There is a confidence and a self-assuredness on display in Kent’s second feature that was only hinted at in her first. From her unflinching examination of the dual standards for gender and ethnicity to the film’s lush compositions, The Nightingale is a tough watch, but one well worth the ugly brush with sexual violence and trauma.

An intriguing export with crossover appeal.

Weitz (About a Boy) is a sharp observer, and Tomlin and the rest of the cast are so superlative that any anxiety is quickly quelled. You’re happy to follow this movie over the river and through the woods.

Both Koepp and Soderbergh are to blame for the underdelivery of a pivotal, plot-defining, single line of dialogue that should have been a strand woven throughout the film.

A riveting piece of cinema, successfully utilizing all the things that screenwriters are supposed to avoid: voiceovers, direct address, unreliable narrators. It also looks gorgeous, thanks to cinematographer Nicolas Karakatsanis and production designer Jade Healy.

God Loves Uganda and recent events make it seem like the time is right for a 21st century raid on Entebbe.

The horror imagined by Évolution does not depend on the genre’s familiar tropes but instead its arousal of dread and fear, not unlike Guillermo del Toro in "The Devil’s Backbone," in which the peril is intuited rather than defined.

Fonda brings all of his childhood frustration and angst to the screen in one of the year's most unexpectedly brilliant acting performances.

Grindhouse raises the bar for a certain kind of movie lollapalooza (and also for the kind of filmmaker who is also a showman, along the lines of a William Castle or Cecil B. De Mille). It's this injection of playfulness and fun and attention to the entire movie-going gestalt that will probably become Grindhouse's lasting contribution to movie history rather than any on-the-screen content of the movie itself.

At its best, there's an undoubted thrill and wonder to Pom Poko, like the massive parade of phantoms the tanuki conjure up as one of their harebrained schemes. Takahata's misfire at least provides some wonderful sparkles.

It ends up being a smashingly good and goofball history of the non-world of Canadian history and flim-flammery, deeply committed to its own colonial crazy.

Celebrate Father's Day in grand movie style.

A powerfully unique film.

We see the work, the figurative (and sometimes literal) sweat that went into crafting these characters. It’s capital-M Movie Acting, and I couldn’t love it more. It moved me.

What's fascinating is the depth of humanity Cruise finds within the character of Jerry and also Cruise's generosity toward the other actors in the story -- a generosity that allows all the other performers to shine and create vivid and memorable characters.

For two filmmakers best known for their comedic scripts like the Jump Street films and The Lego Movie, they know when to pull back on the humor and instead embrace the spectacle, and find their perfect proxy in Gosling.

The comparisons to "Hereditary," Ari Aster's febrile masterpiece of familial dysfunction, are inevitable, and while James doesn't quite reach that film's perturbing depths she brings a different insight.

Although the film is never fully convincing about this rock band’s overlooked potential – despite testimonials from the likes of Alice Cooper, Henry Rollins, Jello Biafra, and Elijah Wood – the story of Death sure adds an interesting and virtually unknown footnote to the annals of punk rock.

Director Nunez, whose previous films (Gal Young 'Un, A Flash of Green) are also set in Florida, has an ability to translate states of mind into their native environments and vice versa. In this instance, his regional realism combines with Judd's transfixing performance to create a movie that sticks to your ribs.

Chi-Raq constantly shifts tones from comedy to drama and back again, while most of its dialogue is delivered in rhyming couplets. The transitions can sometimes be bumpy, but never when Samuel L. Jackson pops up as nattily dressed and off-color one-man Greek chorus.

Squibb’s charm, her gutsiness, and her sharp, subtle humor fill the movie with warmth and veracity.

Starving the Beast does an admirable job of making even the most arcane of arguments and abstruse alliances plain and clear.

The all-out Love Lies Bleeding is a love story that won’t work for everyone. However, for those who can revel in the blood-soaked, complicated, sapphic delights that make up the backbone of the film, the saga of Lou and Jackie will be one for the ages.

With Calvary, John Michael McDonagh (who wrote and directed "The Guard" and is the brother of Martin “In Bruges” McDonagh) has crafted a darkly hilarious and deeply ruminative update on the passion play.

The House I Live In is depressing stuff, but it sparks the fires of anger, and from that anger, possible action.

Sometimes a documentary doesn’t have to change the world, but make you feel warm and that your passion for something is matched by another person.

Hepburn brings Truman Capote's Holly Golightly to vivid life. [Review of re-release]

Hustle is a great modern love story disguised as a neo-noir police procedural.