By giving his actors a three-dimensional world, del Toro sparks their imaginations — and ours. The result is a beautiful, bittersweet, and occasionally horrific look at what it means to be human.

There are a lot of reasons to be thankful for Sorry to Bother You — one being that it represents the return of the inspired/demented midnight-movie satire — but the rise of Lakeith Stanfield to leading man status is probably the most satisfying.

Too often the movies view the problems of Africa through Western eyes, but "Devil" turns that weakness to a literal strength, because Steidle could do nothing in his position except take photographs.

It’s the lack of depth that ultimately may keep you from committing to 1917 or even respecting it — the movie’s sense that war is simply something that happens to people rather than being caused by them. Don’t forget that World War I was once called The War to End All Wars. It wasn’t and according to the headlines it still isn’t, but this movie never stops running to bother ask why.

Those who don’t especially like cats — or Istanbul, for that matter — might not get a lot out of Turkish director Ceyda Torun’s love letter to the feline population of her native city. For everyone else, it should be an almost unadulterated pleasure.

Waste Land is just what the film's website says it is: "stirring evidence of the transformative power of art and the alchemy of the human spirit."

Had it been 90 minutes, we might be talking about a classic here. If there’s anything that was in dire need of a shot of The Substance to bring out a leaner, tighter version of itself, it’s this film’s Cannes-award-winning screenplay.

May ultimately be no more than the sum of its (body) parts, but it's still a ghastly service-industry horror story - a film to make you wonder what might be roiling beneath the surface of the placid young woman who hands you your Grande Latte every morning.

Richly textured, beautifully acted.

One of the most hopeful and heart-rending movies I've seen this year.

The Aura is richer and less showy than "Nine Queens," and it lifts off from the gangster genre to contemplate deeper mysteries.

The new movie, a heist comedy, has been described in some quarters as “Ocean’s 11” for the NASCAR crowd, and that’s not wrong. It also feels like the director is trying to reverse-engineer one of the Coen brothers’ loopier excursions and not getting every one of the pieces in order.

It's a splendidly designed flight of imagination that soars from the barren grays of England to the Art Deco towers of New York over a shining sea of wrinkled, deep blue velvet. With the movie's mixture of stop-motion animation, digital animation and live action, Roald Dahl's 1961 children's book has found its ideal realization. [12 Apr 1996, p.59]

To her great credit (and one must also mention the production design by Mollie Wartell, and the low-key but on occasion lush cinematography by Brian Lannin), Parmet here creates an environment that feels lived-in, and portrays it without condescension. And Scanlen’s detailed work keeps the movie emotionally credible.

Never has space travel looked so sordid, debased, mean-spirited, or crummy, qualities intensified by the (intentionally) ugliest cinematography ever — except for the close-ups of faces — from the great Agnès Godard, Denis’s longtime collaborator. But seldom has space travel served as such an eloquent and tragic representation of the human condition.

When Dafoe is onscreen, his unpredictable energy drives a deserving stake into the film’s stodgy heart.

Self-consciously poetic and shot within a luscious inch of its life, the film's also an engrossing heartbreaker: a family saga that spans continents, political administrations, and decades of travail to arrive at a harder, wiser place.

The new film lives up to expectations and, indeed, pushes past them into virtually unmapped territory.

No matter how you feel, we still get the poetry, stitched throughout the film and occasionally soaring above it like an uncaged bird: hard, far-seeing, and waiting for the day it will be understood.

One of the great newspaper comedies. [24 Nov 1989, p.112p]

Like a meal prepared by an extreme chef, ''Hustle" is more than a bit of a mess. It still tastes like nothing you've ever had before.

Much of Meru is about that second attempt, filmed with such grandeur and intimacy that sometimes attempting to figure out how they made the incredible shots almost spoils them.

Clemency observes its characters with a steady, unmodulated pace and a minimum of frills.

Kenner and Schlosser not only remind us of a danger that never went away, but honor the men whose bravery was never recognized.

As usual, Gladstone is excellent, and she doesn’t mind ceding the spotlight to Deroy-Olson. The two craft a convincing family unit, one we don’t want to see broken. And though the film hits familiar plot beats, it loses none of its redemptive power.

As luscious as the filmmaking craft here is, it lacks the rude vitality, the unpredictability, the pure American craziness of the films that should have won him (Scorsese) the Oscar: "Mean Streets," "Taxi Driver," "Raging Bull," and "GoodFellas."

Till avoids all flash. That makes it a bit didactic at times, but didacticism is a form of commitment: not so much political, though there’s certainly that, but also to emotional truth and simple human decency.

Fresh, original, and arresting.