Pigeon, in its deadpan, hyper-composed way, is often paralyzingly funny, and there is compassion for the gray-faced souls wandering through it.

Inherent Vice, meandering even by Anderson’s standards, is easily the worst of his movies, a soporific 2½-hour endurance test.

Hollywood has been yukking it up over North Korea and its comical-looking leader for some years now. There’s nothing funny about either, and Mansky shows why.

The film doesn’t wallow in grief; it’s a thoughtful and nuanced portrait of a stage of life we often choose not to see.

The highly stylized, often outrageously funny biopic is anchored by a devastating performance by Toni Servillo as Andreotti, brilliantly capturing the gnomic politician's trademark slouch and inexpressive face.

The adventurous souls who stick with it, however, will find head-spinning images and a cumulative impact that does, in fact, amount to a story.

Fish Tank is grim, to be sure, but it leaves us with a feeling of hopefulness.

No, which has been nominated for this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, is largely a gimmick picture: At all times, it looks like hastily assembled news footage shot on grainy videotape in 1988. That means light flaring up to spoil the image, bumpy camerawork, a nearly square picture and all-around grubbiness.

The result is an immensely enjoyable portrait of a strange-looking, non-comforming genius who loved women as much as designing masterpieces but was never able to commit to them. In other words: great architect, lousy family man.

A real actioner, generous with the bullets and blood and chase scenes, that simultaneously mocks shoot-'em-ups.

Meier's tight focus on her primary characters pays off: Seydoux brings a strong array of emotions to a highly unsympathetic part. And Klein, whether plugging his ears with cigarette filters or suddenly embracing a woman he barely knows, is heartbreaking.

Django Unchained might have been a revelation in 2005. But after Quentin Tarantino and others have spent years spoofing '60s and '70s genre movies, this mock spaghetti Western tastes like it came out of the microwave.

Us is more expansive and messier, a Rorschach blot of a movie, riffing on primal fears and a raft of ’80s references. Is it a pointed cultural take or just a gleeful scare-fest? It depends on what you choose to take from it.

A remarkable 179-minute meditation on the nature of revolution.

At the end of it all comes McKay’s big angry harrumph about the meaning of the crisis — a sign of failed, frustrated satire. If you can make your message clear through comedy, there’s no need to say, “Here’s my moral.” A funnyman can’t afford to get caught wagging his finger.

Guaranteed to leave you outraged at the way children - and, for that matter, adults - are exploited by mining companies.

The film fragments into an emotionally devastating parable about what enforced silence does to an artist.

Moana stands head and shoulders above this year’s earlier aquatic animated hit, “Finding Dory”; it’s so transporting it will have your kids begging you to book the next flight to the islands.

An affecting and beautifully realized documentary.

At stark odds with the director’s earlier work is the color palette of this one — that is to say, the film is nearly devoid of it, a haunting wash of multilayered grays. This is one Shadow that deserves to be in the spotlight.

The young, novice actors are charming, but they haven’t completely mastered the art of natural-sounding dialogue.

Premature doesn’t break much new ground. But it sure breaks hearts.

Writer-director Imamura's film seems as deceptively simple as the eel, and yet generates deep emotional ripples. [21 Aug 1998, p.064]

It only seems plotless. Momentous things happen, one of them tele­graphed in a single heartbreaking shot. The sense of time and place is so intense that Jules’ way of life seems to be disappearing even as we watch him.

In the utterly routine effort Skyfall, we're actually expected to cheer each chord we've heard so many times (here's a martini shaker! Look, it's a Walther PPK! And there's an Aston Martin!) We've been turned into wretched Pavlovian dogs, salivating at the bell instead of the snack. The highlight, by far, is a classic animated credit sequence: Adele, you are the new Shirley Bassey.

Not everyone will be in tune with the movie's sick sense of humor, although it's sometimes hilarious.

Nutty Danish provocateur Lars von Trier -- long one of the most annoying filmmakers on the planet -- turns out one of the year's most emotionally resonant art movies.

Andersson has a one-of-a-kind style that not all viewers will appreciate. His humor is not at all like Hollywood’s. His is leisurely and cerebral — two words never heard in La La Land.