As a woman struggling to define her own narrative, Yeo delivers a layered, heartbreaking performance. But she is ultimately ill-served by both the inertness of the story and Chen’s awkward approach to the material in the final half-hour (no spoilers here).

Maybe this mixed-up and weird, awful but awfully likable movie is what Dirty Harry had coming to him, after all.

Eventually, the imperfect Honey Boy — it could have used more from the older Otis; Hedges is almost wasted — achieves a raw, hard-won honesty.

This is a perpetrator’s perspective on the business of violence, carried out with notions of professionalism while slowly shaking the sociopath’s sense of self. Michael Fassbender’s unnamed contract killer is as delusional as he is dead-aimed focused; it’s both chilling and humanizing.

In 90 brisk minutes, we get a three-dimensional portrait of a private, gender-nonconforming trailblazer who not only paved the way for Black Americans, but also for women and LGBTQ people.

The linchpin is Johnson, who turns in a vulnerable yet confident performance as an always chill woman who might be too willing to make a relationship work, a role she’s mastered since starring in the “Fifty Shades” trilogy.

There’s an absurdist edge, but with nothing of the smart-aleck about it. Rather than use wit as a way of bypassing thought and emotion, Bujalski’s concerns are serious, and his attitude toward his characters is warm without being indulgent.

Curiously and unexpectedly, the movie brings on a suffocating feeling of constraint. It's a consequence of seeing characters with such terribly limited mobility.

The film jumps back and forth to Shirin’s unraveling relationship with her girlfriend, but what stands out are the funny, awkward, sometimes painful moments with her family and with various hook-ups — topped off by a delicate, nuanced and satisfying final scene.

Durham’s direction is sensitive and assured, and he does a great job mixing his location work with archival footage to create an authentic sense of what San Francisco was like during those times. This is not one of those movies that shoots in the city for two days then absconds to Vancouver for the rest of the shoot. This is a Bay Area movie through and through.

The ultimate Julia Roberts movie.

Yet, even at its worst, Zombieland is better than most movies of its kind - disgusting but not too disgusting, and with a few laughs.

Both curious from a cultural perspective and refreshing.

Somehow, it all works -- even if Miller relies on a plot that meanders a bit and loses some of its luster.

Almodóvar presents this material in a way that never splits our attention, even as he’s giving us a deluge of sensory and emotional detail. It’s as if he’s internalized the story so completely that he can’t make a gesture — can’t move the camera, can’t shape a moment — without saying something true.

As Enzo Ferrari, Driver looks stylish and commanding, but the movie doesn’t figure out how to make him into an interesting man.

A humongous animation event that ratchets up the level of the computer art that Hollywood is swooning over these days.

A solidly above-average thriller.

Sappiness and romance always are fine with me, and Big is a good example of a movie that effortlessly blends sweetness and fun - it feels a little like stumbling on a picnic of smiles. [3 Jun 1988, p.E1]

Whores' Glory, is as sad a film as you can possibly see. To experience it is to be haunted by the bleakness and ugliness of prostitution, the hopeless trap of it, and the defeat of love that it represents.

The funniest movie so far this year.

If The Square has a point — and it probably has several — it’s that the visceral aspect of life cannot be fully suppressed and shouldn’t be denied.

The film is well acted, with especially strong work by Alonso and Zegers. And director Larraín has a powerful knack for depicting human monsters. But he stacks the deck so heavily that at times the film can seem like simple-minded anti-clericalism, and at least some viewers are bound to resist.

Would be worthy of the highest rating, except for a slight slackening of energy in the last 20 minutes.

Slam, directed by Marc Levin, is schematic but effective as it makes its points about African Americans caught in the Washington, D.C., criminal justice system. It's got a wonderful eye and, for a film, ear.

The film never quite overcomes a slightly stodgy quality.

Both Sides of the Blade is what people like about French cinema. Its indulgences are worth wading through because, in its commitment to the truth about people and its willingness to explore the hugeness of normal human life, it’s unlike anything you’ll find in America.

Talented director Eran Riklis is interested in the coexistence of cultures, not violence, but that doesn’t mean his ending fails to carry an emotional wallop. It’s a doozy, and shows us that life can be a complex whirl of dueling identities.

The absorbing rags-to-riches-to-rags story — a must for any classic film fan — is told in The Most Beautiful Boy in the World, directed by Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri.

All this is dramatized expertly and with a lightness of touch in Simon Beaufoy’s screenplay and in the direction of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the team behind “Little Miss Sunshine.”

If you widen your eyes and turn off your brain, it all adds up to cracking good fun.

Then there's the acting, particularly that of Sam Shepard, as an old ex-con without much in the way of limits.

A crime drama in a special class.

Lacks what could kindly be called coherence.

The director has concocted a tragedy that actually feels tragic.

Foxx's complex performance and the filmmaker's willingness to look at the dark side place Ray safely out of the realm of typical Hollywood hagiography.

Pigossi, star of the Brazilian Netflix series “Invisible City,” neatly avoids wallowing in Lourenço’s misery and instead finds a humanity one can root for. It’s a powerfully emotional performance that lifts all boats in this picturesque drama.

Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse, the latest installment of the venerable PBS “American Masters” series, does a thorough job of laying out and appreciating all of the cartoonist’s significant, consistently subversive works, as well as the psychological factors that informed them.

Bratton has made a film that isn’t necessarily anti-military — he is no doubt proud of his service — but pro-humanity. In a sense, Ellis is going through his own personal boot camp. Perhaps the film should have been called “The Introspection.”

The film is thorough and entertaining. It's enthusiastic about his contributions, but it's no hagiography, and it serves as both a celebration and a cautionary tale.

Has some hilarious moments and still succeeds in dramatic terms.

The jokes in What’s Up, Doc? will scratch a nostalgic itch, but what’s most refreshing about the film is that it shows a lighthearted side of San Francisco, without any superhero spectacle, looming natural disaster or hard-boiled noir themes. It’s a sunny and silly side of the city that rarely gets captured on film anymore, a view of San Francisco that’s worth revisiting.

While recognizably Ceylan's work, is more of a genre piece - a noirish suspense film - and less successful.

Continuing to explore themes of looking past stereotypes to find our shared, ahem, humanity, Zootopia 2 ventures into new territory without losing its emotional footing. It shows us how trust and cooperation often hinge on small, brave choices made over and over again.

A venemous Valentine to Hollywood sugarcoated with laughs.

A masterpiece.

A love story that gets the single male culture down so honestly and unapologetically that it can't help but push the boundaries of political correctness.

In This Corner of the World is 129 minutes, an eternity for an animated film, especially one so wispy in look and so sparing in plot.

In a word, bull - cruddy, foul-smelling and fly-specked, an excuse for a series of cheap sex scenes and single-entendre gags. [15 June 1988]

The brilliance of Dark Waters is that it is able to lay out the case against DuPont without getting too wonky.

Under the cover of what seems like a charmingly slapdash style, the Duplass brothers have created a disarmingly shrewd movie.

The film is much enhanced by the performance of Labed, whose work capturing Marina's moods and contradictions won the best actress award at the 67th Venice Film Festival.

Can make a person sick in two ways at once -- through its lowdown raunch and through the spasms of laughter that use stomach muscles one might not have known existed.

Remarkable in several big ways.

An impressively compelling film.

Although "Riding" is a small-scale movie as opposed to a big-scale epic, it is just as ambitious.

It is, simply, the alienation-invasion movie to beat all alien-invasion movies: meticulously detailed and expertly paced and photographed, with sights so spectacular and terrible that viewers will have to consciously remind themselves to close their mouths when their jaws drop open.

Captures the flavor of putting on a show on Broadway.

Love and basketball -- if you like either one, here is a movie for you.

San Francisco was the first major U.S. city to forbid the police and other agencies from using facial recognition technology — and the persuasive documentary Coded Bias makes it easy to understand why.

I'll stick out my neck and say that Park Chan Wook's wildly gruesome Thirst is the most whacked-out version of an Emile Zola novel ever to reach the screen.

Notes on a Scandal won't be everyone's cup of tea. But if you like your films strong, this one is not to be missed.

All of it works. All of it holds together, guided by the sure hand of director Simon Stone, who subtly imparts his sense of the story. His idea is that everyone involved mattered, and so we come away with an impression of an entire moment of time.

Though the dialogue is laced with the colloquial, the film has an inviting tone that even stuffiest of old fogies may find refreshing. Everybody gets put down, but with affection.

Children, and adults with adventurous taste in movies, will find this among the most eye-popping big-screen experiences in ages.

Sometimes the film, even if it's a "mixtape," bites off more than it can chew, delving into the Attica Prison uprising, heroin addiction and the Vietnam War. But all in all, this film will give you a new perspective on the past - and the present.

It’s not a sin to tell a one-sided story, Hoover seems to be arguing, when there is no other side.

The acting is good, particularly by Faour, who plays the naive, zaftig heroine as warm and appealing despite her troubles. It's also nice to see veteran Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass ("Lemon Tree"), who plays Muna's sister.

CODA is lovely. If you want to see a movie that will make you feel good, this is it.

Despite the shortcomings, Fire Island is a feel-good, enjoyable comedy and a celebration of queer, Asian American storytelling. Let’s hope its success paves the way for even more subversive films to come.

Will-o’-the-Wisp, a flight of fancy from Portuguese provocateur João Pedro Rodrigues, has a few ideas, a fun little musical sequence and quite a bit of eye candy. But it seems like a series of tonally different short films mashed together — an art installation rather than a movie.

Eichner is quick and funny, and Macfarlane is a strong leading man and a sensitive listener — with Eichner constantly deluging him with a torrent of words, Macfarlane would have to be. Audiences will become very fond of both long before the end of the picture.

Directed by Matthew Warchus, Matilda is a curious creation, one whose tone maintains the barest toehold in light musical comedy, while introducing dark, disturbing elements. The movie taps into the reality and the magnitude of childhood trauma.

Despite good reviews at this year's Sundance Film Festival, this is the kind of squishy lost cause that gives liberal guilt a bad name.

Subdued yet percolating with suppressed emotion.

An intriguing exploration of New York theater at the height of its glory.

An exquisite achievement.

This is contemplative moviemaking, with its deliberate pace, often static scenes and emphasis on direct sound. The director keeps the dialogue pared to the bone.

As an exploration and celebration of a sub-culture, the movie fails. The people don’t seem especially bright or interesting. Whatever fascination Moselle felt for this world doesn’t come across in the movie.

A story so good that maybe anybody could have turned out something decent.

The writing is subtle and refreshingly without sentimentality — sentimentality being a common flaw in Middle Eastern cinema.

Fremont is content to let small moments stay small, threading them together for a compelling tapestry of shared humanity.

Not only is a good look at a man who carved a small but important niche into the folk world but a good record of the turbulent 1960s and what motivated its protesters.

The movie’s stylistic idea gets in the way of its story, and the story is too slim to sustain a full-length feature. And as the political ideas become as self-conscious as the style, Where Is Kyra? starts to feel a little like poverty porn.

If it falls short of greatness, it's not by much - and it could end up growing with the years. At the very least, it is exceptional and one of the best and most original pictures to come along in 2012.

Now in middle age, members of N.W.A. no longer believe all of the hype. They’re in an introspective space, to the great benefit of this film.

It’s not for kids, however; though not rated, it has some nudity and violence that would veer into R territory.

Juror #2 is very much the work of an engaged, sensitive director — a series of tight, focused scenes informed by strong performances. There’s something classical about it, old-fashioned in the best way, like a 1974 Coupe de Ville or a 1962 Buick Electra. It’s a smooth, solid ride.

Character consistency is fleeting, to say the least, but who cares? So many of these guys are gone now, just watching the cast having such a great time is half the considerable fun of the film. [28 Jan 2007, p.30]

A zingy self-empowerment fantasy for kids.

It’s as realized a thriller as you are likely to find, not only in the precision of its performances, but in its evocative use of location (Rome, London), its period detail (especially Williams’ clothing) and the tension of the younger Getty’s months-long captivity.

It’s brilliant, and extremely moving. One Week and a Day has its moments, just not enough of them.

Still Mine is uplifting and heartbreaking, a contradiction that results in the viewer exalting and being let down at the same time.

An atmospheric and, to a degree, challenging mashup of psychological, social and folk horror, Nanny casts a spell it doesn’t put us entirely under.

A mostly compelling documentary about that rarest of breeds, an appealing politician.

By the time the ride is over, director Drew Goddard and co-writers Goddard and Joss Whedon will change course three or four times, nodding and winking but never losing momentum.

The films never lose sight of Mesrine the man, a fascinating character in that he's brutal yet extremely intelligent, has a skewed but discernible conscience, and, under the right circumstances, can be warm and generous.

Miami Blues is offbeat and fun. [20 Apr 1990, p.E1]