It’s a genuine achievement on an inexhaustible subject.

In its brief, 80-minute running time, Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry encompasses two different films, and neither one of them is, in fact, a portrait of the poet/novelist/farmer/activist Wendell Berry. Neither one of them, despite sincere intentions, is very good.

What resonates most potently are the scenes of the 1972 trial.

If you're interested in that period, the sheer number of notable photos shown here is reason enough to see the movie.

Both Reagan lovers and Reagan haters will find enough in the film to bolster their perspectives. Even more remarkably, it’s almost entirely snark-free.

A riotous medieval-era sex romp played with lunatic conviction by a great cast.

In theory, these actors should be able to just show up, be themselves, tap into their formidable improvisational abilities and let the laughs flow freely. In reality, though, movies require scripts. They require actual characters and dialogue and narratives that evolve in ways that are logical, or at least engaging.

Pop Aye has a pleasant, amiable tone, buttressed by Chananun Chotrungroj’s warm photography and picturesque framing as well as Lee Chatametikool’s purposeful editing scheme, and yet the film feels lacking overall.

A depressingly rote piece of corporate product that has so little on its mind other than presumably making hundreds of millions of dollars that you half expect the ticket sellers to hand out copies of Comcast’s latest earnings report along with the 3-D glasses.

A work of melancholy enchantment, by turns sweet, funny, scary, sad, and—in the manner of all good science fiction movies—thought-provoking.

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai is your typical sci-fi/action/comedy/rock&roll/kung-fu/political satire/neo-western/guys-on-a-mission extravaganza.

Baby Driver feels both influenced by the modern era of self-aware, pop-culture filmmaking and charmingly old-fashioned at the same time, which is only one of its minor miracles. It’s as much fun as you’re going to have in a movie theater this year.

Most of all it shows how DeJoria’s passion for doing good extends into a head-spinning variety of walks of life.

Paulina is, in that sense, worth seeing, even if its basic plot repeatedly stalls. It is a thoughtful movie, but not necessarily a fulfilling one.

There's always something to ponder with this film, which gets stranger and more polarizing as it goes along.

Violence in The Bad Batch has neither artistic nor narrative purpose.

The movie is a throwback to an earlier era of documentaries, when filmmakers did not feel obligated by commercial pressure to give their film the shape of a thriller, a sports film, a mystery or anything else, but instead simply brought their cameras into people's lives.

The movie, then, is not just a niche film but a film for a niche of a niche. Rather than being ideal for people who know a bit about French cinema and want to know more, it’s best suited to people who know a considerable amount about French cinema (and culture) of the early sound era and want to delve deeper.

It has the feel of a late-night conversation at a college party, full of good ideas but lacking focus.

Gorgeously shot by Philippe Le Sourd (in his first collaboration with Coppola), The Beguiled lingers on its images, allows us time to settle into them.

Apatow also has a knack for spotting up-and-coming talent and using his considerable influence to help foster it on the biggest stage and under the brightest lights. He’s done this with Lena Dunham (“Girls”) and Amy Schumer (“Trainwreck”), and he’s done it again with Nanjiani.

From the very beginning, this is an incoherent mess.

All Eyez on Me is one of the most useless music biopics ever made — it’ll be too confusing for newcomers and too underwhelming for those familiar with the work and the life of rap prophet Tupac Shakur.

The best thing that can be said about Once Upon a Time in Venice, a very light action comedy from Mark and Robb Cullen, is that it allows Willis to cut loose and have fun.

Indie sci-fi film Kill Switch is the worst kind of science-fiction film: the kind that coasts on a central gimmick instead of delivering either visceral or intellectual thrills.

The final exchange between Paisley and McGuinness, when they shake hands, is the best, but by then it's far too late.

This is a movie that is too frenetic and basic to make a substantial impression. I appreciated a kernel of observation here and there, but not enough for me to give it a whole-hearted embrace.

Harmonium is consistently about mood more than anything else. You sink into the film at first. Then, with each new leisurely introduced plot point, you struggle to regain your sense of calm since, after a while, the film's protagonists are doing the exact same thing.

Suddenly, The Book of Henry turns into a not very believable thriller, complete with a ticking clock and a talent show.

47 Meters Down, despite a few things going for it, is an easily skippable work that will, ironically, probably wind up playing better on television and home video, where viewers might be more willing to overlook its failings

Rough Night starts out buoyantly, and it and features some wonderfully weird moments scattered throughout. But those scenes never truly gel with the movie’s eventual life-or-death stakes.

Despite its lack of originality, as well as its lackadaisical storytelling and world building, it satisfies in that amiably weird way that only a "Cars" film can.

This is a remarkably assured movie, through and through. Walsh and cinematographer Guy Godfree have taken care to make every individual shot a thing of beauty. But the artfulness always acts in service of the emotions, which in the end become both inspiring and heartbreaking.

From start to finish, Uziel’s packaging of the story seems more inspired than its contents.

The Hunter’s Prayer is like a Luc Besson film put through a deflavorizing machine to remove any element that could be distinctive, energetic, or fun.

You might come to Camera Obscura expecting nothing more than a kite-high concept like "camera that photographs future murders." But you too will be disappointed if you expect anything more from the film since its creators do not offer satisfying cheap thrills and/or thoughtful consideration of a veteran/artist's tortured post-war psyche.

Dawson City: Frozen Time is a rather clunky and uninspiring title for a film that’s both revelatory and deeply fascinating.

Cohn never turns Night School into a sob story or a manipulative tale of redemption.

Sam Elliott is Sam Elliott as Sam Elliott in The Hero, a sentimental and sporadically effective celebration of the veteran character actor.

Hayek turns Beatriz into her own breed of wonder woman, Lithgow’s Strutt is definitely a super villain of sorts and their head-to-head battle is clearly worth seeing even if, in real life, it has only begun.

Megan Leavey is that rare breed: a war movie that actually shows something new about war, a sub-culture within a familiar sub-culture, the world of the military's K-9 units. For that alone, it should be applauded.

One of the problems with this My Cousin Rachel is that it’s hard to come up with any issue or reason relative to its creation, I’m afraid.

There are times when Raising Bertie can seem a bit too unfocused, but it’s a project that always feels worthwhile for the opportunity it provides to expand an often-narrow view of the country.

It’s amazingly relentless in its naked borrowing from other, better horror and sci-fi movies that I was able to keep occupied making a checklist of the movies referenced.

There are no zombies in the streets, boogeymen in the basement or witches in the woods—and yet it is one of the most terrifying films in years.

The film’s success comes from how Kernell’s skills as a director match the ambitions of her script.

Radio Dreams is an example of both the compelling passion and polarizing fallibility that can arise when a director works primarily from the heart.

It’s a disorganized onslaught of primary source material that doesn’t so much shed light as it does simply exist.

Vincent N Roxxy is a nasty little piece of B-movie trash that lacks both the verve to grab you as a guilty pleasure and the artistry to be taken seriously as a dramatic thriller.

A spectacularly miscalculated historical epic.

In the annals of historical biopics, Jonathan Teplitzsky’s Churchill stands out as a uniquely awful and tedious caricature of a fascinating subject.

For Plummer’s plum of a performance alone, you might want to make an exception for The Exception.

This is a striking and thought-provoking picture.

Lister-Jones is the very definition of a "phenom," and if the film sometimes falls back on cliché, there's enough charm and interest here — particularly in the chemistry between the two leads — to keep it afloat.

A movie with which it is easy to find fault, and if you’re a particular kind of person, you’ll find fault with it without even trying too hard.

The 3-D animation is designed and executed in an unrealistic manner, paying loving attention to light and shadow but tossing the laws of physics out of the nearest classroom window.

Unfortunately, Lucy Walker's Buena Vista Social Club: Adios plays more like a well-intentioned but unsatisfying addendum to Wenders' movie and Cooder's recording.

Jenkins and her collaborators have done what I thought was previously impossible: created a Wonder Woman film that is inspiring, blistering, and compassionate, in ways that honor what has made this character an icon.

Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower is not a great film on the order of Nanfu Wang’s “Hooligan Sparrow” or Alison Klayman’s “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry,” both essential profiles of muckraking activists whistleblowing against government corruption in China, but it does have an equally great story to tell.

Black Butterfly communicates all of its empty-headed ideas idiotically, but still retains a knowing smugness regarding its intentions, like it’s pulling a rabbit out of a hat while acting like no one’s ever seen such a trick.

Hermia & Helena’s touch-and-go approach weakens the movie’s key expression of being a relatable story about being lost during your late 20s/early 30s.

While the mood is that of a gentle and affectionate comedy, the film makes some extremely sharp points about fanaticism, sexism masked as holiness, and tolerance among the faithful.

Shortland has essentially crafted a claustrophobic two-hander with only occasional forays into the outside world.

Critics have a habit of calling movies tonally inconsistent, but this should now be the textbook example, a film that veers wildly from war movie to character drama to satire to history piece to a blended gray of nothing.

As sad as Garcia’s end is, Long Strange Trip remains an exhilarating and inspiring movie. For a not inconsiderable period, Garcia, Weir, Hart, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and various fellow travelers saw the possibilities that their talents and the times offered them, and made hay of them.

Those who go to see “Dead Men Don’t Tell Tales” might just recognize that hollow feeling as they leave the theater.

If you saw the trailer, you got the best the movie has to offer.

Lazenby himself takes center stage to tell his story and explain his actions at last but the end result is a sometimes frustrating work that takes a potentially fascinating tale and renders it mostly inert thanks in large part to its questionable approach to the material.

Paint It Black doesn't offer clear answers to Michael's suicide, because it's wise enough not to go looking for them. The film, a strong directorial debut from Tamblyn, is about living with the results, and it creates a waking nightmare of seemingly unresolvable pain and anguish.

The Commune, featuring a great ensemble cast (many Vinterberg regulars), doesn't really focus all that much on what happens when you put a bunch of charismatic individuals into one house.

Afterimage is mounted in a classical, beautifully understated style that throughout conveys the relaxed assurance of a true master. It’s one of those films that doesn’t ask to be liked or admired, but only to be heard.

The Woman Who Left isn't as exhausting as other recent works by Diaz, like “Century of Birthing” or “Norte, The End of History,” and its grace notes are more sublime.

And the matter-of-fact portrayal of a bi-racial relationship is presented just as it should be — unremarked upon.

Even though half of her screen time consists of her being seen but not heard, Garner has a consistent crispness; her character is simultaneously transparent and slightly enigmatic.

As gripping as the movie is as a legal thriller, it's even more notable as a portrait of a community.

Jettisons everything that’s honest and worthwhile about the books in favor of hackneyed misadventures and gross-out scatological humor.

This is one of Scott’s best-directed movies and one of his most entertaining overall, partly because he’s working in a genre, the science fiction spectacle, that he does better than anyone since Stanley Kubrick, but also because he seems to be approaching it almost entirely in terms of visceral impact and emotion—as symphony of fire and blood, poetry and schlock.

Most of all it is a pure story about love, without the scandals.

It’s a strangely aimless film with some good ideas but it never follows through.

Absolutely Anything is more than its unique place in history, and serves to remind us that no one made movies for goofy adults quite like Jones did.

Sleazy Australian kidnapping drama Hounds of Love will make you wish you were watching a more traditionally nihilistic horror film.

In some ways, Stone’s soul seems part carnival huckster, part 19th century anarchist. A petri dish of toxic pathologies, he has come so far from his Goldwaterite beginnings he could now write his own book: A Conservative Without a Conscience.

For this viewer, the formal element and the narrative never quite cohered, and I wound up admiring the movie for its ambition while unsatisfied with its achievement.

The Wedding Plan feels less like “My Big Fat Jewish Nuptials” and more of a faith-based variation on a Disney princess fantasy. Instead of a fairy godmother, God himself will find her Mr. Right.

Where The Wall excels is in the creation of an extra-untantalizing desert atmosphere. The dust is practically inhalable, the sunlight glaring, and the characters grow ever more sand-gritted with each mishap.

Lane, still an incandescent knockout at 52, continues to pull off expressing sensuality and sexiness better than most actresses of any age.

Lowriders may spell too much out with obvious dialogue, and it may veer a bit too easily toward melodrama. But there’s an earnestness and a fundamental truth to this familial saga—as well as an appealing, low-budget scrappiness—that consistently make it hum.

The problem with The Drowning isn't that the characters are insubstantial, but rather that they don't dry up and disappear fast enough.

The film is thought-provoking, visually arresting, and occasionally very self-important.

It’s a mismatched-buddy comedy. It’s a fish-out-of-water comedy. It’s a raucous girl-power comedy.

The result is an oxymoron: a frenetic slog. That’s unfortunately what happens to King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.

At some point, queasy horror-comedy Another Evil stops being about one man's comically vain attempts at exorcising his home, and starts being a weird character study about a laughably desperate wannabe exorcist.

Chuck ultimately works, mainly because Schreiber is so watchable. There's something compelling about seeing a man who is so strong and so weak, simultaneously. You like him in spite of him.

Directed by Pappi Corsicato and executive produced, typically, by the subject himself, the movie is never uninteresting but is often surprisingly low-energy and, even more surprisingly, visually drab.

He was a real artist and, especially if you believe that art is all about asking questions, about life and about art, he was a great one.

Takes on the topic of gender dysphoria with a talented cast but not much to say.

What it really is is a screwball comedy with a black-hearted center, an energy extremely difficult to capture and maintain, but Healy—as actor and as director—manages to do so.

An incredibly frustrating movie, almost purposefully so.