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.

That it succeeds as well as it does can be chalked up to a lot of different things, including the pleasures of Provincetown in the fall, the sights of New York at Christmastime and the unerring perfection of Luke Macfarlane’s five o’clock shadow.

Plaza doesn’t have to steal scenes in Emily the Criminal. She plays the title role, and nearly every moment — starting with the one where Emily storms out (not for the last time) of a degrading job interview — rightly belongs to her.

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.

Like many great monster movies, Hatching uses its creature as a metaphor for repressed emotion, and the one at the center of this film is one of the most uniquely grotesque creations seen on screen in a long time.

For the first 90 minutes or so, there’s remarkable vibrancy and spontaneity to this picture, as its creators and stars seem to be coming up with their story on the spot, with the cameras rolling. They seem inspired and excited. The mood is infectious.

There’s more at work here than just Hall’s unsurprising mastery of exposed-nerves emoting; both she and Semans, striking unnervingly dissonant chords at every turn, seem to be operating in near-perfect harmony.

With Descendant, Brown wisely chooses to be respectfully, poetically alert instead of imposing, as her use of archival footage shot by Hurston suggests: She’s adding to a pioneering Black filmmaker’s anthropological empathy, updating the conversation, witnessing the witnessers.

Some not great things happen in Mars One. And there is agony. But there are also the good things done in response that keep families like these soldiering on.

In her elegantly unsettling portrait of an invisible woman straddling two notions of home — far from what she’s known, working inside a perilous system — Jusu is letting us know she’s got all diasporic women employed by wealthy families on her mind. And that their fears can easily become nightmares.

The filmmaking maintains its discretion and unblinking restraint even in its most terrifying passage, shot with an implacable calm that renders it all the more unbearable.

By letting the archival material carry most of the weight, Pettengill creates an instructive kind of time-travel experience for viewers of all political persuasions, transporting them to a past hauntingly similar to our present.

Though Schwarz’s finished film provides unmissable and infuriating insight, it’s also disappointing that he never mentions the ongoing violence that the Israeli state commits against residents in the current Palestinian territories, including numerous documented human rights violations.

It assuredly can’t be easy for a filmmaker to choose whether to leave viewers motivated by warmth or woe. Yet your capacity to be both awed and enraged is ultimately well-served by “The Territory,” a gripping portrait of an endangered community for whom nature is both their precious environment and the facet of humanity that can all too easily be turned malicious.

For all the grief that the leads undergo in Chung’s most recent work, the result yields a life-affirming reminder to look across the room and see the other.

As with “Annihilation” before it, the more surreal Men gets, the less frightening and more melancholy it becomes; it’s as if the movie were peeling back the skin of its chosen subject to reveal the diseased, writhing and frankly pitiable mess underneath. And Garland, like a coroner performer an autopsy, surveys his specimen with clinical rigor, gallows humor and the faintest hint of sorrow.

Deftly mounted, shot and scored, The Pact is a master class in ensemble acting, led by Neumann in a visceral, deeply layered and knife‘s-edge turn.

In Vengeance, Novak sets his sights on lampooning the big-city media types who go chasing stories in middle America and return with observations from the “flyover states” that are usually condescending, preachy, or inauthentic, and in doing so, he finds the humor, and something honest too.

Watching it, you can feel Denis zeroing in on the conventions of the bourgeois French melodrama with something resembling a lover’s playfulness; she wants to rough them up, test their limits and bend them into challenging new configurations.

It’s an unapologetically soft ride in the slice-of-life sweepstakes, flecked with era-specific archival footage as connective tissue, but with a sneaky, gathering poignancy that prioritizes the journey over story payoffs.

It’s worth your time, your discomfort, your possible scorn and your weirdly grudging affection, maybe all at once.

There’s a prevailing playfulness to many of the sequences which, like that properly placed unrest wheel, ensures a satisfying balance.

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.

[A] lovely, deeply nostalgic tribute.

The film maintains a quiet dynamic even throughout the most horrific moments, and while you might expect, or even want, the film to climax more operatically, the understated tone is a radical choice.

Like any craftily layered confection, what at first presents itself as colorfully whipped reveals itself to be a more tangy, lasting bite.

It’s a story often told, but this movie tells it well, energetically dramatizing the in-the-moment experiences Leslie has and showing how they inform the choices she makes. And Riseborough is a dynamo, making sure that even at her worst, Leslie has enough personality and humanity that the audience roots for her just to get through another day.

The lingering trauma of Morton’s upbringing is an ongoing challenge for him, even with all of his success; and this quietly moving movie examines how the right opportunities or the wrong expectations can make all the difference in who a person becomes.

This lively and at times moving film explains, eloquently, why Hawk has endured in popular culture — and why he can’t stop risking his bones to master the maneuvers few can do.

An excellent cast and some skillful direction goes a long way toward making “The Aviary” feel genuinely revealing.

The intimate and remarkably relatable documentary that is "Bad Axe” takes its name from the rural Michigan town where Siev’s Cambodian refugee father and Mexican American mother raised a family and ran a restaurant; Bad Axe turned out to provide a tellingly relevant backdrop for the film.

The film’s greatest achievement is the ease with which it traverses the delicate territory of its characters’ lives without losing the sense of a past both shared and fractured in memory.

While the film’s dialogue and characters aren’t exactly unique, its visuals are remarkable and it’s actually about something. It’s a ripping yarn, a gorgeously rendered kaiju adventure on the high seas that uses fantasy to ask pertinent questions about the stories we believe, and who benefits from that belief.

Operation Mincemeat isn’t groundbreaking cinema, but it’s well-crafted and thoughtful; and when the heroes are inventing the personal details for their dead soldier and imagining all the real lives they’re affecting, the movie becomes appealingly bittersweet.

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.

This isn’t the first time Shinkai has raised the specter of environmental disaster within the context of a swooningly sentimental teenage fantasy, and if this one doesn’t achieve the dazzling intricacies or soaring emotional heights of “Your Name,” its easy blend of enchantment and feeling is nearly as hard to resist.

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.

What makes Odd Man Out effective is Reed's love of detail, especially when it comes to the mix of characters Johnny encounters along the way. With economical cinematic strokes, Reed describes these people, getting us to wonder about them and, ultimately, to have a sense of who they are. [19 Jan 1995, p.14]

The Menu is a tightly wound, sharply rendered skewering of the dichotomy between the takers and the givers, or in this case, the eaters and the cooks.

Tonally, Devotion remains steady, never going for over-the-top emotion or sensation, simply seeking to express something authentically moving and human. It unmistakably achieves that, delivering a stirring story of friendship during war, and beyond, that is both rare and real.

As documentaries go, few arrive with as much ripped-from-the-headlines urgency as The Will to See, an eye-opening return visit to the backdrops of some of the world’s worst atrocities.

Viewers with no interest in theology may find these concerns a little esoteric, and may wish O’Brien had spent more time on the mystery of who Aaron is and why he seems to have supernatural powers. But this movie’s a must for anyone who enjoys seeing terrific actors given the space to explore their characters’ pain — and to spin riveting moments out of rich words and subtle moods.

The cast and creative team’s memories are vivid and moving, as they describe — often while on the verge of tears — how this experience changed their lives, forged tight friendships and transformed their understanding of art, performance and what it means to be alive.

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.

This is one slam-banger that looks to connect with action fans at home as well as abroad.

It doesn’t evade every trap or trapping of convention, but its tenderness of touch is matched by a remarkable toughness of mind.

Rodeo takes its blind corners and open roads with plenty of ferocity, but also a necessary compassion for the searching force of nature at its center.

It is a beautiful blend of unforgettable physical performance and visual lyricism brought to bear on the tragic life story of the Gibbons twins, their wildly imaginative writing woven throughout like a sparkling thread, offering a brief glimpse into their realm of existence and imagination.

In the blunt, sprawling, nearly 2 1/2-hour Triangle of Sadness, [Östlund] ascends to new levels of moral disgust while descending to new lows of topical unsubtlety. It’s a pretty good tradeoff.

Rise scores as first-rate family filmmaking and a worthy reminder that some dreams can and do come true — big time.

The filmmakers are incredibly resourceful. While they shot “The Passenger” mostly in and around one beat-up old camper in the middle of nowhere, their movie is nevertheless suspenseful and funny, with a few good jolts and gore effects to satisfy fright fans.

Excessive reverence has killed many a well-meaning adaptation, but this “White Noise,” at once wildly mercurial and fastidiously controlled, somehow winds up triumphing over its own death. It’s too full of life — and also too funny, unruly, mischievous and disarmingly sweet — to really do otherwise.

There's a funny, entertaining, good vs. evil movie built around O'Neal--lots of plot and strong support from "Suddenly Susan" boss Judd Nelson, Richard Roundtree, Annabeth Gish and the city of Los Angeles, home of Shaq's day job with the Lakers. [18 Aug 1997, p.F4]

Hazanavicius has made a movie that tests our ideas of creative genius.

It’s not a criticism to say that Smoking Causes Coughing doesn’t hold together, because cohesion isn’t what Dupieux is going for. He’s more about surprise and delight.

Even if the story of a widower (the great Chishû Ryû) and his daughter weren’t such a naturally compelling variation on Ozu’s themes of family, devotion and sacrifice, the exquisite balance of hues and textures in every shot would render it essential viewing.

The inherent backstage machinations and underlying corruption and hypocrisy that go with the church/state backdrop may not be unfamiliar territory, but Saleh, who controversially took on the 2011 Egyptian revolution in his acclaimed 2017 political thriller, “The Nile Hilton Incident,” keeps it all quite compelling.

Nature nurtured into an eerie consciousness by a celluloid craftsman, it feels like a throwback to “Wicker Man”-era folk-tinged freakouts — confounding enough to not be everyone’s cup of tea, but for those ready for a pot of its brew, plenty transporting and tingling.

If yielding to nostalgia often makes people recall a more affectionate and wistful version of what actually was, this stirring, evocative film likely will leave viewers haunted by what might have been.

This is Krieps’ show, another elegantly virtuosic, intelligent turn that, in this case, imbues sickness with dignity so that every strained grasp for breath feels like a victory for autonomy.

As the satire retains its acridness to the very end, Sick of Myself proves itself well-aware that narcissists don’t learn lessons — they learn how to adapt.

It’s in that soulful shift from repair’s confusion to renewal’s fullness where Revoir Paris is most powerful, dramatizing what it can mean to outlive something unimaginable — and look at the world anew.

Structurally, High and Low, which is remarkable in many ways--the camera work alone could serve as a primer in film technique--is quite a departure for Kurosawa.

A look at the intertwined lives of a father and his three live-at-home daughters, this is more than anything a personal-scaled film, funny, emotional and compassionate toward the human comedy, Taiwan-style.

Though the movie rockets Judge’s doltish heroes into the future, it feels like a charming artifact from the past.

One of Strange World’s triumphs is the vibrant, weird, visually stunning subterranean world that the film’s heroes stumble upon during their quest to save their way of life. From its lush palette to its cute and deadly flora and fauna, this strange, mysterious world is very much deserving of its status as the film’s title character.

A vivid portrait of the human cost for malfeasance and authoritarianism.

It’s sort of a supernatural thriller; but it’s more of a wry and strikingly poetic vision of feminist retribution.

My Policeman is an absorbing, resonant, deeply wistful adaptation of the 2012 novel by Bethan Roberts that will probably be best appreciated — stylistically, thematically, romantically — if judged more within the context of its mainly mid-20th century setting than by contemporary expectations.

The central mystery hinges on an audacious structural coup that produces a succession of giddy, breathless moments in the movie’s second half, as cinematographer Steve Yedlin and editor Bob Ducsay excel at reframing earlier plot points from revelatory new perspectives.

While Girl in the Picture doesn’t skip over any salacious details, it also doesn’t let its villain define what the story is about. Instead, Borgman brings Floyd’s victims back to life, by giving a voice to those who miss them

Sidewalk Stories is a bold and utterly enchanting creation, and its appearance is a signal to watch the multifaceted Lane closely. [09 Nov 1989, p.F1]

Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero is a must see for fans that salutes one of the series’ best relationships, but newcomers interested in more than the fun of an action-packed visual spectacle might want to check out some of the TV series first.

The character designs and backdrops are amazingly imaginative; and though the movements and rendering are often glitchy, that only adds to the charm of the residents’ casual conversations.

Eiselt and Lee cover how these families — and in particular the fathers left behind by their partners’ passing — are still coping with unexpected loss. The film also provides some history lessons on how Black women have been either exploited or ignored by the medical establishment.

Everything about The Phantom is pleasantly old-fashioned, the opposite of avant-garde and cutting edge. Not intended for those who yearn for greatness, this unassuming adventure film is so cheerful and sweet-natured it's difficult to resist warming up to its modest charms. [7 June 1996, p.CF]

There's something delightfully pure and fresh about the children's film The Adventures of Milo & Otis. [25 Aug 1989, p.C8]

The movie, set across a broad swath of Middle America in the late 1980s, is filmed in a rougher, less polished style than Guadagnino’s Italian-set dramas (“I Am Love,” “A Bigger Splash,” “Call Me by Your Name”), but it exerts its own earthy, dreamlike pull. It casts — and sometimes violently breaks — its own lyrical spell.

In the hands of director and co-writer Santiago Mitre, co-writer Mariano Llinás and lead actor Ricardo Darín (“The Secret in Their Eyes”), Strassera is the slow-but-steady one in the story of “The Tortoise and The Junta: The Little Prosecutor Who Maybe Couldn’t, But Wouldn’t Quit.” He’s what one might call “endearingly competent.” The characterization they achieve is something rare and commendable: a lead who is interestingly uninteresting.

If you have any taste for film noir -- that Chandler-esque American style that had its heyday in the '40s and '50s -- this film is a must: one of the classics of the genre. [02 Jun 1987, p.8]

An insightful film that takes us on a nuanced emotional journey with a group of friends trying to make sense of the romantic choices they've made, it has the sympathy and psychological acuity we've come to recognize as the hallmark of French cinema at its best. [20 Aug 1999, p.F14]

Sprightly and engaging, it unfolds with clarity and makes excellent use of its voice talents, most notably that of Jack Palance as the villainous Rothbart; the colorful witty, familiar menace of his voice allows him to all but steal the show. [18 Nov 1994]

It's not "Chinatown," Jake, but Mulholland Falls has a brutal power of its own. A Los Angeles-based period thriller strong on amorality and corruption, not to mention sex and violence, Mulholland Falls combines a vivid sense of place with a visceral directorial style that fuses controlled fury onto everything it touches. [26 Apr 1996, p.F1]

Even with all the metaphysical mayhem, the movie remains rooted in the lives and attitudes of its characters, and in the magnetic performances of Martini and Appleton.

It rewards the attention of a committed voyeur, which all proper cineastes and many of our best provocateurs are anyway. The pinched of mind and the humorless need not bother. Invariably more welcome (one imagines Oren thinking) are those who enjoy their senses and perspectives pried open while their heads get a thorough scratching.

In its most moving and offhandedly momentous moments, The Inspection becomes a chronicle of not just persecution and survival but also solidarity, in which the all-American brotherhood in which Ellis finds himself actually can function as advertised.

The film, directed by Leo McCarey, is almost a shot-by-shot remake of his 1939 hit "Love Affair," with Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne, but this version sparkles thanks to Grant and Kerr's crackling chemistry. [15 Jan 2008, p.E11]

Buckles’ greatest asset is his subjects, many of whom have never spoken before about the trauma that the adults and authority figures in their lives have expected them to endure, bravely and stoically.

A dazzling suite of emotions plays out within the confines of Boutefeu’s subdued, sensitive, gradually mesmerizing performance. At times she stares with laserlike focus into the camera, as if she had located the object of her scorn seated just behind the lens. Mostly she stares pensively into the middle distance, lost in the phantasms of memory.

Hamm’s performance here as freelance journalist and investigative whiz Irwin “Fletch” Fletcher is a master class in effortless charm, a comedic turn that never sacrifices the character’s intelligence for a punchline yet steers clear of the smugness and smarminess so prevalent in contemporary comedy.

As offbeat and personal as the director’s best.

The story’s a bit convoluted, though no more than most detective plots. Ultimately, it’s a solid mystery, explained well by Enola in her fourth-wall-breaking chats with the audience. The pairing of actor and role here is just about perfect, and as much a star-making turn for Brown as her breakout performance in “Stranger Things.”

Simultaneously rousing and unnerving, “Pipeline” strays from despair. It doesn’t complicate the story with the loss of human life the way “Night Moves” does, and in that sense it can seem too neatly wrapped-up. Still, its pointed timeliness enthralls.

“Black & Blues” isn’t a straightforward biography so much as a collection of engaging anecdotes and keen observations, meant to spark a renewed appreciation for someone too often misunderstood.

What is particularly powerful is that the film does not feel the need to overexplain Monica. The film offers glimpses into her life, her relationships and her livelihood, but Monica doesn’t have to spell out the details of her past or justify her present to anyone.

Directing his first documentary feature, Corbijn, a longtime music photographer who made the Joy Division docudrama “Control,” is well suited to this material’s creative highs and human dimensions.

This absorbing, thoughtful film doesn’t take sides; that’s not James’ way.

Cat People sinks its claws into the psyche for an erotically tinged horror-thriller. [29 Oct 1998, p.F7]