary constraints, this is nevertheless a welcome return for an artist who truly deserves the sobriquet: El Maestro.

It is an observant and effective study in character and setting, suitably grave and distinctively realized.

Gorgeously lensed and delightfully structured, however, this is, in a word, wonderful.

Some Kind of Heaven effortlessly blends humor and pathos into a memorable and at times unsettling study on where life’s trajectory might land us, and that is a concept that deserves more than mild contemplation.

Has everything a great personal-paranoia/persecution movie needs.

It's brutal to watch the bigger-they-are-the-harder-they-fall tragedy of this once-great heavyweight. In fact, it's enough to make you cry.

The Damned United is Shakespearean in its tragedy.

An absorbing, delightful, and nuanced movie with laugh-out-loud humor, and though it often plays events broadly where you might have preferred subtlety, it's not a movie that could have settled for muffled silence.

The film has a lot to say, but it thankfully does it in a manner that is natural, gentle, and if you will, authentic.

I said once before that every generation gets the superhero it deserves, and Nolan's darkest of dark knights is surely ours – and no more so than in this current incarnation. (Granted, this doesn't bode well for society, but hey, things are bleak all over.)

It's ostensibly a Southern-fried comedy of terrors, but what little humor the film evinces almost immediately lodges in your windpipe like an errant bit of K-Fried-C gristle.

The Birth of a Nation most definitely has its finger on the pulse of our times.

Much to cheer here, from its treasure trove of early and alternate versions of songs to the triumphant finale.

A meticulously-researched chunk of underground Americana that traces the poet's full life from his rather dysfunctional childhood (beneath the hoary shadow of his mentally ill mother) to his meetings and eventual friendships with Kerouac, Burroughs, Neal Cassady and other Beat luminaries. (Review of Original Release)

Half Nelson, with its bleakly hopeful view of humanity both damned and redeemed – simultaneously – is uncomfortably, almost exactly right.

For a franchise in the throes of a post-Endgame wheel-spinning slump, and with a less-than-compelling upcoming slate of films, Guardians Vol. 3 is a refreshing, if overstuffed, respite. I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t feel bittersweet to be seeing them off for the last time.

The film is sufficiently methodical and well-researched to walk the walk behind its controversial premise. More to the point, it's terribly involving, intriguing enough to hook documentary-shy viewers.

Atlantis isn’t an easy film to watch, and it’s not meant to be. It’s an anti-war film without solutions, but what it clear is that Vasyanovych believes in humanity rebuilding from tragedy.

Most important, Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary makes us wonder, in a very human sense, about the various blinders we all adopt to make our peace with life.