Spare, haunting, uncompromising, Ida is a film of exceptional artistry whose emotions are as potent and persuasive as its images are indelibly beautiful.

If you’ve ever doubted how art, rage or action can make meaningful change, Goldin’s combination of all three fighting an opioid crisis that nearly killed her is exhilarating proof of the power of “screaming in the streets,” to borrow what the queer artist David Wojnarowicz — one of many close friends of Goldin’s whom the AIDS epidemic took — wryly described as a necessary ritual of the living in a time of too much death.

A ruggedly beautiful landscape of desert and sea provides a dramatic setting for a psychological drama told with the utmost rigor--and unabashed eroticism.

Provocative, hallucinatory, incendiary, this devastating animated documentary is unlike any Israeli film you've seen. More than that, in its seamless mixing of the real and the surreal, the personal and the political, animation and live action, it's unlike any film you've seen, period.

What transpires is an exquisitely controlled yet diverting blend of pre-mourning and in-the-moment pleasures, a tonal blend of miraculous balance for a first-time filmmaker, even one with Panahi’s one-of-a-kind training.

They Shall Not Grow Old is a tribute paid by the present to the past, and what a gorgeous gift it turns out to be.

Poetic and painterly, personal and political.

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.

Baker wrote the part for her, and Madison returned the favor with a star-making performance, leaning into Ani’s audacity while revealing the fragile façade, the vulnerabilities and self-deception lurking underneath.

Most of all you remember Colman, in a performance that achieves its power, in no small part, by utterly destroying our understanding of what power looks like. She beams and scowls, brays and bleeds, shatters and disintegrates. She rules.

Egoyan understands how potent a deliberate pace can be, how effective it is in making already powerful material strong enough to tear at your heart.

Ghost World is above all a disquieting consciousness-raiser.

In a brash, beautiful, deeply American film, Kaufman has combined the resources and ingenuity of movie making with the freewheeling, damn-the-conventions style of of the New Journalism and come up with a generous, high-spirited look at the bravery and lunacy that was that era.

Despite all the good fun, Bambi remains a potent story that touches deep fears and emotions. Few scenes in animation--or live action film--match the poignancy of the death of Bambi's mother, a sequence that still moves children (and adults) to tears.

Minute by minute, it’s a roving, inquisitive, elegantly expansive portrait of an establishment whose many constituent and tangential elements — farms and markets, kitchens and dining rooms, chefs and sous-chefs, servers and customers — function together in a kind of whirring, bustling day-to-day harmony.

A film of rare visual poetry that's simultaneously personal, political and philosophical, it's a genuine art film that's also unpretentious and easygoing.

A documentary potent enough to alter how you see the world.

The Brutalist argues, and proves by its very existence, that the maddening thing about major works of art is that they demand invention and resources and cooperation.

Because Linklater now wears his heart on his sleeve, he has made a film that in its joy, optimism and aesthetic achievement keeps faith with American cinema at its finest.

As with Rohrwacher’s previous movies, there is an exquisite blurring between the tangible and the ethereal, the urban and the pastoral, life and death, past and present — all of it overlapping with the same ease as the hues of a twilight sky.

Nobody here actually calls Julie the worst person in the world (that insult is reserved for another character entirely), but you can imagine her thinking it about herself as she considers the mistakes she’s made and the people she’s hurt. But over the course of this charming, wistful, ineffably tender movie, you also see her learn to embrace the possibility of good in herself and in every precious, unhurried moment. It’s time well spent.

Lovely, lavish 1935 adaptation of Charles Dickens' beloved story about a plucky young lad living in 19th century England. [15 Oct 2006, p.E10]

A startling reminder of exactly how spectacular a director Spielberg can be when he allows himself to be challenged by a subject (in this case World War II) that pushes against his limits.

With Licorice Pizza [Anderson] has sifted through a haze of wildly embellished tales and half-forgotten memories — and pieced together something that feels more concrete, more achingly, tangibly real, than just about any American movie this year.

Director Judy Chaikin, who co-wrote the film with its deft editor, Edward Osei-Gyimah, infuses this fine portrait with grace, nostalgia and a well-calibrated dose of social commentary.

A movie like Ben-Hur, while almost never stirring or imaginative in the way that the true epics of Griffith or Gance or Kurosawa are, nevertheless has a basic appeal.

The movie, its many strands brilliantly threaded for maximum impact, is also an argument for the necessity of independent inquiry, and for a reassessment of what a “true crime” documentary means when the lion’s share of attention goes to sensationalized, overreported tabloid tales that go down easy in streaming formats.

Only Yesterday is a realistic, personal story made universal in a delicate way.