The film's climax involves a father and son reunion that is tense, tragic and, finally, as transcendent as Mohammad himself.

Bielinsky's movie builds like a poker game in which the players, having invested everything, cannot afford to fold.

A superbly researched and edited documentary about the women's movement in the 1960s.

Like Connery - but in different proportions - Craig is earthy and erotic, holding himself like a smoking gun.

Saraband, flat and static both visually and thematically, doesn't begin to approximate the austere beauty of the director's art-house classics.

In refusing to pigeonhole its characters, Nine Lives is less like those L.A. road-rage melodramas "Short Cuts" and "Crash" than those all-of-us-are-interconnected dramas "Amores Perros" and "21 Grams."

Its daring dive into the mind of Brian Wilson feels right. God only knows (to borrow a Pet Sound song title or two), but you still believe in . . . Brian.

Taste of Cherry takes its title from an anecdote that celebrates the things in life - such as the savoring of a delectable fresh fruit - that we take for granted. Kiarostami's film won the top prize at Cannes last year, an honor that has infamously gone to some overrated movies over the years. In this case, the award was less than a superb picture deserved. [12 June 1998, p.04]

True Grit is probably the least ironic picture in the Coen Brothers' worthy canon, but that doesn't mean it's devoid of their signature oddities, that it doesn't take a few dark, strange turns.

Kore-eda, deploying a Western pop score by the Japanese indie-rock band Quruli, just lets these kids be kids.

There's a fine line between bag lady and belle of the ball, and Apfel instinctively knows it. Her sense of style is uncanny.

The Force Awakens is half reboot, half remake, and all fun.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer contrasts the mundane and the domestic with the appalling. The tone doesn't vary at all, and it's not a pretty picture, but movies that burn their images into your consciousness like this one are very, very rare. It is admittedly hard to look, but this is a portrait that demands to be seen.

I love this movie, and I love the pride, spirit and sportsmanship of the kids who represent the best of American pluck and luck.

OK, first off, anyone who shares his or her life with a dog, or has done so in the past, go see My Dog Tulip.

White God offers a dark - very dark - take on the way humans exert authority, and superiority, over our fellow creatures.

The rhythms of Whale Rider are hypnotic as the ebb tide, haunting as the song of the humpback sea mammal, bracing as the ocean spray. It's a movie that rewards the patient viewer.

Taut entertainment that juggles brainy ideas about perception, predetermination and free will - and drops things in a messy third act where the vintage noir gets bathed in a bit too much Spielbergian glow.

The script is shrewd about the problems that money can and can’t solve. Wild Rose also threads the needle between the genre expectations and its own brand of realism, grounded in the very palpable heartache Rose feels as she tries to survive in the space between her family obligations and her artistic ambitions.

The Simpsons Movie is finally here. And guess what? It's funny. But not that funny.

Stands apart from the trite conventions of most coming-of-age drama chiefly through the originality of Pool's approach and the honesty and conviction of Karine Vanasse's portrait of Hanna.

For those dazed and dazzled by surf anarchists Noll and Clark, Hamilton comes off as the sport's technocrat, but he boldly goes where no surfer has gone before.

Emotionally engaging and unhampered by dialogue, Boy & the World will appeal to children with its deceptively simple story and its visual splendor.

A heartbreaking story of true love.

Irma Vep is over before you know it, which is both a tribute to the talents of Assayas - he draws you in completely, his film never lags - and a bummer. You want to follow these people around a little longer, see what happens to their movie (although we do get to see something that happens, and it's weird and dazzling) and what becomes of them all. This a film about thievery - the character of Irma Vep is a jewel thief, the director is stealing from the past - and in its own very cool, very brash way, Irma Vep steals its audience's heart. [13 June 1997, p.10]

First-time filmmaker Kolirin paces his can-we-all-just-get-along? parable as if it were a silent comedy, which for long stretches it is. This movie about musicians has no soundtrack. Its musical moments are few, but potent.

An extraordinary work in three movements about the Sasakis, a seemingly ordinary family. In this unpredictable work, the clan implodes, explodes, and glues itself back together.

If that sounds highbrow and pretentious, it's not. The neat trick of Tristram Shandy is that the whole thing comes off as a lark.