The larger point in Citizenfour is that dictatorships have always relied on the massive gathering of information in order to control their populations. In this brave new cyber world, it is all too easy for democracies to cross the line, too.

The two leads are remarkably fresh, and so is the movie.

On its own conventional terms, the film succeeds – maybe not as a "Coen Brothers" movie, but as a tall tale well told.

Director Mark Waters does a fine job meshing the fantastical with the quotidian.

He's 9Mendes) discovered his stride here, a blend of thrills and sabotage and deep-dish emotionalism. The powerful performances by Craig and Dench surely owe a great deal to his indulgences.

The ferocity of the performances is inextricable from the men’s real-life criminality. We are baffled, moved, and repulsed – often at the same time – by the elemental spectacle before us. In this metaprison drama, the prison bars are both illusory and unbreakable. Caesar Must Die chronicles an exalted entrapment.

The eroticism is all in the fittings of fabric and the power plays of a couple who make Mr. and Mrs. de Winters in “Rebecca” seem like Ward and June Cleaver from “Leave It to Beaver.”

It's a deliciously perverse melodrama.

One of the most dreamily unsettling documentaries ever made.

It’s a delicate little fable that creeps up on you. It seems slight at first, but it’s held together by a performance from the veteran actress Kirin Kiki, playing an older lady who makes supernal dorayakis, that cuts very deep.

Jesse Moss’s documentary The Overnighters is being hailed as a modern-day “Grapes of Wrath,” which, up to a point, it is. But it’s far more complicated than that.

Like all good noirs, it has an almost comic appreciation for how the best-laid plans can go horribly wrong. No matter how bad things get, they can always get worse. I watched the film in a state of rapt enjoyment.

As it turns out, bearing Welles’s words in mind, it becomes almost a meta version of Welles’s movie. I would like to think that the great magician himself would have approved.

Despite never having made a movie before, and utilizing comparatively primitive camera and recording equipment, Kurt and his son Ian crafted a movie unlike any other in the rock-doc genre.

This movie is a one-of-a-kind experience – blarney carried to rhapsodic heights.

Judging from this film, a pop cultural resurgence in Afghanistan seems ultimately unstoppable, even with a resurgent Taliban, if for no other reason than that 60 percent of the population is under 21. Also, this is a country, as we see again and again, that loves to sing.

DiCaprio's performance is a revelation only for those who have underestimated him. In Scorsese's previous films, "The Gangs of New York" and "The Aviator," he seemed callow and miscast, but here he has the presence of a full-bodied adult. He's grown into his emotions.

One of the funniest and happiest movies I’ve ever seen about early adolescent girls and their wayward, fitful joyousness.

Essentially two movies for the price of one. But those halves add up to more than most movies right now.

All in all, a harrowing, one-of-a-kind movie.

It was beset by legal woes and held in French vaults and labs for almost 40 years. Both Neville’s film and “The Other Side of the Wind” are being released simultaneously in theaters and on Netflix. I would advise seeing Welles’s film first. It’s more rewarding and less confusing that way.

Mongol is a throwback to a more respectable tradition. The largeness of its scope arises naturally from the material, not the budget. The movie earns its stature.

I find it the most adventurous and imaginative American film I've seen this year - and also the weirdest.

Since we all know that Paris wasn’t blown to smithereens, the tension here is not in the outcome but in how it was achieved. The meeting between these two men is largely fictional, but the stakes could not have been more real.

This is the loopiest star vehicle in ages.

Edet Belzberg’s documentary Watchers of the Sky, which was a decade in the making, reclaims the reputation of Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Holocaust refugee who not only coined the term “genocide” but also invented the concept of categorizing mass murder as an international crime.

Tender Mercies builds a marvelous flow of suspense and surprise precisely by refusing to ''pay off'' on situations that would plunge toward sensationalism in any conventional picture. Add another stunning portrayal by the brilliant Duvall - who even does his own singing! - and a splendid supporting cast, and you have a movie to treasure for a very long time to come. [10 Mar 1983, p.18]

The film’s most joyous performer is the bagpiper Cristina Pato, known as “the Jimi Hendrix of Galicia,” who is such a powerhouse that she could probably upstage the Rolling Stones (in their prime).

Viewers expecting a blistering attack on the fast-food business, or an Altmanesque panorama, will be disappointed, but it's a sensitive and humane piece of work.

It’s a good bet that the director had “High Noon” in mind when he made this film, but the comparison ends there. As a compact study of wartime guilt, the film has the look and feel of a waking nightmare.

There's ample reason to stay with this series. When Harry says "I love magic," you believe it.

The wonder, the astonishment, is that these puppets are invested with a full range of human emotion.

Renner gives a full-bore performance of great individuality and industriousness, but essentially his character is as glamorized as any classic Westerner.

Night Moves may have a soft, almost dreamy feel, but at the core it’s crucially hard-headed. In its own quiet way, in how it pulls together our utopian ideals and home-grown fears, it’s the zeitgeist movie of the moment.

If 45 Days is a tragedy, it’s a tragedy without a summation. Despite the ineffably moving speech Geoff delivers to the assemblage at the anniversary party, perhaps the finest piece of acting in Courtenay’s long career, it is not at all clear where these people are headed, or what shoals await.

The film is a real rarity, made even more so by the fact that what has moved us so profoundly are a bunch of pop-eyed plasticine figures.

In some ways the movie's straightforward style is more appropriate to the horror than a more souped-up approach would have been. With material this strong, sometimes the best thing a filmmaker can do is to stay out of the way.

It provides us with a window into the psyche of a person worth caring about.

Spiritual redemption is a big theme of Narnia, but on a purely entertainment level, the movie also goes a long way in redeeming the current sad state of children's fantasy filmmaking.

One of the great achievements of this movie is that, in the end, Van Gogh’s words enter into our soul with the same force as the paintings.

The plot's many complications pretty much all add up, which is a rarity these days for a murder mystery. It's possible that audiences don't even care anymore if a film makes sense as long it's entertaining.

The action is swift and witty, and the 3-D effects are imaginative and not simply tacked on as with so many animated movies these days.

It gives ample play to all sides of the argument. Herzog allows us to think things through on our own.

Given the slam-bang slapstick featured in so many of her movies, I have to admit the subtlety and fullness of [McCarthy's] performance in this film did hit me as a shock to the system.

The marvel of Cage's performance is that, somehow, it's all of a piece. That's the marvel of the movie, too. This is one fever dream you'll remember whole.

It's really about the ways in which Chinese westernization clashes with the traditionalism of Confucian teachings. It's about competition versus piety.

All in all, a visual and musical feast.

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

The innocence of the townspeople is weirdly uplifting. They love their Bernie so much that they seem even more blinkered than he is.

A cross between "Godzilla" and "Jaws," it manages to be both truly scary and truly funny – sometimes all at once.

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.

What we do see, among much else that is damning, are archival NYPD videotapes of the boys being interrogated by detectives who press them to implicate one another in exchange for a leniency that never materialized.

Particle Fever doesn’t prompt us to say: “Gee, these superbrains are just like us, except for the brains.” The film allows for our awe. It also demonstrates that science is the most human of activities, with all that that implies.

The ongoing tragedy in Africa is too nefarious, too complicated, for any one film to do it justice, but We Come as Friends opens a wide window into this mansion of horrors.

It’s a rarity, and a real pleasure, to find a movie that presents without condescension rural working-class people, especially women.

His (Lindholm) steadfast, unvarying gaze has its own authenticity. He’s made a thriller that thrills while also respecting our intelligence.

Probably the most faithful to the writer's tortured spirit. It's the kind of movie that gets under your skin - and stays there.

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.

Bracingly perceptive about the human comedy.

If the sequels to “The Force Awakens” are as good as this film, that will probably be because they follow the same formula: heavy on the human side, more comedy, less CGI, more fresh faces, and more delightful droids. And, yes, one must pay homage to the Force.

Cumulatively, the everyday voices of those who waited in vain for help that never came, mingled with the concern of prominent national figures, presents a poignant picture of official blunders and personal loss, and provides important national lessons if another threat this size hits an American city.

The riders who appear in Buck seem almost uniformly exalted by their contact with Brannaman and his methods.

At just over two hours, Stranded is nonstop harrowing. It has cumulative power.

I wish Rowley didn’t so often dabble in standard movie-thriller-style stylistics, but his film is an exposé of practices that need – demand – exposing.

It leaves us with a question that may be unanswerable: How does one extinguish terrorism when its causes are myriad?

It's a sweet and disquieting excursion made by filmmakers whose eyes and ears and imaginations are in marvelous sync.

The remarkable thing about Smith in The Lady in the Van is that, even though the role is no longer fresh for her, the performance certainly is. She gives it everything she’s got because, you feel, she wants to honor this character. She wants Miss Shepherd to live on.

Ballard filmed across hundreds of miles of South African desert, and there are times when the whole throbbing universe seems to resound for him.

Baumbach captures the ways in which children takes sides in a war they can't even begin to comprehend.

This movie doesn't end up taking on all the problems it offers up. Meting out justice to an evil school administrator seems to be enough for now. As an enlightened and energetic film - a voice for the '90s - it is enough. [12 Sep 1990, p.11]

Factotum is so sly and low-key hilarious that anybody can be in on the joke.

In a film that overwhelmingly avoids happy-faced pronouncements, this one sticks out.

In the end, the film’s most nuanced summation comes from Wajdi, who says, “No one has a monopoly on suffering.”

The pessimism pervading this film is summed up by Shalom, who says, speaking of the decades of occupation: "The future is very dark."

As the uptight banker, Robbins does some of his subtlest acting to date. As his hardened but resilient friend, Freeman is simply miraculous, giving the role so much depth, dignity, and good humor that you feel that you've known this man forever. [27 Sept 1994]

Extraordinary stunt and fight work and nonstop excitement, but a warning to those who are at all squeamish: this may be the most violent movie I've ever seen.

The visuals are irrepressibly witty and so is the script, which morphs from the classic fable into a spoof on "War of the Worlds." I prefer this version to Spielberg's.

It appears to have been made from the inside, not only of the characters but of the historical situation in which they struggle.

Although flawed by incoherence at moments, their version is a model of literary adaptation - intensely dramatic, sharply cinematic, and full of passionate performances. In all, it's quite a turnaround from Huston's last book-inspired effort, the misfired adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's amazing ''Wise Blood." [5 July 1984, p.25]

In Zodiac, working from a script by James Vanderbilt, Fincher has decidedly toned down his act. His straight-ahead, methodical direction isn't as flagrantly unsettling as much of his previous work, but it's more psychologically layered. In this film, for the first time, we feel for his characters when they bleed.

Petit, by the way, is still very much alive and spry. I saw him at a screening of the film at the Sundance Film Festival where he spoke to the audience afterwards. On his way up to the podium, he tripped.

With scrupulous fairness, Ferguson meticulously lays out for us the whole sordid mess.

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.

This riveting drama takes courageous stands against the senselessness of war and the brutality of capital punishment, leading to one of the most ironic climaxes in British cinema. [17 Apr 1997, p.12]

The Namesake takes in a lot of territory, and at times is too diffuse, too attenuated. But the actors are so expressive that they provide their own continuity. They transport us to a realm of pure feeling.

Since music is so much more than music between these two, their filmed sessions resemble not so much rehearsals as communions.

The central conceit of The Death of Stalin is that what is funny is not always just funny. In this sense, the film is closer in spirit to “Dr. Strangelove” than, say Mel Brooks’s “The Producers.” The latter was a jape; the former was a cautionary howl.

His (Hamer) new film, 1001 Grams, is almost as good as “Kitchen Stories,” with a story equally unpromising – but only in theory.

There is so much to look at in Isle of Dogs that a second viewing is almost mandatory. You can forgive its fetishism. Mania this dedicated deserves its due.

It seems to me that too often in this country, and especially now, science has become politicized to the detriment of those who could be helped by it. Just because truths are inconvenient is no reason to suppose they are not real.

Each man is sharply characterized, and the performances are expert, right down to the cook (Toby Jones).

A young adult romantic comedy with a sweetness and delicacy that lifts it out of its genre.

Above all, literally, are the kites. When a character says, "You fly these kites and feel the joy," we know just what he means.

Because the war in Afghanistan is so much in the news now – it should always have been so – a movie like Restrepo is both a bracing document and, in a larger sense, a disappointment.

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.

The mystery of the dual plot line is also a trick – a very cleverly executed one, which baffles the audience by exploiting their ingrained responses to certain cinematic conventions. I didn't figure it out until moments before the big reveal.

It's as powerful as it is bruising, with more surprises than "Jurassic Park" and more sheer energy than any action movie this season.

The film may be subtitled "Shut Up & Sing," but you can't sing with your mouth closed.