Legendary is an overworked adjective, but surely it applies to Jack Cardiff, the British cinematographer whose awe-inspiring resume includes some of the most beautiful Technicolor films ever shot, among them "The Red Shoes," "Black Narcissus" and "Stairway to Heaven."

Vincent Lindon, one of France's leading actors, is super as Marc, a man on a downward spiral into insanity. And Emmanuelle Devos is comforting as Marc's loving wife.

Suffers even more than the Harry Potter films from a compulsion to be faithful to the source material, including cramming in a head-spinning assortment of characters and subplots.

The final twist is completely unexpected.

The movie is strangely demure in its attempts to be wild.

A cinematic enchantment, a low-key 1970s-style kids’ movie brimming with sincerity and heart. It’s one of the best films of the year.

The plot doesn’t entirely escape formula, and the ending is jagged and forced, unable to commit to either hope or gloom. But for at least part of its length, My Brother the Devil brings refreshing changes to a genre badly in need of them.

A comedy as black as the asphalt desert of a mall parking lot.

Hilariously overblown, "Cruelty" fairly pops at the seams with the beloved eccentricity of Joel and Ethan Coen, from the fiendishly ludicrous scenarios and casually tossed off visual gags to the razor-sharp repartee.

No "Girl on the Bridge," but this comic thriller does generate a fair amount of erotic tension and sly commentary on psychoanalysis.

Each scene stumbles onto a detail of inspired absurdity or a crunchy bite of dialogue that encapsulates Chinaski's weird flavor of self-destruction.

Basically a mega-budget war movie that makes fun of mega-budget war movies.

Dialogue is sparse in this leisurely paced chase; instead, the bluesy vocals of indigenous singer Archie Roach -- singing de Heer's lyrics -- are layered over the action as a kind of musical narration.

I cannot tell a lie. I derive great satisfaction watching John Malkovich act.

Koch ends with the former mayor showing off a typically flamboyant gesture that embodies his contradictions - choosing to be buried in a Christian cemetery in his beloved Manhattan, complete with an already erected tombstone proclaiming his Jewish identity.

Frankel has a fine eye for telling detail, and the result, while sentimental, is as irresistible as the dessert cart.

It’s the gargantuan and deeply satisfying Spider-Man: No Way Home in which the former Billy Elliot proves he’s more than a teen idol with a perfect American accent. This time, his Peter’s got gravitas, emotional oomph, brutality, believable love, an anguished scene in the rain! The movie is the actor’s best performance yet, in anything, Spandex or no.

The climactic scene, in both story concept and design, is too complicated and peculiar for my tastes. But until that short blip, co-directors Phil Johnston and Rich Moore’s (“Zootopia”) film is supremely intelligent, and Reilly and Silverman once again give deep-feeling vocal performances.

Unfortunately for the film, it's clear from the outset this is a totally one-sided battle that well-connected developer Bruce Ratner is fated to win.

Mozart's Sister had a much smaller budget than "Amadeus," but Féret makes good use of his resources, even getting to film in the splendid halls of Versailles. The cast is excellent, be they relatives of the director or not. And the music, though not by a Mozart, is beautiful.

In short, Red Eye hits the bull's-eye.

The misleading documentary Trumbo paints a golden nimbus of holiness around the onetime highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood, Dalton Trumbo, an on-the-record hater of democracy, defender of authoritarian rule and avowed Communist.

Delightful performances are delivered by all in this ingenious work of cinema that is worth seeing if only for its glorious views of the Himalayas.

The release of Crossing the Line couldn't be more timely. Earlier this week, it was announced that the two Koreas would hold a summit this month in Pyongyang. Perhaps Kim will bring Dresnok with him.

Lush and poetic, Dolls proves once again that Kitano is one of the world's most original filmmakers.

Intelligent, well-acted movie.

While clearly on the side of the protesters, the filmmakers are still determined to explain every legal detail, and at times matters become bogged down in endless televised journalists and snappish legislators.

Visually, this toon is all over the place. Rapunzel's glowing hair can look alarmingly like fiber-optic cable, but some backgrounds are the computer-generated equivalents of Disney's golden-age work.

11 Flowers boils down to a coming-of-age tale merged with a why-dunit — not unlike “To Kill a Mockingbird” — but the plot is molasses-slow, as threads are dropped, picked up and dropped again.

A Tom Cruise action flick with a strong female heroine and a sense of humor? Edge of Tomorrow has both of those, plus a “Groundhog Day’’-style gimmick that pays big dividends. Over and over.

Makes for fascinating viewing.

Walken gives a beautifully understated performance.

Director and co-writer Matteo Garrone infuses The Embalmer with a spooky eroticism. The film is dark, both in theme and visual composition.

Rather morbid.

Like with any great singer, it's often the telling pauses of the man born Anthony Benedetto that say the most in The Zen of Bennett.

Hard to say what percentage of Haynes’ adult audience will dig this one. I found it lovely to look at and emotionally underwhelming.

Yvan Attal and Anne Consigny give understated but powerful performances as Graff and his wife, Françoise. Although a bit too long, Rapt makes for compelling viewing.

War was both cruel and magnificent, as Churchill once put it. To Gibson, it still is.

Grunting and boarlike, Gérard Depardieu supplies a one-note rendition of Dominique Strauss-Kahn in Abel Ferrara’s peculiarly unilluminating Welcome to New York.

A beautiful but empty-headed documentary.

Keeps such a lazy pace, with so many scenes that fail to move the story forward, that it should be cited for failing to meet the minimum speed for a crime drama.

For all the drama's canonization of a runner who valued guts over everything else, Without Limits takes no risks. It's just not all that it could be. [11 Sep 1998, p.069]

It’s a film heavily dependent on tone and atmosphere for its charm, the budding relationship shown through things like a lovely twilight bike ride down a hill to the shops below.

What’s the difference between “21 Jump Street” and 22 Jump Street? Same as the difference between getting a 21 and a 22 at blackjack.

Though deadly serious, Christopher Smith's European-made bubonic- plague melodrama provides good value with lots of blood and guts, as well as a solid cast.

To keep this one-man show visually engaging, director Sophie Fiennes places the professor in sets and costumes from the movies, talking about “Full Metal Jacket” from atop a barracks toilet and “Brief Encounter” from a 1940s British train.

A first-rate example of good storytelling and well-timed — while not excessive — gore. Its disgusting, hilarious conclusion left me eager to see what’ll be next from director Jim Mickle.

It also boasts a killer breakout performance by comic Patton Oswalt as a former classmate who becomes Theron's unlikely co-dependent and sometimes co-conspirator.

A highly entertaining first-person documentary .

White excels at writing dislikable protagonists — topped by Laura Dern on the HBO series “Enlightened” — while giving his characters enough humanity not to be monsters, and the potential for change.

Not a film for all tastes, but it's a considerable artistic achievement.

Except when Norton is playing retarded, he and De Niro basically compete to see who can under-act the other. It's positively mesmerizing.

Less of a "You go, girl" manifesto than its title would suggest.

The lyrical The Road Home is less political and less flashy than some previous films by Zhang Yimou.

A triumph of intelligent adaptation. It shows again how well the great Victorian storyteller translates to film, and makes enjoyable use of a generally first-rate cast.

A sobering, if exploitative, portrait of the real-life hitchhiking hooker portrayed so realistically by Charlize Theron in "Monster."

Dutch-born Lotte Verbeek is solid as You, a role that won her the best-actress prize at the Locarno Film Festival.

The hopelessly dated 1968 play "The Boys in the Band" yields a surprisingly sprightly and multifaceted documentary, Making the Boys.

Call it the rape of Carnegie Hall.

Riddled with sores, his lips locked on a crack pipe, the "sub-basement"-dwelling subject of this cult-rock doc initially seems plucked from an episode of "Intervention," or maybe "Hoarders."

The result is quite a ramble: Leacock talks about how equipment influences filmmaking, the making of a custard and the wanderings of his cat. Through it all, happily, his company is a pleasure.

The hugely enjoyable second entry doesn’t lift the franchise to new artistic heights, a la The Empire Strikes Back, but Part II is every bit as good and scary as its predecessor, and the characters, especially the kids, go to deeper and braver places.

A crowd-pleaser of the first order.

The evidence adds up cleverly and the script doesn’t coast on its status as a nice family movie in order to avoid delivering a satisfying conclusion. It’s meaty, like a roast leg of, well, you know.

The film thwarts any pat expectations you might glean from the town's bad economy and these checkered backgrounds. The teenagers are refreshingly gentle and clean-living; they don't drink, they don't swear and they certainly aren't having sex. All three are religious, a fact that is neither emphasized nor underplayed.

Tom Hardy gives an amazing performance as Peterson, who took on the nickname Charlie Bronson, after the "Death Wish" actor.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is, as you'd expect, rubbish, but the word is slightly too kind. The David Fincher film (like the very similar Swedish one - released in the US just last year! - and the book) is not even good rubbish.

The Outpost really is not a movie of wit or soaring inspirational speeches, but of no-holds-barred emotion. A story of young men in their 20s, with dreams and loved ones back home, who had the courage to risk it all for each other.

The newest “Dragon” adventure, once again written and directed by Dean DeBlois, achieves real visual artistry.

Still, the proceedings move so quietly and thoughtfully as to be occasionally somnolent, though they’re punctuated with spasms of the violence that marked the Troubles.

Strictly for art-house types, particularly those familiar with the director, who makes no concessions to mainstream audiences. You have to abandon any preconceived notions about movies and allow your mind to be seduced by the mystifying, occasionally humorous world of a one-of-a-kind filmmaker. You might even find yourself becoming a fan.

Frequently charming, beautifully drawn and far more faithful in spirit to the source material than those dreadful Ron Howard-Brian Grazer productions.

The supremely talented Florence Pugh has rapidly rebounded from the “Don’t Worry Darling” debacle with The Wonder, a creepy new Netflix drama that’s unusually strong for the streaming service. For once, it’s the characters who endure hardship — not the audience.

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

Horn bookends his documentary with clips from "It Came From Outer Space."

Boring.

Despite the underlying wretchedness, though, the characters exude a sense of having so little interior life that none of this, or anything else, fazes them. That’s disturbing, too.

You don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy Divan, an absolutely charming first-person documentary about a young ex-Hasidic woman determined to re-connect with her roots on her own terms.

So potent, it could change the mind of even the most staunch defender of capital punishment.

The labor of love of South African brothers Craig and Damon Foster, who directed and photographed this intriguing documentary.

Lately, the Shakespeare plays on film tend to be either too self-consciously irreverent on the one hand or too stodgy on the other; Kurzel’s Macbeth takes a point of view without betraying the Bard.

A cheap exploitation picture wrapped in miles and miles of stale would-be Oscar scenes.

Vinterberg aces the metaphor-heavy scene in which Troy demonstrates his swordsmanship for an inexperienced, dazzled Bathsheba.

It's a tribute to Birbiglia's storytelling chops that the most engaging part of the film is when he's talking directly to the camera. The fleshed-out story, with its first-rate cast, almost feels like gilding the lily.

An amazing portrait of the great filmmaker Ingmar Bergman in his later years.

A powerful fable about love and addiction that manages to be darkly humorous when it isn't graphic or harrowing in the extreme.

A soufflé that begins promisingly but never quite rises.

The subject may be serious, but Ghobadi's approach is mostly light and humorous, at least until the final scenes. Hamed Behdad is especially funny as a streetwise promoter who fast-talks his way out of jail and 80 lashes.

In their overly earnest attempt to flesh Sendak’s story out to 100 minutes, Jonze and his co-screenwriter, novelist Dave Eggers, have laboriously spelled out motivations (divorce is bad!), elaborated back stories -- and added reams of less-than-inspired dialogue.

Will Forte continues his transition into serious actorhood with this indie.

Its double-barrel satire is aimed both at those who curate their lives through merrily sun-dappled photos, and their followers, who drink it in as reality.

What made Ludwig such a great musician? The documentary In Search of Beethoven, directed by Phil Grabsky, answers that question reasonably well.

Roman de Gare translates as "station novel," a book you might pick up to read on a train journey and then discard when you arrive at your destination. Lelouch's film is the cinematic equivalent, enjoyable fluff that your mind will discard after the closing credits - but worth seeing nevertheless.

A remarkable accomplishment. It takes one of the century's vast tragedies...and makes it heart-rendingly real and intimate.

A clever, funny, extended joke about ruthless directors, method actors and the power of the cinema.

The whole film could use a jolt of caffeine, and a lugubrious woodwind score doesn't help.

A verité collage of indelible images Sauret collected in and around Ground Zero, beginning moments after the planes hit the World Trade Center.

Carandiru, which ends with actual footage of the prison being demolished in 2002, marks a terrific comeback for Babenco - it's the roughest picture of life behind bars since "Midnight Express."