Though its protagonist is a 10-year-old girl, it is a crackling good tale with a sense of wonder and mystery strong enough to captivate any age group. [03 Feb 1995, p.F1]

Working from an excellent screenplay (by Chika-ura and Keita Kumano) that’s a finely tuned model of narrative empathy, and boasting an all-timer portrait of decline by the great Tatsuya Fuji (“In the Realm of the Senses”), it conveys both keen insight into a tough situation and, at the same time, intriguingly lets some workings of the heart and mind remain impenetrable.

Babygirl’s erotic scenes are hot. But really, Reijn is doing her damnedest to get a moral rise out of us. Romy and Samuel have safe words, yet our own national conversation about sexual ethics gets tongue-tied whenever it tries to define right and wrong. Instead, we have Reijn asking uncomfortable questions.

Like its black anti-hero, the mapantsula (Zulu for small-time crook ) of the title, the movie makers do their job with swiftness, guile and gall. It’s a moral drama in disguise.

Holy Cow achieves its own special texture and flavor the more its central character boils, curdles and cools.

Not quite a thriller and not quite a horror movie, April is all the more haunting for never pinning down the roots of Nina’s retreat from life while dedicating herself to improving the lives of others.

Sight gags baked into the production design (the books the Gromit reads or the signs that populate the sets) and gnome puns aplenty make for a ride in which every frame packs a dense layer of comedy, at times conspicuous, others not so much.

Rudd and Robinson’s scenes together are great.

The potent image-making and performative ferocity turns what could have been a crime thriller into a near-metaphysical showdown.

With its inspired sight gags and comic mishaps, the deceptively artless-seeming "Mr. Hulot's Holiday" is as blissful as a sunny day at the beach. [02 Feb 1995, p.F4]

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

In its graceful intertwining of meditation and obscenity, Afternoons of Solitude gives an ancient, controversial tradition the chance to shock and awe without hype or favor. It’s inhumane, it’s human and it’s a hell of a film.

In its simple, generous spirit of giving these creatures palpable narrative power, there’s a profundity: Flow might only be imagining their coping skills without us, but it’s a charming, poignant vision of community and perseverance we could stand to be inspired by.

Mary and Max’s jauntiness fades into a sadness that culminates on a note of self-acceptance -- and a great gratitude for the sustaining, redemptive power of friendship.

It's an '80s "road" film -- in the '70s vein of "Five Easy Pieces" or "Two Lane Blacktop" (which Wurlitzer wrote) -- and it's almost a little masterpiece: morally brave, beautifully measured, funny, sad and powerful. With quiet skill, it tears open and subverts some glittery fantasies of the American dream. [11 Mar 1988, p.27]

By the time “The Sacrifice” comes full circle it emerges itself as a symbolic gesture of great emotional impact. We may share Alexander’s sense of impotence, but Tarkovsky turns such feelings into a work of art.

From its first romantic encounter, as two pairs of eyes lock across a crowded room, to its last tremulous one, "Crossing Delancey" is unqualified pleasure, bound on every side by love. [31 Aug 1988]

Power shields its misdeeds with propaganda, but Panh sees such murderous lies clearly, giving them an honest staging, thick with echoes.

It answers Riefenstahl’s carefully chosen narrative, a fable of disillusioned purity, with an equally forensic counternarrative exposing her childlike narcissism about the impact of her talent. More disquietingly, she reveals a selective ignorance regarding the circumstances that brought her power and recognition.

Lurker is a teeth-grittingly great dramedy that insists there’s more tension in the entourage of a mellow hipster than a king.

Told with an unassuming, gentle simplicity that grows into an accumulating emotional power, the film manages to feel very small and specific while also vast and expansive.

A shrewdly constructed, heartrending dramedy.

It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley is a repudiating of the typical narrative of inescapable fate, instead pursuing the richness of a gifted artist’s ups and downs. Director Amy Berg would rather us see Buckley as he was in the world instead of some conveniently doom-laden figure.

While The Perfect Neighbor is, on the most visceral level, a documentary horror film built with police footage, it also reveals how a violent tragedy can be unwittingly manifested by unchecked grievance and a law that weaponizes white fear more than it guards anyone’s peace.

Nothing about Together screams comedy, yet that’s precisely how it’s put together. Awkward humor is the skeleton under its prestige nightmare surface, even as it’s wonderfully, heartbreakingly tragic to watch our leads roil to melt together like mozzarella.

Of the many artists Hawke has honored on screen, he has never depicted one so touchingly diminished — someone so consumed with envy who nonetheless cannot lie to himself about the beauty of the art around him.

The script is lean enough that there really isn’t room for narrative flubs besides one breakdown that’s a bit too convenient. Hawkins lets herself get vulnerable, too, and the film never fakes a punch by pretending she’s anything more than a small, desperate and bedraggled woman with eyes that look like a bottomless well of need.

It is one of the simplest of Bunuel's films but is also among his most powerful and subtle. [17 Sep 1995, p.6]

That Shear knows how to bring the storyline’s seasonal time frame to a cyclical close with humor, warmth and hope is the grace note that makes Fantasy Life feel like the start of a promising writing-directing career.

[Schaffer's] Naked Gun doesn’t want to regress; it wants to surprise and surpass while never punching down. The film is so committed to its PG-13 rating that it manages to pull off some truly filthy, bawdy slapstick without exposing a frame of skin.

Manon of the Spring reminds us how gratifying good old-fashioned revenge can be. Yet the film makers also remind us that carrying vengeance too far is ultimately futile and self-destructive. [24 Dec 1987]

A former sketch comic, Cregger knows how to work a crowd. The combination of his assurance and his characters’ confusion is wonderful in the moment, as though you’re listening to a spiel from someone who sounds crazy but might be making all the sense in the world.

Somewhat miraculously, we’re carried out of this consequential collision of hearts and minds on the lightest of notes, with the sense that our capacity to rediscover harmony will always be beautifully mysterious.

Baumbach and Clooney have crafted a character who comes to realize his mistakes, many of which simply can’t be undone. Jay Kelly, the movie star, may be in the process of figuring himself out, but “Jay Kelly” the movie arrives as a fully-formed knockout.

There’s a salve-like quality to Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, a balm for any battered romantic’s soul. It may be utter fantasy, but it’s the kind of escape you’ll want to revisit again and again, like a favorite Austen novel.

Now that Linklater has ascended to the establishment, he’s encouraging cinema’s future by turning to its inspirational past with Nouvelle Vague, the lively story of how Godard (Guillaume Marbeck) directed Breathless with a tiny bit of cash and a ton of ego. It’s the origin story of Godard, and, in a way, of himself. Even more importantly, it’s a manual for what Linklater hopes will be a fresh wave of talent storming the shore any minute. (I’m counting on it.)

Sirāt is taut and riveting and nearly all mood. You feel the exhilaration of veering off the path, the self-exile of speeding toward nowhere, the dread that this caravan has veered too far for its own safety.

There are many ways to portray authoritarianism, but Two Prosecutors is penetrating in its depiction of a society being slowly poisoned. The film might be too much to bear if it wasn’t so brilliantly conceived and executed.

Lighton’s biker BDSM rom-com might sound niche, but free yourself to see it and you’ll discover it’s a universal romance.

If It Was Just an Accident lacks the conceptual audacity of Panahi’s This Is Not a Film or 2022’s No Bears, the film’s straightforward narrative proves to be just another feint, disguising the writer-director’s anger and sorrow at his own mistreatment and that of so many Iranians

It’s a movie about a citizenry at war with itself, hoping to keep the plates spinning for one more night. You watch it and think how easy it would be to envision an American remake — and wonder, too, if a filmmaker like Lapid even exists here.

Filmmaker Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s snaky, surprising fable starts with a sneeze and explodes into a saga about bureaucracy, modernization and moral corruption. It’s electrifying.

Rian Johnson’s darkest, funniest and best installment yet in his three-film detective series.

Bigelow making a movie in which most of the story takes place in rooms full of people talking would seem like a misuse of the talents of one of our great action directors. It’s not. A House of Dynamite is a tightly wound dynamo, elevated by her production team.

There are many heavy hitters still to come, but Hoppers feels like the first great animated movie of the year. At a time when our right to protest is under siege, this sci-fi yarn exalts the way an individual’s conviction can plant seeds of change, leading to a stronger sense of community.

The movie glides by so unassumingly, you may be stunned how moved you are by the end.

A haunting, elegaic reverie of a movie; its opening battle scenes recalling John Ford’s cavalry westerns.

What’s quietly miraculous about Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, considering its added tragic weight, is what the force of Hassona’s personality and Farsi’s filmmaking choices still manage to do: speak to what’s ineffably beautiful about our human capacity for hope and connection.

With apologies to Ibsen’s ghost, DaCosta’s tweaks have sharpened its rage. I don’t think that long-dead critic would like this “Hedda” any better. I think it’s divine.

Our Land is the work of a director whose attention is rigorous, whose care is genuine, but who is also conscious of her outsider’s perspective.

Franҫois Ozon, with abiding respect for the high-wattage brilliance of his countryman’s spartan masterpiece about an apathetic killer, has given us a movie adaptation that does daylight-noir justice to its alluring mysteries, while threading in some freshly necessary political context.

The fluid, idiosyncratic charm of Silent Friend — which never feels like two and a half hours — is in Enyedi’s heartfelt belief that curiosity is simply a garden that grows progress. It doesn’t hurt, of course, that this veteran dreamweaver’s key cast are entrancing, inviting specimens themselves, led by an inner glow of compassion in Leung that feels like its own natural energy source.

The gently transcendent, tear-inducing conclusion that “Little Amélie” reaches suggests that memory serves as our only remedy for loss. As long as we don’t forget, what we cherish won’t become ephemeral.

This cut sutures the two halves together while sustaining its unusual momentum. It’s a film so flush with ambition that it rarely crescendos; it can afford to chop sequences, songs, even genres, down to a string of snippets. The exhausting, invigorating totality of the thing sets its own tone.

Hokum is a fabulous horror film for all tastes.

Though it has its over-caffeinated aspects and its missteps, this Star Trek has in general bridged the gap between the old and the new with alacrity and purpose.

Instead of a thriller, war movie or western, the director has turned out a stirring drama about South African leader Nelson Mandela, blending entertainment, social message and history lesson.

The writer-director is up to his old tricks, creating an onion of an experience -- a movie within a movie within a movie, irony in each layer, poignancy that stings and whimsy that bites.

The dialogue is fresh-prince clever, the themes are ageless, the rhythms are riotous and the return to a primal animation style is beautifully executed.

This is a smartly told story, and as fresh as any contemporary romance.

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."

A lovely bit of memory and mischief.

What makes Whip It a blast is the action in the rink. What gives Whip It heart is the pathos, pain and mettle-testing elements that accompany any serious athletic competition. It doesn't hurt that its diminutive star is surprisingly athletic and agile on the track.

Best known for 1994's "The Wild Reeds," Techine has been a director for more than 30 years, and the fluidity of his polished, intelligent, at times enigmatic works make him someone whose films are always worth watching.

Peli works at mining the unknown, the unknowable, like a minimalist, using small moments and virtually no special effects exceedingly well.

Differing greatly from the rough, casual mood of many behind-the-scenes pop docs, this one is instead of a piece with Jackson's body of work: dazzling and strange, blurring the line between fantasy and reality.

There is a sort of perverse brilliance or brilliant perverseness to be found in this story of a bachelor party gone terribly wrong.

In the Loop is no precious show dog. It's a snarling, frothing little beastie straining at its leash.

Police, Adjective may not be the film you're expecting, but it's one that will stay on your mind.

Greg Mottola has taken that most overdone of contemporary genres, the coming-of-age story, and made it engaging, bittersweet and even fun.

In this sinister but gorgeous and compelling film by director Tomas Alfredson, being human and acting human don't always go together.

Frequently excessive but never dull, The Departed is a little too much of a lot of the things that define Martin Scorsese films but it's also almost impossible to resist. Too operatic at times, too in love with violence and macho posturing at others, it's a potboiler dressed up in upscale designer clothes, but oh how that pot does boil.

Its style is spare, rigorous, almost anti-dramatic, but it deals thoughtfully with some of the most complex elements of the human equation.

A consummate entertainment that echoes the rhythms and attitudes of classic Hollywood, it's a satisfying throwback to those old-fashioned movie fantasies where impossible dreams do come true. And, in this case, it really happened. Twice.

A powerful and effective piece of advocacy filmmaking, but it's difficult to watch it without thinking of subtitles like "The Place Where Evil Dwells" or "The Little Town With the Really Big Secret." Which is no accident.

For all of its cutting cynicism, "Dad" proves unexpectedly moving in its portrait of a middle-aged man leaving childish things behind.

This is a difficult film to pigeonhole, an indefinable mixture of genres and attitudes that is by turns off-the-wall and serious, comic and sad.

Ghobadi uses the lack of resources and the surfeit of drama that had been the lot of the Kurds throughout Hussein's dictatorship and both Gulf wars much in the way De Sica and Rossellini used the European tragedies of the '30s and '40s,

A familiar story set in an unfamiliar context, it's a paean to the universality of human experience, a testament to the endurance of individuality during great political and fanatical upheaval, and a reminder that even the most complex situations, identities and stories are heartbreakingly simple.

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.

Encouraged by Mendes' artful direction, his gift for eliciting naturalness, the core of this film finally cries out to us today, makes us see that the notion of characters struggling with life, with the despair of betraying their best selves because of what society will or won't allow, is as gripping and relevant now as it ever was. Or ever will be.

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

Deceptively superficial at the outset, the movie deepens into something poignant and unexpected.

A thoughtful and provocative look at a previously little-seen world.

The idea is that the guys' adventure proves transformative, but Tucker's dramatic I've-seen-the-light speech is charged with just the right degree of glibness to leave one skeptical.

What with everyone so focused on the raunchiness, it comes as a complete surprise to find that Superbad is in fact a love story.

Are you hungering for that rare vampire movie with serious intellectual heft, ravishing undead, biting passion and a healthy splash of irony as well as iron in all that spilled red blood? Wait no longer, Korean auteur Park Chan-wook's Thirst should satisfy.

The beauty of this film is in its lapidary details, which sparkle with feeling and surprise.

Because it's a Coen brothers film before it's anything else, this is about as dark and nihilistic as comedies are allowed to get before the laughter dies bitterly on your lips.

Though Penn's fierce identification with the protagonist is a key source for the film's accomplishments, Into the Wild succeeds on screen because Hirsch ("Alpha Dog," "The Lords of Dogtown") throws himself into the part without reservation, projecting an appealing openness and life force that brings a special poignancy to his fate.

It’s a mark of Greengrass’ unequaled gift for believably re-creating reality that, once seen, it’s impossible to get United 93 out of your mind, no matter how much you may want to.

You may never have expected to see the words heavy metal, endearing and warmhearted in the same sentence, but you just did.

28 Weeks Later lacks the streamlined thrust of its predecessor but makes for compelling, adrenaline-fueled viewing just the same.

Themes of loneliness, alienation and unrequited love are not new, but there is always that sense of the unexpected in Phoenix that keeps you curious.

As good as it is because of the care and skill writer-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck bring to it, gifts that were visible in their first film, "Half Nelson," which earned a lead actor Oscar nomination for Ryan Gosling.