It’s a narratively simple film that has been interpreted differently by dozens of critics since its Cannes premiere last May, but it’s one that is impossible for this critic to shake, a reminder of what movies can do when they loosen the restraints of traditional narrative and remember that images are meant to evoke as much as they are to explain.

Rasoulof gets terrific performances from all of his cast, but particularly noteworthy is Sohelia Golestani's work as Najmeh, which captures the woman's subtle, gradual transition from defender of her husband to an ally of her daughters.

Morris' direction offers other filmmakers a template for how to make a small movie that feels big, just by making definitive choices and sticking to them.

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.

There are times when Anderson’s Buddhist leanings can be a bit overwhelming, and the piece ends a bit too abruptly for my tastes, although that almost seems thematically appropriate.

As [Farhadi] does to such masterful effect in “A Separation,” here he constructs a story that keeps revealing new thematic and psychological layers, ones that often come to light through the shifting of perspective from one character to another, a technique that deepens our sympathy for the people we’re watching to the point of our realizing that, as in Renoir, “everyone has their reasons.”

Depressingly universal and even more depressingly contemporary more than two centuries down the line.

This franchise has demonstrated an impressive ability to beat the odds and reinvent itself, over a span of time long enough for two generations to grow up in. It's a toy store of ideas, with new wonders in every aisle.

On the Record does a lot of things very well, but what it does best of all is back up Mayo's eloquent and pained statement. Everybody loses when women go away.

The strength of Hama-Brown’s film is how deftly it captures that feeling that emotion can’t always be expressed through language.

Others may find In My Room to be a small gem thanks to Köhler’s eye for small details. He’s a keen image-maker; Armin’s story also resonates thanks to Köhler’s ear for naturalistic dialogue and novelistic detail, both of which serve the movie’s episodic narrative.

As a small amusement, “Chicken for Linda!” is an enjoyable enough lark. But its flightless emotional course leaves its profundity just out of range.

Jubilant, unapologetically massive, and bursting with a cozy, melancholic sense of communal belonging, In The Heights is the biggest-screen-you-can-find Hollywood event that we the movie lovers have been craving since the early days of the pandemic, when the health crisis cut off one of our most cherished public lifelines.

Fire of Love is one of a vanishingly rare breed of documentary that is determined to be "total cinema," not just capturing the facts of what happened to its subjects but creating an entire aesthetic—a vibe—around them.

Hamnet actually works best as a sensory experience, before its major plot points fall into place.

The Witch, a feminist narrative that focuses on an American colonial family as they undergo what seems to be an otherworldly curse, is more like a sermon.

A fascinating and fastidiously complex study of one man’s moral choices at a crucial juncture in his life, Cristian Mungiu’s Graduation is a thoroughgoing masterpiece which offers proof that Romania’s cinematic upsurge remains the most vital and important national film movement of the current century.

One of the most impressive elements of Kubo and the Two Strings — besides its dazzling stop-motion animation, its powerful performances and its transporting score — is the amount of credit it gives its audience, particularly its younger viewers.

Kaurismäki makes these bigots look ridiculous, but he also takes very seriously the damage they do, and the movie’s finale takes that into account.

How on earth Patterson made a movie about a UFO hovering over a small town in the late 1950s without falling back on every cliche in the book is the fun and wonder of The Vast of Night. You already know the plot. You've seen it all before. But the way the story is told is new. With The Vast of Night, it really is about the how, not just the "what happens."

Based on Jonathan Ames' novella of the same name, the film is rooted so firmly in Joe's point of view he sometimes is absent from the screen entirely. We're inside his head.

I rarely see a movie so original that I want to tell people to just see it without reading any reviews beforehand, including my own. David Lowery’s A Ghost Story is one of those movies.

The result shows the human stakes and often punishing difficulties of challenging entrenched powers and interests.

McQueen’s masterful film is the kind that works on multiple levels simultaneously—as pure pulp entertainment but also as a commentary on how often it feels like we have to take what we are owed or risk never getting it at all.

This first-time feature from writer/director Russell Harbaugh has an understated, intimate, pointillist style, with a cool jazz score that matches its improvisational tone.

But the movie is, for all its accomplishment, sketchy, tentative. And there’s something about the conception of Yoav that smacks of self-aggrandizement.

You won’t forget any of the young men who populate this film, nor will this be the last you’ll hear from them.

The film’s most affecting moments are when Murad speaks directly to the camera.