Despite this film's narrative lapses, Malick has a unique way of distilling the poetry from the commonplace -- and for that precious gift we should say amen.

For the iconoclastic film director Ken Loach and his longtime screenwriting collaborator Paul Laverty, I, Daniel Blake represents their most accessible film ever.

The Counterfeiters differs from most Holocaust movies in that the emphasis is on the personal moral choices that are made rather than the overall horror and despair.

Unfortunately, in Bier’s world, where even the most innocuous acts can result in emotional ruin, redemption is purgatorial in its own peculiar way.

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.)

Despite its best intentions, The Lost City of Z never finds itself, doomed to aimlessly wander to an unsatisfying conclusion of a dream that betrays the best of men.

On the mean streets, Devil is okay; but it's something special when it gets to Easy's street.

What surprised me about Petzold’s latest is how ultimately straightforward, even slight, it felt upon conclusion, even with certain questions left aggravatingly open-ended.

What's best about Markus and McFeely's script is that they understand the characters.

Ghobadi works squarely in the neorealist tradition of countrymen like former mentor Abbas Kiarostami, using nonprofessional actors and documentary technique to tell small, spare stories of the human condition through the eyes of children.

Gleeson is triumphant in this portrait of a complex man who is concurrently sensitive, boorish, brilliant, singular, and unforgettable.

Under the gentle hand of Griffiths, The Ballad of Wallis Island is both hilarious and delicate, never even making the buffoonish Charles simply a figure of mockery.

Appearing in almost every frame of Blue Ruin, Blair – who previously starred in "The Man From Orlando" and writer/director Jeremy Saulnier’s first feature, "Murder Party" – owns this film.

Instead of aiming for biographical overview, this film strives to capture a sense of what makes Sakamoto’s music tick. (Hint: It’s not a metronome, but rather, the sounds of nature.)

The People’s Joker feels like it would work better as a one-woman show, a monologue that seems weighed down by the burden of its own metaphor.

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie may not win over many or even any new fans, but devotees of the TV show, and even diehards from the single-n Nirvana web days will relish having their favorite gentle idiots back and hearing the same joke on a bigger stage.

A rattling and ruminative piece of speculative fiction, Ex Machina is good enough to wish it were even better.

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.

Uncompromising and supremely controlled, it is a demanding film that will leave you shaken and shattered. How’s that for hyperbolic?

Ramsay is experimental, unconventional, and forever reaching at the gorgeousness in grief and despair. Her film moves slow as molasses, slow as paint drying -– and all the better to see the colors and the complexities.

Reilly, Phoenix, Gyllenhaal, and Ahmed – a murderers’ row of outstanding character actors who all moonlight as leading men – take the script’s raw materials (daddy issues, the trauma of being bullied, the civilizing effect of a toothbrush) and forge new bonds with a few words, a light look. The film treats their growing intimacy, in all its permutations, like an objet d’art, to be turned over and examined, delicately, from every angle. When they’re together, the film is electric.

Doesn't necessarily make for a crowdpleasing experience, though it is a provocative and uncomfortably authentic one.

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.

Much as Blue Moon is a eulogy for the death of a creative life, it’s also a testament to Linklater’s continued vitality as a filmmaker.

It’s always a pleasure to be in the company of Potter, and when looking back at the just-competent first outings – well, baby, you’ve come a long way – but still: Where’s the magic, huh?

Easily one of Disney’s more imaginative and detail-oriented CGI offerings in a while, Zootopia uses the classic tropes of anthropomorphized animals and comic references to pop-culture touchstones to slyly puzzle out what it means to be “civilized.”

Hall, one of our least appreciated great actors, is mesmerizing as Sydney.

Sublimely ridiculous film.