Boseman, evincing the same integrity he clung to his entire career, refuses to soft-pedal the destination. He imparts to this seething, shattered man the gift of a broken soul, riven by anger and trauma, and makes him all the more human for it. His final moments of screen time are among his darkest, and also his finest.

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.

Endearing, sumptuous 1935 adaptation of Dickens' sweeping epic set against the French Revolution. [15 Oct 2006, p.E10]

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

Fast-moving and slow-burning by turns, The Killing of Two Lovers suggests that real life — and real drama — so often unfold in the in-between moments, in the anticipation rather than the actual execution of the next move.

James Goldman's script is razor-sharp, treating all characters, major and minor, with intelligence and compassion. The movie is shot in subdued hues, making the film more of a motion painting than picture. It is quite simply a film that must be seen -- and once seen, treasured. [29 Jul 1994, p.21]

Sometimes you just don’t want a movie to end. The characters are so vivid and multidimensional, the milieu so inviting, the circumstances so compelling, you don’t want to let go. The Dig, starring Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes, is such a movie.

It’s a profound, immersive lesson in empathy that should resonate with anyone interested in neurodiversity or simply seeking a more inclusive society.

The history of slavery was vividly relived through the memories of a fictional 110-year-old woman beautifully played by Cicely Tyson in a story adapted for TV by Tracy Keenan Wynn and directed by John Korty. The climactic scene, when Miss Jane defiantly drank from a "whites-only" water fountain, was one of TV's most memorable moments in one of TV's most memorable movies. [23 Apr 1989, p.25]

What's exciting about Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story is that, in Jason Scott Lee, the movies have created a new star out of an old star. The film is a tribute to Bruce Lee but it's also a tribute to the transforming powers of performance. Lee does justice to Bruce Lee while, at the same time, creating a character out of his own fierce resources. He is, quite literally, smashing.

It’s a film noir in much the same way that “Crimson Peak” was a horror movie: Feverishly and often magnificently overwrought, it treats its genre less as a template to be followed than a lavish funhouse in which to run amok. Its characters, tropes and archetypes, convincing enough on their own, take on even richer dimensions when placed alongside their antecedents.

Actors as well as athletes have a prime of life, a time when everything they touch seems a miracle. And the crowning pleasure of watching Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh in this rollicking version of Much Ado About Nothing is the way it allows us to share in that state of special grace, to watch the English-speaking world’s reigning acting couple perform at the top of their game.

Because Heder — whose previous work includes the Netflix series “Orange Is the New Black” and “Glow” and feature “Tallulah” — is so adept at establishing the emotional bonds between the film’s close-knit family, the presence of all these conventions doesn’t matter.

You may know Thompson as a member of the Roots and as the musical director for “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” If you’ve read his book, “Mo’ Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove,” you’re aware that he’s also inquisitive and a first-rate music geek, making him the perfect person to crate-dig through the musical and cultural history documented in this film. His respect and enthusiasm for the material jumps off the screen.

Page by page, frame by frame, it seeks to cultivate your wonder and awaken your outrage, to spin a work of unbridled fantasy into a depressingly relevant critique of human callousness and greed in any era.

Flee is a work of great empathy for the refugee experience, bringing audiences close up to the fears of violence and repression that drove Nawabi’s family from their home and the abuse and apathy he describes that they faced once they left.

At the simplest level, the stories of trauma and loss told in In the Same Breath exist as a necessary corrective.

What fascinates the director, and clearly also fascinates his four outstanding lead actors, is the possibility of grace in a seemingly impossible, inconsolable situation. With considerable intelligence and disarming moral seriousness, they confront the question of whether forgiveness and understanding can be honestly extended or received, and whether healing can ever be more than an abstract concept.

This is a definitive statement of what Carmichael can do as a director, transcending the small scope of the film into something grander and more epic.

[Hall] picks up on their contrasting energies, the way Negga eagerly draws the camera’s gaze while Thompson quietly deflects it. But what’s most striking about Hall’s direction is her visual acuity, her gift for composing images that are gorgeous, disorienting and strangely intuitive.

A stirring debut by both Thyberg and Kappel and a daring picture that makes you love it, not for tawdry reasons but for all of the truthful crimes, perils and delights it covers.

If you care about Sparks, this movie is heaven, a long-overdue answer to the group’s 1994 song “When Do I Get to Sing ‘My Way.’” (With this doc, Ron and Russell have to feel, at least a little bit, “like Sinatra felt.”) If you don’t know about Sparks, Wright has created an introduction that gleefully demolishes any barrier you might think you have toward their music.

Part tribute, part reconciliation, "Tina" makes a beautiful case for why survival sometimes means saying goodbye.

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

Introduction’s economy is deceptive, its staying power surprising.

If that wistful, cleareyed melancholy were its primary mood, Gas Food Lodging might have been a little masterpiece. It isn't -- but it's good enough. Anders gets the externals of her vision of Laramie: a world of high skies, searing deserts, dusty stores and roads that vanish into a flat horizon. And the internals: the bickering, hurts, dreams and little everyday epiphanies. If many movies avoid or disguise the world, shining it up beyond recognition, Gas Food Lodging takes the opposite approach, a better one. It jumps right into life, faces it with careless affection, clarity and courage. [14 Aug 1982, p.F8]

Tokyo Decadence is likely to stay with you long after the theater lights come up.

High-class entertainment, carefully controlled, beautifully mounted and played with total conviction. Its lurid soul may have more in common with Jackie Collins than Jane Austen, but its passionate nature and convincing performances can’t help but draw you in.