The haunting mastery of Leviathan comes not from these broad indictments of a social order, but from the specifics of the performances, the actors wearing their hurt and rage, their defiance and dread, like well-worn clothing.

It's hard to know whether this is a function of the sympathetic screenplay or of Krieger's sympathetic direction - or both - but Celeste and Jesse are endearing even when they do unsympathetic things.

The Painted Veil is rich with history and heartbreak. It's stirring stuff.

Dazzling and delirious, The Fall is a celebration of cinema, of old-fashioned storytelling and globe-hopping spectacle.

Rees tells Alike's story in vignettes that are sometimes slapstick, sometimes heartbreaking, always tender.

The animated French family film April and the Extraordinary World will have your imagination doing somersaults and cartwheels.

Lord knows how Holofcener got the performance she did out of Goodwin, but the child actor's Annie, rude and unmanageable, is an extraordinarily rich and complicated figure.

A super-taut and superbly acted three-character piece.

Hunger is daunting and powerful work.

Chronicle is full of smart writing that isn't too smart.

DuVernay, a low-key director sparing in her use of emotion and music, has made an existential drama that is European in its feel.

Extraordinarily sensual and extraordinarily bleak, Claire Denis' Nenette and Boni depicts a world of diffident youth, of estranged families and displaced souls. [02 May 1997, p.15]

It's a testament to Cage's canny performance and Jonze's seamless use of special effects that you believe Charlie and Donald are two entirely different people.

It can feel inchoate, dropping the viewer in the middle of events without much context, and it exacts an emotional toll. But its raw quality also makes it compelling viewing.

It's easy to mistake the simplicity of plot and theme here for simple-mindedness - this isn't Pynchon or Proust. Kung Fu Panda 3 has the economy of a Zen koan, not to mention its inner harmony and wisdom.

Stays with you like great movies tend to do. It asks you to examine the inner mechanisms of human beings, cheerful and miserable alike. It's not about looking at a glass half empty or a glass half full. It's about drinking down what's in that glass and letting it fill your soul.

The rare movie that manages to convey the inner soul of an artist.

It's a devilishly twisted affair.

Collins and Pacino plumb the depths of acting, of Shakespeare, of the difference between law and justice.

La Promesse is a compelling look at issues that - in a world where ethnic frictions grow more tense, even as national boundaries disappear - really are universal.

An immensely enjoyable, warmhearted, and gentle showbiz dramedy.

Chuan's unsettlingly beautiful black-and-white, wide-screen account of those nightmare six weeks, re-creates that horror in ways that are at once allusive and lucid, mixing cinematic impressionism with documentary-like detail.

Very few of us would like to think about the physical and emotional toll that life in captivity takes on these magnificent creatures. Gabriela Cowperthwaite's powerful, heartbreaking, and beautifully crafted documentary, Blackfish, forces us to do just that.

Proves that the most local story is sometimes the most universal, the simplest tale sometimes the most complex.

A story of companionship, loneliness, resilience. It's a small, artfully crafted thing, but it resonates in big ways.

Her life, and her work, transcended what we think of as "fashion."

Try not to let the film's overbearingly jaunty score get in the way. The Lady in the Van is quite a feat.

A far more trenchant - and funnier - satire of the fame-afflicted than Woody Allen's "Celebrity."