Truth be told, Firth's transcendent performance in A Single Man renders that stylistic gimmick utterly unnecessary -- Firth provides all the emotional color this movie needs, and then some.

The similar Kevin Bacon HBO movie "Taking Chance" got there first. Worse news: The earlier movie was sober, meticulous and quietly convincing, not a shouty, shoddy bore like this piece of flummery.

Clever, wise and witty.

Jim Carrey mostly plays it straight as the narrator. The 3-D effects are uncanny; much of the audience ducked when sea snakes lunged at it. You can't get that on your TV set. Yet.

You don't have to be a fan of Daniel Johnston, an underground artist and singer-songwriter whose manic-depression has kept him from realizing his full potential, to appreciate director Jeff Feuerzeig's documentary.

Forget those weepie liberal clichés. This starless and vividly authentic romantic thriller set in Central America really rocks, and is one of the most exciting directorial debuts in years.

In a way, this marvelous movie does show that the Mekons have declined, because they’ve become the one thing punk rockers never ever want to be: lovable.

The stunning adventure Mountain Patrol: Kekexili is like a John Ford western set, not in the master's beloved Monument Valley, but in remotest China.

As subtle and careful and slyly disturbing as Child’s Pose is though, it and many others of its genus suffer from an airlessness, pacing like the growth of algae, a dishwater color palate and a dirge-like monotone.

Tomlin and Elliot relive their characters’ pain and anger so deeply that they could very well both end up with Oscar nominations.

Presence is a brisk 85 minutes, which is nice if you have dinner plans, but it also exposes limited storytelling ambitions. It’s a mid-season episode of TV. We don’t get to know much about the characters, and don’t care either way about their fate.

Profane, darkly funny, violent and tragic.

So daring and unsparing in its depiction of the psyche and experience of adolescent girls that it's hard to imagine an audience that wouldn't find it deeply provocative despite a slow pace.

Maddeningly pretentious and often slow to the point of tedium, Humanite is also hauntingly original and truly strange.

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."

Such is literature’s power that the cast is more at ease portraying ancient Romans than speaking as versions of themselves.

A charming and enjoyable movie.

We get to know three of these courageous, funny, smart and perhaps permanently damaged men in a film that largely avoids telling us what to think and makes an effort to get near the truth of the soldiers' experience.

Nothing Cooper does is organic or authentic, and his show-off performance is always stilted. He arduously thinks through every single choice — it’s time to scream into a pillow; cue the laugh; ready, set, cry. Nobody goes to a movie to watch actors ponder their next beat. We want to feel, and his overwrought turn does not allow us to.

A devastating indictment of unbridled greed and materalism, made all the more relevant by the Enron and WorldCom scandals.

During a moment in which movies tend to be either cynically corporate or bleaker than a black hole, “Project Hail Mary” dares to be about that once-great driver of drama: friendship.

Director Marc Silver expertly interweaves the courtroom drama and its larger social and human connotations.

Those with the stomach to sit through Decline will be rewarded with a lively, masterful documentary.

We know Lee can channel anger into art. Now, in the maiden feature for Amazon Studios, he adds poetry, beginning with the spoken-word verse that fills the movie.

Any plot greasing is quickly forgivable because of how damn delightful it is to be riding in the back of Squibb’s scooter. That this is the actress’ first leading role in a decades-long career is the greatest crime of all.

The entertaining movie from director Rose Glass, whose first feature was “Saint Maud,” is unsparing in its graphic depictions of violence, abuse and extreme aspects of the body. Many will find all of that stuff gratuitous, but it fleshes out this unsavory world and ratchets up the plot’s tension.

Issues millions of people face everyday are addressed cleverly and poignantly, and never without a hint of humor. Wilde isn’t really interested in sentimentality, either, and her movie hits harder for it.

Twice I have left a Calvary screening feeling dazed and moved.