Anderson works in animation and home movies (Lolabelle “playing” the piano is a wonder), and Anderson’s voice-over narration is closer in quality to song than to spoken word. It’s a confounding, transfixing mélange.

War Witch is most effective not when we are looking in on Komona but when we are inside her head. When she says that, in order to survive in the rebel camp, she “had to learn to make the tears go inside my eyes,” our identification with her is total.

It doesn’t put you through the emotional wringer the way its predecessor did, but it’s consistently inventive, funny, witty, and heartfelt. In other words, it’s a lot better than it has any right to be. It’s more than good enough to justify its existence.

It’s an M. Night Shyamalan movie with a PhD. Or maybe an MA.

The rhythms are Latin; the beats come from the heart. Miranda’s character-based story culminates with a twist that illustrates that home isn’t a locale, it’s a state of consciousness.

If you can handle its horror-comic grotesquerie, you'll find an enormous amount of cinematic imagination at work.

My favorite line in the movie comes when Gordon-Levitt, in a face-off with his mob boss (Jeff Daniels), informs him that he'd like to leave the business one day and move to France, to which Daniels replies: "I'm from the future; you should go to China."

What also comes through is a quietly scathing portrait of a society in which every move, overtly or covertly, is monitored.

Ballast lacks ballast. Much praised by aficionados of minimalist indie cinema – hey, who needs a plot when you've got mood? – it's a wearying slog through anomie in a Mississippi Delta township.

I have always felt that Almodóvar was at his best as an artist when he was at his most playful. Volver is about deadly serious matters of the heart, but it often has a screwball spirit. The darker things are, the funnier.

By the film’s end, the main protagonists have become more philosophical, if no less ardent, about the future of Egypt. “We are not looking for a leader,” Hassan declares. “We are looking for a conscience.” He has only to look in the mirror.

Jane Austen's deeply ironic novel loses some of its bite but little of its beauty in Emma Thompson's screen adaptation, which is fetchingly photographed and capably acted by Kate Winslet and Hugh Grant, among others.

Clooney and Payne are coconspirators, too. They know that the story they are telling is too emotionally complicated to muck up with a lot of preening and artifice. They head right into the sad and crazymaking humor of the situation. This is a modest marvel of a movie.

First Man pays lip service to the politics of the cold war that surrounded the moon shot, but it’s not that kind of movie, really. For all its scale and ambition, it’s essentially a small-scale character study. The character, Armstrong, is microscopic, and the backdrop is macroscopic. It’s an odd, uneasy fit.

Mood, atmosphere, and character are more important than story twists in this unassuming, acutely observant drama.

The personal triumphs in Happy-Go-Lucky may be small-scale but its embrace is all-encompassing. It's a wonderfully humane movie.

When class conflict stirs the viewer's attention as much as a canine hero's homecoming, it's clear that this isn't the usual (read: mindless) family entertainment.

The visuals are amazingly realistic, filling the screen with authentic effects.

Charged with humanity and compassion.

Noyce's movie pares away the novel's meditations on the futility of war and the importance of religion. It retains the book's thoughtful blending of psychological and moral issues.

What’s clear is that many of Weiner’s supporters within the mayoral campaign stuck with him only because of Abedin’s connection to the Clintons. Hey, it’s politics.

This kind of quiet ambiguity, avoiding easy answers to complex human conflicts, is all too rare in American movies.

On screen as on the stage, Glengarry Glen Ross is a powerhouse experience - forcefully written, bruisingly performed, and one of the most thoughtful American films in recent memory. [29 Sep 1992, p.11]

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is the eighth movie in the series and one of the better ones. I’d rank it behind “The Empire Strikes Back” (still by far the best) and the first film, but it’s about on par with the enjoyable last episode, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which also awakened the long-moribund franchise.

From its star-studded cast to its indelible camerawork by the legendary Giuseppe Rotunno, it's an unforgettable experience by a revered master of European cinema.

The visual style is at once deliberately archaic and slyly postmodernist, slinky and sensuous from first frame to last.

An amiable look at a bygone time and a set of ideas about the world that once held far more power and magic than it does today.

He is the least intrusive of great directors, and Boxing Gym, which is about a gym in Austin, Texas, is so offhandedly observant that, for a while, you may wonder if much of anything is really going on.

Bridges draws us deeply inside Blake’s moment-to-moment heartbreaks. He makes us root for him as we would root for a dear friend. Ultimately, his triumphs become our own.

This is a funny, sad, stunningly smart movie about the end of movies, made in Tsai's inimitable, unblinking style. No movie lover should miss it.

In both its original 1973 version and its expanded 2000 edition, this hugely popular horror yarn is less a cleverly spun story than a disjointed collection of shockeroos, surrounding a few ghoulishly effective moments with overcooked plot twists and in-your-face vulgarity. [2000 re-release]

This comedy-drama for children is made with more intelligence and imagination than many of the so-called art films that come our way, filling the screen with vivid images that ideally suit its fanciful plot.

What rescues the film from melodrama is that Legrand drew on extensive interviews with psychologists, emergency police personnel, female victims, and batterers. The bone-deep chill of real, observed experience cuts through this film and gives it a verity that at times reminded me of Frederick Wiseman’s harrowing documentary “Domestic Violence.”

Finkiel's filmmaking is so careful and cautious that it becomes plodding at times. The theme is powerful, though, and the movie's sincerity overrides its heavy-handed tendencies.

Adaptation is sort of like the mythical Ourabouros mentioned in the screenplay -- the snake that eats its own tail -- or like a series of mirrors repeating their images to infinity.

Todd Solondz's movie begins like a suburban ugly-duckling tale with many comic overtones, but it grows darker as it goes along, evoking dangers that youngsters must be alert to in today's world - from drugs to child abuse - and showing how cruel children can be to one another when grownups aren't around.

This is not intended as a movie about what a genius must endure on the path to success. Sharad’s story is much more relatable than that.

Dustin Hoffman gives the inspired performance that launched his movie career, and director Mike Nichols shows a gift for social satire that has never glistened quite so brightly since. [Review of re-release]

His movie is visually as beautiful as anything he’s ever done. Conceptually, it’s muddled. The collision between poetic fancifulness and grim reality, between peace and war, never falls into focus. Miyazaki has seized on a great theme only to soft-pedal it.

Has its pleasures, foremost being its look – a sophisticated puppet primitivism backdropped by near-psychedelic colorations.

A fascinating account, if less urgently compelling than it might have been.

Hands down the funniest movie I've seen all year and also the smartest.

Sometimes enticing, frequently savage.

Superb performances from a nonprofessional cast. It's gripping, timely, and revealing.

Most of the photographs on view in The Salt of the Earth bear witness to great suffering, and what they exalt is not the photographer’s eye but the fearful humanity that binds us all.

Turning Red hits its key points about coming of age with authenticity and without apology.

It's the year's cleverest comedy in more ways than one. The animated sequences are brilliant... Most important, the story also has dark overtones that lend a hint of seriousness to what could have been just silly. [24 June 1988]

Most of the acting is as real and warm as the characters themselves. And the streets, shops, and living rooms of Brooklyn have never seemed more inviting. [29 Jan 1988]

At once sympathetic and unsentimental, this is a model of low-budget storytelling on a human scale.

Within its limited compass, ’71 packs a punch, and the lack of political bias does give it a more encompassing feel.

One glaring question the film doesn’t raise: Why, given his history, is Tilikum still entertaining in sea parks?

Despite, or perhaps because of, these constraints, it’s one of the most cinematically alive movies of the year.

Although Gravel doesn’t make a big deal about it, Julie also represents something larger than herself. Her plight as a single working mother is far from unique. But Full Time doesn’t ennoble the working class.

The big news here is not simply that Nim was traumatized, it's that Nim was signing that he was traumatized.

The sequel is more exciting and surprising than the 2002 original, thanks largely to Molina's excellent acting. Only the strenuously comic scenes fall as flat as one of Spidey's leftover webs.

Fascinating footage goes beyond the boxing ring to document Ali's brilliance as a public personality.

I have rarely seen a movie that better expressed the revivifying nature of music. (Many of the women, not surprisingly, grew up singing gospel in church choirs and had preachers for parents.)

If I never felt entirely transported by Avatar, it's probably because the story thudded just as often as the imagery soared. But Pandora is still a good place to park yourself for three hours.

Without Bening, whose performance is a watchful and laid-back marvel, 20th Century Women, written and directed by Mike Mills, would still be borderline worth seeing because of its supporting cast.

In all, Wyler's version is a fine example of classical Hollywood filmmaking. But if you want the full experience of this dark and stormy tale, spend a few evenings curled up with Bronte's novel. Nobody has improved on it yet. [19 May 1989, p.10]

You may not feel like dancing after watching Pina – unless you have a thing for earth in your shoes – but you'll certainly know you've seen something.

All very grim and unrelenting; Michôd generates some nail-biting suspense, though it's not the sort of experience that many people are likely to enjoy.

Hugo is a mixed bag but one well worth rummaging through.

Ladybird Ladybird tackles this troubling tale with documentary-style realism, showing profound sympathy with the protagonists while dispassionately revealing the enormous divide that exists between ideals of harmonious family life, on one hand, and a network of inadequate social policies, on the other. [29 Nov 1994, p.14]

Gloria is a starting-over story that never quite picks up a head of steam. Lelio paces the action as a series of sketches, and the hit-or-miss quality of the material makes for a bumpy ride.

Arguably the subtlest, most carefully textured film of Cronenberg's career.

I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a movie that better conveys the sheer passion both performer and listener have for great music.

What gives the series its force is not just its universality but also its particularity. These grown-ups may be Everyman, but they are also singular.

A quintessential New York director made this quintessential New York movie in 1973, with Pacino at his best.

This is a movie about, among other things, pain, and it's made by someone who understands its expression.

Milk is an agitprop fantasy about the selflessness of sainthood. If anybody but Penn was playing the saint, we'd probably feel as if we were being sold a bill of goods. Instead, he just about pulls it off. Such is the treachery of talent.

This grim Danish-Swedish production is socially revealing and artistically creative, both coldly realistic and infused with compassion for its heroine and her youth culture.

One of the most entertaining films ever made by the legendary Maysles brothers and their gifted associates. [17 Apr 1998, p.B2]

Their 40-year marriage seems like more of a trial than this overweening, lightly likable movie acknowledges.

Tarantino has always been an inventive director, and in Kill Bill: Vol. 2 he's at his cinematic best, showing an ingenuity that nothing in his monster hit "Pulp Fiction" surpasses.

The acting is brilliant and Leigh's screenplay - developed through his usual process of improvisation and rehearsal - is very long on compassion, very short on preaching and politics.

If we are being asked to regard BlacKkKlansman as more than a movie, this may be another way of admitting that, on some fundamental level, it falls down as anything but revue sketch agitprop.

“Vengeance Most Fowl” encapsulates everything that makes “Wallace & Gromit” movies such a joy for children and adults. Its humor is unabashedly silly, yet slyly clever.

Audiences knowing nothing about hockey will still be able to appreciate this movie as a somewhat jaunty take on the cold war and its aftermath – and resurgence. A curious kind of cold-war nostalgia can be felt in the West these days; President Vladimir Putin is the kind of comprehensible villain Americans feel comfortable with.

As is true of most movies about “important” topics, The Post is least successful when it’s glorying in its own righteousness. If the movie has any shelf life beyond the current historical moment, I suspect it will be because of Meryl Streep’s performance.

Goldfinger happened upon a story far larger than he must have anticipated. The Flat is about the persistence of denial, and of hope.

Although it doesn't always live up to its ambitions, the film provides an offbeat portrait of universally relevant human issues. [27 Mar 1998, p.B2]

A pungent, powerful film that points an accusing finger not at religious beliefs but at flawed human institutions. It also targets social and cultural mores that are almost medieval in their patriarchal bias against girls and women.

Cronenberg has a distinctive style – deadpan absurdism laced with fright and all executed with slow deliberation. But too much of Eastern Promises is cultish and silly.

At its best when it gets into the cutthroat dynamics of academic competition, which are both horrifying and amusing.

Touching, transfixing, unique.

A marvelous documentary that brings home the terror and heroism brought forth by the Katrina debacle.

A considerable achievement even if, on balance, it's more of a Tim Burton phantasmagoria than a Sondheim fantasia.

Avoiding the clichés and condescension that characterize many films on religious figures, the movie is at once a compelling drama and a thoughtful look at faith-related issues on personal, social, and cultural levels.

Broderick and Witherspoon give perfectly matched performances at the head of a first-rate cast.

This unconventionally structured thriller moves at an energetic pace, spurred by a string of clever variations on conventional film narrative.

Suspenseful, surprising, and psychologically rich.

In the end, the finest achievement of Wright's movie is that it fully captures what Martin Amis, writing on Pride and Prejudice, said of Austen: "Money is a vital substance in her world; the moment you enter it you feel the frank horror of moneylessness, as intense as the tacit horror of spinsterhood." All that, and a great love story, too.

There are wonderful sequences strewn throughout, like the moment when Lazhar, at a school dance, begins to slowly sway to the music as if in a trance.

The screenplay is by Hanif Kureishi, who wrote "The Mother" for Michell and also scripted the classic "My Beautiful Laundrette." He has a feeling for outsiders.

This is Hollywood's most mature treatment of the '50s-nostalgia theme so far, and the most accurate.

A pungent pleasure from start to finish.

The film would be more informative if it put Goldsworthy into the broader context of modernist art movements. It's visually ravishing from start to finish, though.