This feature-length expansion of Cohen's deliciously ridiculous character accomplishes what decades of Soviet propaganda failed to do: It points out and underscores issues of race, religious intolerance, classism, and all manner of very American social ills by giving the culprits just enough rope to hang themselves by their own petards (and then some).

Perception is key and Control Room should be required viewing for anyone within reach of a TV signal.

The dialogue is scattered with so many beautiful gems that conversations glitter.

The masterful Land of Mine slowly, almost without notice, transforms into one of the most viscerally intense anti-war films since Dalton Trumbo’s "Johnny Got His Gun."

As riveting as a documentary can possibly be, this slim (74-minute) film is also one of the most politically aware films of the year.

The film is hypnotic, which lends it an addictive sensibility that complements the need Adam and Eve have for their bloody fixes.

Absolutely unlike any documentary you’ve ever seen, Step Into Liquid nearly qualifies as a religious experience.

Audience fortitude aside: This is compulsively watchable stuff, a masterstroke of thoughtful direction and thought-provoking performance.

The Last Station would have satisfied alone as a witty, manic lark, but as it moves toward the titular railway station, the film unfurls into so much more – a work of compassion, modulated mournfulness, and unchecked joy.

The film becomes a kind of meditative act.

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.

The phrase “searing indictment” is an overused idiom in the critic’s toolbox, but in this instance, it couldn’t be more appropriate.

Fonda (who received an Oscar) and Sutherland are at the top of their game in this mystery/thriller that also provides a fascinating look into the mind and soul of a top NYC call girl.

By far the most gorgeous slice of sunlit sadism so far this summer, I’m Not Scared also manages to be oddly sweet: a boy’s life, with treachery.

I laughed more (sincerely, full-throatedly) at Toy Story 3’s smart comedy than at any other film of the still-young summer movie slate.

A triumph in anguish.

The story (even more so if you weren't around in July of 1969) is gripping, eloquent, and powerful stuff, the right stuff right down to its pioneering heart, taking manifest destiny to the stars themselves.

Remarkably, the film is composed entirely of point-of-view shots. Although she’s in the room, Viviane is not even part of the image during the early minutes of the film.

Trần’s script (very loosely adapted from Marcel Rouff’s 1924 novel La vie et la passion de Dodin-Bouffant, gourmet) isn’t simply an ode to the idea of food being the food of love. Instead, it’s an utterly charming and touching description of a tender relationship between two people in middle age.

Bouncy with enthusiasm and freely tapping their generous reserves of movie-star charisma, Gosling and Blunt perfectly embody the rhetorical question at the heart of this genuinely tender ode to the industry and its undersung practitioners: Aren’t movies the best?

Fantasies and phantasms aside, Fincher proves himself yet again to be a better cinematic psychologist of (in-)human nature than almost any other director alive. It’s another squirmily excellent date movie from hell, courtesy of contemporary cinema’s most overt nihilist.

A movie with style to burn, and, initially, that is this crime drama's most mesmerizing aspect.

What Mr. Soul! expresses is that we still need people like Haizlip to push Black stories so they are seen and heard.

Fans of the show will rejoice and a few newbies will become converts. In this heightened reality, there are no rules except to get the laugh. And they do, incessantly.

The hippies, the ravers, the bumbling bobbies and nonplussed locals, the mud, the rush of being in the crush, up against the barricades, torn between the need for a restroom and the need for more room, to dance, to sing, to carry on like a stark loony regardless of your faraway day job – all of this is captured by Temple's unblinking, seemingly everywhere-at-once eye.

To paraphrase a passage from one of the character's journals, Girls Town illustrates how these young women express themselves in ways that compensate for the words they do not yet have.

This is a Disney film, so there's never any real question regarding Bolt and his friends' ultimate success or failure, but the writing team of Dan Fogelman (Cars) and co-director Williams (Mulan) have concocted one of the most witty and often hilarious Disney outings in years.

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