Like a picture postcard vision of his life and work: absolutely accurate as far as it goes but not too keen on looking too close for fear of uncovering anything untoward.

Historical resonances aside, Coming Home functions well as an impeccably crafted, compellingly acted tale.

A movie that underplays its many strengths. You don't realize how good it is until it's over.

Freeman and Tandy are the whole film, and their interplay is marvelous to watch and hear. [12 Jan. 1990, p.G7]

Shaun the Sheep Movie delivers exactly what it promises: The cutest, most innocuous entertainment this side of Internet panda videos.

The result is somewhat elliptical but also thoroughly engrossing and propulsive. Compared to Denis' earlier work, it's practically an action movie.

Watching this tender little movie with its teasing humor, its deeply felt performances and its focus on slight moments rather than gigantic sea changes is like hearing a tasteful sonata instead of the usual vulgar symphony that the cinema offers up.

Foxcatcher has a sober, chilly vibe that's completely at odds with the sport of wrestling and the men and women who love it.

The acting is so persuasive as to be transparent.

The result is as much a revelation of the artist's craft as it is of the man's heart and mind.

There are nice bits throughout, and your heart can’t help but go out to these impassioned young lovers whom you know are doomed. But Bright Star is too often tarnished by the ordinary.

There's an inherent contradiction at the film's core: this sexually explicit motion picture, seemingly made by and for altered consciousnesses, is all about how an innocent newcomer falls prey to gin, sex, and television.

The problem with Inherent Vice, and what keeps it a step below "The Master" and "There Will Be Blood" and Anderson's best movies, is that all the Pynchon threads and dead ends come apart in the middle and aren't really pulled back together.

Sorrentino is a spectacularly inventive talent and has harnessed an astounding performance from Servillo.

Like "Red Road" it's slow-moving and sometimes grueling, but it's more of a chronicle than narrative, a series of slices-of-life rather than an unfolding and increasingly engrossing enigma.

This remarkable film by Jane Campion has a distinctive photographic style perfect for this tale of a very odd family dominated by a corpulent and crazy daughter. [24 Feb 1990, p.C06]

Anchoring a terrific cast is Bernal, who gives one of his best-ever performances.

The most telling moment comes when his mother reveals that, despite all the subterfuge and false promises, she wouldn't have had it any other way.

It's smashing fun, nonetheless, made with razor wit and continual invention and far, far fresher than not only Hollywood buddy-cop movies but also Hollywood's own spoofs of them.

For all the inactivity and resistance that mark the plot, there's beauty in the filmmaking and a kind of dazzling inevitability to the unwinding of the tale.

Django doesn't have the razor-sharp chronological complexity of "Pulp Fiction," but it's ably paced. A very funny scene involving a proto-Ku Klux Klan lynch mob and their poorly made hoods nevertheless seems a bit out of place, but there's plenty of well-timed suspense.

The style and subject matter recall the films of the Dardenne brothers, ("The Kid With a Bike") and while Sister never reaches the heights of their best work, it earns the comparison.

As an artist who can craft an ebullient postmodern pastiche but maintains links to an idiosyncratic heritage, Amirpour has instantly become one of the most exciting, globally relevant filmmakers working today. Her film is a testament both to her own creativity and the infinite elasticity of the vampire mythos.

All the characters are treated with respect and affection, even at their most comical and deluded, but Lee knows how to stop just short of overplaying the emotional scenes. [27 Aug 1993, p.AE13]

A highly entertaining, informative movie about how the subprime mortgage crisis led to a worldwide financial meltdown in 2007-08. The fact that such a movie is so unusual is one big reason why the meltdown occurred and why it easily could happen again.

To top it all off, the movie ends with one of the best covers of "I Shall Be Released" you'll hear, courtesy of gospel singer Marion Williams.

In the passion, violence and tough talk, it finds a beating heart and an evocative love story. [13 Nov 1998, p.28]

With gadgets, girls and globe-trotting held to a minimum, Skyfall, could, for long stretches, be mistaken for just another 21st-century thriller, albeit a well-made and intelligent one.

An exquisitely mounted and achieved film (shot, as it so happens, on Paris sound stages), it tells a story so protracted and uneventful that you wonder if writer-director Tran Anh Hung isn't pulling your leg. [08 Apr 1994, p.AE15]

The experience of psychological depression has been described with a variety of metaphors. William Styron called it "darkness visible," and Winston Churchill euphemized his bouts as "the black dog." In typically grandiose fashion, though, Lars von Trier tops them all.

Upstream Color culminates in a wordless final act that is among the most transcendent passages of pure cinema in memory.

A mature, tense, frightening and altogether masterful film.

So good at what it does that it can exhaust you: In the later going, one big number follows on the heels of another so quickly that it feels more like an opera than a regular musical.

She (Cho) can tell a joke, mimic, offer commentary, play cute, play ugly and be so hilariously absurd that tears will run down your cheeks.

With its eye-popping color, bold personality and snazzy tunes, Chicago is a breathtaking experience.

Kong is brilliant in many, many places. But it overwhelms its own best qualities with its sheer, punishing size. It is, literally, too much of a good thing.

The narrative can be difficult to follow. But not to worry. The images, the language and the characters can pull you along. [19 June 1992, p.AE22]

Most of the time, Goodnight Mommy creates its air of supreme unease quietly, even subtly, but even hardened horror fans might be shocked by some of what goes down in the movie's second half.

Allen's filmmaking technique isn't what it once was, true. But at age 75 he still manages to keep a spry pace going even if something less than impeccable craft hobbles the photography and editing.

Mostly this film is a glorious ode to the culture and family bonds that override all else, and to the expressiveness of both the human and animal actors.

When the movie is funny, it’s very funny.

This is a delicious premise, and Blomkamp, who first played with it in a 2005 short called "Alive in Joburg," has magnified and improved it with ferocious energy, wit and style.

You come away with an appreciation of the abstraction, scale and daring of Ai's art and, even more, a sense of the living man in his courage, humor and restlessness. It's an invigorating experience.

Bad Education, in this light, is Almodovar's "8-1/2" or "Day for Night," a lens through which all of his movies appear as a seamless whole. It's not the story of his actual life but, more excitingly, the deft, witty, bittersweet story of the life of his art.

A funny, believable film about the ability of even the damaged and imperfect to earn a little happiness.

The merits of its arguments can be debated on the Op-Ed pages, but at least the movie makes it clear that they desperately need to be.

It's Herzog-light, in a way -- more travelogue than dissection. But it's filled with small riches, not least of which is the director's amazing narration. Can't you just imagine him reading "Green Eggs and Ham"?

Gripping, outraging documentary.

What makes The Martian work is Damon.

Despite its flaws, Ridicule is a proverbial diamond in the rough among this year's avalanche of unpolished rocks. Go see it, match wits with the upper-class twits and you'll be better prepared to slice up more than the appetizers at your next dinner party. [20 Dec 1996, p.25]

The film is exquisitely realized, with a tremendous, naturalistic performance by Michelle Williams at its heart and a pervasive, assuring sense that Reichardt and Raymond have distilled everything nonessential from their story and imparted exactly the impact they wished.

It's a raw and honest film, and it keeps its feet firmly on the ground, even as The Ram flies through the air to deliver -- or receive -- another beating in the squared circle of life.

There are levels of complexity and nuance and intellectual rigor in The Hours -- it's clearly a film into which you could gain continued insight after several viewings.

Wonderful performances and the director's continual inventiveness make Junebug a particularly promising first feature.

Kenner mounts it all with a pleasingly fluent and varied style, which makes it more or less easy to absorb his arguments, even if they're familiar from other books and movies and are presented with unopposed certainty.

A haunting, melancholy fable, Tony Takitani is the kind of film that could seem tedious from a mere description. Approached with the right mind-set, however, it's a hypnotic mood piece on love and loss, one that knows -- at 75 minutes -- not to overstay its welcome.

Sleek Deco-inspired props and color scheme, startling special effects, eerie theremin-driven score, the drolly interactive mechanical man (Robby the Robot!), wide-screen CinemaScope presentation, Anne Francis' scanty outfits: to audiences in the '50s it all must've been future shock. Today, it remains a brilliant cinematic realization. [07 Nov 2003]

Stirring and haunting.

Watching The Queen of Versailles you don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Incendies was likely a crackling thing to read, but it's not quite so vivid as a finished film.

Offers a charming reinterpretation of what it means to look for happiness and all the unexpected places that it may be found.

See Casino Royale for a Bond you've never seen before, and then imagine him in a film two-thirds the size. Here's hoping the writers of the next Bond movie employ the same personal trainer that Craig did to keep the script tight and lean.

A joy to watch.

The snaky cinematography pulls you through even when the writing doesn't, and the best performances keep you hoping that you'll feel the next one or the one after that just as powerfully.

It's a welcome change from a conventional birth-to-now biography, somewhere between the straight narratives of "Ray" and "Get On Up" and the fractured, Cate Blanchett-in-sunglasses, Richard Gere-on-horseback meta-fable "I'm Not There."

A fine, straightforward and engaging film that restores the salt, fire and humor that Hathaway and company drained from their source, Charles Portis' wonderful 1968 novel.

Entertaining and informative.

It breaks so sharply from the practice of contemporary horror film that it requires us to return to the most basic understanding of what it is to be frightened by a movie.

At the heart of Iris is love, between Iris and the camera, Maysles and his subject, and Iris and Carl. They nailed it, this crazy life, and they're still getting a kick out of it.

If Abrams didn't take many chances, he didn't make many mistakes, either. First, Do No Harm became Don't Mess With Success, and it worked. Show Me the Money is sure to follow.

The end result is the best documentary you'll see this year, as thrilling a competition as any Super Bowl and as suspenseful a story as any Hitchcock film.

The result is a film that outrages and fills the viewer with poetry that's at once epic and intimate, scandalizing and life-affirming -- a real work of art.

White God holds some fascination. But as an indictment of the evil that men do, it's all bark and no bite.

It's easy to imagine that some folks will find the film rapturous, but it's equally clear that there are others whom it will drive crazy.

The most compelling question dangling at its end is, "Didn't Steven Spielberg used to know how to bring a movie to an end?"

It's amusing enough and breezy enough not to disappoint. But it never dazzles or challenges or truly delights. And that leaves me fairly certain that whatever Bart Simpson would say about it probably couldn't be printed in a family newspaper.

A coming-of-age movie that stands apart from the rest.

A more sober, less in-your-face documentary than Peralta's great skateboarding flick.

The credibility of these theories ranges from faintly plausible to frankly ridiculous, but Ascher isn't interested in judging them; his movie is more about the joys of deconstruction and the special kind of obsession that movies can inspire.

Being a fairly faithful adaptation, this version also has a lot of that other stuff about the hypocrisy of civilized life, the truthfulness of natural splendor and so forth.

Art isn't always supposed to be user-friendly. But it should at least be provocative, making you contemplate a piece on several levels. This, at least, is where Irma Vep is successful. [25 July 1997, p.28]

A charming little film built of bits of music, romance, cultural conflict and the simple human need to connect.

Only in the slightly overlong last act, as the family's misfortunes become truly existential, does director Kiyoshi Kurosawa take things to another level. Whether this is an extension of the film's social criticism, a comment on the absurdity of melodrama or straightforward audience manipulation, is anyone's guess.

Coogan makes tremendous sport of himself, taking on a role as an adulterous, vain, anxiety-riddled, alcoholic and truly comic creep. Brydon is exquisitely droll as the straight man to this ugly comedian act.

An unusual and absorbing, if somewhat preachy film.

When it all comes to a head, what seems ordinary blossoms into something deeply complex and emotional.

This was a story that made front pages in its day but has been largely lost to history, and now is brought bracingly and compellingly back to life.

Among the Dardennes' more accessible films, despite a drawn-out finale that still doesn't quite satisfy.

The easy chemistry between Binoche and Stewart is reason enough to see Clouds of Sils Maria.

For its sheer visual gusto alone, Coraline is a wonder.

A painful, funny and fresh comedy.

West of Memphis does nothing to displace its predecessor films as masterpieces of investigative filmmaking, but complements them as a riveting capstone to an epic and tragic tale.

Some aspects of Siddhartha seem terribly dated: the '60s-ish nude sequences, the wispy music, the big-eyed earnest acting. But it is a lushly beautiful film. Shooting largely in natural light, Nykvist creates a poetry more beautiful than Hesse's prose and as profound as the author's message.

Not a masterpiece, but still fabulous.

The result is a totally absorbing and entertaining film, one of the best historical dramas from Hollywood in many years.

After seeing Eat Drink Man Woman, it's a toss-up whether you'll want to reach for tissues or for General Tso's chicken. [19 Aug 1994, p.AE17]

In some ways, Senna is as pure and clean as the man's sport: as actor/racer Paul Newman liked to say, the winners of auto races are determined, unlike movies, by objective criteria. And although it's a subjective judgment, it's hard to see how anyone wouldn't be absorbed by this fascinating film about a formidable driver and man.

Daring work of genius.