Most assuredly, though, this is a duo of director and star once more moving in concert together, maybe not as confidently as with some previous efforts, but with a knowing intelligence.

Green Book is a savvy and super effective piece of popular entertainment.

Writer-director Clark's commitment to a deadpan vibe of crisp comic kink amid eccentric, left-turn sorrow can sometimes feel condescending. But within this not-so-jolly trip into the detailed recesses of simmering suburban emptiness, Hollyman takes this woman's barely controlled dignity on a quietly brave, revealing ride.

Unfortunately, and through no fault of Meryl Streep, there doesn't seem to be enough electricity generated out there in Africa to power a love story 2 1/2 hours long.

The film takes some deciphering, but once a viewer cracks its code Alps opens up into something expansive and rich. Part of what makes Lanthimos so uniquely masterful is that he remains in control while refusing to point toward any singular interpretation.

A skillfully rendered narrative that should satisfy fans and pique the interest of the uninitiated.

If the process of passing judgment at all fascinates you (and perhaps it goes without saying that it would fascinate a critic), it’s hard to resist The Competition’s extensive breakdown of how one weighs the merits of artistic goals and visions that tend to elude the usual scoring mechanisms.

Boy Erased is a sobering, justly infuriating movie, but its own convenient elisions keep catharsis at bay.

Stakeout is this summer's suntan lotion: It won't linger in the memory any better than it would survive a quick dip in the pool.

A stirring ode to cultural bridge-building.

Thanks to a focus on the setting and emotions of the story, by the time the life-or-death action kicks in, Harcourt and McKenzie have clearly delineated these characters and what they’re facing — bringing Mahy’s words to life.

Whedon is the key reason why this $220-million behemoth of a movie is smartly thought out and executed with verve and precision. It may be overly long at two hours, 23 minutes, but so much is going on you might not even notice.

The film is a tough, vital lesson in love, valor and compassion.

It sounds like a throwback to an earlier, more traditional style of Israeli filmmaking but it instead provides a view of that country that's as satisfyingly eccentric and unexpected as anything we've seen.

It is a caustic, comic, cerebral romp for a long time before it hits you with its best shot — some Polanski-worthy darkness.

Exhilarating and frustrating at the same time... the Coens' skill is such that you're not averse to following them anywhere, but every once in a while you can't help wishing they weren't so dead set against throwing the rest of us at least a hint of what's on their minds. [21 Aug 1991]

Writer-director David E. Talbert’s marvelous, groundbreaking musical-fantasy Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey stands to join the ranks of holiday movie classics. Smartly conceived, lovingly mounted and beautifully performed, this Victorian era-set extravaganza nearly sings out to be enjoyed as a communal, big-screen experience.

Even decades after it was written Beirut is as relevant as it is entertaining, and it is very entertaining indeed.

Its warped, disconnected sensibility makes for an oddly distant piece of work.

Diaz has said that she hopes the film asks the right questions. But it seems, in this case, that the questions are leading - and rightly so. Marcos is given all the tape she needs to hang herself.

"Antarctica" is successful because it operates on two complementary levels, the epic visuals whose grandeur can stagger you and the small-scale personal stories of the people who live and work down there.

The documentary is an enlightening journey to a dark corner of contemporary punk's dank little basement. It also will surprise some to hear how articulately some of the former performers explain the dark impulses that propelled them.

As the film's linchpin, Falk comes across as a crummy, low-life Pied Piper with a stupefyingly irresistible charm. [18 Aug 1985, p.5]

Within the confines of this cross-cultural shaggy-dog tale, Hirayanagi locates both a sharp vein of absurdist comedy and a bitter, melancholy undertow. She also has a deft enough touch to make one mode almost indistinguishable from the other.

The Farrellys here show a gift not just for finding humor where others have feared to look but for presenting it in a way that is surprisingly close to irresistible.

It’s the superbly acted interplay between the embattled Alice and Joe that drives this lean, gripping, often profoundly tragic tale.

Cunningham’s beguiling openness, coupled with as many estate-sanctioned photographs from his collection as Bozek can squeeze into the brisk running time, easily overcome a general roughness of assembly.

Private Violence makes painfully clear the emotional and legal hurdles battered women endure just to feel safe again in or outside the home.

With a formidable presence that mainlines emotional intensity, Devos dominates this film, appearing in almost every scene, but she has key support from another of France's most accomplished actresses: the enigmatic, four-time Cesar winner Nathalie Baye.

On-screen, Bad 25 moves in the style of a great pop song.

Satiric, surreal, unexpected and at times wildly funny, Zero Motivation is a savage black comedy that eviscerates an unexpected target: the Israeli army.

It’s kind of funny and kind of scary, if ultimately neither funny nor scary enough to keep the two modes from canceling each other out.

Seductive and creepy, perfect for a hot summer night when nobody has the energy to pose a lot of questions.

Convincingly creepy while also slightly thought-provoking, it warns about deceiving facades, because what hides underneath masks is possibly much worse.

The filmmakers get more tension and even emotion out of this premise than most movies of this type do, mainly by treating the characters as multidimensional people who deserve a shot at redemption, and not like voodoo dolls ripe for the poking.

The low-budget movie, shot in artful black-and-white by Ante Cheng, pulses with yearning and sorrow and love for its characters. Its brightening touches of underplayed humor strengthen and comment on the main action.

A crafty, brainy and uniquely stirring concoction.

It’s a Shakespearean rhapsody in indigo where love, friendship, betrayal and revenge swirl and blur with life-changing consequences.

The riveting and superbly acted Iranian drama, based on a real variety show, poses a moral crucible born out of a theocratic system that disfavors women amid the heightened tension of the on-camera spectacle.

The very title suggests that this compelling and provocative film is going to be different from other Holocaust documentaries.

In its modest, quiet maturity, Luxor avoids the cliché of presenting the East as exotic or renewal as a catharsis — it’s the rare travel story that understands how sometimes being someplace else is as much about the “being” as it is the “someplace else.”

Thanks to the deadpan chops of the cast, the low-grade silliness is funny enough to offset the occasional feeling that a shorter, tighter version built around its biggest laughs might have been more effective.

Insightful and thoughtful.

A luminous, piercing film from the Elizabeth Bowen novel, richly evokes a world of privilege on the verge of disintegration.

Although the term cinéma vérité is overused as a descriptor for documentaries, it applies here. The makers of Horns and Halos eschew the Michael Moore "poke 'em with a stick, let's watch 'em squirm" approach and wisely let the cameras roll, interspersing news footage with their own interviews.

The look and feel of the film is entirely beguiling. It is deliberately not a period piece, heavy with dated styles and fads, but instead evokes a sense of timelessness.

A hysterical farce about a Sicilian laborer (beagle-eyed Giancarlo Giannini) who gets himself in political and sexual trouble. [31 Jul 1997, p.F39]

The emotional momentum...is carried along easily by Mozhdah, making a remarkable screen debut: In an instant, she can melt from trembling vulnerability to hair-pulling defiance, and in nearly every scene, we see her not just emoting but also thinking, continually renegotiating her position in a world that perceives her as tainted goods.

As the filmmaker unfurls the harsh, essential facts, both past and present, about America's complex relationship with drugs — along with tobacco and alcohol's longtime place in the equation — the movie gains serious power and momentum.

It’s a simple recipe and remarkably effective.

A beautifully filmed, subtly political travelogue with some central conundrums.

Hermanus, as a Black, queer South African, isn’t about to paint Nicholas’ predicament as on a par with apartheid’s true victims. But the emotional intelligence he infuses Moffie with — all the way through its inevitable march to the front line — feels personal nonetheless, and empathetically inquisitive about the kind of masculine indoctrination that fuels oppression through rituals of violence and the criminalizing of identity.

This mind-and-fork-bending sci-fi saga comes from the freaky imaginations of director Josh Trank and screenwriter Max Landis, who've packed their feature debut with smartness.

Gilliam never aims down, his films zing in somewhere at the Mensa level of reference, but he seems confident that we will catch the wit of his visual quotations and so we do. Like a film making Catherine wheel, he throws off an immoderate art history display; he plunders past film styles with a free hand to make a point. [5 Mar 1989, p.23]

A transgender icon with a life as tragically short as some of the idols she worshipped, she's the deserving subject of an archivally rich remembrance, and such is James Rasin's poignant documentary Beautiful Darling.

A sports film to remember.

What makes Into the Woods so entertaining is the cleverness of the tale itself and the way specific characters match the talents of its storytellers.

For a drama that’s as quiet and circumspect as Chronic, it’s a decidedly bold film, one that pulls few punches as it slowly peels away the emotional layers of its complex protagonist. t also features an ending that’s as devastating as it is shocking.

If our understanding of the losses these characters have suffered feels incomplete, it’s hard to come away entirely unaffected as these men and women look back at their young adulthood and the whirlwind of historical change against which it played out.

See How They Fall"shows an ambitious director well on his way to being the master of his game.

Even at its most scattered though, Finding Yingying is haunting, largely because it’s so personal. In a way, this feels like Shi reflecting on her own life by honoring someone who had hers cut short.

The radiant Danner, one of the greats, is perfection here, while Forster gives a stunning, Oscar-worthy turn as a man struggling to hold onto a blissful past to ward off a frightening future.

The largely improvisational approach as well as the limited settings and story arc also undercut the picture’s deeper dramatic potential — despite a powerful, beautifully performed finale.

For a movie about a fleeting moment, it leaves a surprisingly resilient ache.

It's a story of contained chaos, quietly observed — one that catches fire more in retrospect than in the viewing.

The story of Captain Underpants is funny, fresh and frantic, playing with format and genre, adding meta, self-reflective winks. The film is propelled by its hyperactive energy and quirky style...and the combustible chemistry between the two leads.

Ego-stroking bio docs being a cottage industry these days, Balvin is one of the more disarmingly open figures to get this kind of treatment. But it’s also nice that The Boy From Medellín makes the most of its allotted time with a busy phenomenon to at least dabble in the ins and outs of an artist contemplating his place in the world.

The Spierig brothers have deftly fashioned an unpredictable thrill ride, and the joy is to fit together all its puzzle pieces.

Gremlins 2 is better than the original, though it lacks the same archetypal horror-movie drive.

With Philipe apparently doing a lot of his own stunts, Fanfan is replete with heroic leaps, speedy horse rides, occasional explosions and clashing sabers. If this all sounds like a 1950s version of "Pirates of the Caribbean," that may not be such a bad comparison.

The French, no one needs to be told, take food and food preparation with extreme seriousness. "There are no 'all-you-can eat' places in France," one chef sniffs in this excellent Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker documentary. "The idea is to eat small amounts of the best food."

As much as filmmakers Lev Anderson and Chris Metzler capture the energy and attitude of the band's early days, it is the more recent footage of Fishbone still making the most of it - despite years of personality conflicts, personnel changes and commercial disappointments - that has an emotional appeal.

A peculiarly potent story about life’s unexpected little ruptures — those odd coincidences, repetitions and shifts in perspective that can set off aftershocks in the human heart.

The filmmakers materialize a fascinating cinematic language that interrogates itself about matters of spontaneity and manipulation, man-made products and earth-given treasures, simplicity and sophistication, and how these all intersect.

This is finally a film that is better at mood than substance, that has its strongest hold on you when it’s making the least amount of sense.

The Underneath doesn't add up. Made with polish and assurance, capably acted and intricately constructed, its overall impact is less than these parts would indicate. It is good but, against all logic, it is not good enough.

By the time this distinctive 1986 film is over we have been treated to a lavish fugue on the themes of childhood, wolves, eroticism and myth. [11 Jun 1989, p.2]

The Princess is absorbing and surprisingly intimate, given the sources Perkins used. But it’s also a cautionary tale, which lets no one off the hook.

Impressive as is Wilson's output and oeuvre, it's the fully-engaged, aesthetically driven life that fascinates. And Otto-Bernstein's movie is a portrait of an artist at his most essential, in every sense.

It's billed as an environmental horror story, but The Last Winter bears all the hallmarks of an ever-popular genre that has always pitted science, technology and reason against emotion, awe and nature. It bears all the hallmarks of the gothic: ghosts, death, alienated sexuality, decay, secrets, madness and, of course, awe and trepidation in the face of the sublime power of nature.

It's not entirely satisfying, but there's plenty to savor in Chicken With Plums.

Lover for a Day, which completes a thematic trilogy of sorts with Garrel's "Jealousy" (2014) and "In the Shadow of Women" (2016), is one of his more enchanting specimens.

It’s basically espionage adventure, but with a science fiction backbone: Nolan ups the ante on “Mission: Impossible” by making the impossibility not just physical but quantum physical. And he goes about it expertly, bullishly and with giddily perverse intent to bewilder.

(To be) thoroughly enjoyed as a privileged look at one of the loopiest of late 20th century lives.

Splendid entertainment, young in spirit but accomplished in all aspects with the fullness of spirit and sense of ease that comes only with experience.

Energetic and absorbing documentary.

Sayles' films are always of interest, and even though the partly cloudy Sunshine State is not the writer-director at his best, even his letdowns often have more to offer than other people's successes.

Enlivening things to an unprecedented extent, the songs turn O Brother into perhaps the warmest production in the Coens' repertoire.

Lacks the scope and distance that could have been provided by an outsider. But it speaks in such a frank way that avoids self-indulgence that its limits are forgiven.

Grainily shot but radiating life, The Amazing Catfish is an enormously affecting portrait of a family in crisis that dares to hope.

The story is thematically muddy at best and problematic at worst in the ways it handles Sparkle’s newfound independence and the horrors she experiences. Despite these issues, the arresting images of She Paradise and the distinctive voice of its director mark Cozier as a filmmaker to watch.

What makes the extended trip-tastic finale ultimately disappointing is that it remains a resolutely exterior experience, a set of wild but recycled gestures that reminds you just how tedious watching someone else’s LSD high can be.

As offbeat and personal as the director’s best.

Bastards is a thriller truly etched in darkness, pools of black broken mostly by the stricken yet soldiering faces of her main characters, like ships in a sea of stormy nights.

Director Danny Boyle and screenwriter John Hodge (who is a physician!) keep the action spurting forward, but their approach is oblique. We seem to be catching the odds and ends of scenes; it's as if the filmmakers wanted to make a movie in which all the expected high points were skimped.

The film dawdles at times. but for the most part Donaldson keeps just the right amount of tension present in each scene.

While its beats are familiar, TV director Jude Weng’s debut feature diverges from its well-worn path when it matters, staying true to its heart and love of Hawaiian culture.

British actress Jane Horrocks plays Little Voice, and it is a transfixing, tour de force performance.