One of the pleasures of Doctor Strange is the way it both wholly embraces and gently mocks the unapologetic geekiness of the enterprise.

This beautifully crafted jewel of a throwback thriller signifies Okuno as a talent to watch, but furthermore, it pushes the viewer to question what, and who, we choose to believe and why.

Psychotic, battle-weary and devoid of compassion as they may be, these merry professional killers aren’t entirely dead inside. By the same token, Gunn’s insouciant swagger isn’t entirely devoid of warmth or sentimentality, and the bonds of kinship that emerge between comrades — warm little cracks in the movie’s nihilistic facade — can’t help but sneak their way into your own affections.

Audiences who feel battered by Hollywood's usual hard-sell approach to farce may be disarmed by Koepp's soft touch and inclined to credit blandness as understatement.

As Madeleine Sackler's absorbing, often tender documentary The Lottery shows, when it comes to the world of charter education, no seemingly good deed may go unpunished -- or at least undercut.

Stephenson's a true original, worthy of her own reality TV show. As Pressure Cooker proves: Anything is possible.

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.

The machination is comic, and the repercussions carry the awkward tinge of threadbare farce, but the vibe is pure melancholy, echoed in the clinically beautiful monochromatic cinematography and the tinny, weeping musical phrase Hong often leans on to close his extended takes of dialogue.

Escapes is as unconventional as its subject, demonstrating the charming things that can happen when a life in no way ordinary gets documented by a filmmaker most unusual.

What the film does well is capture the confusion of the identity abyss of twentysomethings of a certain social class.

Dances on the edge of flat-lining just like the DOAs that are Frank's stock-in-trade.

It's one of the charms of Air Guitar Nation that much of it plays like a mockumentary in which you're not quite sure who's pulling your leg. But it's real, even if the guitars are not.

Veber, also responsible for "The Dinner Game," apparently has a finger on the pulse of French audiences and Gallic-minded Americans, but there's just not a lot of freshness in this Closet.

Sensitive, gritty and courageous, this film gathers a power and focus not foreshadowed in its deliberately rambling earlier sequences.

It's a drag how Nettelbeck sees working women -- or at least this working woman -- for whom she shows little understanding; there's a puritan, even punitive, cast to the way she sees her character, whose pathology she digs at with the tenacity of a truffle hound.

As for Polsky’s own directorial style, it’s breathlessly, haphazardly eccentric, a little too prone to the clichés sports docs use to pump up our adrenaline. But his subjects — kings of the puck, the pigskin and the pitch — are engagingly self-analytical and honest.

The movie is less an uncharted journey than a 2 p.m. bus tour of a music industry legend. But like an expert guide, Mangold shepherds the story with enough grace, energy and skill to make it worthwhile.

What seems to start out as a burlesque against the rich -- a satire of class-consciousness -- ends up mutating into something stranger and richer and more ambiguous. [10 Dec 1993, p.F4]

It deals with friendship, loneliness, abandonment and forgiveness, and though its curious narrative arc means you're never sure exactly where it's going, the film works up a considerable emotional charge by the end.

If Pusher III is the trilogy's least effective, that may be because the soured-deal plot line is by now a given, and its theme is the simplest: Old habits die hard.

Kontroll is in fact an allegory, but one that oozes a gritty, dynamic realism.

It's potent stuff, laced with smart, sensitive humor, and extremely well handled by Wysocki and the excellent ensemble of young actors that become Terri's intimates.

The proportions of the narrative strands sometimes feel off, but the movie pulses with the unpredictability of full-blooded characters.

More discursive than comprehensive, the film does seem to capture Thomas’ fierce, swashbuckling spirit.

A fun and informative documentary.

Consistently outrageous and relentlessly surreal, the Belgian film is, intentionally or not, frequently funny; it's also compelling and distinctive.

Replete with superior acting and visual splendor, the film is a fine instance of the overly familiar made fresh.

At almost two hours, the film feels a bit long and suffers from multiple endings, but Okada is clearly a talent to watch.

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.

Enough can’t be said about Liu’s astonishing, naturalistic turn. She’s a physical marvel here, making herself as small and inconspicuous — yet also as quietly resolute — as her complex character requires.

Since many of the themes from Illmatic have become mere clichés in contemporary rap, this film serves as a reminder of the potential and the promise that hip-hop truly holds.

It pretty much keeps its pulse steady, its blood cold and its nerves tamped down -- which, combined with cinematographer Remi Adefarasin's architectural Hitchcockian flourishes, lends a queasy, cool air to the proceedings.

The edgy appeal of Erupcja is in the way it maps humans as molecules and electrons, fizzed by location, inspired by connection, driven to hover, fuse and release. The characters may get bounced around a bit and some will feel stranded, but you’ll know you’ve been taken somewhere new by this charming indie.

Elements of its plot have the standard quality of a Hallmark production, and the work of some of the film's costars is a bit too on the nose. But, with Moore and Stewart on the case, we feel the presence of something real here, something that can't be shrugged off or ignored.

This is a pressure-cooker film, an exercise in small-budget simplicity that leans on one set and one goal: Keep ’em watching.

Without pounding home its avant-garde cred, this fresh ode to found sound and the music of silence casts an amused gaze at careerism, classical-music reverence and notions of artistic purity and ends with a pitch-perfect change of tune.

A Space Program may find cheeky humor in our quest for meaningful science. But it certainly hints that there's something worshipful in the details.

It's that the closeness with Dunne, as well as his complete familiarity with the boldface-names life she and her husband led in both Los Angeles and New York, has given this film a quality of personal intimacy that makes it moving and involving.

While time inevitably marches on, director Roger Mainwood has a splendid constant at his disposal in the pitch-perfect voice performances of Blethyn and Broadbent, who inhabit their hand-drawn characters with a vivid, fully-dimensional authenticity.

Calamy delivers a beautifully open performance at the center of an utterly winning comedy about the most important journey a person can take: toward finding themselves.

Mehta explores matters more complex and unsettling than movie-tidy, against-the-odds heroism. In Tailang's fine performance, the enormity of Mahendra's mission registers in all its devastating weight.

There’s a much appreciated sweetness and innocence to what we witness, a truly diverse group of Americans selflessly helping one another, joy being their only compensation.

The point of this film seems to be that wholesomeness is a sign of maturity, and it partially cancels out the performers. Juliet Stevenson breaks through anyway. She has a charged core, like Judy Davis, and she makes you root for her passage to happiness. [8 May 1991, p.6]

It's difficult, though, to see how this picture -- essentially chronicling a long car trip -- could mean much to anyone but the Wagners and their friends and relatives.

As externalized visions of high school hellishness go, Shaw’s doesn’t always translate into the most cohesively entertaining of mash-ups, but his techniques are attention-grabbers.

Whatever Rosefeldt intended, Manifesto doesn’t quite set forth a manifesto of its own. But it’s a blast of fresh air. And like many of the gauntlet throwers it cites, it risks looking foolish and, in the process, creates something gorgeously defiant.

What Surfwise reveals is that the dark side of the surfing doctor was that he could be a terrible tyrant, someone whose controlling, self-centered rigidity limited his children in ways large and small as much as it gave them richer lives.

Brown has expertly captured the exhilarating and terrifying experience of watching surfers attack waves so preposterously large and ridiculously beautiful they defy description.

Mulan has its accomplishments, but unlike the best of Disney's output, it comes off as more manufactured than magical.

The film throws so much ersatz cleverness and overdone emotion at the audience that we end up more worn out than entertained.

The Silence is an exemplary German-language thriller, a complex and disturbing examination of guilt, violence and psychological torment that chills us to the core not once but two times over.

Despite the good intentions, structurally it's all over the place with an excess of montages, archival footage, interviews and information practically drowning out any chance to appreciate the richness of the German composer's beloved achievement.

Touches of empathy and self-awareness invariably crystallize the unsettling emotions of revisiting one’s past life.

Strouse demonstrates a contagious affection for his characters, and he invests in them in a way that makes us do the same.

The combination of archival bounty with Salles' touching analysis has a hypnotic effect, serving up the past plus reflection, garnished with a resonant melancholy about the ebb and flow of uprisings.

By cycling through humor, joy, sentimentality and surrealism, The Year of the Everlasting Storm reminds viewers of the myriad possibilities of daily life. The film’s poignancy comes from its confirmation that even in tumultuous times, our senses of wonder, love and loyalty remain integral to the human experience.

While the message is pat, the way it’s presented is poignant, thanks to an arresting lead performance from Gong, who manages a tricky balance of chilliness and charm.

Forget the wan 1994 remake and check out the sweet 1951 original. The great Paul Douglas, Janet Leigh and Donna Corcoran star in this fantasy about how the hapless Pittsburgh Pirates get help at bat from angels who were former baseball players. [27 Dec 1996, p.F24]

Oldroyd and McKenzie keep us adroitly off-balance.

If this ends up being Cronenberg’s last, he’ll have gone out with a worldly, weighty epitaph.

With a fine piece of work in his hands, Schroeder has brought all his skill to bear on Kiss of Death, and it has made all the difference.

Enthusiastically received at Sundance, "Great World" is an intriguing look at our obsession with being successful and famous.

A harrowing picture of the casualties of war — and the unchecked madness that may drive those entrusted to defend us.

Dagg (who previously made the very good chase picture “River”) tries too hard to give the material a highbrow frame. The movie is dimly lighted and hushed to a fault. But the China brothers’ script is strong, and Dagg elicits terrific performances from Abbott, Bernthal and Poots.

For what makes this tale something more than a puzzle to be solved is a level of emotional impact that genre exercises don't often provide, emotion traceable to sensitive acting that is similarly rare.

Though he's adapting the same story Grisham always tells, that of an ethical, talented and inexperienced attorney taking on and outwitting powerful and corrupt legal opponents, Coppola has infused The Rainmaker with enough humor, character, honest emotion and storytelling style to make it one of the year's most entertaining movies.

Its narrative flaws (and there are serious ones) are more or less overcome by its compelling protagonist and the loving marital relationship at its center.

There is an unnerving and hopefully implausible twist at the end, but for the most part, Mikhalkov's 12 is magnetic.

It’s elegant and diabolically poised, a familiar story expertly retooled for an era of tech-bro sociopathy and #MeToo outrage, but also graced with an insistently human pulse. Studio brand extensions rarely feel this intimate, this personally unnerving.

It’s a movie of alternately promising and frustrating half-measures, in which Reeves’ shrewd storytelling instincts and the usual franchise-filmmaking imperatives repeatedly fight to a draw.

As frigid as its name. Burdened with a story of some of the world's least interesting people going through a holiday crisis, director Ang Lee and screenwriter James Schamus get as close as any creative team could to making matters involving, but the task is finally too much for them.

Somehow, despite that minimalistic approach, we are emotionally swept up in Overgård’s desperate fight to stay alive.

It's a brisk, smart satirical comedy from the writers of "Police Academy" and the director of "Valley Girl," set in a Caltech-like institution for the whiz kids of the sciences. How refreshing it is to see young people depicted as having a capacity for thought as well as emotion.

Definition Please is one of those debuts that doesn’t fully cohere on its own but hints at the promise of what the filmmaker can do.

Thoroughly gratifying in its consistent inventiveness and has a grasp of human nature so universal that there's no feeling of the exotic about the film and its people.

Like all memorable sports documentaries - Undefeated is really an examination not of how games are won and lost but how lives are lived, how young people faced with daunting challenges come to see, often in the most dramatic fashion, what is important going forward and what is not.

What really elevates the film, though, is the crucial context that Payne provides to explain — but not justify — the pirates' actions.

It finally can't transcend the limitations inherent in being no more than a way station in an epic journey, a journey whose cinematic conclusion is several years away.

Soechtig puts mainstream clout to work to deliver a hard-hitting message. Her mix of archival material, punchy graphics and concise talking-head commentary traces a troubling modern history.

Winstead, who appears in nearly every scene, can be compelling but, like the material, often pushes too hard, especially in Kate's climactic dive off the wagon. In a far more limited role, Paul is lower-key and convincing.

A powerful, poignant, provocative drama, it gets its strength from its dispassion, from an uncompromising determination to explain rather than justify or condemn, to put a human face on incomprehensible acts.

Fortunately, in image and structure Roodt and Harwood go for a steadfast simplicity that builds to a beautiful moment of rekindled faith for the grieving Rev. Kumalo that lifts Cry, the Beloved Country to a climactic moment of redemption.

Despite the character’s rocky path to sexual awakening, Herzi navigates toward a hopeful conclusion that doesn’t peddle phony uplift.

Ruffalo's feral vulnerability gives the familiar form a jolt.

Ambrose's Frankie, who is more intelligent and capable of reflection than those around her but is even more unworldly than she realizes, is tremendously appealing.

As a dramatist Eason has a classicist's sense of structure and movement to complement his sense of the cinematic. Manito, which has a special grand jury prize from Sundance among its 10 awards, is a small film with a big impact.

Artfully, even elegantly constructed, Secret Lives skillfully probes issues of conflicting emotions and allegiances in a dark time, yet emerges as a loving affirmation of humanity's remarkable potential for goodness in the face of pervasive evil.

It wants you to feel that nightmare scenario of being stuck, but it also wants to be meditative. It’s not always successful at merging those experiences — as experimentation it falls short, and the horror label is also a stretch — but it ultimately earns a liminal fascination as it fuses your perspective to the protagonist’s.

Tyrel is a lab experiment with no insight into feelings of otherness beyond the blinding light directed at its wigged-out subject.

A roguish and delightful comedy of duplicity that's as entertaining as it is sly.

A love of the world of movies permeates the first-class, crackling excitement of F/X, giving a rare dimension to this thriller.

Romero easily commands an enormous cast, a plethora of action sequences and a cornucopia of special effects -- some of them very gory -- and creates one darkly dazzling image after another that allows Land of the Dead to emerge without any nudging whatsoever as a bleakly humorous, hard-charging allegory.

Most of what makes Brooklyn 45 so entertaining doesn’t cost a lot of money. It just takes talent, and diligence.

We’ve seen many versions of this kind of story before, but there’s something so spot-on and involving about the film, written and directed by Daniel Schechter — and performed with such a lived-in rhythm by its talented cast — that it proves surprisingly refreshing.

Recently deceased master filmmaker Claude Chabrol's 50th and final feature, Inspector Bellamy, proves a sadly bland footnote to an illustrious and influential career.

Neo Ned is exactly the kind of production -- scrappy, flawed and a little odd -- that should exemplify the very notion of "independent film."

No one is likely to rank "Boss" on the same level as his more somber and ambitious efforts, but Von Trier admirers will be pleased to discover that, even while working in a far less consequential mode than usual, the ever-uninhibited filmmaker's distinctive flair is in full force.