The ending is both shocking and inevitable. Drummond and Matthews honor the western traditions, classic, spaghetti and revisionist, while creating something stylishly original steeped in the seldom-seen rural and tribal cultures of South Africa.

In divisive times, Pig and his friends, who consist of maybe a dozen drawn lines apiece, provide much-needed laughter in the tradition of the great Warner Bros. cartoons.

Gilbert emerges as a tenderly observed, remarkably insightful keeper.

Love & Bananas works on two levels, spreading awareness about the plight of Asian elephants and the damage that tourist activities like elephant treks wreak, as well as documenting Noi Na's 500-mile journey and dramatic rescue.

A shockingly alarming investigation produced with the sensibilities of a social realist drama, Sarbil and Jones’ nonfiction warning should petrify U.S. viewers immeasurably.

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

Smartly nuanced and darkly comedic. [21 Mar 1997, p.F2]

Formidable from a technical standpoint, The Platform thrives on effectively grotesque production design and ghastly special effects that shock and disgust with purpose.

The relationship between Gilbert and Arnie has "Of Mice and Men" vibes, but it strikes a responsive chord in a way that the rest of the film doesn't. Most of the credit for that goes to DiCaprio's performance.

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.

While the events that transpire are minimal, the poignancy of “Montana Story” resides in watching these two strangers, once inseparable, reconnect now as different people but with the same scars.

There are not one, but two wars raging inside this adaptation: one between the North and the South, and another, more calamitous war between art and middlebrow entertainment.

Foley's family members, colleagues and prison cell mates vividly recount his 2011 imprisonment in Libya, his difficulty reacclimating to home life in sleepy New England after his release, before leaving again for Syria and enduring imprisonment by ISIS.

Whenever The Commitments threatens to get bogged down in its own problems, Parker is savvy enough to pull it back with more of that invigorating music on the soundtrack. When that band starts to sing, the screen fills with genuine life, and that is too rare a commodity for anyone to second-guess for long. [14 Aug 1991, p.F1]

The biggest disappointment of Williams’ film then is not the ordinariness of its style and narrative mechanisms or even its safe and easy politics in search of a similarly broad audience, but its unwillingness to disrupt, with full and heavy weight, the exact things that it critiques.

The key to the fun is that Yeon eschews lookie-loo gore for thrilling set pieces: his fleet, imaginative action scenes recall Brad Bird’s crisp transition to real people in peril when he made his “Mission Impossible” movie.

McKay, a British stage actor who was doing an off-Broadway production about the movie legend when casting started, and Danes, whose acting always seems so effortlessly good, are the best things about the film.

American Sniper is at its best when it deals with the assembly-line-of-death relentlessness of combat for Kyle, how it simultaneously consumes him and wears him down, and how, to his wife's distress, it turns the civilian life he returns to between tours of duty into the aberration, not the norm.

Working Girl is the sparkling success that it is because of the sheer irresistibility of Melanie Griffith. [21 Dec 1988, Calendar, p.6-1]

Favored with copious amounts of footage shot during the voyage, as well as Genovés’ collected data and writings, Lindeen forged a riveting and illuminating study of the unscrupulous endeavor.

A clever piece of business that is a complete pleasure to experience.

Still, as compelling as The Price of Sugar is, it also represents a squandered opportunity. A stronger connection could have been made between the film's subject and our own responsibility as consumers.

Deeply fascinating, unexpectedly potent documentary.

Never Gonna Snow Again, Poland’s submission for the 2021 international film Oscar, is an intriguing, hypnotic, often beautiful but ultimately inconclusive dramedy.

Despite its singular star and bursts of audio-visual vibrancy, the film may prove more ponderous and patience-testing than enlightening or involving for all but the most intrepid viewers.

Whether snarling behind shades in uniform or off hours in elegant dresswear, Chen is a rule-breaking hoot, never more so than when she’s gearing up to heap abuse on a near-tears little girl in order to break her.

As brainy, vital and captivating as its eponymous star, the documentary Bill Nye: Science Guy should warm the hearts and minds of science lovers, weather enthusiasts, environmental watchdogs and astronomy buffs, all while inspiring viewers to ask questions and seek answers.

Funny Pages itself sometimes feels like an exercise in misplaced artistry, a student’s overly precocious stab at brutish cynicism. Its biggest laughs, which tend to go hand-in-hand with its meanest jolts, seem to arise less from any recognizable emotional or situational reality than from a filmmaker’s desire to shock and humiliate his characters, to put them repeatedly through the wringer.