In giving historical context to the poisonous nature of our oft-bemoaned political discourse, "Best of Enemies" showcases brainy bloodsport with humor, nostalgia and, appropriately, a lacing of melancholy.

Like the best of dreams, familiar yet wondrously different, On Body and Soul adroitly mixes recognizable cinematic tropes with extraordinary ideas that are very much the filmmaker's own.

The rightfully disturbing Buzzard emerges as a true original.

The more things change, the more we have to laugh if we are to have a prayer of remaining sane, and the Pythons are the best possible step in that direction.

Guzzoni’s directorial hand chooses to move with restraint where others would exploit the despair on display for melodramatic manipulation. His focus is on the moral grays.

God’s Country is a film that wants to disarm you at every turn, and it often succeeds with a transfixing, acute spirit of retribution against society’s toxic racial and gender power dynamics.

A great gangster film...Shanghai Triad is one of the lushest-looking, most stunningly photographed (by Lu Yue) films of the year, but its depiction of unabashed material splendor is instantly eclipsed by the natural beauty of this island retreat with its swaying pampas grass, magnificent skies and modest structures of simple beauty.

Hairspray is a deliriously fast and funny satire of the '60s that marks John Waters' best shot yet at mainstream audiences. [25 Feb 1988, p.1]

Grass, true to its title, is small, sharp and bladelike. It may strike you as more of the same until you see it and its implications and possibilities begin to grow and multiply.

The powerfully disturbing Red Riding trilogy will haunt you waking and sleeping, night and day. If you survive the watching of it, that is, which is no easy thing.

A superb bit of tongue-in-cheekery, stylish and fun but also deeply affectionate. [11 Aug 1985, p.5]

Personal Shopper is a gripping portrait of solitude, which is to say it’s a hell of a one-woman show for Stewart, the rare actress who can blur into the background and magnetize the camera in the same scene.

The gritty, low-budget realism approach of the Dogme manifesto gives immediacy and edge to the raw emotions Bier and her cast uncover. Best of all, Bier never forgets that a little humor can relieve an awful lot of pain.

The film is never more real than when Jimmy unloads his anger on someone close to him, a frequent occurrence. Eminem is an actor with a rare gift for rage, and movie careers, even big ones, have been built on less.

By choosing to bludgeon the audience with ever-worsening tales of woe, Once Were Warriors paradoxically blunts its power, though the truth is that people may be too shell-shocked to notice. [03 Mar 1995, p.F1]

[Filho's] mastery of pacing, theme and stylistic eccentricity throughout Neighboring Sounds is so assured as to be breathtaking. Don't miss it.

The Ghost Writer is the kind of impeccable adult entertainment, able to alternate edge-of-your-seat episodes with bleakly comic moments, that Hitchcock used to specialize in and that Polanski himself realized so successfully in "Chinatown" and "Rosemary's Baby."

It’s also worth remembering that someone as complex as Alvin Ailey isn’t going to be captured in any one film. Ailey is, therefore, best absorbed as an elegant, impressionistic primer, a chance to bask in his mastery of movement and dance, as framed by those near enough to him to know what it took out of him to gift it to the world.

There may be no fancy filmmaking steps in “Alive and Kicking,” but the jaw-dropping improvisations and physical intimacy of the dancers make it an action film par excellence — joy-fueled and gravity-defying.

Like the remarkable films Eastern European countries turned out regularly during the Soviet era, it marries a character-driven story with social concerns, in this case a deft parable about the kind of corrupt privileged society nominally egalitarian Socialism created.

Mendelsohn and Davis, among the finest Australian actors working today, are both awfully good at villainy, which is why their characters’ emotional restraint and fundamental decency here feels refreshing as well as true.

By turns sweetly amusing and surprisingly unnerving, crammed with story, song and computer-generated visual splendors, it's such a model of modern crowd-pleasing entertainment that it brings to mind a celebrated quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald about filmmakers who were "able to keep the whole equation of pictures in their heads."

This may not be exact history, but it certainly makes an impression.

Bolt’s ethically engaging, easy-to-grasp and artfully conceived film covers a wide range of areas that stir us to think about benefits and costs.

Favier carefully dissects the complex power dynamics at play, as well as the emotional devastation that results from the abuse. It’s an honest, and surprisingly, even hopeful portrait.

The music is memorable, Michael Kidd's choreography is energetic and the cast is game. But there's a certain spark missing that would have transformed it from good to great. [25 Apr 2006, p.E2]

Fear of retaliation often keeps faculty and administration from speaking up for students or talking at all, and six university presidents declined to be interviewed here. If it does nothing else, The Hunting Ground should make that kind of evasion more difficult in the future.

Self-aware, funny and articulate, blessed with a first-class temperament, Ferencz is front and center telling his own tale, which includes being the key player in what’s been called the biggest murder trial in history.

This delicious satire about aging hipsters and their discontents is everything we've come to expect from the best of Noah Baumbach, as well as several things more.

A rich, unstable alloy of history, legend, musical pageantry and cinematic psychedelia, it mounts an argument for mind-expanding, complacency-rattling art in a world that often prefers the opposite.

Dickinson’s first feature is so assured in every other regard that you can give him a pass for these interludes. Urchin establishes him as a filmmaker to watch: a storyteller willing to look at a thorny subject and admit that there are no easy answers.

It's clear that an exceptional body of work is coming out of this country at this particular time and place. It's not necessary to categorize these films to enjoy them, it's just necessary to go.

Writer-director Jonas Carpignano glosses over much of the sociopolitical context in his depictions of the chain of events.

There’s no overarching life-story chronology; biographical details emerge in bits and pieces. The director doesn’t wring maudlin tears from her subject’s ordeal, in part because Jones never asks for pity.

It’s disappointing that the story machinations get in the way, because the lived-in heft of Collins’ turn is better suited to the atmospheric portrait inside “Jockey,” the one scored for tonal moodiness by Bryce and Aaron Dessner, than the story that shoehorns in a dubiously engineered motivation late in the film for added drama it didn’t need.

Even with some flaws and flailing, Dallas Buyers Club is a rough, raw, ragged and exhilarating ride.

Even as the movie captures Williams’ recklessness, it’s also a convincing sketch of his artistic growth and commitment.

Prophet's Prey is a sobering reminder that tyrannical monsters who hide behind religion can be homegrown too.

A film of flowing, redemptive beauty and poetry, at once immediate yet classic in its simplicity of form.

This comprehensive and charming film not only recalls those days exactly, it also manages the wonderful trick of taking us back there along with it.

This is a train wreck you think you see coming, but no matter how prepared you are the nature and extent of the damage will overwhelm you.

This is the rare Morris movie that feels led by the personality of its star figure, in this case Dorfman’s wry positivity and love of what she does, rather than his need to probe.

Dead Lover, in all its stinky, sexy, queer and grotesque glory, is one of the grossest and loveliest films about love I’ve ever seen. This one’s for the horny, hopeless goth inside all of us.

Director Yoonessi and deGuzman perfectly balance the contrast between Joy’s cuteness and innocence and the darkness and sexuality of her experience.

An exhilarating vérité work by first-timer Manuel von Stürler, the documentary follows this seasonal migration, or transhumance, with a sense of quiet awe and intimacy, capturing the feel of cold rain, deep snow and the comforting heat of a campfire.

The film, which debuted last year at Sundance, covers considerable, resonant socio-political ground while being anchored by the compelling performances of its’ leads.

This is the finest work of Arcel’s collaboration with longtime cinematographer Rasmus Videbæk. They craft this Nordic western epic with an eerie beauty and an eye toward the kind of startling violence that can erupt unexpectedly in lawless frontiers.

For the most part, Ford has done good by the film, infusing a sad story with warmth and humor to spare. While loss is what makes George's experience universal, heart is what gives him such life.

There is energy and inventiveness enough here to stamp it as one of the year's most interesting films. Although it's virtually impossible to look at anyone else when Newman commands a scene, and although each man is exploring his character at completely different depths, Cruise is at least willing to extend himself; he gives the sense of a young actor who is working to grow. Add the edgy, indolent Mastrantonio and you have an electrifying unholy trio. The picture is, however, in the pocket of the old pro, who is still, in Fast Eddie's own words, some piece of work.

Introduction’s economy is deceptive, its staying power surprising.

The film belongs to Foster. The actor always makes the most of what is handed him, though he's usually required to find his footings around the margins, as he did as the crazed cowboy in "3:10 to Yuma" or the crazed druggie in "Alpha Dog."

Practice has delivered something close to perfection as this new film offers a startling experience that takes you down into the Great Barrier Reef without the expense, hypothermia or oxygen tanks.

A masterpiece by any measure, is fresh, immediate and contemporary, but its wintry yet warm perspective is suffused with the wisdom and experience of a great filmmaker who turns 85 on June 2.

It's a satisfying comedy in which the humor actually develops from character rather than plot. [15 Mar 1987, p.5]

A performer of formidable self-absorption, Johnston has inspired a film with the same trait, and the results are about what you might expect.

There is bitter and breathtaking truth in the story and in the story- telling, which won Fukunaga the directing and cinematography award in the dramatic competition at the Sundance Film Festival.

Like many music documentaries, this film suffers from the tendency to reiterate its point too often.

While it’s sometimes dizzying in its visuals or its joy, it’s often not cute. It can be fun, even exhilarating. It can also carry the emotional impact of loss.

A chilling portrait of how fanaticism can grow and be enabled, this is a matter-of-fact film that moves with an awful inexorability toward its foregone conclusion.

This is a profound and difficult film, an attempt to grapple with the existence and mindless perpetuation of evil, and to suggest both the fleeting satisfaction and the eternal futility of vengeance. Nothing about it is easy, and everything it shows us matters.

These kinds of merciless conditions lead to a culture that is stoic about life and death and a story that will surprise you by its willingness to embrace that unsentimental natural world.

A ferocious psychological drama with the pace of a thriller, Child's Pose combines, as have the best of the Romanian new-wave films, a compelling personal story about mothers and sons with an examination of socio-political dynamics in a way that is both intense and piercingly real.

Weitz's film moves from clunky domestic dramedy to genuine feminist odyssey.

Presence is being sold as a ghost story, but it’s more like a family drama disguised under a sheet. The eye holes are the only thing separating it from a thousand other ordinary little films about the injuries people do to those they love. Otherwise, the story doesn’t have enough flesh on its bones to hold our interest.

Harding’s story, in this overly broad retelling, is not especially strong on narrative density — or, for that matter, ambiguity.

[An] incisive and absorbing documentary.

A striking and maddening delivery system for art house creepinesss.

The film's concluding sequence is bound to polarize audiences.

Ulee's Gold stands out for its sureness, its quiet emotional force and writer-director Victor Nunez's ability to find and nurture the mystery and power in the events of an ordinary life.

A film of stunning impact.

A fascinating exercise in genre reinvention, a showcase for two radically different approaches to homage.

A fascinating, skillfully assembled chronicle of the rise and inevitable fallout surrounding the granddaddy of the environmental activism movement.

Clear-eyed, compassionate and compelling, the documentary “The Price of Freedom” efficiently unpacks and debunks the myths it posits the National Rifle Assn. of America has deployed to further its all-guns-all-the-time agenda and foster a culture war.

Caesar Must Die shows us in the starkest possible terms the electric power of drama to move and touch not only audiences but the actors who bring so much of themselves to their performances.

In its leisurely, exceedingly subtle way, The Pool charts Venkatesh's gradual awakening to the larger world.

Benda Bilili! earns its exclamation point. It's a feel-good movie that actually makes you feel good, a story that will have you shaking your head in astonishment and moving your feet to some unstoppable rhythms.

It is the achievement of Gerhard Richter Painting to shine a light on that hidden, private act as few other films have done.

Think Guy Maddin as the long-lost seventh Python. But it’s also one of the more vivid and amusing excursions in a year marked by unclassifiable realities and the need for diverting art.

The film acutely captures the topsy-turvy uncertainty of life during wartime, where there's Burger King and land mines and Pizza Hut and snipers.

Maestro holds its contradictions in balance; it sees the complexity and the tragedy of Lenny and Felicia’s romance, and also its undeniable tenderness and passion.

A wholly unexpected film, as heady and surprising in its humor as in its emotional texture.

Rachel Lang’s first feature isn’t about placing Ana on the road to her life’s purpose; it’s a serpentine trip through impetuous leaps forward and messy retreats.

Project Hail Mary is wholesome science fiction that satisfies like a jumbo serving of apple pie and milk.

Catnip for comedy nerds and psychoanalysts, "Jim & Andy" works as both a vibrant raising-of-the-dead for the crazed, showbiz-piercing genius that was Kaufman — there's plenty of footage from his performance-art career — and a peek into the mind of a massively talented, box office-busting comedy star at a self-doubting, turbulent time in his life

For most of its running time, Relic feels more like a chamber piece than a full-fledged horror outing, but a nail-biting third act ups the ante.

A documentary that shouldn't have to be made, about a law that needn't exist, explored via a crime that could have been avoided: 3 1/2 Minutes, Ten Bullets is a thought-provoking, mournful experience, perhaps more so in the wake of the killings in Charleston, S.C.

The most gripping parts of Advocate are the film’s fly-on-the-wall cinéma vérité sequences of Tsemel at work, meeting with clients’ families, navigating the legal system and conferring about cases with fellow attorneys and her staff.

Joy and redemption aren't exactly punk mantras, but A Band Called Death might just give your heart a thrashing.

With her unblinking but nonjudgmental eye, Spheeris doesn't shy away from the horrifying, at times violent messes these kids make of their lives, but she is always sensitive to the pain behind everything, to the unhappy futility of squandered potential.

It’s easy to give in to despair. What We Feed People makes clear is that you can help with a simple, small act of empathy.

Powered by unbridled optimism, Gameau defies skeptics by doing his homework and bringing receipts.

While the setting may be humble, Margolin captures the unlikely beauty of the Valley, and injects thrilling suspense into this yarn, one that transforms quotidian dramas — like making an unprotected left turn, or closing pop-up ads on a webpage — into nail-biting action sequences.

In the end, even in the howling high frequencies and the nihilistic night, this R-rated movie misses its best shot. It doesn't talk hard enough. [22 Aug 1990, p.5]

Clear-eyed and urgent.

The history of slavery was vividly relived through the memories of a fictional 110-year-old woman beautifully played by Cicely Tyson in a story adapted for TV by Tracy Keenan Wynn and directed by John Korty. The climactic scene, when Miss Jane defiantly drank from a "whites-only" water fountain, was one of TV's most memorable moments in one of TV's most memorable movies. [23 Apr 1989, p.25]

The film is pleasantly reminiscent of ’90s neo-noirs in both style and storytelling, but with a narrative fearlessness and visual imagination that makes it totally fresh.

There’s also a fascinating dive into the inequalities that bedevil Boys State and Girls State themselves, reminding us how organizations often embody, at a structural level, some of the very problems they’re ostensibly trying to rectify.

The film is then not so much a meditation but a reverie, a swirl of emotions and ideas, managing to be both calmly reflective and skittishly anxious at the same time. Calvary is a serious comedy, a funny drama, a ruminative film about life and a lively film about death.