The film’s peculiar, lingering pathos do not depend on any sort of strict genre definition. The effectiveness depends on caring about the people in the bar, waiting for last call.

A stunner: a fiercely brilliant film of such wrenching impact, nonstop drive and unpredictability that watching it becomes an exhilarating ride.

You watch the movie with an ongoing feeling of dread, and it's not a feeling that ever dissipates.

“Sunday Best,” from director Sacha Jenkins (who died this past May), is a fine effort that explores Sullivan’s commitment to pushing back against network forces, sponsors and other interested parties who were opposed to the presence — the celebration, really — of Black people on the show.

Is what we see grief porn or an epic, careerlong study in the best and worst we can find on Earth? See the film and decide for yourself.

It’s one of the most imaginative and provocative documentaries on any topic I’ve seen this year.

Sing Sing exerts a strong pull on the heartstrings — but without the hard sell or the crafty, manipulative exertion.

Turning Red is pure Pixar in its imaginative clash of genres and impulses. Yet it’s something new, too, its own cultural- and gender-specific creation. I’m eager to see what Shi does next, metaphorically and every other way.

Brilliantly funny, bracingly smart and surprisingly moving. [22 June 1988]

Small but sure, the film is like Alejandro himself: quick on its feet, attuned to a harsh life’s hardships and possibilities.

Sold as a romance, but actually is one of the funniest pictures to come out in quite some time. [15 Jan 1988]

In the tradition of indie films "Girlfight" and "George Washington," Sollett's emotive, sub-improvising style leads to pitch-perfect performances from a watertight cast in a loose, joyfully fresh film.

42nd Street is the quintessential '30s backstage song and dance movie-and one of the most influential and much-copied movie musicals ever. [09 Mar 2007, p.C6]

Swift and exciting, with no taste for the usual war movie heroics, first-time feature film director Yann Demange's film belongs on a short list of immersive, rattling, authentic fictions right next door to the fact of survival inside a war zone.

The film may be depressing. But even with a terrible, watery musical score, it's also good.

If "Nightmare" was a jazzy pop number, "Bride" is a waltz--an elegant, deadly funny bit of macabre matrimony.

The film is a master class in reactivity, and Calamy manages it with perfect dramatic pitch.

The best of Brooks' movie parodies: a high-style sendup of Universal's James Whale-directed Boris Karloff "Frankenstein" movies. [26 Oct 2007, p.C3]

Project Nim is practically irresistible. The story keeps getting odder and richer and more complicated.

Elizabeth Taylor, at 12 already a raging beauty, plays Velvet Brown -- the passionate girl who loves horses and wants to win the Grand National; it's perhaps her most perfect performance and one of her best-loved. [16 Nov 2001, p.C1]

On its own terms, thanks to two fine, committed performances and a coastline made for this tall tale, The Lighthouse works its own stubborn form of black magic, pulling ideas and dynamics from silent and early sound cinema, from early Harold Pinter plays such as "The Dumb Waiter,” and from the recesses of the Eggers brothers’ fertile imagination.

Until it develops a bad case of verbosity toward the end, it improves upon its predecessor in almost every way, delivering flashier thrills while digging deeper into its characters and adding an overlay of wit.

It's an easygoing epic -- and John Wayne, as the one-eyed, booze-swilling bounty hunter who tracks the baddies down, gives a lusty, amusingly overripe performance. [08 Oct 2000, p.49]

Yes, for every star there are five more also-rans and maybe-next-times. But there is honor and glory in being part of the blend. And, at the film's midpoint, when Clayton talks about the late-night recording session in 1969 of "Gimme Shelter," the memory takes on the glow of myth.

The first 90 minutes of Avatar are pretty terrific - a full-immersion technological wonder with wonders to spare. The other 72 minutes, less and less terrific.

Ever since she took "The Grifters" by storm, Bening has been a spectacular if often ill-used actress. Here, it's a marvelous fit of performer and role, and she makes Dorothea a dozen things at once: warm, chilly, open, wary, worldly, insecure, grave, blithe.

In both theatrical environments and open-air ones, with Wenders paying close attention to the geometrics as well as the psychology of the movement, Pina is the best possible tribute to Bausch, and to adventurous image-making.

Documentary filmmakers can make any number of rookie mistakes with their first features. Casting too wide a net is one of the most common. "La Camioneta" avoids that pothole, beautifully.

More than a great love story. It's both a lighthearted and deeply impassioned inspirational lesson about life. [4 April 1986]

Rich and stimulating even when it wanders.

The tone and feel of Wild Reeds keeps shifting between irony and sentimentality, violence and tenderness, rebellion and acceptance. And those oscillations fit the volatile nature of its subject: young love and friendship. Together with his attractive and excellent cast, Techine recalls and invokes the mood swings of youth, the intensity and bursts of near-delirious passion.

Finally! A comedy that works.

A powerful experience. [20 Jan 1995, p.B]

A shocker for devotees of stylish angst and psychological torment. You'll have to watch it with patience and great attention, but it richly rewards that patience.

Gordon's documentary proves better than 90 percent of the manufactured stories out this summer. One can breathe a sigh of relief that it was done right and not cobbled into another bad fictional comedy.

Raimi knows how to modulate his technique, as with the coolly controlled morality tale "A Simple Plan," but he's a firm believer in the power of an active, expressive camera, as well as the value of insinuation.

It is a movie about the gradual erosion of life's seeming certainties, and it's also about the destructive immorality that may lie beneath the most exquisitely composed veneer. As we watch "Chocolat," this great director and his great actress, Huppert, convince us: Evil is.

Farmiga has never been better than she is here. Rarely does she get to do comedy, and she and Clooney give Up in the Air's sustained air of engaging disengagement a heartbeat as well as a romantic charge.

The story of Harvey Milk is a tragedy, but not since Jeff Spicoli in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" has Sean Penn played such a serenely happy individual.

Schwartzman’s film is a strong, cogent examination of outrage, coolly and carefully documented, one text, tweet and reckoning at a time.

What's remarkable as we watch Lilya's plunge (and the brief, false rays of light that illuminate it) is how real Moodysson makes her plight, how intensely he makes us empathize with Lilya.

Action superstar Bruce Lee's consensus best movie and biggest international hit. Lee is a secret agent inflitrating a sinister island kung fu kingdom, battling John Saxton, Jim Kelly and the nefarious martial arts lord Shih Fien in famous set-pieces like the hall of mirror showdown.

Another great domestic comedy-drama. [08 May 2009, p.C2]

The neatest effects in U2 3D are simple ones. The wow/coolness of watching a revered superstar tilt his mic stand toward the camera creates a simple but irresistible feeling of being there in the flesh, with a phalanx of expensive digital 3-D cameras.

The stakes are important, but the film is carried by a stream of small, acutely observed moments, and the way these actors move, converse, relate and enliven Powers’s best dialogue. It’s a case of getting the best of both worlds: a strong, mellow film of urgent, historically prescient ideas expanded from a juicy theatrical premise.

Fuller amusingly mixes up his usual hard-knuckled muck-raking melodrama with a sort of soap opera, all done in raw, awesome black-and-white images. In its day, this was the locus classicus B-Movie American auteur thriller. [12 Feb 1999, p.R]

For those seeking the vibrant innovation of Tarantino's first movies or the sheer rush of "Kill Bill, Vol. 1," Vol. 2 feels like a dulled blade.

Among its many excellences, Vera Drake functions superbly as a pure thriller; the last half is reminiscent in structure and detail of Hitchcock's "The Wrong Man."

The film is a mite thin, and occasionally glib. But Baker knows where the bittersweet human comedy lies in this mother, and this daughter.

By the end of Lake of Fire, you know full well you’re in the presence of a deeply conflicted filmmaker, bound to make all sides uneasy, even enraged.

It feels fresh and unpredictable, as quietly strange as the remarkable musical score from first-time feature film composer Mica Levi.

Anne Bancroft won the Oscar playing Helen Keller's teacher, Annie Sullivan, in this intelligent adaptation of William Gibson's Broadway hit, and it's a fierce, moving job, highlighted by the incredibly savage battles between teacher Annie and pupil Helen (fellow Oscar winner Patty Duke). It's a model serious bio-drama.

The Post has a lot going for it, alongside a certain amount of hokum.

Fireworks is a great new film that takes the traditions and makes them burn and explode, in violence and beauty, flame and flower. It's a film that lights up the night, opens your eyes. [20 Mar 1998, p.C]

A fierce, brilliant film that breaks (and then mends) your heart.

Even more enjoyable than the original. [19 June 1981]

There is a great deal of value in Branagh's version, not least in his own lead performance as a soft, indefinite Henry who defines himself over the course of the play. [15 Dec 1989]

The well-loved science fiction tale of the brainy extraterrestrial Klaatu (Michael Rennie), who comes to Earth to warn the planet against its self-destructive nuclear pursuits; he winds up observing humanity close up. [06 Oct 2006, p.C6]

An unusually strong crime thriller, Eastern Promises comes from director David Cronenberg, a meticulous old-school craftsman of a type that is becoming increasingly rare.

Great Hollywood kitsch, supremely visualized by Von Sternberg and cinematographer Lee Garmes. [07 Nov 2003, p.C6]

The main thing with Cedar's film, I think, is to approach it not as a farce, not as a drama, not as a mystery, not as any genre in particular. It's a comic nightmare, in the vein of the Coen brothers' "A Serious Man," and Cedar proves masterly at playing the stakes for real.

One of the year's best documentaries.

The tensions inherent in Honnold’s singular life are many. Free Solo gives you just enough of that life on terra firma to make the heights truly dazzling.

Trouble the Water is so much better and truer and deeper and more illuminating than either of them ("Bowling for Columbine"/"Fahrenheit 9/11").

The rhythm and plotting of Misericordia subverts expectations, not with story twists but with a tonal game of three-card monte.

This is an elegant and eloquent love letter from one master filmmaker to two of his prized idols.

The issues at play in Mustang are gravely serious but the tone and rhythm is brisk, headlong and intelligently lively, like the women at the center.

[Mitchell’s] celebration of these films is seriously entertaining.

It’s dumb to measure the worth of anything by its ability to make you cry, but by the end of Driveways the feelings of the characters spill over into your own experience of watching a small, very quiet, very powerful 83-minute short story of a movie.

A genuinely charming comedy about real people challenging themselves to create new realities for laughs and a little truth, one made-up scene at a time.

Sweeney Todd may haunt you in ways you’re not used to with a movie musical. At least not since “Mame.”

While Intervista will appeal mostly to the dedicated cineaste who can appreciate its many inside jokes, Fellini displays such a ravishing range of technique and assurance that even more casual moviegoers must view this film with awe. [26 Mar 1993, p.J]

The thrilling sequel-return of Mifune's hip samurai from Yojimbo. [01 Nov 2002, p.C9]

A lot happens, some of it life-changing, some of it heartrending, parts of it (in story terms) a bit rushed or on-the-nose. The actors, unerringly well-cast, more or less take care of those last parts.

The first of Mann's great Jimmy Stewart cycle -- and one of his best. [30 Apr 2010, p.C3]

Twenty minutes in, Hardy notwithstanding, you might be tempted to bail on Locke. Don't.

The Polish thriller that made Polanski world-famous, a taut psychological drama in which a bourgeois married couple invite a hitchhiking student for a weekend of sailing. The sea becomes an arena for desire, menace and deadly games. [19 Jan 2007, p.C3]

Entertaining but frustratingly uneven.

A puzzle movie in which the puzzle is actually worth the time and effort to solve.

Half the film, written by Coogler and Aaron Covington, revels in cliches, skillfully. The other half sidesteps them and concentrates on scenes and relationships that breathe easily and draw us in the hard way: not by narrative fiat or bald calculation, but through well-written and shrewdly acted encounters.

At the end, director Wright wraps the whole thing up with a fairy-tale coda more Shakespearean than Austen-tine. Yet it all works.

Whatever the film's limitations, it's certainly engaging to watch. As is Mohamed Fellag, as Lazhar.

I don't see how you can get away from calling Cage’s performance a great one. [10 November 1995, Friday, p.C]

Blithely sophisticated, would-be French naughtiness, sleek as a bolt of silk. [08 Jan 2004, p.N1]

A more threatening embodiment of that idea, of new times that seem like old times, comes to subtly provocative life in Transit, one of the most intriguing films of the new year. Written and directed by German filmmaker Christian Petzold, it’s an audacious reminder that there’s more than one way to adapt a so-called “period” novel for a new era.

Peter O'Toole, still a British cinematic lion at 74, performs another movie miracle in the Roger Michell-Hanif Kureishi film Venus.

It’s a lot for everyone to process and I was was drawn in by the conflicting feelings colliding at all once: Mutual grief and joy, but also confusion.

Even if Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour represents a triumph of novel distribution more than a triumph of the concert-movie form, its impact will be fascinating to chart.

What happens in Night of the Kings is a piece of traditional oration and impermanent art, significantly marked by both its temporal and improvisational qualities. It’s both a power struggle and a ritual practiced by the collective within a microcosm of society housed under the oppression of the state, and a powerful demonstration of the transporting, and liberating, power of narrative.

I know of no documentary on a contemporary artist that conveys so much about the artist's work so lyrically and directly.

Muylaert's picture relates to many other South American domestic comedies pitting "the help" against the economic overlords, but this one has the grace to humanize everyone on screen. The results are both smart and curious.

Three Times is great cinema, pop romance that carries a special charge.

You can go into Anselm knowing roughly as much as I did (very little, or less), and Wenders’ latest nonfiction portrait of an artist and their environment will work, effortlessly, because it’s just plain beautiful.

Not since “Out of Sight” has a sort-of-crime-thriller, sort-of-romantic-comedy led with its sensual interests over its violent ones. That’s my idea of a good trade, and Powell is more relaxed and easygoing on screen here than ever before.

It’s less about the healing power of theater and more about the persuasive power of the right actors working with two responsive filmmakers, sidestepping pitfalls and finding little nuggets of behavioral gold en route to a most unlikely Romeo’s opening night.

127 Hours never calms down. You suspect you're only getting half the truth of what this ordeal must've been like.

Enough talk; enough flashbacks. Sometimes the best thing a mystery can do is give its protagonist a reason to run like hell.

Chomet himself has written the gentle waltz theme and other music. The piece glides by, effortlessly.