A gripping look at the immigrant experience, with small moments as important - and visually arresting - as any on the baseball diamond.

It may surprise you to hear that in the end there is a sliver of hope offered in Under the Tree, so thin that it’s almost not there. A less interesting movie might simply have served up a headlong plunge into the abyss — but Sigurdsson gives us a tiny flicker of light.

The result is startling and repellent -- a challenge to filmgoers accustomed to fake gunfire, fake wounds and cosmeticized death.

For music fans, there's great pleasure in hearing new audio tracks to "Sitting Here in Limbo," "Friend of the Devil" and more songs -- each one complete and unedited.

The Daytrippers is low-budget perfection, a comedy without a false note and without a flat joke.

Anyone who has ever felt morally right and completely in the minority will have a point of entry into this movie.

Jude is knockout Hardy, filled with stormy visual poetry and accompanied by a gorgeous yet simple score.

Martin Lawrence finally gets to show what he can do as a screen comedian.

The melancholic, beautiful Cairo Time confirms two things that hardly need confirming: The Egyptian capital is a breathtaking metropolis, and Patricia Clarkson is one of the best actors in the world.

Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon is a bladder-buster of a movie with no obvious bathroom break, no section where the story starts to sag. This makes it, almost by definition, a good and admirable piece of work. But Killers of the Flower Moon is also a lumbering mess, an ungainly and tonally odd film that, for all the strength of its parts, has little cumulative impact.

A filmic hug for Brooklyn.

It's an entertaining, depressing and ultimately hopeful movie about the times we live in.

Davidson’s appeal is essential to the movie’s success. If you know him only from “Saturday Night Live,” you’ll be surprised by him here. On “SNL,” he can be zany and annoying. Here he has a very particular quality that seems to be coming from a place of past pain. He has equanimity. Without making a fuss about it, he’s attentive to other people’s feelings. He just seems like a decent, thoughtful young guy, someone that you’d like to see come into his own.

Although I, Robot provokes thought, it doesn't exactly deliver thought, despite the occasional Cartesian reference to "ghosts in the machine."

Shock and Awe is no “All the President’s Men,” but it does present a nice balance to the earlier film’s ultimately rosy picture.

There's tremendous maturity and skill in Felicia's Journey but also a sense of impending horror that's bound to repel some audience members -- even though the violence is all implied.

Sausage Party is definitely not for everyone. Its well-earned R rating guarantees that. But what might prove the often hilarious and startlingly intelligent film’s greatest bar to blockbuster status is the very thing that sets it apart: its ideas.

If studios insist on remaking classic horror films, this is definitely the way to do it.

A genuinely affecting love story with something to say about such contemporary obstacles to affection as weird families, hot exes, addictions, anonymous hookups, homophobia, irony, gay two-stepping -- and the difficulty of connecting no matter what gender you go for.

Ryan's comic timing continues to delight, while Kline is touchingly heartfelt as a man doing what is evidently all too easy to do -- fall in love with Meg Ryan.

The hits just keep on coming in Muscle Shoals, a hugely entertaining, perhaps overlong, documentary about the renowned recording studios in the small Alabama town of the film's title. It's mandatory viewing for fans of the classic rock, soul and rhythm and blues of the 1960s and '70s.

For all its flaws and vagueness, Safe is smart, challenging and provocative -- a film that gives you plenty to chew on, long after Carol's sad tale has wound down.

Buoyed by an appealing lead performance by John Hawkes, Small Town Crime is a smart, sharply written detective story that, though not without humor, plays it straight and tough.

A film that has unusual expectations from its audience -- and that's a welcome relief.

It proceeds, weirdly enough, from the truly annoying to the absolutely fascinating.

A little film that makes a big impression.

The drama surrounding the romance gets a little too precious -- though I loved it 15 years ago; maybe I'm getting cynical -- but everything else is excellent, including Jack Nicholson, who is subtle and sly in a small, key role. [18 Jan 2004]

The Great Escape is great entertainment. [06 Jun 2004]