Farmers’ market jokes and “desert vibes” hashtags aside, Ingrid Goes West cuts to the quick, ultimately revealing a toxic, yet oh-so-appealing demeanor that has come to define our current existence.

Dissent – or a remotely critical eye – doesn’t have any place in RBG; this is an entirely admiring doc.

In the documentary profile It’s Only Life After All, Emily Saliers and Amy Ray of indie folk rockers Indigo Girls convey what they want the audience to experience from their music: self-esteem, a shared experience, and healing, likening it almost to a warm hug from a loved one. And that’s exactly what the film provides.

It's contemporary French cinema without a dollop of Besson and Jeunet's beloved CGI theatrics, and all the better for it.

Ill-suited to casual viewing. But its challenges are worthwhile, and the gifted Gleize is one to watch.

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

At once emotionally charged and genuinely, disconcertingly surreal...a marvel of subdued, genuine filmmaking.

For all its stentorian performances, though, Shadow of the Vampire is a bit much, from the detailed period sets to the final, bloody scene.

Ruffalo makes a dent as a dogged narcotics detective, and the Spanish superstar Javier Bardem appears as a crime boss. Overall, however, Mann seems content to play games with his fast cars, cool streets, and loud rock, leaving Collateral squarely within the action genre.

There's never a singular direction for the film and its sub-plots, but instead it's as if Daneskov strikes for a central mood, then lets each element wander a little away from it: not far enough to be disruptive, but never quite cohesive. Like the misguided men it follows, its charm is in its disorder.

A sterling example of what Hollywood can accomplish when it puts its trust into an offbeat project whose creative team has a different perspective on American life.

The war might be over, but fear and hope remain locked in a rapturous stranglehold amidst the rubble.

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.

Kusama’s paint-splattered jeans, her continual need to create, and her singular vision are concepts that Lenz gets through with her very loving film.

Fast and funny, it makes you wish this would-be American master was more often lightweight.

More methodical than innovative, Don’t Breathe is nevertheless an effective suspenser.

The main draw here, besides the nature of the high-stakes poker milieu, is Jessica Chastain.

Beyond the Gates bears witness to the worst of the worst, but these days, and far more importantly, so does YouTube.

A razor-wire-taut (and extremely violent) exploration of what happens when good guys go bad, badder, baddest.

"Always be good to rock and roll and it will always be good to you," the film quotes Phil Spector as saying, and a more fitting explanation of the Bingenheimer mystique you'll likely never find.

This is the rare movie to acknowledge the impact popular music can have on our lives, particularly during the period of your life when you’re struggling to figure out who you are and – more importantly – who you want be.

The film has lovely moments – Gehry buildings can be extremely photogenic, after all – but it doesn't sink its teeth in the way it probably should.

Of course it helps tremendously that Willem Dafoe plays Pasolini. Just as he did with 2018’s "At Eternity’s Gate," in which he embodied the artist Vincent van Gogh, Dafoe brilliantly captures the essence and a more-than-reasonable resemblance to the real figures.

It’s one of the few narration-dependent films in recent years in which the words don’t get in the way of the story.

Much of Rare Exports is seen through the eyes of its preteen protagonist, which explains some of the story's minor omissions (who, exactly, hired this nefarious multinational mining outfit and why exactly?).

Dyer’s masturbation scenes feel innocent as opposed to titillating, and she charms with her mix of cautious curiosity and wide-eyed expressions.

If overly conventional, the film is so bursting with compassion, I felt like a heel any time I sniffed when the tone tipped toward corniness. Best to meet Bob Trevino on its own terms – with open arms and an unjudgey heart.

This is what great dialogue -- and by extension great movies -- is made of.

Padilha's film offers no easy answers, but the title is a tip off as to where at least his sympathies lie.

The action set-pieces, double crosses, and narrow escapes are handsomely mounted and suspenseful as a Saturday matinee.

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

The message here is clear: You can’t front to your true friends. This clique is ready to take on the world, and they aren’t afraid to fight dirty for each other. What can I say? Squad goals.

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

Pamela Gray's script and the way these actors bring the characters to life are the film's real treasures.

Although Scott Frank's screenplay has more than a few holes in it...they're forgivable, mostly because this movie is so utterly likable. Little Man Tate is a small movie by industry standards, but it nevertheless stands pretty tall.

What Happened Was … dissects the interminable hopefulness of dating. Noonan, who also wrote the script, has an ear for believable dialogue, and Sillas (Simple Men, Risk) allows every conceivable emotion to ripple across her face, which is a landscape unto itself.

For the incomparable Streep, it’s yet another performance in high C.

Much has been made of the fact that Swanberg has cast for the first time bona fide movie stars and not just his mumblecore pals: In fact, it's the making of the movie. If you're going to build an entire film on microexpressions, then a certain innate magnetism is required. Swanberg gets it in spades from his top-shelf cast.

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 Descent may not be everything you've heard, but man, it's also a lot of things you haven't.

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.

A Perfect World is a gorgeous, sprawling road movie, full of unique characters (more or less -- Laura Dern's criminologist seems like some sort of PC afterthought, and Eastwood's grizzled Ranger borders on cliché) and arresting cinematography that reminds us why we live here in the first place.

While Cam feels authentic, it's not a documentary.

Preparations successfully trades narrative authority for a more provisional path, and much like its main character, remains wholly enigmatic.

From the fan's perspective this is sheer bliss, the next best thing to pouring a couple of glasses of grappa and sitting down with a bona fide film immortal (and world-class raconteur) for a long, intimate conversation.

Ultimately one of those sprawling epics best suited for a rainy day.

For better and worse, the story unfolds as the late Brown himself might have related it, scattered across time, told with more impulse than clarity.

In George’s odyssey, McQueen attempts to emulate and skewer the classic British boys’ own adventures by juxtaposing it with social realism, but it ends up divided between the two instincts. Blitz is also burdened by a surprisingly leaden script filled with paper-thin Cockney stereotypes.

Look past the uneven narrative and you’ll find a new cinematic voice with something to prove, and the formal prowess to back it up.

King Car has moxie and its heart is in the right place, even if it feels like dialectic materialism for motorheads.

So much here is equally befuddling and beguiling; I caught myself leaning in toward the screen repeatedly, trying to somehow get closer to the gorgeous impenetrability of the story, of the boy.

Bogdanovich narrates the most extraordinary moments of close-up slapstick and derring-do with equal fascination. But mostly what he does is let them play out with the occasional factoid, so the audience can appreciate just how impeccable Keaton's work was.

With remarkable access, Klayman is prepared to let Bannon hang himself with his own words.

As with most superhero movies, Shazam! is also as much a harbinger of sequels to come as it is a stand-alone film. This, surprisingly, is where Sandberg’s film shows the most promise.

Dench deserves better, and unfortunately it will probably be a long time before she gets another starring role in a movie custom-made for an actress her age.

While grown-ups are sure, at the very least, to respect Into the West's beauty and integrity, it may be a tougher sell amongst the very young where the Irish brogues and the lack of rugged Hollywood heroes and high-tech derring-do may prove impediments. But the aura of magic realism has never felt more tantalizing as it shimmers Into the West.

Such an important and tender subject as assisted suicide deserves more than this mawkish, soapish nonsense.

Light Sleeper represents Schrader at his best, giving us a character we've become familiar with over the years and Schrader's intimate mastery of our fascination with decadence, loss and redemption.

The sidekicks Jean-Bob, the dandy French frog (Cleese), and Speedy, the true-blue turtle (Wright), are mildly amusing, but knowing the talent behind the voices, you can't help but wish that they'd had a hand in the writing as well. Still, the picture has a certain sweetness about it that melds nicely with its old-fashioned look (the cels are all hand-drawn and hand-colored) and the characters are not totally without charm. What it boils down to is that The Swan Princess just doesn't have that old bibbity bobbity boo.

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.

The film rarely demonstrates how the ideal actually works in practice. Personally, I would have liked to see a savage breast or two being charmed.

Under the muck and mire, Vesper is a reminder that both life and hope can be surprisingly durable, flexible, and morphable.

It’s amazing what Yossi & Jagger does manage to relay in its brief time onscreen. And instead of melodrama and fireworks, the film goes the more difficult route of restraint and psychological tension.

It's a veritable shoo-in for an Oscar nod this year, and one of the more disturbing films to come out of a major studio in ages.

Dern is hilarious as the obsessive sister-in-law, Sarsgaard plays oddball dog-man to perfection, Pais is perfectly awkward as Peggy's nervous boss, Reilly rocks the subtle humor of Peggy's hunting-obsessed neighbor, and Shannon gives a breakout performance.

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.

An informative and nonpolemic look at the birth of the modern environmental movement and its various offshoots and key players.

It's the kind of film you feel like watching twice -- not because you found it that engaging to begin with, but because you didn't, and everyone else did.

Bill Murray's Polonius is so delightfully coy and self-satisfied that this performance is reason alone to see the picture.

A stunningly impassioned and articulate study of a writer's life and the censorial demons that can strangle that voice.

A film that wants you to get happy.

It's not a pretty picture, but it is a hellaciously gorgeous and original film.

Cuartas tenderly catches the scenario at the end of the road, leaving only the question of who, if any, will be able to walk away. Not that their existence is tenable for anyone that crosses their paths, and Cuartas' script gives plenty of space for the core trio to explore their tragic roles in this disaster.

Theater Camp may not qualify as a 24-carat enterprise, but when it occasionally shines, it glimmers with a love for the transformative magic of the stage.

These people manage to convince us that the events at Abu Ghraib were standard operating procedure and not aberrant activities. Therein lies the horror of the movie – and also its banality.

Not in itself a bad thing -- the "Star Trek" films have long come under friendly fire for being too heavy on the philosophizing and not enough so on the deep-space car chases -- but oddly, the film feels soulless and hollow, despite best intentions to the contrary.

And like most women in bromance comedies, Jones does exactly what she's supposed to do by doing almost nothing.

Well-researched and candid, this documentary will not change anyone’s perception of Cohn or rehabilitate his character in any way. Although his self-loathing insecurities may slightly humanize him, he will always be one-dimensionally evil.

The Israeli comedy Ushpizin begins something like Guy Ritchie's "Snatch" and ends like the Coen brothers' "Raising Arizona" – in between it's a wholly original movie.

By now, we’ve grown accustomed to the signature touch of Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Forrest Gump), who is one of the best creative minds to see the innovative narrative potential lying dormant in technical cinematographic advances. This does not always provide the underpinnings for great stories, but bien sûr his movies are almost always quite something to see.

Sharp-witted delight.

The language barrier borders the Babel-esque; it’s a surprise fount of humor, too, as when a translator is terrified to pass along an Italian tailor’s request to the French-speaking chief seamstress, knowing she’ll be furious at the added work.

Roth delicately captures the weight of weariness that burdens Neil, as he shuffles the streets in his Birkenstocks, briefly showing signs of life in the company of Berenice. We are locked on to Neil for those signs, and Roth’s performance is utterly absorbing.

Chalamet embodies Dylan in a quite literal sense; he’s clearly studied the tape and does a more than passable mimicry of Dylan’s voice and performing style. Problem is, it’s an intentionally opaque characterization, in a film overcrammed with musical performances – onstage, in the studio, on the bed noodling on a new song – which basically means half the movie is like watching pretty good karaoke.

The chaos, the confusion, the ongoing struggle between personality and purpose, The Paper really gets the beat, gets how a paper comes together and the beat at which that happens.

Embrace the simple pleasures of pen to paper.

My Penguin Friend is ultimately a charming story of quiet resilience and healing as much as it is about a man and a bird. May we all find such friends.

The game footage is as engrossing as the real thing, although it comes at the expense of diminished attention to the teen players and their emotional problems.

Neeson, taking a welcome break from his late-career reinvention as a man of action, and Manville (Another Year, Phantom Thread) are such gifted performers, and they play this couple – their tenderness and stress – at a likably subtle frequency.

While some filmmakers fade into obscurity during their time away from the screen, The Bikeriders is a welcome reminder that Nichols’ thoughtful explorations of economic tension and toxic masculinity are more relevant now than ever.

While never dull, The Cup is a leisurely, quiet film, rife with staid, sometimes ponderous moments reflecting the seriousness of their situation in exile.

As atypical a summer film as they come -– no explosions, no car chases, no Arnold -– but immensely more pleasing than films with all three of those summertime staples.

A literate, sophisticated comedy whose humor and loss and hope linger in our hearts, like the jazz music it reveres, both sweet and lowdown.

Fresh and raw like a blown-out vein, Narc takes a walking-dead, cop-flick subgenre and beats new life into it.

It's a one-note gag, but a superior gag performed with a minimum of cheese and a surplus of laugh-out-loud moments.

Ultimately, the film’s many charms drown somewhat under crushingly sad events. Still, there is redemption in the chemistry between the two lead characters, their passions and complexity, as well as in the grace of the music as it is performed and how it is used.

1900 is a marvelous movie, Bertolucci is one of the best directors who has ever lived.

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."