Can be summed up in one word: style.

Not for all tastes, but it demonstrates Loach's skill as a poet of gritty semi-documentary filmmaking.

The real star of The Son isn't lead actor Olivier Gourmet. It's the back of his neck, which the camera obsessively focuses on throughout this difficult but rewarding Belgian drama.

This environmentally themed, very loose version of Hans Christian Andersen's "Little Mermaid" is never going to be mistaken for Disney's musical of the same name.

The movie is more a situation than a narrative, and it's repetitive and depressing. One interrupter -- a murderer who did 14 years in prison -- says of the program, "In essence, it's just a Band-Aid." At best: One of his colleagues gets shot in the back for his peacekeeping effort.

A mouse and a bear defy social convention to forge a friendship in this lovely, charming and Oscar-nominated French animated feature (now available dubbed into English with the voices of Forest Whitaker and other notables).

This is the song of the summer in movie form, a playful ode to car chases, Motown, diners, that moment when you find the exact tune that matches your mood, driving stick, crime capers, ’80s movies and love.

The best reason to wade into this (let's be honest) challenging but hugely rewarding film is Quvenzhané Wallis.

The closing subtitle says that no one was ever prosecuted for this madness. The pure-archive approach leaves a taste of despair; civic governance, it seems, can’t even promise not to kill you.

A startling look at the devastating human cost of China's newfound embrace of capitalism.

Fans of Hou know just what to expect from his slow, contemplative films - and they won't be disappointed.

Impressive throughout is the way Eisenberg balances reverence for his locations and belly-grabbing comedy, while using those elements to support each other.

Anyone expecting a hard-hitting biography will be disappointed by Julian Schnabel's soft-edged, dreamy and relatively nonpolitical film.

A breakthrough animated film -- a trippy cross between "Yellow Submarine" and "My Dinner With Andre" that will leave some audience members struggling to stay awake and others reaching for a toke.

The film seizes Lowery’s best skills as a director: his eye for innocence and nature (Pete’s Dragon) and how he uses slowness to deepen a story (The Old Man and the Gun).

Director Paul Greengrass - who directed the superb "United 93" between the second and third "Bourne" installments - knows how to stage and edit bravura action sequences, generating almost unbearable suspense while deploying a superb cast.

Everything a summer blockbuster should be but rarely is - a whip-smart, slam-bang piece of entertainment where we deeply care about the fate of the central characters.

In a perfect world, Tea With the Dames could be a series. Let us be flies on the wall for this posse’s weekly gathering for tea and convivial cackling. And I say this with the delighted surety that they would tell anyone who proposed this idea to go straight to hell.

It would be possible to appreciate Shannon's fabulous work in Take Shelter far better if the filmmaker lost a quarter of the two-hour running time -- there are many overlong scenes that make this a needlessly tough sit.

Like his Oscar-winning “A Separation,” Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s latest, nominated for this year’s Best Foreign Language Film, is an expertly crafted domestic thriller.

Visually flat and uninteresting and too often feels like a (leisurely paced) filmed play.

The Pianist recalls "Schindler's List," even down to its weakness: Just as Spielberg's film turned sentimental in its final half hour, Polanski's work, too, has a schmaltz coda. But that doesn't make The Pianist any less effective.

A powerful piece of filmmaking.

It’s Peele’s first film, but it has none of the rough edges or self-indulgence you’d expect from a rookie.

It’s the ensemble that wows most, though. Faist makes an unusually spindly Riff, yet he is scarier than any I’ve seen. Bernardo, the best role in the show, is given real intensity by David Alvarez and Ariana DeBose dances the dickens out of “America” as Anita.

I was reminded, at times, of the painstakingly detailed beauty of “The Triplets of Belleville,” but Moore has a more ethereal, rounded aesthetic all his own. They don’t make movies like this anymore — except when, lucky us, they do.

Two of Winehouse’s oldest friends also contribute, giving deeply sad accounts of watching their goofy, fearless pal disappear into a haze of flashbulbs and self-destruction.

All too often, films about interconnected lives stumble under the weight of coincidences. Not The Edge of Heaven.