While you don’t have to be crazy about cats to enjoy this documentary, it would certainly help.

The film's maximalist storytelling, both expansive and precise, snatching specific emotions from its torrid swirl, is best exemplified by the fact that the title card doesn't appear until an hour in.

This is Pedersen's second movie for Sen in the same role (after "Mystery Road," with a reported Australian television series in the works), and his Jay is the kind of compellingly gloomy, intelligent and tough justice-seeker easily worth a whole series of politically thorny, culturally resonant crime sagas.

Come for the cold case, stay for a couple of remarkably lived-in performances from Simon Baker and Natasha Wanganeen.

A fascinating film that is as thorough as it is idiosyncratic.

What keeps "Gaslight" burning is its tantalizing aura of mystery. [10 Feb 1994, p.5]

If it weren’t for Moore and Qualley hurling themselves into the shared role, it’d be as flat as a scotch-taped pin-up. If it weren’t for Moore, I’m not even sure it would work.

Denis and Testud, in a wondrous collaboration of a gifted director and equally gifted actress, succeed in making Christine a tragic figure.

Mr. Death, which is shot through with one dark absurdity after another, emerges as a cautionary tale if ever there was one.

Gathering its forces slowly, this careful, thoughtful film, quietly but deeply moving, is dramatic without seeming to be.

Although there is real pain and suffering in It All Starts Today, it is too impassioned, too brisk and too embracing of life and human foibles to be depressing.

If you believe that bringing the questionable virtues of "American Idol" to Afghanistan would do that beleaguered nation no favors, the remarkable documentary Afghan Star will change your mind in an instant.

Sublime psychological thriller.

The most hopeful — and the best — of this solid and unsettling series.

If it verges on being a little too pleased with itself for its own good, that's an acceptable price to pay for something that makes you smile.

the first techno-misfire from Walt Disney Pictures, an over-elaborate film that leaves you feeling harangued, harassed and assaulted.

The Starling Girl doesn’t always hold our attention, mainly due to an occasionally shaggy pace that forgets we’re often ahead of the plot. There are also two endings: one built on a choice of Jem’s that’s incredibly stirring and naturally tense, but then a subsequent scene with music and dance that reads more like something scripted to be a meaningful bookend.

Denis’ coolly appalling vision gets an infusion of warmth from [Robert] Pattinson, an actor of brooding intelligence and remarkable physical grace.

The film is a feat of maximalist and moody production design and cinematography, but the tedious and overwrought script renders every character two-dimensional, despite the effortful acting, teary pronunciations and emphatically delivered declarations.

This is a rebellious, empathetic adventure story about a grandmother who catches on that her society needs to learn how to think freely.

Exploring a Lao family's experience during and since the Vietnam War, the film chronicles the treacheries of geopolitics and the upheaval of exile.

Wong brilliantly blends musical styles and eras to create an intoxicating mood.

Transformer beautifully captures the process of Janae crafting her own sense of femininity, unique to who she was and who she continues to be.

The stately rhythms of the dialogue — drawn out by the particulars of Davies’ blocking, framing and editing — become a kind of music. The effect is bewildering at first, then absorbing, then transfixing. Its purpose, in line with the loftiest ideals of poetry itself, is to clear the mind and stir the soul.

The whole point of this illuminating and often moving film is that all of these people have a tale to tell — and one that’s not as simple as Hollywood would have it.

The introduction of a baby that Tonny supposedly fathered feels worrisome initially...but in Refn's skilled street-realist hands, the child becomes a potent, wailing metaphor for Tonny's own dilemma of rudderless need.

If there is a through line that unites all the women in Abortion: Stories Women Tell, it’s that they take the potential responsibilities of parenthood very seriously. And no matter how tough and self-reliant they are, this decision is always an impossible one, and one that the outside world's unbending attitudes do not make any easier.

Tickling Giants surprises us on several levels. It reveals Egypt’s familiar Arab Spring experience through a lens, that of satiric comedy, which is very different from the way we usually see it. And it has the personal element of Youssef’s involving story, showing what can happen when your dreams come true to a completely unexpected extent.

Brilliantly choreographed and shot, Kung Fu Hustle is often grisly, visually spectacular and unabashedly silly, sometimes all at once.

Self-conscious about its heroism with portrayals that lean toward the glib and the professionally uplifting, the film milks our sympathies too readily to be emotionally convincing.

It’s a rousing and illuminating tribute to a brilliant musician who burned out quickly, but burned so brightly.

Though the Meru climbing and outdoor footage is spectacular, it is the personal struggle of each of the climbers, and the candid way they talk about them on camera, that give this film its considerable impact.

It’s both an overstuffed box of postmodern delights and a classically Dickensian repository of whimsy and charm.

Even in a film that makes no bones about presenting its subject in a flattering, softening light, this 89-year-old stage and screen legend has refreshingly few qualms about saying exactly what she thinks.

It’s a sterling piece of American realism, powered by the transfixing spectacle of a great actor at the peak of her powers.

Lots of documentaries these days will tell you to be afraid, to be very afraid, but few will scare you as coolly and as convincingly as Command and Control.

Tremblay’s template for on-the-run suspense is effective, primarily by avoiding the exploitative in favor of scenes that drive home the feeling of lives susceptible to being uprooted.

A lot of this is quite well done, but Bromell has a tendency to have too schematic an aesthetic agenda for his story: treating film noir like kabuki is not necessarily the best way to go, no matter how beautifully you do it.

No matter what you've been used to, Idaho is something completely different, a film that manages to confound all expectations, even the ones it sets up itself. [18 Oct 1991]

Tainted or not, Hughes' life was a remarkable one, and, flawed or not, Scorsese's film version deserves the same accolade.

It’s a humane, compassionate film, simultaneously full of beauty, sadness and struggle.

Till is more understatedly effective, and Deadwyler’s performance at its most powerful, when Chukwu resists and even undermines the template of the prestige biographical drama she only appears to be making.

Bleak childhoods make for the best cinema, and Ratcatcher stands at the head of the class.

An honest title for a film that is almost entirely conversation. Yet its rich contemplative tone proves deceptive, for its director, Portugal's preeminent filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira, at 96, still knows how to pack a wallop.

Marvin's performance, much enhanced by "The Reconstruction," is a marvel.

Terrence Malick’s Voyage of Time: The Imax Experience is a glorious cosmic reverie, a feast for the eyes and a balm for the soul in these angry, contentious times.

Looking at combat from all sides, examining the pride, the anger and the regrets, is what this fine documentary is all about.

Moving in its humanity and forceful in its pragmatism, the documentary feels like essential viewing, especially for decision makers with the power to enact similar initiatives.

With clinical dispassion and narrative elegance, Breillat has constructed what she calls "a thriller about denial."

A low-key, near-total charmer, writer-director Charles Poekel's Christmas, Again captures something ineffably moving about the holiday grind.

Pribar’s humane and heartbreaking drama is beautifully photographed and performed; a loving, warm, and even sexy film about death and dying that is teeming with life.

While the situation seems at times dire, Trapped contains a distinct hopeful streak that is at once defiant and singularly human.

Liu gives you plenty to listen to, but don't forget to look: Beyond the formulaic thriller plotting and the showy verbiage, it's the movie's richly textured vision of urban decay that stays with you.

Gibney’s film cuts across subjects and genres with its own fluid, quicksilver intelligence.

If the story is a welter of subplots, tangents and ideas — to the point of being overly taken at times with its own conceptual daring — Peele’s visual craft shows an admirable finesse and discretion.

Focusing on the last 15 years in the life of mercurial actor-director Orson Welles, the bulk of which was spent trying to complete his passion project, “The Other Side of the Wind,” the impeccably assembled production employs Neville’s virtuoso touch to provocative effect.

Because no one compensates for a thin concept like the people at Pixar, there is a lot to admire in the animated “Dory,” including stunning undersea visuals and an ocean full of eccentric and engaging aquatic creatures. But, as the 13-year gap between “Nemo” and “Dory” indicates, this was not a concept that cried out to be made.

Aside from a riveting adventure story that Herzog tells in all of its terrifying, stripped-down simplicity, Rescue Dawn is a fascinating study of human particularity.

No Way Out's greatest prize is Costner, a leading man at last: fiercely good, intelligent, appreciatively sensual in a performance balanced perfectly between action and introspection. It's a movie that lends itself to more than one sitting, and when you go back, armed with full understanding, Costner's work seems even better than the first time, richer, more complex and many layered.

The overall effect is of something too large to fully comprehend, yet also too intimately sad to ignore, the kind of dilemma that Ai believes speaks directly to who we are as human beings — that ingrained desire to better ourselves, the right to migrate toward safety and prosperity, and the belief we’ll find solidarity in that quest.

No film with as many elements as Happy Feet is successful with all of them, and the romantic-emotional elements of this story feel overly familiar. But the music and dancing are fresh and new, and this strong an ecological message has not been seen since Hayao Miyazaki's "Princess Mononoke."

A compelling piece of work that turns out to have unexpected relevance to the current world situation.

With observant fluidity and that grounding point of Qi's desire to fight once again, Chang roots the film in personal, individual stories, keeping larger metaphors for the nation at the edges.

Violet never progresses. It’s just one long, slow wallow. That said, Devos and cinematographer Nicolas Karakatsanis devise so many striking images that the movie is always a pleasure to watch.

Even if you don't fancy raw fish, "Jiro" is a captivating film.

The tension never lets up throughout Longlegs, though it is peppered with a dry, black humor that somehow just makes everything more disturbing.

If its wobbliness doesn't always serve its commanding central performance, the movie does mark a sensitive, low-key approach to outsiders of any kind, one that legitimizes their struggle without selling them as ready-made saints.

Although the film builds an effective sense of dread and contains its share of unnerving visuals and well-timed scares, it proves far more psychological thrill ride than shockfest.

That bland, opaque quality is a disadvantage here; whatever else [Depp] is capable of, making audiences feel his pain is not at the top of the list.

As with his 2016 documentary “Tower,” which recounted a 1966 mass shooting in Texas, director Maitland is most concerned with those whose stories get buried beneath the headlines.

It's a film of exceptional technical virtuosity that could have used some help in the dramatic department.

A vibrant and transfixing revelation, You Will Die at 20 is as novel a vision as we may see this year. From its meaningful ideas on the here and the hereafter, its lesson for Muzamil is that after perishing a rebirth may follow.

Intelligent, involving and serious, it is as honestly emotional as Hollywood allows itself to get, a story of the search for wartime truth whose own concern for the genuine makes all the difference.

Though much of the movie was shot in secret to protect the filmmakers, Bailey and Thompson managed to create a remarkably vivid portrait of a land and its people, while bringing us two unforgettable heroes in Campbell and Freeth.

There’s certainly enough potential mayhem, desperation and danger here (including the gangsters on Sang-hyeon’s tail) for “Broker” to have become a dark, propulsive action-drama, in another filmmaker’s hands. But Kore-eda focuses on — and mines — the grace notes, better angels and soulfulness of his characters in such lovely and relatable ways that we’re grateful for his humanistic, more empathetic priorities.

Dated, but rousing 1944 dramatization of the planning and execution of first bombing raid over Tokyo. [24 Dec 1998, p.F12]

Artfully and cleverly, the sweet spirit of that young bear from darkest Peru and his many London misadventures materializes brilliantly on screen in the very good hands of writer-director-conjurer Paul King.

What Polley achieves here is an artful, incisive distillation of Toews’ arguments, effectively if somewhat visibly engineered for clarity and brevity.

Australian Mendelsohn (sporting a pitch-perfect American accent) and Reynolds are terrific, each wrapping himself up in the material like a well-worn favorite sweater.

Ultimately, Pollard’s film is equal parts tribute and lament, as complicated as this country.

Successfully venturesome, but you need to know that it's also a real downer.

It is the kind of distinctive, culture-driven drama from emerging filmmakers that I wish we saw more of.

Director and co-writer David Wnendt is after serious comedy here, a character study of psychic pain, wounds hereditary and self-inflicted, and body-conscious absurdity that treats the human condition with wry intelligence, not empty prurience.

By refusing to be cheap or insincere, "Fly Away Home" allows us to enjoy our emotions without feeling we've been criminally manipulated. [13 Sep 1996, p.F1]

Stands out among creative bio-pics for an ability to show art being made in a way that's as realistic and exciting as it's ever been on screen.

This modest film has virtues that come out of nowhere. It takes familiar material and develops it with such tact and skill that we find ourselves moved and sort of amazed at the same time.

Laugh-out-loud funny. [11 Dec 1997, p.F48]

What makes 51 Birch Street a moving revelation rather than a therapeutic exercise is Block's commitment to understanding his parents, Mike and Mina, on their own terms, regardless of what it does to his image of them.

It is to González-Rubio's credit that he can celebrate nature so joyously, yet suggest neither the preferred lifestyle of either parent is superior to the other.

Mam's camera work is exquisite in its immediacy and agility. One of the most striking aspects of her film is the intimacy it achieves without feeling intrusive or turning her subjects into fodder for a message.

Composed of breathtaking images and cheeky bits of humor, Dencik's travelogue reveals a journey with curious traces of the past, eye-popping encounters with a wild present and — in discovering an oil company's ship in the group's midst — a weighted reminder of our future as stewards of the Earth.

Icaros is a mini-epic of serene, intelligent mind-body wooziness.

Although this well-acted film, which was Israel’s official submission for the 2022 international film Oscar, is a bit slow-going, it presents a timely, pointed, at times cleverly satirical snapshot of Israeli-Palestinian relations. It also offers an often poignant look at a dysfunctional family at the center of it all.

If your recipe for outrage needs a villainous presence, Peck isn’t interested in stoking it that way, and shouldn’t need to. That’s not the oxygen Silver Dollar Road, building off a 2019 ProPublica article by Lizzie Presser, wants to breathe. Rather, it’s the warmth, togetherness and persistence of a family fighting a ruthlessly unfair system, holding onto each other as forces move to expel them.

1942's Mrs. Miniver seems dated in today's contemporary world. Nevertheless, it's still an inspiring, well-made, patriotic drama. [05 Jan 1997, p.4]

Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but Argentine writer-director Damián Szifron allows it to sit until it congeals in the dreary six-part anthology Wild Tales.

This is a blistering drama, intense, disturbing and inescapably thought-provoking, a film that gets its power from a merging of potent opposites.

Memories in popular music are notoriously short, and if you’ve forgotten how extraordinary a singer Linda Ronstadt is, how wide a range of material she’s explored and how deep her commitment to the art and craft of music is, Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice is a potent, mind-expanding reminder.