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.

The actor (Segel) creates a dreamy, solemn but subtly vibrant version of Wallace that works for him and for the material.

Should hold you spellbound.

This is simply marvelous entertainment that breathes life into a genre that I thought had been dead for a decade-the prison picture.

Wistful Depression-era Bonnie and Clyde romantic noir. [04 May 2007, p.C2]

This is one of those films that encapsulate most of its maker's key thoughts and feelings while also connecting us vividly to a fascinating past. No one who loves French film (or movies in general) should miss it.

Maiden is a grand adventure, the likes of which we don’t always see too often anymore.

Gripping, visually assured and working far above its summer-sequel paygrade, War for the Planet of the Apes treats a harsh storyline with a solemnity designed to hoist the tale of Caesar, simian revolutionary — the Moses of apes — into the realm of the biblical.

Duma, at its best, reminded me exactly why we loved movies as children: because they told stories like this, with images just as rhapsodically colorful and exciting.

A sweaty, vital masterpiece that's always one step ahead of its audience.

In every design detail, the physical production and realization of You Won’t Be Alone really does take you somewhere. However unsettling, it’s a film that knows what it’s doing.