No film with as many elements as Happy Feet is successful with all of them, and the romantic-emotional elements of this story feel overly familiar. But the music and dancing are fresh and new, and this strong an ecological message has not been seen since Hayao Miyazaki's "Princess Mononoke."

A compelling piece of work that turns out to have unexpected relevance to the current world situation.

With observant fluidity and that grounding point of Qi's desire to fight once again, Chang roots the film in personal, individual stories, keeping larger metaphors for the nation at the edges.

Violet never progresses. It’s just one long, slow wallow. That said, Devos and cinematographer Nicolas Karakatsanis devise so many striking images that the movie is always a pleasure to watch.

Even if you don't fancy raw fish, "Jiro" is a captivating film.

The tension never lets up throughout Longlegs, though it is peppered with a dry, black humor that somehow just makes everything more disturbing.

If its wobbliness doesn't always serve its commanding central performance, the movie does mark a sensitive, low-key approach to outsiders of any kind, one that legitimizes their struggle without selling them as ready-made saints.

Although the film builds an effective sense of dread and contains its share of unnerving visuals and well-timed scares, it proves far more psychological thrill ride than shockfest.

That bland, opaque quality is a disadvantage here; whatever else [Depp] is capable of, making audiences feel his pain is not at the top of the list.

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.

It's a film of exceptional technical virtuosity that could have used some help in the dramatic department.

A vibrant and transfixing revelation, You Will Die at 20 is as novel a vision as we may see this year. From its meaningful ideas on the here and the hereafter, its lesson for Muzamil is that after perishing a rebirth may follow.

Intelligent, involving and serious, it is as honestly emotional as Hollywood allows itself to get, a story of the search for wartime truth whose own concern for the genuine makes all the difference.

Though much of the movie was shot in secret to protect the filmmakers, Bailey and Thompson managed to create a remarkably vivid portrait of a land and its people, while bringing us two unforgettable heroes in Campbell and Freeth.

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.

Dated, but rousing 1944 dramatization of the planning and execution of first bombing raid over Tokyo. [24 Dec 1998, p.F12]

Artfully and cleverly, the sweet spirit of that young bear from darkest Peru and his many London misadventures materializes brilliantly on screen in the very good hands of writer-director-conjurer Paul King.

What Polley achieves here is an artful, incisive distillation of Toews’ arguments, effectively if somewhat visibly engineered for clarity and brevity.

Australian Mendelsohn (sporting a pitch-perfect American accent) and Reynolds are terrific, each wrapping himself up in the material like a well-worn favorite sweater.

Ultimately, Pollard’s film is equal parts tribute and lament, as complicated as this country.

Successfully venturesome, but you need to know that it's also a real downer.

It is the kind of distinctive, culture-driven drama from emerging filmmakers that I wish we saw more of.

Director and co-writer David Wnendt is after serious comedy here, a character study of psychic pain, wounds hereditary and self-inflicted, and body-conscious absurdity that treats the human condition with wry intelligence, not empty prurience.

By refusing to be cheap or insincere, "Fly Away Home" allows us to enjoy our emotions without feeling we've been criminally manipulated. [13 Sep 1996, p.F1]

Stands out among creative bio-pics for an ability to show art being made in a way that's as realistic and exciting as it's ever been on screen.

This modest film has virtues that come out of nowhere. It takes familiar material and develops it with such tact and skill that we find ourselves moved and sort of amazed at the same time.

Laugh-out-loud funny. [11 Dec 1997, p.F48]

What makes 51 Birch Street a moving revelation rather than a therapeutic exercise is Block's commitment to understanding his parents, Mike and Mina, on their own terms, regardless of what it does to his image of them.