As for Plummer, I don't know how he does it, but he somehow radiates gayness. It's nothing overt, just some internal shift, but if you saw only 10 seconds of Plummer in this film, you would know he was playing a gay man. You just might not know how you know it.

The locally sourced documentary is always engaging — lively and well-paced with an impressive list of interviewees from Hillary Clinton to Huerta herself.

A fine-boned, luminous tribute to Keats and the sufferings of love.

Martel's vision is so visually rich and complex it borders on the impressionistic, but The Headless Woman would be nowhere without the precise tour de force performance by Onetto.

It is a mess of a film, botched but also misconceived, with a central performance by Natalie Portman that evokes nothing about Jackie Kennedy, beyond the stylish clothes and the secret smoking.

An entirely unconventional, hypnotic, meandering film.

In just a short period of time, a weekend hookup tests the boundaries each man has set for himself.

The aftertaste of that father-son scene is so strong, so disturbing, that the riches of Happiness -- its writing, its performances, its trenchant wit -- all seem a bit diminished in the bargain.

After nearly two hours of A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, anyone who entered the theater on a Wednesday might wish for it to be Thursday, too.

Three Identical Strangers tells a remarkable story. In fact, it tells several. It’s already extraordinary 20 minutes in, and then it goes to unexpected and yet more amazing places, like a narrative feature by a master storyteller.

American Fiction is not a perfect film. The book trails off at the finish, and though the movie comes up with something better, the end still doesn’t feel ideal. But none of that matters as much as it might, because Wright gives the perfect performance.

We see the tormented, limited and potentially dangerous man underneath.

Even as it stands, Fish Tank is a valuable movie, though it aspires to a social insight it doesn't attain and a psychological penetration it won't maintain.

The film leaves us staggering with a strange, almost unbearable embrace of childish innocence and treacherous spite. It is powerfully depressing. [02 Mar 1990, p.E1]

Little Shop of Horrors is consistently amusing and churns with non-stop musical momentum, plus a few old-time Disney touches. This time, it's easy being green. [19 Dec 1986, p.79]

Mixing in citizens’ harrowing cellphone footage and heartbreaking emergency call recordings, Walker’s teams immerse us in the flaming terror as few features have before.

Bernal is quite good as the young media specialist - it's always surprising to see how strong a presence he is in his Spanish-language films and how he all-but disappears in his American films. Is it a matter of the roles or the language? The jury is still out.

At its heart, it’s a darkly comic drama about a man trained to be a killing machine who must rediscover his own humanity before his daughter loses hers. Along the way, a family of quirky characters is formed.

A fascinating look at a bizarre man and a brilliant talent. But a good deal of the movie is described by its subtitle -- "A Son's Journey'' -- and to the extent it is, the movie sags.

Plays like two films in one, and succeeds on both levels.

Director Corneliu Porumboiu ("12:08 East to Bucharest"), with his deadpan style and probing intelligence, is someone to keep an eye on. Using a minimalist style, and possessing the courage to risk alienating his viewers, he has created a movie full of resonance.

With his crisp intelligence always a step away from collapsing into paralyzing self-consciousness, and his polished good-boy veneer often giving way to hysteria and vulgarity, Grant is a delight. [18 March 1994, Daily Notebook, p.C-3]

The most consistently entertaining movie of 2012. It's 165 minutes long and shouldn't be a minute shorter, a film of surprises, both in story and in casting, and of moments of agonizing, teased-out tension. The dialogue is dazzling.

The real acting laurels go to Klein, who is both an adult and a child - by turns smart and not so smart, brave and fearful, caring and full of disdain.

It’s entertaining and provides the tired vampire genre with a welcome infusion of fresh blood.

Last time, Peele made a movie about the country. This time he made a movie about himself, and it’s even better.

It's a wise, sweet-natured film, and one that manages to have fun with its charac ters without judgment or condescension. [04 Aug 1993, p.E1]

Features some disturbing clips.

Simply the most relentlessly entertaining film of the last few months.

A slow start keeps Moana from reaching “Frozen” or “Beauty and the Beast” levels of excellence. But the comic self-awareness, engaging songs and a fulfilling finish are enough to merit a strong recommendation.

This is the portrait of a marriage as full and enviable as the greatest unions in literature.

A brutal movie, brutal in all the right ways -- brutally stark, brutally funny, brutally brutal. [30 Oct 1992]

This horror-slasher-thriller-tragi-romance is certainly going to leave some squeamish, but there's no denying that this is high-quality filmmaking.

A viewer may even blink his eyes to be sure the turn of events is actually happening.

Skyfall is a different kind of Bond movie, one that works just fine on its own terms, but a steady diet of this might kill the franchise. One Skyfall is enough.

The result is a warm and extremely thoughtful journey, with a deliberately bare-bones narrative.

The film would only be very good were it not for Vega’s performance, which ranks right up there with the five women nominated for best actress this year and, in some cases, surpasses them.

One can see the influence of Hayao Miyazaki here — this is way more “Spirited Away” than “Ghost in the Shell” — but Shinkai also goes off into his own, weird direction.

Delicately flavored as much by the inherent appeal of its classic Cinderella-like story as by its pictorial beauty, The Scent of Green Papaya is a lovely experience in the dreamily exotic.

If only Lars von Trier took into account that audiences might actually want to enjoy Melancholia, rather than endure it, or sift through it, or submit to the director's will, he might have made something extraordinary.

This film by Alison Ellwood feels thin. Anemic. Even shortsighted. Sure, the documentary frames the band’s story with that astounding fact of their first number one record, but beyond that underscored point, “The Go-Go’s” plays like paint by numbers for music documentaries.

Life in remote parts of New Zealand must forge hardy souls, judging from the characters in Hunt for the Wilderpeople.

If this documentary never quite makes the case for the deeper artistic or cultural imprint of the Ballets Russes, it does convey its enduring presence in these dancers' lives.

Boorman enlivens The General with a number of scenes, like that one, that play against the con ventions of crime movies. He and Gleeson, both of whom were denied the Oscar nominations they deserve for this film, do exemplary work and give us one of the liveliest, smartest and most surprising films in a long time.

Offers a brew of wondrous chimera combined with the wonders of human nature.

Elaine May (left), known for making comedies, wrote and directed this brilliant crime film, which easily ranks among the best movies of 1977. [09 Jan 2005]

It's not a film for children, and it's not even something children would like. It's challenging and disturbing and uncanny in the ways it captures the nature of dreams -- their odd logic, mutability and capacity to hint at deepest terrors.

The documentary Hell and Back Again may be the closest most civilians ever get to the reality of the war in Afghanistan.

An unforgettable, poetic romance from Italy whose disarming humor, blushing encounters and bittersweet flavors are certain to set off a groundswell of smiles, tears and regret.

A life-affirming rebuttal to apathy, despair and surrender. It’s also one of the year’s most important films.

Movie magic.

A wickedly, punishingly funny movie.

On its own terms, the film is overlong, repetitive and lacks impact. Even if this were the first gorilla-in-love movie ever made, audiences would come away vaguely dissatisfied, suspecting there was an intriguing idea buried somewhere in here, but it didn't quite come off.

The movie is a total blast, and what a surprise.

That's Entertainment! III aims mightily to please, and it's a fascinating, unpretentious journey through a garish, opulent, often breathtaking American art form. [13 May 1994, p.C3]

This is a film that would never work without brilliant casting of the child actors, and it’s a marvel to watch the interplay between the young girls, who don’t deliver a false note.

A potent and disturbing experience. Fortunately it’s much more, offering sharp performances and genuine drama.

A movie that's loving and wistful and often hysterically funny.

The performances are extraordinary, as they often are in Beauvois’ films, with Baye a study in quiet suffering and Bry wonderfully enigmatic — seemingly simple, but hinting at a soul capable of expansion and adaptation.

Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One may not be a great movie, but it’s a special movie deserving of its own kind of event and worth appreciating. Only Tom Cruise makes movies like this, and you either understand why this is pretty wonderful or you should give yourself the chance to find out why.

Directed with style and wit by London filmmaker Richard Kwietniowski, who makes his feature debut here, Love and Death is an off-kilter romantic comedy.

Benediction is an awesome combination of wildness and control. Davies is out there all by himself, speaking a cinematic language that is his own and that has little to do with plays or literature.

The film is cleanly made and moves quickly, which enhances its effectiveness. It raises moral issues that simply can’t be addressed too often.

Because Living is all about unexpressed emotion — and an unexpressed life — there are times when we’ll feel impatient with the characters; we’ll want them to throw off their restraints and say everything they’re thinking. Just don’t be in a hurry. Living gets where it needs to go, and gets its characters where they need to be, in its own good time.

A fable about women struggling to free themselves from that myth, and even at its most obvious, it's exhilarating.

Weeping Camel essentially lets native people tell their own unforgettable story.

The result is an original picture, not entirely successful, but successful enough, and delightful in its ability to surprise viewers, and juggle tones and keep every ball in the air. The World's End has the aura - and this might only be an attractive illusion - of something imagined whole, in a burst of inspiration, rather than as something labored over.

Chinese Portrait is a great art installation, but a thoroughly unsatisfying film.

Every now and then, a film comes along that both defies and compels description. District 9 is one such movie: a science-fiction action vehicle so brilliantly and fully imagined that real life, when it resumes after the credits, arrives with a new sense of dread.

A heartbreaking, beautiful movie that gains strength from its deep characterizations.

One of the most hauntingly beautiful mysteries ever created on film.

Klayman has already shown us Ai challenging the authorities on various fronts, most grippingly in a confrontation with the Chengdu police officer who had given him a potentially fatal head injury.

The movie’s sympathies are with Halla and against the climate-change deniers, but it also sees something slightly ridiculous in her David-and-Goliath actions. What sets the film apart is how it balances both this sense of irony and an abrupt plunge into serious personal matters stemming from a forgotten decision Halla made years ago.

The whole movie is kind of like that: direct and devastating without overdoing it. The Nest unfolds in the way smart people tend to express their deepest disappointments — get it out, regain emotional control, divert for a while if you can.

Ultimately, Ford v Ferrari is about art versus commerce, devotion versus cynicism, and inspiration versus deadness. It’s one of the year’s great films, and of all the great films so far, the most accessible.

Intoxicating and flawed.

The film’s overall aesthetic is a pleasing blend of naturalistic drawings, cartoonier designs and Heavy Metal magazine futurism.

The movie's tone follows Yates' sensible credo of "less is more." McQueen, as the stylish, unflappable and virilely named Lt. Frank Bullitt, has little to say; he conveys most of his feelings with his piercing blue eyes. The gritty atmosphere of the location shots matches Bullitt's heavy brooding. [29 May 2005]

Shot almost entirely within a hotel, the film operates as a low-budget answer to “Roma,” Alfonso Cuarón’s much-lauded film that also centers on the life of a domestic worker.

As a movie about mental illness, Silver Linings Playbook is more lightweight than lighthearted. But thanks to Lawrence, it does one good thing most movies don't do. It actually gets better as it goes along.

Director Jacques Audiard beautifully lays out the story of a charming nobody named Albert who becomes a master of the half- smile and nonchalant gestures of deceit. But the story is also a cogent metaphor for French collaboration with the Nazis.

A poetry of love, longing and affirmation bleeds through the music of Cuba, and some of the best sounds the island ever created are captured with embracing humanity.

All this is interesting, or interesting enough, depending on how you feel about Elaine Stritch. If you're a particular fan, this documentary is a must-see. But for everyone else, a little of Elaine's personality goes a long way.

I could have done without the clips from the old "Superman" TV show - strictly sugar to make the medicine go down, and a sign that the director doesn't fully trust his audience.

First-time feature director A.V. Rockwell, working from her own script, tells an epic tale in miniature.

Although more Fiennes is always a good thing, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple simply doesn’t have the solid storytelling or enthralling characters that its predecessor has.

An enjoyable example of this extraordinary director's documentary work.

Like many first-person medical documentaries — such as the recent “Gleason” — Unrest can be really hard to watch. Brea’s film, though, might be the beginning of hope for millions of sufferers who might see the film, and could be a conversation starter for additional funding into research.

Waves is a movie that tears itself apart halfway through with an unspeakable act of violence, then miraculously heals itself. Whatever your reaction to this ambitious, boldly original and hard-hitting family drama, you could never accuse writer-director Trey Edward Shults of holding anything back. He leaves it all on the floor, as they say in basketball.

The new Ridley Scott movie is fascinating and charming and crammed and overstuffed, and it’s a curious case, too. It gets all the seemingly hard things wonderfully right, but then caves in at points that should have been easy.

If you are a thoughtful, open-minded person see this reverent exploration into the mystery of Jesus, the man.

So there’s talent on view here, but in service of a questionable proposition, with the whole thing tiptoeing toward the exploitative. It would be nice to see Mascaro try his hand at less volatile material.

Invoking the seven deadly sins and the Ten Commandments, nearly everyone has something to confess. In that sense, this new “Knives Out” isn’t just a whodunit, but a who-didn’t-do-it — spiritually speaking.

Exceptional, powerful new documentary.

Don't be too quick to jump on Hurt with complaints of old-fashioned gay stereotyping. Only with a development well into the movie will the audience realize the layers he brought to Molina's role-playing.

This wise and warm man, who died in 2002, is captured in all his glory by the remarkable documentary.

With a surgeon's precision and trenchant wit, director Patrice Leconte slices open the French upper classes of the late 18th century and reveals the black, wilting heart beneath the pomp and pretense.

A film that might have seemed faintly academic six months ago becomes an anxious expression of its historical moment.