The Pigeon Tunnel is mannered, but one could argue that’s fitting. It’s hard to get more mannered than the le Carré prose style and plotting. Yet no character inhabiting the novels, not even George Smiley, is as riveting and memorable as David Cornwell. Anything that gets between him and the viewer is not a good thing.

A marvelous, uncommonly observant, and unexpectedly rousing group portrait.

Just as in the first film, I was put off by the white-savior narrative (Stilgar’s fervent belief quickly becomes grating), and the Hans Zimmer score that sounds as if Arrakis were in the Middle East rather than space.

The movie has you from its nearly wordless opening sequence.

Travels around the world via the oceans' floors to show us symbiosis at work in a variety of ecosystems.

The Fighter is this close to a triumph: a movie that steeps us in the grit of its time and place - Lowell, Mass., in the 1990s - and electrifyingly dramatizes Ward's battles with the family that almost loved him to death.

In retrospect, it’s obvious why the film was never produced: The director was a lunatic.

Part of what hooks you to this movie is how Leth outsmarts his taskmaster, and how the two men have divergent, almost incompatible aesthetic ideals.

The idea that there may be life after war and murder, even for the murderers, and what that might look like — what burdens you might be allowed to put down and what you’ll carry forward forever. The movie’s too wise, and too weary, to have a moral beyond that.

As in Linklater’s Dazed and Confused (1993), about the last day of school and first night of summer vacation in a Texas town in 1976, Apollo 10½ maintains a wondrous balance between Lone Star specific and anywhere-in-America general.

They're as special as special effects get.

Dodging the pitfalls of making a film about a writer is no small challenge, but Campion succeeds unforgettably in Angel at My Table. [14 Jun 1991, p.31]

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a movie so fully collapse in its third act as this one does, and it does so without warning.

The movie’s dramatically uneven, as anthology movies tend to be, but is it worth watching on the big screen? If the idea of Monument Valley peopled with classic Coen misfits hits your sweet spot, by all means go.

A definitive, low-tech stomping of every sci-fi clone that has sprung up in the original's wake.

This is a film of our times - paranoid, heartbroken, disillusioned - and the rare recent American movie whose characters react the way actual people might.

Violence in Green Room is just bad. Unfortunately for its heroes and for us all, it’s also sometimes inevitable.

There is a surprise waiting in Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten, a labor of love that Pirozzi painstakingly assembled over a span of close to a decade, although the story it tells holds no mystery.

Directed from the center-left with an ear to parties on both sides of the West Bank separation barrier, it’s knowledgeable and unhysterical, openhearted without seeming naïve. Those on the extremes will probably hate it.

Downey appears to like all this make-believe. Even the clunky dialogue sounds witty out of his mouth. This is not a part that makes great demands on his talent, and his slummy approach to it is amusing.

About the search for common ground, among journalists on all sides of the conflict and, through them, between viewers in America and the Arab world. Only within that common ground, Noujaim believes, can something like a workable, personal truth be found.

Nair, to her credit, doesn't succumb to any special pleading, which deepens her film's impact. Time and again, you sense that she and her subjects come from a place that believes in film, as "Salaam, Bombay" specifies its world and compels us to inhabit it. [15 Sep 1988, p.68]

Disarmingly direct and charmingly directed; it’s a bona fide love story, if an exhausted and occasionally thin one.

It is harrowing, heartbreaking, cheering, and unforgettable.

Ju Dou is far richer and more jolting than "The Postman Always Rings Twice," which it suggests. When it comes to film noir entrapment, we have nothing on the Chinese. [05 Sep 1990, p.63p]

In addition to being very funny, In a World . . . also makes a case for women to be, well, heard. But in terms of cohesion and narrative, it doesn’t quite come together as a movie.

Selma is at its very best when it gets into the nitty-gritty of the SCLC’s arrival in Selma amid colliding factions and forces.

It’s a mechanical exercise that lacks suspense, is too long (at 148 minutes, it’s the franchise’s lengthiest film), and is so chockfull of exposition that I took more notes than I’ve done in years.

A black-and-white fever dream, and, like all dreams, its meanings are elusive. It’s opaque, maddening, often pretentious, yet the pretensions may be on purpose, to push us away from the adulterous colonials at the story’s center and reveal the Africa they’re too obsessed with each other to see.

There's a grim fatalism in Les Voleurs, with more than a few pangs of resignation and a melancholy respect for the problematic nature of life. But it's also bold and powerful and totally unpredictable as it draws its narrative strands together to conclude that the human heart can be the biggest thief of all. [17 Jan 1997, p.D5]

The Assistant is a stealth bomb of a movie: It barely makes a noise but it leaves a crater in your heart.

Visually, this movie is big, bold, often awe-inspiring.

Is it being a spoilsport to suggest that the Hubble’s original 2-D images are a lot more stupendous than all the IMAX 3-D hurly-burly?

Ullmann's film is an achievement of heart and consequence, as full of integrity as Bergman, yet demonstrating more mercy.

Movingly recounts a hitherto untold story in the voices of the people who lived it.

The filmmakers are smart to cut between their primary interview and later footage of Junge watching that interview and offering further commentary -- living footnotes, as it were.

Plays a little like “Sex and the City” as reconceived by a Minimalist composer. That makes the movie sound like a threat, when actually it’s a dry, lightly sad, and very French comedy of romantic neurosis, brought to us by two great artists, director Claire Denis (“Chocolat,” “Beau Travail,” “White Material”) and star Juliette Binoche.

Reducing Life of Pi to a homily does it a disservice. Lee gives the framing story short shrift and concentrates on visualizing the inner tale with as much detail and power as possible.

It's an honorable attempt, but there's still no genuine need for this film to exist.

You don’t get groundbreaking cinema from Fences, but what you do get — two titanic performances and an immeasurable American drama — makes up for that.

"Grin Without a Cat" brilliantly used montage and a wide intellectual scope to speculate about the history of war and revolution. "Grinning Cat" is a more modest achievement, but the director's wisdom remains robust.

Miss Bala signals the rise of a director to watch, as Naranjo offers a grim subject with neither flash nor sentiment. It is a sober film done with style.

Conclave is a massively entertaining slice of melodramatic excess, with actors who know they’re in a soap opera disguised as high drama. As a result, everyone plays their roles completely straight — and to great effect.

You never know where Mother is going to go next. All you know is that you're in the hands of a master with an appreciably bent sense of humor.

It's inspired of Sachs to lean on Russell for a kind of oblique emotional depth. But it's possible to leave this movie mistaking Sachs's soul for Russell's.

Burshtein has achieved a gripping film without victims or villains, an ambiguous tragedy drawing on universal themes of love and loss, self-sacrifice and self-preservation.

That’s how the gifted young Argentine writer-director Matías Piñeiro makes his movies, in a style that seems casual and feels sure-handed — casual and sure-handed being about as good a combination as artistry, in any medium, has to offer.

A stinging, gorgeously filmed tragicomedy about male insecurity and the power of positive drinking.

The triumph of this fond, uncontainable documentary is that it lets you hear that voice again loud and clear.

From its title on down to the rugelach, Shiva Baby is an instant classic in the Jewish comedy of mortification, a genre that combines hilarity, anxiety, resentment and schmaltz.

The songs, written by Carney and Gary Clark, have a goofy but genuine appeal. Watch out, or you might end up downloading the soundtrack.

If Keane is a downer, it's a stupendously well-conceived one.

Souffle-light and airily playful.

The Spanish-Argentine comedy is about as far from being a CGI-fest as you can get, but Cruz’s hair is a very special special effect. Its oxblood abundance is torrential, jungley, diluvian, an in-your-face to the very concept of baldness. It’s also gloriously ridiculous, and ridiculousness masquerading as glory — male pomposity and artistic pretension, too — is what “Official Competition” is all about.

An eloquent ecological warning.

Zodiac is a kind of corrective remake of "Se7en," a renunciation of that earlier movie's psychotic nihilism. That rejection extends to a neat sight gag. Fincher gives us a shot of a cardboard cutout for "Dirty Harry" that mocks the personal abyss that catching Zodiac becomes.

How often are psychosexual lunacy and classic cinema combined so fiendishly well?

Priscilla gives us little idea of the inner workings of Priscilla Presley. She’s an enigma in what is supposed to be a story of her empowerment.

This documentary has the feel of someone flipping channels nonchalantly, and everything they turn to is an interesting watch.

Some girls fight over men. Ballerinas fight over parts. But the occasional brilliance of Black Swan is that it's a one-way fight. Nina battles herself.

So compelling is The Painter and the Thief — and ultimately so powerfully moving in its faith in human resilience — that you may not notice the illuminating ways in which Ree plays with form and viewpoint. The documentary won a special jury award for creative storytelling at the most recent Sundance Film Festival and it comes to streaming video as one of the year’s most affecting and subtly radical movie experiences.

With Black Bear, Plaza pushes her talent into raw new places.

The finished film, which was completed in about 11 days, has the tidiness and optimism of a fable. But it showcases certain hard facts of life in a war-torn country whose scars have yet to heal.

This is a cautionary tale, but it’s also a celebration of a life filled with crazy stories and lots of love.

Despite the material’s fit, the story’s relentlessly downbeat tone is challenging. Strong performances by Logan Lerman (“Fury”) and Sarah Gadon (Hulu’s “11.22.63”) can’t keep the film from feeling like exhaustingly slow going.

A seductively corrosive horror story that also potently suggests the ways war can shatter childhood.

It's more than a labor of love -- it's a powerful summoning of devoted craft, conveying the pain and complexity of a great musical innovator, avoiding almost totally the usual Hollywood cliches. [14 Oct 1988, p. 53]

It's more than science, more than biography, more than metaphor. Fusing all three and linking them to a profound human dimension that never cheapens the man or his macrospeculations, it ties them to shared human destiny. As Morris' elliptical style circles and deepens its themes with each pass, A Brief History of Time turns into film's own expanding universe. [14 Sep 1992, p.50]

The movie is a block of paper that, when Tsai's finished with it, becomes a chain of snowflakes. Loneliness doesn't often get such a gorgeously ornate tribute.

There are several kinds of wit at work here - Gould deserved no less - and they add up to an entertainingly offbeat evocation of a stimulating character whose wistful side is touchingly and glancingly evoked as well. [02 Feb 1994, p.66]

You could argue that Gandolfini doesn’t have enough screen time, but what’s there is, as they say, cherce. The scenes in which Albert and Eva get to know each other are delightful miniatures of emotional intimacy, two bruised romantics amazed to find someone still on their wavelength.

What stands out in Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie is the candor and determination of its subject. Moments with his four adult children and wife are beautifully captured, and Fox pulls no punches in his responses to Guggenheim’s occasionally tough questions. The result is a worthwhile, inspirational, and very watchable documentary.

The Green Fog is a cinephile’s mash note — and a glimpse of the beautiful film library of Babel that lives in Guy Maddin’s head.

The script is biting and timely.

It’s rough and observant, stacked with finely etched characters whose sympathies keep shifting along with ours.

Has to be appreciated simply for doing its job, for being the only thriller I've seen recently that made me wonder how my knuckles ended up in my mouth.

July may have lost all faith in the strategies of the parents' generation but holds out hope for the future. I think this may be her idea of a family film.

A sound piece of profiling that has miles of archival footage of the affable, pop-eyed Langlois enthusing.

The result is both a surprisingly lucid portrayal of clinical depression and dramatically a bit stiff.

There was little mirth or innocence in the world that Wharton was able to write her way out of (she was much happier living in Paris), and Davies and his leading lady lift the silks to reveal it as the minefield it was.

The film itself is a classic of romantic wish fulfillment, exactly the sort of beautiful lie that Hollywood specialized in. [Review of re-release]

The editing of the action sequences — and let’s face it, they’re the heart of the movie — is terrifically effective. Speed is one thing. Clarity is another. Top Gun: Maverick has both.

Gas Food Lodging is a film about nourishment on a financial and emotional shoestring. It's a delight. [19 Sept 1992, p.29]

A gentle collection of scenes that work and scenes that don't.

Its breadth, profundity, and stunningly rendered vision make idealism seem renewed and breathtaking again.

Written by Preston Sturges and directed by the great Mitchell Leisen, it's both sexy and touching. [19 Dec 2007, p.F6]

Not about crashing into walls or crashing into other people. It's about crashing into yourself and living to tell the tale.

It's hugely entertaining.

Glory is the long-needed antidote to Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind. With a grave clarity that echoes Augustus Saint-Gaudens' Boston Common monument and Robert Lowell's angry poem, For the Union Dead, Glory not only does justice to its deserving subject, but brings it into the popular consciousness with a distinction that compels respect. [12 Jan 1990, p.36p]

A perfect example of a small, well-made, and (in its central role) rivetingly acted film.

It is an uncompromising family tale, one that's dark but lyrical and moving in its rendering of the ties that bind even the most dysfunctional families, despite valiant efforts to destroy them.

A civilized delight.

Without any framing background information, this affectionate documentary and its continual monologues can feel a little too insidery and indulgent. [22 Nov 2010, p.G9]

As remorseless in style as it is in message, In the Fog offers little hope and few pleasures, but earns admiration for its elegant exploration of the lowest depths of the human condition.

This movie catalogs a wealth of human ugliness. It’s even been made to look ugly, presumably to underscore the horror movie that is Precious’s life.

A smartly observed, unpretentious, and unconventional comedy of manners -- or more properly, it's a comedy of mannerisms.

Dìdi reminds us that our parents aren’t just our parents — they’re people who have their own hopes and dreams. It’s not just about us.

Like another documentary set in North Dakota, Jesse Moss’s “The Overnighters,” they follow the story for months as it unfolds, offering no editorial guidance except dates and places and a soundtrack by T. Griffith that underscores the growing angst and pending horror. Welcome to Leith. Say goodbye to certitude.