Paints an entertaining picture of the cherubic gentleman, who as the first curator of contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art brought new excitement to the stodgy institution.

[Refn] mixes jittery hand-held camerawork, improvised dialogue and available light to create a nightmarish world of sex, drugs and horrific brutality that will turn off many viewers while delighting others.

An utterly beguiling tale.

The funniest "SNL" movie since "Wayne's World."

A vivacious film that is a treat for eyes and ears.

Virtually dialogue-free and animated in a cacophony of playful bright colors and ominous industrial landscapes, Boy & the World plays like a dream segueing into a nightmare.

Be advised that this is no ordinary music doc. There are no talking heads and no performance footage of Nirvana. In fact, there's no Nirvana music at all. Instead, Schnack gives us other artists' music that had an effect on the troubled rocker.

An invigorating and surprising journey.

Sex Drive has shaky moments, and its smutty gags aren't edited so much as slammed together.

Raunchy frat comedies are as hard to pull off as any other kind because they have to keep surprising the audience, and The Hangover does with a bizarre series of uproarious situations with explanations that just about stay within the bounds of plausibility.

Camandule gives a strong performance as the lovesick guard, but Svarcas gets little chance to show her skills. There's minimal dialogue and camera movement -- but lots of charm.

Free State of Jones is enticingly difficult to chart. It’s anti-war, anti-plutocracy and anti-racist, but it’s also pro-Bible, pro-gun, anti-tax and sympathetic to the poor whites who usually get tagged as racist. Its hero is an avowed Republican named Newt.

Powerful, important and refreshingly straightforward documentary.

[Refn] mixes jittery hand-held camerawork, improvised dialogue and available light to create a nightmarish world of sex, drugs and horrific brutality that will turn off many viewers while delighting others.

Clever, wise and witty.

A great abortion documentary might leave you guessing which side of the debate the director was on. Lake of Fire is not that film, but it comes somewhat close.

Harp’s mix of old-school masculinity, love of animals and innate paternal instincts suits Elba perfectly. And unlike Nomadland, which also brought together real citizens with a Hollywood star (Frances McDormand), Elba fits easily and naturally into this group and their environment. It’s like a rider meeting the perfect horse.

Leguizamo knocks it out of the park as an armored car driver in The Take.

Sometimes teeters on the verge of going completely over the top, but it's mostly saved by its own self-awareness.

Director Bolton could easily have exploited the film's unsettling issues, but he takes a nonsensationalized approach that leaves viewers to decide the moral questions for themselves.

Seeing what Hitler's propaganda minister saw, hearing only his diary entries and what he heard, we effectively live inside the monster's head.

Well worth seeing for Walters, whose comic and dramatic gifts are showcased to very entertaining effect.

The result — directed by Rufus Norris and setting words collected by Alecky Blythe against music by Adam Cork — is mesmerizing.

Some of the plot twists don't really stand up to close scrutiny, but the sometimes over-the-top Joy Ride plows through them with such joyful glee, you don't really care.

My own voice-over would go something like this: “This summer. One woman. Will see this movie. Again.”

Douchebag belies its abrasive title with a soft touch for two wobbly souls.

Superb Noo Yawk attitude, dialogue and performances (including one from the essential Kevin Corrigan, now well into his second decade of being indie movies' dirtbag on demand) keep the movie lively and tart.

A fun ride of a sci-fi thriller with terrific romantic chemistry between Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan.

Short, fast and nasty, The Mechanic is considerably more fun than the rather lethargic original.

Written and directed with compassion by Noah Buschel, the film is a low-key chamber piece better suited to television. But don’t let its restraint fool you: As unshowy as it is, The Phenom has an impressive collection of tools.

A pleasingly low-key effort pitched at fans of the first couple.

The tragic victims in "City of God" are played by actors while those in La Sierra are flesh-and-blood real.

Solidly old-fashioned entertainment.

The script falters at the end, as the two reach the Turkish village where Ibrahim was raised. But the winning performances -- and killer '60s soundtrack -- save the day.

Some advice: Don't even bother trying to figure out what's going on in Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence -- just sit back and enjoy the lush, trippy visuals.

A daunting work that will please movie lovers willing to invest their time and intellect. Now I look forward to Fiennes' next project, a feature about Grace Jones.

As the wife, pixie-ish Kanako Higuchi provides the perfect accompaniment to Watanabe.

A crackling musical score and eye-popping cinematography add to the nonstop ferocity, and Wagner Moura is charismatic as the head of the titular police unit.

This is a look at the joy, confusion and heartbreak of adolescence that's both culture- and locale-specific and, at the same time, universal.

The plot isn't a new one (remember Lady Chatterley?), but Corsini gives it a few twists and turns that keep matters fresh and suspenseful.

Though somewhat marred by cheesy docudrama re-enactments, the film (produced by Steven Spielberg’s sister Nancy) is nutty, dramatic, surprising and above all inspiring.

Mother is yet another winner by Bong, one of Asia's most talented directors.

Shot in luminous black and white, John Boorman's The General is an off-puttingly adoring homage to a complete savage [18 Dec 1998, p.65]

Raises an interesting question. Do you clamp down on corporations in order to protect the environment or do you let them go about their business because they help feed countless families.

Author is one of the most entertaining documentaries in recent memory — and, possibly, the origin story of catfishing.

Who needs mind-bending drugs when they can see this.

There's a carnivalesque medley of subplots scampering about the screen, but Serreau manages to emerge triumphant with all the threads nimbly stitched together.

An oddly endearing little chamber piece that provides a terrific showcase for Hoffman, surely the best actor who has never been nominated for an Oscar.

The enchanting voice on the phone, who delightfully shows up in person halfway through, belongs to Zooey Deschanel. In real life, she hooked up with the composer of the lively score, M. Ward, to create the pop duo She & Him.

As you might suspect, the 2012 dialogue is pure Velveeta.

A sweet and charming treat.

Deeply personal screenwriting and a superlative performance by Molly Shannon as a dying mom lift Other People above the level of many similar tragedy-inflected indie comedies.

Preteen sexuality is a sensitive subject, but director Auraeus Solito handles it with dignity, never becoming exploitative.

Footloose won me over early, with a sequence in which the hero gets all heavy metal while restoring his badass ... VW Bug.

Girlhood veers between being a celebration of sisterhood (albeit an occasionally violent sort) and a chronicle of the cycle of poverty.

The film never pretends to be other than what it really is: soft-core porn for the ladies, diluted with an “R” rating.

Far more worth seeing than most of what's out there.

The star gives us a generous and hilarious portrait of life as an aging legend.

Wholesome entertainment that will please the under-10 crowd without boring their parents.

Well worth seeing for the incandescent Portman.

Whether you're looking for a love story with a little gore or a horror movie with a little romance, Zombie Honeymoon will suit your taste.

So filled with amusing, idiosyncratic touches and unexpectedly charming characters that you mostly don't mind its excesses.

It's the little things that resonate in this tender and sincere tale of first love.

The script is fresh and accessible - even for folks who don't know Croatia from Cambodia - and it is put over by solid acting and direction.

(Kusturica) celebrates its gaudy humanity in a joyous picture that is his most lighthearted and amusing work to date.

Kari successfully meshes comedy, ennui and tragedy, much in the manner of Jim Jarmusch and Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismaki.

With Lake Tahoe, Mexican filmmaker Fernando Eimbcke proves himself adept at turning a blank screen into a work of art.

A well-built machine that dunks you into a big warm vat of sadness. There's no plot: It's a situation drama. Instead of punch lines, it delivers regular shots of heartbreak.

A labor of love, Young Rebels is essential viewing for anyone who wants to stay ahead of the hip-hop curve.

Woody Allen certainly hasn't managed anything remotely this funny lately.

To get to the best part first, Tarantino's adrenaline-pumping "Death Proof" is actually a good movie that - unlike Rodriguez's "Planet Terror," - rethinks its genre in ways that say something to contemporary audiences. And it's got some of Tarantino's best dialogue since "Pulp Fiction."

A tabloidy, nail-biting thriller.

As with "Capturing the Friedmans," the documentary is grueling to sit through. Yet the greasy, guilty thrill of being privy to your neighbors' most intimate dramas makes it impossible to stop watching.

Though the movie doesn't use real names and the press notes say it's "inspired" by the Durst case, it seems to follow many of the facts rather closely -- all the while mixing in not a little provocative speculation.

In the end, inner peace is found by all - on screen and in the audience.

In Hot Summer Nights, Chalamet proves he’s learned Hollywood’s most important trick of all: consistency. His performance here is every bit as good as those past credits — more so, in some respects, thanks to his comedic chops — even if the film’s prestige is dampened by, well, tons of pot, cocaine and gnarly murders.

Luke, who seems to have been marking time since his impressive debut in the title role of Denzel Washington's "Antwone Fisher" four years ago, is fiercely good as this reluctant warrior and devoted family man.

Has buckets of gentle sincerity. Since there aren't any dumb jokes or hip visuals, it's easy to get caught up in the simple messages: Be good to your sister, don't be a bully, use your imagination in a pinch.

De Wilde has a good grasp of Austen’s sense of humor, and she plays it up with some amusing bits

The Edgertons pile on the plot twists a bit thick, but the director steadily ratchets up the tension until a climactic shootout.

Archival footage is combined with somewhat affected-looking re-enactments, but the film achieves its purpose: to remind us that we still have thousands of bombs, and neither they — nor we — have gotten that much smarter.

An unusually well-written and satisfying multilayered drama that conveys the feel of urban India with more vivid accuracy than anything made in the subcontinent in recent years.

At the Professional Bull Riders championships, a rough animal is called "rank." In this skillful documentary, you can almost hear the cracking bones as brave and/or stupid riders attempt to stay on these snorting 2,000-pound monsters for eight seconds.

With a mischievous, metaphysical flourish, Doctor Strange administers some much-needed CPR to the flagging superhero genre. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel — a power-hungry villain (Mads Mikkelsen) tries to unleash hell on Earth, blah blah blah — but it’s a heck of a lot more fun than I’ve had at a Marvel movie lately.

Garrel’s ideas on both are pretty old-fashioned. But he wraps it up with a pleasurable O. Henry-like twist, and a moment of what feels suspiciously like true love.

The show works pretty much the same as "Idol" does, with Afghans voting by cellphone for their favorite performers. But this is Afghanistan, where the Taliban still has power, not America.

Holy ship! Crowe’s grumpy Noah and his dysfunctional clan help God reboot the too-wicked world in this imaginative (but hardly sacrilegious) and visually spectacular elaboration on Genesis.

For my money, Furious 6 is more fun than “Skyfall" and a lot more fun than the deadly dull “Star Trek Into Darkness,’’ both of which ask you to take their silly plots way too seriously.

For the most part, however, “Deliver Me From Nowhere” is in conversation with where Springsteen’s mind and passions rest today, as evidenced by his memoir “Born to Run” and his introspective Broadway show — revisiting the mansion on the hill and returning to his father’s house.

Hard Goodbyes could easily have been maudlin, but isn't. Credit an adult script and realistic acting, especially by Giorgos Karayannis as Elias.

When Hopkins' Hitch directs the audience by waving his hands like a symphony conductor - it's a nice callback to a Hannibal Lecter highlight - it's one of the best scenes of the year: a delightfully personal way to show how the story of "Psycho" concluded.

Ryan Reynolds is chillingly perfect as a nice-guy factory worker struggling with schizophrenia and murderous impulses in this tonally wild indie, which is nearly too horrifying to be funny — but not quite.

One way to judge a filmmaker is by the way he or she directs children. Take Tze Chun and his impressive first feature, Children of Invention.

It's an enjoyable, well-acted, old-school geekfest pitting a group of middle-school students against an escaped monster from outer space.

Delightfully quirky.

The film failed to be frightening, suspenseful or dramatic but accidentally succeeded in being absolutely hilarious.

With its gray skies, moody ambience and ominous orchestral score, Thelma fits the cliché about Scandinavian entertainment being dark as hell — in the best way. It’s also gorgeous.

The director is, you won't be surprised to learn, Tsai Ming-laing, whose deadpan humor and minimalist lensing has made him a god among film geeks.