Ibelin is an overwhelming film, ugly tears all the way down. It starts off with the most unspeakable of tragedies and then, as it winds its way back through Mats’s life, becomes a bittersweet story of empowerment, acceptance, even joy.

A pretty good documentary about a great subject.

It’s all supremely touching and evocative without ever feeling too on-the-nose or heavy-handed.

The movie’s singular acting triumph is Nathan Fillion’s Constable Dogberry, one of Shakespeare’s simpler buffoons made poetic by understatement. Fillion speaks softly, with ­uninflected sincerity, a brilliant departure from the standard gregarious-­hambone Dogberry. It’s his insularity — his imperviousness to the interjections of more observant people — that makes him such a touchingly credible clown.

Yacht Rock is most intriguing as a chronicle of the cat-and-mouse relationship between artists’ creativity and the language fans and brands use to describe and promote it.

The film is at its best when it lets Dickinson’s deceptively blank face and Hélène Louvart’s lyrically natural cinematography tell the story, which is far more informed by mood than events.

Too much of this fantasy is filled out with artsy folderol, but it's a movie like no other--except, maybe, one by Guy Maddin.

In the end, the point of this ridiculous, arduous, oft-interrupted odyssey turns out to be elusive — and is all the richer for it.

Some films make a point of not pulling away from their main character’s uglier moments. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, brilliantly and suffocatingly, turns its unrelenting photography into a manifestation of Linda’s self-loathing, her anxiety so intense there’s barely room for anyone else in the frame.

Del Toro’s comes into a marketplace more open to gothic delirium, and he’s such an expert craftsman that the film is a momentous technical achievement. But it’s more than that. Whatever its flaws, the director has filled Frankenstein with seemingly everything he loves, and it reflects his obsessions. It feels like the work of a true madman, and that’s really the only way anyone should make a movie of Frankenstein.

A pro-union, anti-corporate, race-conscious, Silicon Valley side-eyeing tale of one man’s journey through the late-capitalist nightmare of an “alternate present” version of Oakland, Sorry to Bother You’s greatest asset is the strength of its conviction, and how far it’s willing to go to make sure it stays burned in your brain.

The artifice of the aesthetic premise overwhelms any of the film’s other intentions.

The lifelong friends in Fred Schepisi's marvelous Last Orders actually seem like lifelong friends.

Sylvie Testud gives such a ferociously controlled performance that the messy murder seems like a necessary release.

The whole movie is a trick, reversing our expectations at nearly every turn and casting actors in roles that they were not exactly born to play, but do so with relish.

While his actors carry the drama to glittering heights of intensity in outbursts of violence, explosions of temper, gushes of tears, Scorsese is unfortunately putting on a camera show of his own, the handheld pursuit of the image lending an exhausting freneticism to what is melodrama enough on its own. [27 Jan 1975, p.64]

What his vampire drama is missing is precisely the quality that’s given Eggers’ earlier work its unsettling energy, which is that he’s able to render the past as an alien landscape whose inhabitants don’t just look different, but conceive of the universe in ways very different than we might.

The film is lyrical, expansive, unbearably beautiful.

This is a rock documentary that doesn’t just recount a band’s rise, breakup, and successful reunion, though it does do that. It invites its audience to see the band’s success from a deeper, more contextualized point of view.

The final scenes are potent enough to save the movie.

Each film in Nicolas Winding Refn's mesmerizingly brutal Pusher trilogy can stand on its own, but it's fun to see all three and observe the way the bad guys in one become the sympathetic heroes (or anti-heroes) in another.

Half-amazing, half-ridiculous, thoroughly exhilarating.

Meru is a packed 90 minutes. And I guess it is inspiring, in the sense that if human beings can endure this kind of risk and punishment, they could colonize Mars or breed a super-race to carry our species to the ends of the galaxy. All the familiar critical adjectives (harrowing, etc.) sound especially lame in this context. The movie is sick.

There’s a resilient buoyancy running through The Personal History of David Copperfield that proves irresistibly moving by the end of its journey. Its protagonist weathers hardships and cruelties in addition to benefiting from acts of kindness, and yet he never loses his capacity to be fascinated by people, a quality that’s comforting without feeling cloying.

Above all else, Clemency is a supreme actors’ showcase, backed by a director of fine-tuned emotional intelligence and a cinematographer who understands the depth and beauty of black skin tones.

Alongside Gladstone’s expressive performance, Fancy Dance’s ability to choreograph that criticism gives the film a singular grace.