Mikhalkov has made a new film with its own original characters and stories, and after all, it's not how the film ends, but how it gets there.

Clockwatchers is a wicked, subversive comedy about the hell on earth occupied by temporary office workers.

Poetic Turkish tale. Nuri Bilge Ceylan shot this entrancing black-and-white story in his hometown, from a story written by his sister and with a cast of friends and relatives. [20 Oct 1998, p.37]

A sly little comic treasure.

It’s a new twist on the period-piece slasher movie, smart and strange and fantastically depraved. I kinda loved it.

Redford and his writer, Richard Friedenberg, understand that most of the events in any life are accidential or arbitrary, especially the crucial ones, and we can exercise little conscious control over our destinies.

This becomes Tobey Maguire's film to dominate, and I've never seen these dark depths in him before. Actors possess a great gift to surprise us, if they find the right material in their hands.

The 1971 version of The Beguiled was blunt and overheated and a little bit nuts. The 2017 edition is more sophisticated and nuanced — but it’s still a little bit nuts.

I found it to be a fantastically creative, fourth-wall-breaking, pop-art waking dream.

A splendid movie not just because it tells its romantic story, and makes it visually delightful, and centers it on Depardieu, but for a better reason: The movie acts as if it believes this story. Depardieu is not a satirist - not here, anyway. He plays Cyrano on the level, for keeps.

What Mark does, better perhaps than either he or his father realizes, is to capture some aspects of a lifelong rivalry that involves love but not much contentment.

This film moves effortlessly from some pretty intense dramatic moments to hilarious scenes showcasing the contrasting lifestyles of the gay and straight worlds to some vignettes of incredible poignancy.

I suspect a lot of high school students will recognize elements of real life in the movie, and that the movie will build a following. It may gross as little as "Welcome to the Dollhouse" or as much as "Clueless," but whichever it does, it's in the same league.

An action epic with the spirit of the Hollywood swordplay classics and the grungy ferocity of "The Road Warrior."

The movie finds countless opportunities for humorous scenes, most of them with a quiet little bite, a way of causing us to look at our society.

We increasingly admire the quality of the acting: Both actors take their characters through a difficult series of changes, without ever seeming to try, or be aware of it.

Neither hagiography nor cold-plate dish, this is a solidly researched, well-photographed, crisply edited film that chronicles Trotter’s life with journalistic integrity, while providing fascinating glimpses into the “foodie” culture of the times, in Chicago and around the world.

Café Society is a gorgeous and lightweight confection, a love letter to the Hollywood of the mid-1930s, as well as the New York of the same era.

In D.J. Caruso's Two for the Money, you can see Al Pacino doing something he's done a lot lately: Having a terrific time being an actor.

Songwriter is one of those movies that grows on you. It doesn't have a big point to prove, and it isn't all locked into the requirements of its plot. It's about spending some time with some country musicians who are not much crazier than most country musicians, and are probably nicer than some. It also has a lot of good music.

A funny screen version of a very funny (if not very significant) Broadway comedy. It does well as an evening's entertainment.

I Am Ali serves as further testimony Ali wasn’t simply a great boxer, he was a great man who happened to be a great boxer as well.

In its descriptions of autumn days, in its heartfelt conversations between a father and a son, in the unabashed romanticism of its evil carnival and even in the perfect rhythm of its title, this is a horror movie with elegance.v

Broadway Danny Rose uses all of the basic ingredients of Damon Runyon's Broadway: the pathetic acts looking for a job, the guys who get a break and forget their old friends, the agents with hearts of gold, the beautiful showgirls who fall for Woody Allen types, the dumb gangsters, big shots at the ringside tables (Howard Cosell plays himself). It all works.

Just about every scene features an Oscar winner or an Oscar nominee or an Emmy winner and/or a first-rate character actor — and just about every scene is a bloody mix of taut thriller and utterly implausible noir plot point. This is a sordid but slick and gutsy mess that comes across like a cover-band version of a Michael Mann movie.

Drawing from behind-the-scenes footage and photos on the “Rust” set, police footage from the scene and from interrogation rooms, interviews with actors and production staffers as well as director Joel Souza (who was wounded but fully recovered) and Hutchins’ personal archives, “Last Take” is a powerful piece of work.

Writer-director Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade is a sweet and intelligent and sometimes absolutely heartbreaking slice of modern-day, eighth-grade life, which, in some ways (hello social media), is radically different from the eighth-grade experience of 1998 or 1978 or 1958, but in many ways is absolutely relatable to audiences of any age or gender.

Movies like this embrace goofiness with an almost sensual pleasure.

Ferrell and his longtime collaborator Adam McKay have a unique gift for creating characters that are human car wrecks yet somehow win our affection.

An unreasonably entertaining movie, causing you perhaps to revise your notions about women's Roller Derby, assuming you have any.

It’s a crazy kaleidoscope of bright colors, dark corners, David Lynch-style set pieces and shock moments designed to keep you up at night — and it features a quintet of memorable performances from two of the best young actors around and three iconic Brits.

With Pamela Adlon (“Better Things”) directing in a style reminiscent of the best Woody Allen and Nora Ephron movies of the 1970s and 1980s, a sharp and hilarious and poignant screenplay by Glazer (“Broad City”) and Josh Rabinowitz, and winning performances from the co-leads, “Babes” is one terrific friend-com, or should we say a mom-com, and I can already picture Eden and Dawn making fun of that latter term.

The Homesman is not an easy, comfortable viewing experience. That’s part of what makes it unique.

Like most British family films, Water Horse doesn't dumb down its young characters or insult the intelligence of the audience. It has a lot of sly humor about what we know, or have heard, about the Loch Ness monster.

Those hoping to see a "vampire movie" will be surprised by a good film.

A surprisingly effective film, touching and knowing and, like Deneuve, ageless.

It's poignant to watch the chicks in their youth, fed by their parents, playing with their chums, the sun climbing higher every day, little suspecting what they're in for.

From front to back stage, 20 Feet From Stardom is a compelling look at the spirit of these giving artists as they navigated the rapid musical and social change of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.

Guggenheim, contends the American educational system is failing, which we have been told before. He dramatizes this failure in a painfully direct way, says what is wrong, says what is right.

Thieves doesn't have the Hollywood kind of ending, where everything is sorted out by who gets shot. It is about the people, not their plot. It is about how the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons, and the grandsons.

The formula has rarely been mined to such resounding success. This is one of the funniest movies of the year AND one of the most romantic movies as well.

Not a war film so much as the story of a personality who has found the right role to play. Scott's theatricality is electrifying.

Equal parts film noir, relationship drama, dark comedy and mood piece, Digging for Fire is a movie made by someone who clearly loves the art of movies.

Sports movies have a purity of form. They always end with the big game, in triumph or heartbreak. So does The Heart of the Game, although the lawsuit still hangs over the team after the final free throw.

Levinson’s dense and richly layered, albeit sometimes overly theatrical, script affords Washington and Zendaya multiple opportunities to showcase their considerable talents and for the discourse to expand beyond the fraying relationship.

A vicious and cheerfully twisted psychological thriller dripping in deception and dread, bathed in pop-art colors and infused with a wickedly dark sense of humor.

Ruffalo plays the character with that elusive charm he also revealed in "You Can Count on Me."

At the end of The Man Without a Past, I felt a deep but indefinable contentment. I'd seen a comedy that found its humor in the paradoxes of existence, in the way that things may work out strangely, but they do work out.

An astonishing, horrific, fascinating and complex true-crime story that starts with a brutal act of murder in the late 20th century and winds its way well into the 2000s and 2010s.

Penn and Nicholson take risks with the material and elevate the movie to another, unanticipated, haunting level.

Sharp-edged, perfectly timed, funny and thoughtful.

This is an intelligent, deeply moving film that is about so much more than a rich lady with delusional dreams about her own musical abilities. It is, in fact, quite an uplifting homage to the spirit of confidence in the face of enormous adversity.

Think of how we read the thoughts of those closest to us, in moments when words will not do. We look at their faces, and although they do not make any effort to mirror emotions there, we can read them all the same, in the smallest signs. A movie that invites us to do the same thing can be very absorbing.

There’s a terrifically entertaining sequence late in the film that plays like an homage to a certain element of the original “Poltergeist,” and a thrilling and nerve-wracking extended final sequence that will put you on the edge of the proverbial seat.

It’s not easy to make an emotionally involving film in which some of the most pivotal moments are about phone calls and making copies of documents and a source circling names on a document — but save for a few overly dry moments, Spotlight prevails.

Regardless of Crudup’s ranking as a box-office draw, he’s every inch the movie star in Rudderless, a rather strange but engrossing film with one of the more jarring twists of any film in recent memory.

Fighting With My Family works as a cheeky but never condescending story of one of those “chin-up” working-class British families so often featured in the movies, and of course primarily as the story of an undersized, overmatched outcast who is determined to succeed against all odds.

If you have seen the masterful 2002 Brazilian film "City of God" or the 1981 film "Pixote," both about the culture of Rio's street people, then Bus 174 plays like a sad and angry real-life sequel.

tT never grow up is unspeakably sad, and this is the first Peter Pan where Peter's final flight seems not like a victory but an escape.

This is a parable about modern Iran, and like many recent Iranian films it leaves its meaning to the viewer. One of the wise decisions by Rafi Pitts, its writer, director and star, is to include no dialogue that ever actually states the politics of its hero.

Crooklyn is not in any way an angry film. But thinking about the difference between its world and ours can make you angry, and I think that was one of Lee's purposes here.

Reviewing The Naked Gun... is like reporting on a monologue by Rodney Dangerfield - you can get the words but not the music.

The movie is a record by well-meaning people who try to make a difference for the better, and succeed to a small degree while all around them the horror continues unaffected.

Aubrey Plaza is a sensation as Ingrid, who is alternately charming and sad and pathetic and absolutely insane. Plaza has a unique and magnetic screen presence that creates great empathy, even when she’s portraying a mostly off-putting character.

A bleak comedy, funny in a "Catch-22" sort of way, and at the same time an angry outcry against the gun traffic.

One of the many surprising delights in the bright and brassy and wonderfully funny Thor: Ragnarok is the recasting of the God of Thunder as a perpetual underdog.

The movie makes no attempt to soften the material or make it comforting through the cliches of melodrama.

While The Good Lie certainly doesn’t shy away from scenes designed to make us shake our heads at man’s inhumanity to man and scenes designed to make us dab at our eyes, it’s the kind of movie that earns those moments.

Funny and dirty in about that order.

It feels as if about 50% of this movie accurately captures the music business, while the other half is a fluffy confection of pure fantasy — and that’s a formula that works perfectly in an escapist film such as this.

Undefeated is an emotional and effective film.

The movie's heart is in the right place.

Directed by Mervin LeRoy, the film is epic in scale, with special effects that were quite advanced for their day, and a glorious film score. Some historical facts might not be quite accurate, but it won't make a difference in the end. [10 Apr 2009, p.NC18]

Even on my most Ebenezer of days, I wouldn’t have been able to resist this sentimental journey.

This is one of the most stunning visual treats of the year and one of the most unforgettable thrill rides in recent memory.

A passionate and explicit film about sexual obsession.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things is crazy good.

The performances are pitch perfect, even including Gabriel Chavarria as Ramon, the man who steals the truck. It adds an important element to the film that he embodies a desperate man, not a bad one.

Watts achieves a kind of early Coen brothers, early Tarantino feel.

Neither Connie nor Paul existed in real life, and the events in 18 ½ are pure fancy. Still, this is an eccentrically intriguing and thought-provoking chapter in the long history of Watergate-based TV series and films.

Respect is filled with memorable supporting turns, including Audra McDonald as Aretha’s mother and Saycon Sengbloh and Hailey Kilgore as her sisters, who were often in the background in more ways than one — but an old-fashioned show-business biopic such as this rises and falls on the talents of the lead, and it’s hard to imagine anyone in the world doing more justice to the legacy of Aretha Franklin than Jennifer Hudson.

Snow White and the Huntsman reinvents the legendary story in a film of astonishing beauty and imagination.

The movie suggests that humans benefitted little from Project Nim, and Nim himself not at all.

In the uncomfortably funny, unapologetically insensitive, cheerfully outrageous Jojo Rabbit, writer-director Waititi (“Thor: Ragnorak”) delivers a timely, anti-hate fractured fairy tale AND turns in hilarious work as Adolf Hitler, imaginary friend to a 10-year-old German boy near the end of World War II.

Not all of it works, but you play along, because it's rare to find a film this ambitious.

The chemistry between Rockwell and Kendrick drives the movie. They’re fast and wonderful together. But Mr. Right has an abundance of strong supporting performances as well.

For the bulk of the ride, it’s a wickedly funny interpretation of the one of the great confounding moments in American pop culture and political history.

This is one of the smartest and most provocative of science fiction films, a thriller with ideas.

Quaid is just right as the guilty husband who somehow becomes the wounded party.

A fascinating portrait of an almost likable rogue. You'd rather spend time with him than a lot of more upstanding citizens.

The young actors are powerful in draining roles. We care for them more than they care for themselves. Alfredson's palette is so drained of warm colors that even fresh blood is black.

This is the type of adventure that transports you to a world so exotic and lush and mysterious and dangerous, it feels as if we’re on a different planet.

The cinematography, the set design, the all-important soundtrack, the editing: all first-rate. This is one smart chiller.

This is easily the most absurd of the "Star Trek" stories - and yet, oddly enough, it is also the best, the funniest and the most enjoyable in simple human terms. I'm relieved that nothing like restraint or common sense stood in their way.

The widespread speculation that Exit Through the Gift Shop is a hoax only adds to its fascination.

Yes, we know these events are less than likely, and the film's entire world is fantastical. But what happens in a fantasy can be more involving than what happens in life, and thank goodness for that.

This description no doubt makes the film seem like some kind of gimmicky puzzle. What's surprising is how easy it is to follow the plot, and how the coincidences don't get in the way.

All of these films approach their subjects with such irony that we cannot take them at face value; "White" is the anti-comedy, in between the anti-tragedy and the anti-romance.