A film of haunting mystery and buried sexual hysteria.

The pairing of Law and Coon as a married couple doing an extended love/hate dance in The Nest results in an absolute master class in acting.

In the hierarchy of great movie chase sequences, the recent landmarks include the chases under the Brooklyn elevated tracks in "The French Connection" down the hills of San Francisco in "Bullitt" and through the Paris Metro in "Diva." Those chases were not only thrilling in their own right, but they also reflected the essence of the cities where they took place. Now comes William Friedkin, director of "The French Connection," with a new movie that contains another chase that belongs on that short list.

Ford v. Ferrari expertly captures the essence of mid-20th century racing, and the spirit of the men who went to battle in Le Mans.

Pedro Almodovar's new movie is like an ingenious toy that is a joy to behold, until you take it apart to see what makes it work, and then it never works again.

McQueen is great in Bullitt, and the movie is great, because director Peter Yates understands the McQueen image and works within it. He winds up with about the best action movie of recent years.

We're fully aware of the plot conventions at work here, the wheels and gears churning within the machinery, but with these actors, this velocity and the oblique economy of the dialogue, we realize we don't often see it done this well. Silver Linings Playbook is so good, it could almost be a terrific old classic.

His film is more subtle and wide-reaching, the story of a man for whom everything is equally unreal, who distrusts his own substance so deeply that he must be somebody else to be anybody at all.

It is a touching story, and the musicians (some over 90 years old) still have fire and grace onstage, but, man, does the style of this documentary get in the way.

This is a must-see for anyone who loves theater, acting and especially individuals like Elaine Stritch unafraid to bare their souls — so all of us can gain more insight into the complicated essence of the human condition.

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.

It is a poem of oddness and beauty.

To say this film doesn’t follow a conventional narrative is putting it mildly. One can understand how some viewers will be thrown off, maybe even put off, by the radical change in plot course midway down the stream. I found it to be a fresh and bold and immensely effective choice.

Damon is terrific. The movie lives and breathes on his performance, and he comes through in every scene.

Here is a film that engaged me on the subject of Christ's dual nature, that caused me to think about the mystery of a being who could be both God and man. I cannot think of another film on a religious subject that has challenged me more fully. The film has offended those whose ideas about God and man it does not reflect. But then, so did Jesus.

Tells one of those rare and entrancing stories where one thing seems to happen while another thing is really happening.

A sports documentary as gripping, in a different way, as "Hoop Dreams."

What is fascinating about Ridicule is that so much depends on language, and so little is really said.

Another illustration of how absorbing a film can be when the plot doesn't stand between us and a character.

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

Director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver), who is of course British, aims to rectify that with The Sparks Brothers, a sprawling and comprehensive and cheeky film that documents the rise and fall and rise again and fall again and the leveling out and all the other peaks and valleys the group has experienced over the last 50 years.

This is Rourke doing astonishing physical acting.

For a movie audience, The Hours doesn't connect in a neat way, but introduces characters who illuminate mysteries of sex, duty and love.

Sounder is a story simply told and universally moving. It is one of the most compassionate and truthful of movies, and there's not a level where it doesn't succeed completely.

That the males play baseball and that sport is their work is what makes this the ultimate baseball movie; never before has a movie considered the game from the inside out.

Director Lears and co-writer/editor Robin Blotnick had the benefit of knowing the outcomes when they put together the film, so it’s easy to understand why Ocasio-Cortez is the primary focus. But they do an excellent job of weaving in the stories of the three equally impressive candidates.

Junebug is a great film because it is a true film. It humbles other films that claim to be about family secrets and eccentricities. It understands that families are complicated and their problems are not solved during a short visit, just in time for the film to end. Families and their problems go on and on, and they aren't solved, they're dealt with.

If a heartfelt summer comedy feels like something that the doctor ordered, then a healthy dose of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On will fill the bill.