Coming on the heels of Ma Saison Preferee, Thieves suggests that Techine is filling the void left by the deaths of Truffaut and Louis Malle, and ought to be considered his country's finest humanist filmmaker.

The Assistant isn’t a particularly enjoyable film, but its message and quiet power linger for days.

If you see the movie, notice how the ending is no ending, and the fact that it even feels like one is entirely a function of Michael Giacchino's musical score.

Raw, provocative, sometimes humorous and always humane, Kokomo City is an engrossing documentary about four Black trans sex workers who constantly disarm with their outrageous anecdotes and their palpable fears of living in a world that’s often hostile to them.

Hurrah! Poetry and passion, comedy and tragedy are fused into one absolutely marvelous affirmation of independent spirit in Dead Poets Society. [2 June 1989, Daily Notebook, p.E1]

Much of the film is so wrenching there's no time for idle thoughts.

At its slowest, the film has value as a historical document. At its best, the film gives a human face to stories of unimaginable suffering and unexpected triumph.

Riveting.

Schrader seems to understand these characters implicitly, and the result is probably the best film he has directed.

Achieves a rare interweaving of the darkly poetical and raspy, cockeyed comedy.

The movie is nonetheless strongly written, with a game cast. Wu is especially a revelation, with a layered and often moving performance that shows off dramatic chops not seen by many of her fans.

It’s a deep and moving investigation into one woman’s inner struggle as she goes about looking for true love.

It's a slow-moving fable, with enough story and substance to make for one amazing Imax short. Instead the material is stretched beyond its limits into a long, repetitive and often stagnant 127-minute feature film.

Although this one indulges in unnecessary CGI enhancements, it's still a striking piece of character-driven horror, and it ranks among the more understated fright fests to hit the mainstream in recent memory.

Washington delivers not only one of the year’s best performances, but one of the best self-directed performances in cinema history.

The most glaring problem here, and the one hardest to explain, is Soderbergh’s failure to elicit any warmth or charm from Zoë Kravitz, who has been consistently appealing in her every other screen performance, from blockbusters like the “Divergent” series to little independents like “The Road Within.”

Bala, by the way, means "bullet." Laura Zúñiga, the real-life beauty queen on whom the film is loosely based, was called "Miss Narco" in the Mexican press.

Conclave is a fascinating drama about the personal and political machinations involved in the selection of a new pope. If a bunch of cardinals filling out multiple ballots over the course of several days doesn’t exactly sound riveting to you, prepare for a surprise.

An alluring piece of work, an artful whodunit that melds shrewd plotting with resourceful camera work and sympathetic characters that are fascinatingly, morbidly off.

The film is at its best in the bedroom, not shying away from the sexual relationship, but not being graphic about it, either. There is great sex, clumsy sex, tender sex - and it's all crucial to the story. Such genuine intimacy, whether gay or straight, is virtually nonexistent in American cinema. It's enthralling to see it here.

One of the most direct and personal music documentaries ever made.

"Searching" has emotional valleys and zeniths, and gasp-inducing turns, as old friends, fans and Rodriguez's grown daughters are interviewed.

The director’s skill pushes what could have been the same old song into a likable testament to the saving powers of young love and rock ’n’ roll.

Taut and suspenseful.

Delicious but complex.

This complex, fascinating documentary breaks new ground by focusing on the legal types who have administered, and justified, the occupation over the decades.

Argentine filmmakers Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn (who wrote the film in collaboration with Duprat’s brother, Andrés) direct Official Competition with a sophisticated understanding of its tone, which is essentially realistic and deadpan. The world isn’t crazy, just the people in it.

Leaves its audience with many troubling questions. Among them: Should a film console us with its own brilliance when it aims to discomfit us with its content?

Never takes off, but it never collapses. At times, it becomes frustrating -- for example, about 30 minutes are spent pursuing a lead that goes nowhere.

At first I was irritated by what I felt were the unnecessary repetitions, but the film's final effect - for all its laughs - is a shocking reminder, as Adams says with resignation, that the lady who holds the scales of justice is blindfolded. [21 Mar 1988]

Wildly imaginative if extremely strange.

There are painful moments in “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore,” and there are triumphs. But mostly, it is a film of grace and acceptance — a necessary portrait of a groundbreaking artist.

Priscilla could be described as the story of how the virginal wife finally got a clue, but it takes her too long. We’re left with a movie that mostly consists of a confused woman-child stumbling around a mansion in high heels.

The action is so fast that the viewer almost breaks out in a sweat...Ultimately vapid. Lola never does develop as a character, and the fuss seems ultimately pointless.

One to One: John & Yoko combines the best aspects of Boomer nostalgia with generational overindulgence.

It's excessive and psychologically imprecise, coarse where it should be refined and too much like a David Cronenberg horror movie in places where restraint and intellectual rigor are called for.

For the most part, The Painter and the Thief seems authentic, a very real portrait of two unique individuals. It not only explores the artistic impulse, but also issues of relationships, addiction and rehab. It also provides an interesting glimpse into the Norwegian prison system, which is geared toward rehabilitation rather than punishment.

Ultimately, Black Bear is about the price of art — not only the price the artist pays, but that the people around the artist end up paying, unwittingly. Yet in the actual experience of it, the movie doesn’t feel so lofty. It just feels tense and disquieting, like a thriller. In that sense, it is a thriller, but one of the emotions, and it’s riveting every step of the way.

Emily Watson is ravishingly good -- and brings an amazing focus and intensity to what could have been a disease-of-the-week picture.

The movie asks us to wonder what’s real and what’s false, and what it all means. But it goes on for 134 minutes without ever giving viewers a reason to keep watching. Few Netflix customers will make it all the way to the end, and even fewer will be glad they did.

While “André Is an Idiot” serves as a great reminder to schedule some basic health screenings, it also explores how best to find the quality of a life when its quantity is clearly defined.

Like the best wines and the best films, there’s a complexity to the finish, so that it reverberates with meanings beyond the obvious. Indignation has the disconcerting quality of truth and is an altogether adult piece of work.

The film doesn't explore the nature of ghosts, as it promises to initially, but it's fun to watch Del Toro confront death and fear with such energy and humor.

The beauty of Morris' achievement is the way he fuses Hawking's work in theoretical physics with his subject's life history -- finding subtle connections between the two, and avoiding the pat, predictable structure of biographical film. [28 Aug 1992, p.C3]

Neither does it help that, despite the wit and literacy of Enough Sad, its form is straight out of a teen romance: A cool kid starts dating someone less cool, and then engages in some elaborate deception that, if found out, will threaten the progress of young love. The funny thing is, if Enough Said were converted wholesale into a high school romance, the characters' behavior might ring more true.

Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie is irresistible. While his Alex P. Keaton of “Family Ties” and Marty McFly of “Back to the Future” are beloved characters, the actor who gave them life is much more interesting and real.

Sr. is elegiac in tone, often moving, with moments of irreverence and humor.

The biggest sin of 28 Weeks Later is that it's not in the same league as the near-perfect movie that came before it.

I’ve been fascinated by McCartney for decades, and “Man on the Run” made me feel like I was getting closer to understanding the real guy.

As a slice of life, Les Misérables is satisfying enough, but as the film wears on, the movie goes beyond the slice of life. It steers in the direction of drama and consequences, as the story narrows, and pressures come to a boil.

Haunting psychological drama.

At its best, Kajillionaire provides a chance for Rodriguez to play a breezy extrovert and for Wood to play a damaged introvert, and for their characters to alter and deepen through contact with each other. They’re both excellent, but they can’t make the movie any less slow, and July’s relentless whimsicality occasionally sounds some false notes.

A treat for anyone who's passionate about films or who's ever wanted to learn more about them.

There's little illumination.

Her (Anderson) performance is a study in the difference between hubris and pride, remarkable for how unshowy but profoundly devastating it is.

The experiences of this family from Fairfield will resonate with moviegoers around the country.

The result is an excellent film - entertaining and informative and sometimes stunning in its display of the personal demons shared by these two geniuses.

If you haven’t been to the movies in a while, Top Gun: Maverick is a way to get back in. It’s pretty much what “going to the movies” is all about.

BlackBerry was ultimately left behind — in the cemetery plot next to Myspace. Still, if you ever had a BlackBerry, there’s something not only entertaining but nostalgic in watching this movie.

Apart from its cast, however, Gas Food Lodging doesn't have a lot to recommend it. This is true: It's earnest, the milieu it establishes feels authentic, and the three actresses work hard at giving their characters a life...But Anders' inexperience at writing and directing shows. She overloads her film with too many subplots, and consequently loses whatever steam she manages to build up. She introduces too many secondary characters -- two suitors for Nora, one ex-husband, and two boyfriends apiece for each daughter -- but never develops any of them adequately. [9 Sept 1992, p.E3]

Wallows in bleakness and settles for sentimental gestures.

A rare spectacle on the big screen.

The concluding image of men silhouetted against the dying flares of explosives, as they march to the raucous refrain of the Mickey Mouse Club theme, is masterly, but leaves a viewer curiously discomfited. Whereas "Platoon" shattered civilian complacency about that war, Full Metal Jacket is merely numbing. [26 June 1987]

The movie has the wisecracking quality of a Sturges screenplay, but it's warm and heartfelt, too. [13 Nov 2016, p.Q16]

Sexy and intoxicating.

The end result is something like the best blues festival anyone could have thrown last year, although Lightning in a Bottle falls a fair piece short of its own lofty goal.

The incident depicted in Warfare may have happened nearly two decades ago, but the film seems as fresh as today’s headlines.

Each element combines to make Glory one of the few Civil War movies that reach into the very guts of that conflict. [12 Jan 1990, p.E1]

The resulting film is nobly ridiculous and ridiculously noble, doing everything in its power to subvert the dross it's fooling around with.

Wonderfully original comedy.

This is warts and all, with the emphasis on the warts.

This may not be Martin Scorsese's most sophisticated film, but it actually takes a smart filmmaker to understand that, with a subject like Fran Lebowitz, the best thing you can do is let her talk.

One of the great movies -- a triumph of storytelling and character development, and a whole new ballgame for computer animation. Pixar Animation Studios has raised the genre to an astonishing new level.

Still, the film's limitations are serious. Pennebaker and Hegedus did not begin their film until Clinton was already nominated, missing out on the big stories of the primary season: Gennifer Flowers, the draft flap and Clinton's knock- down, drag-out with Jerry Brown in the New York primary...With mixed results Pennebaker and Hegedus attempt to sketch in what's missing via unused news footage and out-takes from ''Feed,'' the Kevin Rafferty-James Ridgeway film about the New Hampshire primary. In one example that I picked up on, Pennebaker and Hegedus juggle the time sequence, giving the impression that a scene of Clinton hanging out in a hotel with his handlers in New York occurred in New Hampshire. [30 Dec 1993, p.E1]

A movie about an obese Harlem teenager who's raped by her father and abused by her mother. It's depressing, devastating, harrowing and repulsive. But there are lyric flights of hope interspersed among that raw naturalism, and that's what makes this movie amazing.

A film one can admire, but it is not "likable," per se, nor does its director wish it to be.

Wang, the director, is smart to spend much of the camera’s time lingering on the young star’s expressive face as his wide, inky eyes take in the world around him.

Hand it to directors Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K. Walker, who could have made the story into a black-hat/white-hat affair. Without soft-pedaling Cobb’s noxious ideology, they implicitly raise questions about how Leith responded to the perceived danger.

With “After Yang,” the distinctive filmmaker Kogonada has made a movie that is at once ambitious yet timid, asking big questions but providing no answers, not even clues. It’s a thought experiment, but a thought that meanders.

Price has given us Yelchin’s most complete performance: himself. It is a cinematic gift to contemporary film fans everywhere.

The silence captured in this documentary -- a meditative look at life in the Carthusian monastery of the Grande Chartreuse in the French Alps -- may be the most eloquent you'll ever hear.

Blanchett in Blue Jasmine is beyond brilliant, beyond analysis. This is jaw-dropping work, what we go to the movies hoping to see, and we do. Every few years.

There’s just one big problem here: It Comes at Night is about as enjoyable for the audience as it is for the people in the movie. On both sides of the screen, misery reigns.

The talented fantasy filmmaker and heir to the "Lord of the Rings" throne gets the tone right throughout Hellboy 2, and the hip retro charm alone is enough to merit recommendation.

Though I wish Please Give were a little better, there aren't enough American movies like it.

A handsome film, filled with lavish costumes and set designs and told in a series of exquisitely composed images. But even with its visual polish, it's a chilly, largely unaffecting film about an unsympathetic man.

The film feels like bare- bones docu-fiction, though, resisting the attendant drama until the bitter, grisly end.

Under Fontaine's direction, family dysfunction is an intense experience with unexpectedly positive repercussions, even if the steps between are painful and potentially deadly.

This is a brave film, a unique way of exploring a taboo topic. The animation works on many levels, but at the end of the day, it’s about how art helps Signe overcome her madness. That’s a heartfelt message — and here it feels genuine.

Compelling.

It's no masterpiece. In fact, it's not even all that good. But it has that great character in it -- Falstaff, or in this case, a thinly veiled Vito Corleone -- so it's something to see. [27 July 1990, p.E1]

Killer of Killers continues the concept co-director Dan Trachtenberg applied to his 2022 live-action “Prey,” only with the more elaborate action, wider scope and graceful, graphic kineticism animation can accommodate.

There’s no question that John Wick: Chapter 4 is really good for what it is. The only bad thing is what it is.

Neville’s portrayal is gripping, emotional and therapeutic, but fans looking for clear-cut answers won’t find them.

Not counting no-budget movies with casts of nonprofessionals, The Humans is one of the worst-directed films in recent memory. It plays like a wicked practical joke or a deliberate act of sabotage.

Schrader’s characters are haunted (please see “First Reformed” if you haven’t). They’re also deeply moral, not in a dime-store virtue kind of way but in the sense that they struggle mightily to do the right thing. In the end they’re painfully human, which is why they keep resonating after the lights go up.

The film's sense of intimacy, its closeness to real people and painful events, allows it to reach a deeper place than more conventional pieces of political rhetoric.

How to Draw Bunny won the Special Jury Prize at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, which must go to show how scarce noteworthy documentaries are.