Richard Brooks adapted and directed this superbly acted though watered-down -- all references to homosexuality were deleted -- 1958 version of Williams' popular 1955 play. [30 Apr 2006, p.E14]

[Bong Joon-ho] combines a great cast, a gripping idea and a gorgeously grimy retro aesthetic to keep this eerie examination of the train wreck of humanity racing along.

Rare archival footage is intertwined among the film’s historical narrative with an all-too-rare grace — the images we see here lend themselves to a deep and nuanced understanding of Lowndes County at the time; not just the shared, communal efforts but the mapping of both community and anti-Blackness as it materialized through the everyday.

Maybe the most rewarding quality Eephus displays as a first-ballot hall of fame sports movie is the dedication of Lund and company to just being what they are: no-nonsense celebrants of something ephemeral yet enduring.

The Oscar-winning Mon Oncle, in which Tati returned as Hulot, finds the filmmaker in a no less humorous, yet more critical, mood. [02 Feb 1995, p.F4]

As is always the case with Leigh's protagonists, Poppy does not fit into a schematic log line, she simply is. She exists with an intensity that few other filmmakers' characters can manage because of the singular way Leigh creates his people.

This fractured fairy tale not only knows there's no substitute for clever writing, it also has the confidence to take that information straight to the bank.

Most fun of all, however, is basking in Chappelle's ability to be effortlessly funny. Whether he's making believe he's a pimp in a Dayton clothing store or charming little kids in the Bed-Stuy day-care center that was concert headquarters, his personality infuses the film with infectious good feelings.

Breathtaking reverie worthy of Fellini.

Star Michael Caine, who gives one of the great, inescapably moving performances in a career filled with them, based his character on personal impressions of the late author. And Greene's lifelong concern with moral ambiguity gives this film a texture and complexity that movies don't usually achieve.

Once again, truth proves stranger than fiction in the raucous and provocative documentary Weiner.

When the movie goes in for an infrequent closeup — a shot of ultrasound gel being smeared on Lynn’s belly or of Lynn’s face as she puts on a surgical mask in the immediate wake of the COVID-19 outbreak — the intimacy is startling, and instructive.

Langley's impeccably nonjudgmental camera knows exactly what details to record. Drawn from more than 300 hours of footage, the film's all too brief 94 minutes mesmerizes with its insight and, rarer still, its beauty.

A major American motion picture, an overpowering piece of work that involves some of the most basic human emotions: love, hate, fear, revenge, despair. Directed by Clint Eastwood with absolute confidence and remarkable control.

Easily its most exciting iteration in decades — the first flat-out terrific “Star Wars” movie since 1980’s “The Empire Strikes Back.” It seizes upon Lucas’ original dream of finding a pop vessel for his obsessions — Akira Kurosawa epics, John Ford westerns, science-fiction serials — and fulfills it with a verve and imagination all its own.

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.

There's a rawness and immediacy to his (Bujalski's) work that cuts straight to the experience, a starkness that's startling in an age of bloated spectacle.

Wherever you stand on healthcare and the fact that uninsured people nationwide use emergency rooms for basic services, the documentary The Waiting Room is a revealing portrait of the often tough transactions between patients and hospital staff at the urgency level.

The Rescue is a gripping, unsurprisingly moving early account, one that emphasizes the pluck and ingenuity of its heroes and the resilience and beauty of its survivors. To say that it feels necessarily incomplete is to acknowledge the extraordinary and extraordinarily multifaceted story it has to tell.

The tone is dry and spartan — and funny, too, if you don’t mind snorting at someone whose sons died in a marshmallow-eating competition, or giggling over the sobs of a worker weeping in a cubicle for reasons that go unexplained.

Aside from superb ensemble work from an 18-member cast, "Together's sense of human potential is its greatest pleasure.

It's sexy, brainy and slightly nuts.

Few filmmakers juxtapose cruelty and beauty as audaciously as Japan's Takashi Miike. A master director with great style and panache, Miike's latest, 13 Assassins, is a classic samurai movie, right up there among the finest in the genre.

Most gratifying in Newnham’s investigation is how Hite reclaimed her own positive sense of self in exile through some key female friendships: a love goddess finding refuge with like-minded souls after a bruising battle with unenlightened, resentful mortals.

An exquisitely tender tribute to love in its purest expression, The Blue Caftan doesn’t romanticize the complications and conflicts facing its two soulmates, and precisely because of that it feels like an utterly honest tale of romance.

You might want to tuck Damien Chazelle's name into your memory bank if his filmmaking debut, the terrific jazz improvisation that is Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, is any indication of what his future might hold.

On a par with Bridges' acting, and a sine qua non for Crazy Heart's success, is the excellent music he sings.

Lo’s humane film helps us glimpse the lives of those who are often overlooked, whether they walk the streets of Istanbul on four legs or two.

De Palma's biggest asset, not surprisingly, is the man himself. A formidable talker who is invariably smart, candid and acerbic, De Palma is a person of considerable self-confidence, and listening to him hold forth gives us an always-involving glimpse inside a singular cinematic mind.

Cuaron perfectly understands how a combination of simplicity and restraint help to create a sense of wonder on screen. Under his sure, quiet direction, A Little Princess casts the type of spell most family films can only dream about. [10 May 1995, p.1]

There’s an acting master class to savor, as one might expect from a cast that includes Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen and Natasha Lyonne, each of them in career-best form.

Custody can be difficult, even wrenching to watch, but it always plays fair with the audience, and the experience, worth every minute expended, is impossible to forget.

The movie is first fascinating, then terrifying.

It's typical of the nerve, the bravado, the sheer giddy playfulness and sense of fun that characterize what has to be the boldest and most imaginative studio film of the year.

Director Amir Bar-Lev finds a way to mix the personal, the philosophical and the historical into a complex human document, something that's funny, moving and sad.

A near-classic, balanced evenly between camp and carnality.

The Snapper is amiability itself. Good-humored and sassy, it is one of those charmingly off-the-cuff films that doesn't let its small scale stand in the way of pleasure. [03 Dec 1993, p.F1]

This exercise in beauty, derangement and memory can be contemplative or silly. Often it's both, in just the right proportions.

Rather than observing this family, we feel we are part of it, and that draws us in as nothing else can.

Exuberant and pitiless, profane yet eloquent, flush with the ability to create laughter out of unspeakable situations, Trainspotting is a drop-dead look at a dead-end lifestyle that has all the strength of its considerable contradictions.

With his ability to understand and convey these absurdist scenarios in both adult and preteen terms, writer-director Solondz catches the unlooked-for humor in poignant, hurtful situations.

Among other things, “The Disciple” is a decades-spanning chronicle of an entertainment industry in constant technological flux, which means it’s fascinated by the ephemeral as well as the eternal.

Looked at now (2017), The Graduate is frankly a film you admire more than actually enjoy experiencing. Dark, pitiless and despairing, it plays stranger and more distant to me today than it did back in the day. So much so that one wonders if that was the plan from the beginning, when the fact that its mildly transgressive attitude seemed fresh and new disguised its essential nature.

Kreutzer, who wrote the screenplay, proves especially adept, in conjunction with editor Ulrike Kofler, at the natural suspense of pinging between Lola’s professional and personal lives, and where the vulnerabilities in one bleed into the other. It’s a steady tension that’s greatly enhanced by Kreutzer’s spatially conscious visual style.

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.

A comedy about learning to live with grief, Between the Temples has a lot going on in its head and heart.

To see The Wind Rises is to simultaneously marvel at the work of a master and regret that this film is likely his last.

A pleasantly cerebral experience, exhilarating and fizzy, that goes to your head like too much Champagne.

An offbeat and life-affirming triumph, “Limbo” is the kind of original work of art that moves the needle on an issue by interrogating the human factor rather than hanging out on the impersonal surface. A movie born of our times but destined to outlive them, it deserves to cross the threshold from festival darling to audience favorite.

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

What results is a thoughtful, analytical yet still emotional film, meticulously investigated and absolutely compelling.

The most important thing is that it is genuinely great, a singular and moving glimpse of loneliness, community and finding the strength to face another day.

The lingering lesson of Soul, a lovely, imperfect movie about life’s lovely imperfections, is that every moment is worth living to the fullest, this one very much included.

It's a film of high energy, punctuated by rock music and a dark wit, yet it is capable of profound reflection and tragic irony.

Raw and wretchedly current, it is a story that packs a cruel emotional wallop.

The Salt of the Earth deals with two kinds of journeys the photographer made. The outward one may have literally taken him to the furthest corners of the Earth and resulted in the stunning images the film features, but it is the inward journey that paralleled it that completely holds our attention.

There’s a thrilling friction between the smoothly assembled pieces of Anthony’s narrative, and often sparks.

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.

A film like Sing Sing is a rare, precious achievement — a cinematic work of unique empathy and hand-turned humanity, hewed from the heart, with rigorous attention paid to the creative process.

Acrid and harrowing, it’ll slap you awake.

There’s something particularly pleasing about the harmony that Turning Red achieves between the lyricism of ancient Chinese legend and the synthetic creaminess of teeny-bopper pop.

A taut, strikingly beautiful drama.

As informational as it is inspirational, Patrick Creadon’s Hesburgh is a thoroughly engaging documentary chronicle of the life and turbulent times of longtime Notre Dame president Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, whose tenure coincided with a particularly pivotal stretch of American history.

Dense, satisfying, feverishly inventive and a technical marvel… But--animation aside--the treasure of the piece is Hoskins' pungent, visceral comic performance. [22 June 1988]

Chop Shop"exudes a sense of joyousness amid harshness. Bahrani celebrates those who never give up, no matter how badly their dreams are shattered.

Such nourishing comedy. It satisfies every hunger, especially the irrational ones that seem to hit hardest at holidays: hunger for impetuous romance and for the reassuring warmth of family, for reckless abandon, and for knowing who we are and what we want. [16 Dec 1987]

His film may be something of a beautiful lie, but what's true about Sollett's characters is that their dreams, their grace and their struggles are as real as it gets.

Nothing is extraneous, no moment that doesn't enhance the tension of this nightmare scenario is allowed to survive, until the proceedings become, in the best possible sense, almost unbearable to watch.

The Cave reminds us of the horrors of a situation we have perhaps become numb to and shows us the unforgettable people who don’t have that luxury.

Blackfish, named after the Native American term for orcas, remains decidedly one-sided. But when that "side" is such a vital, convincing proponent for the greater protection and understanding of such evolved and majestic creatures, it can't help but win.

If the setting of The Guilty couldn’t be simpler, its immaculate execution by first-time director Gustav Möller couldn’t be more gripping and involving.

The result is a film made of loosely connected scenes, the best ones floating between observation and storytelling, not unlike a dream.

What ensues amidst Jia’s indelible, gliding visuals of modern Shanghai are ruminative testimonials from the breadth of an older citizenry — former soldiers, descendants of gangsters and politicians, and (lots of) artists who endured the city’s turbulent evolution, and who in their stories of family, love and survival form a tapestry of memory and wisdom.

Unassumingly electrifying and amusingly elusive, this modern-day fable focuses on the marks we leave behind in others when paths diverge and physical distance grows.

Corpse Bride has more warmth and appeal than its title would indicate, but it is finally more grotesque than good-humored. And, even at 75 minutes, it feels longer than its content can comfortably support.

Gravel, in the heart-stopping vein of Belgium’s social-realism-minded Dardennes brothers, invests his protagonist’s one-challenge-at-a-time needs with the kind of visual intimacy and racing rhythm that makes us feel intensely close to Julie, from first sprint in her dehumanizing day to the exhaling bathtub soak she takes each night.

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.

What makes this film especially engrossing is that what happened between that chimp and the humans with whom he spent his life in intimate contact turns out to be only half the story that Marsh, who directed the electrifying "Man on Wire," has to tell.

It's not always pretty, but Neil Young Trunk Show is very much rock 'n' roll.

It’s a pretty arduous journey, complete with personal revelations, melodramatic suspense, a grand finale and all the Hollywood hokum MGM could get away with.

The Lighthouse is a ferocious battle of wills, a tour de force of cold, clammy suspense and a protracted descent into cabin-fever madness. It is also a gorgeous piece of film craft, a chance to savor the visual glories of a bygone era of cinematic artisanship.

As played by Alfred Molina with both computer-generated and puppeteer assistance, Doc Ock grabs this film with his quartet of sinisterly serpentine mechanical arms and refuses to let go.

Irresistible 1969 Hal Wallis-Henry Hathaway Western that won John Wayne his long overdue Oscar as a rip-snorting federal marshal who meets his match in Kim Darby's doughty little girl. [06 Oct 1991, p.8]

Việt and Nam is both simple and cryptic. Its spellbinding pleasures reward a patient audience who’ll be swayed (and may well swoon) over its hypnotic wonders.

A deeply aware film, Rose Plays Julie allows for the fantastic as a means and space of catharsis.

Anchored by delicately moving performances from O’Sullivan and the amazing Williams, Saint Frances is a quietly riveting film that slowly but surely draws you in.

Loving Mandy means appreciating what’s special about it from start to finish: from the psychedelic opening to the speed-metal finale. This film is a fusion of kitsch and pulp, underscored with a genuine spiritual yearning. It shouldn’t even be shown in theaters; it should be projected onto the side of an old hippie’s van.

The resulting film does have a makeshift quality to it, with the new footage, old newsreel shots, circa 1974 interviews, film of the fight and the concerts stitched together in a kind of cinematic crazy quilt. But because a classic heavyweight championship fight, especially with these protagonists, epitomizes the drama inherent in sport, When We Were Kings always compels our interest.

A moving and joyous behind-the-scenes documentary about a world filled with big, bold personalities and the music they make.

Avatar's shock and awe demand to be seen. You've never experienced anything like it, and neither has anyone else.

Morgen has crafted an often brilliant, sometimes overheated but always humane documentary, one in which Nirvana’s music and fame is just the scaffolding to Cobain’s inner life.

The beauty of Bening’s performance lies in those marvelously suggestive layers — all the delicate, tendril-like emotional possibilities that she manages to tuck into the margins of any given moment.

Klondike is certainly not an easy watch, but it is a profound one — a film that feels both prescient and retrospective about Ukraine, locked in what seems a never-ending existential conflict with its neighbor.

This 1939 William Wyler version of Emily Bronte's passionate and inspired novel of l'amour on the lightning-lashed moors and gloomy heaths is the best and most successful on screen. [16 Oct 1994, p.65]

Whether you're familiar with Pina Bausch's work or not, the new film Pina is a knockout.

Faultlessly acted by top Australian talent, including Guy Pearce, Ben Mendelsohn and Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom marries heightened emotionality with cool contemporary style.

Made with a restraint that enhances the heartbreaking nature of its narrative, Rosie is also fortunate in having top-of-the-line Irish actress Sarah Greene, who is wrenchingly involving as a character teetering on the edge of complete desperation.

A virtually irresistible film. [21 March 1986, p.1]