Honest, observant, and subtle.

Here is a gloriously greasy, sweaty, hairy, bloody and violent Western. It is delicious.

Radio Days is so ambitious and so audacious that it almost defies description. It's a kaleidoscope of dozens of characters, settings and scenes - the most elaborate production Allen has ever made - and it's inexhaustible, spinning out one delight after another.

Southside with You is a sweet, intelligent, well-crafted, wonderfully romantic, no-frills re-imagination of the first date between Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson.

The most remarkable thing about Rize is that it is real.

Not every joke lands, but with a brisk running time of 1 hour and 32 minutes, director/co-writer Seligman displays a keen sense of timing and a real awareness of how to make a point with edgy wit and then move on to the next target as we’re still admiring her willingness to go there, and there, and also there.

As for Witherspoon, there’s not a shred of her America’s Sweetheart persona in this work. She strips naked, literally and otherwise, in a raw, brave performance.

A visually arresting, consistently entertaining story featuring a host of endearing and memorable characters. Everyone in the ensemble is excellent, but the standout is Awkwafina, who does some of the best animated voice work I’ve ever heard.

Funny, yes, but also observant and thought-provoking.

It's a comedy, but there's more in it than that; it's a movie about the ways we pursue, possess, and consume each other as sad commodities.

On the surface, The Burial is about a contract dispute between a white small business owner and a white billionaire. Soon, though, it becomes about much more than that, and the result is a thoroughly entertaining, old-fashioned yet timely courtroom thriller.

Sir Carol Reed's Oliver! is a treasure of a movie. It is very nearly universal entertainment, one of those rare films like The Wizard of Oz that appeals in many ways to all sorts of people.

I'm not sure I feel more at ease after seeing this prize-winning film about a child protection unit in Paris. No doubt a lot of children get protected, but the professional standards of the police sometimes seem inspired by TV cop shows, on which the plots center around the camaraderie of the cops.

Miracle Mile has the logic of one of those nightmares in which you’re sure something is terrible, hopeless and dangerous, but you can’t get anyone to listen to you.

This is simply the story of one man. Yes, and on those terms I accept it, and was moved by the humanity and logic of the character.

In drawing out his effects, Amenabar is a little too confident that style can substitute for substance. As our suspense was supposed to be building, our impatience was outstripping it.

Fake It So Real filled me with affection for its down-and-out heroes, a group of semi-pro wrestlers in Lincolnton, N.C.

After seeing Awakenings, I read it, to know more about what happened in that Bronx hospital. What both the movie and the book convey is the immense courage of the patients and the profound experience of their doctors, as in a small way they reexperienced what it means to be born, to open your eyes and discover to your astonishment that "you" are alive.

The same material, filmed in America, might seem thin and contrived; the adventures are arbitrary, the cuteness of the men grows wearing, and when Nino has an accident with a chainsaw, we can see contrivance shading off into desperation.

Here is a film that dabbles in fantasy yet gets everything right about that fleeting summer when you’re between the end of your youth and the beginnings of adulthood.

The movie is brilliant, really. It is philosophy, illustrated through everyday events. Most movies operate as if their events are necessary--that B must follow A. "13 Conversations" betrays B, A and all the other letters as random possibilities.

I've seen Barcelona twice. It seemed deeper to me the second time. It appears at first to be about the casual lives of young men trying to launch their careers, but eventually (again, like an Allen movie) it reveals darker depths and meanings.

A whirling, uplifting, thrilling story with a heart-touching message that emerges from the comedy and song.

Sure, these guys now have a budget to work with and they can pull off some elaborate stunts, but we’ve seen so much viral, backyard Jackassery through the years, the shock value has dissipated and all that remains is the cringe factor and a growing feeling of restlessness as the gags become repetitive and tiresome.

Not very much really happens in Duck Season, but in its rich details, it remembers how absorbing and endless every single day can seem when you're 14.

Inception does a difficult thing. It is wholly original, cut from new cloth, and yet structured with action movie basics so it feels like it makes more sense than (quite possibly) it does.

Serenity is made of dubious but energetic special effects, breathless velocity, much imagination, some sly verbal wit and a little political satire.

A naturalist comic of inarticulate manners, writer-director Andrew Bujalski attempts the ensemble styles of Robert Altman and Christopher Guest to peer into a micro-culture in Computer Chess.