Richly satisfying entertainment the way movies are at their best, when they prod you to think.

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.

Maestro exposes a truth about marriage that I always knew but could never quite articulate: To be truly known and understood can actually be scary.

The goal of this review - why not just say it? - is to disclose as little about the story as possible while instilling a ravenous and even rabid desire to see Love Crime immediately.

Alan Rudolph's direction is active but unintrusive, highlighting some of the more chilling moments with slow-motion sequences and odd cross-cutting. [19 Apr 1991, p.E1]

The Coens' plotting, with its suspense and reversals, is a source of amazement and delight.

This movie is seriously funny, surprisingly funny, not funny in a way that you ever decide to laugh, but funny like you couldn’t keep quiet even if you wanted to. The laughs, as they say, keep coming.

Gripping and compelling.

A disturbing film about grim subject matter, but the overall experience is more exhilarating than saddening. There's just something satisfying about seeing a movie so well made.

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

The plot is spare, but unsettling imagery elevates The Hunter to the level of pure cinema.

An intelligent, well-made film about a seemingly well-adjusted, likable and loquacious woman.

The movie is about a sculptor, played by Michelle Williams, in the days leading up to a gallery show. That’s all it’s about, and yet it’s enough. The pleasure of Showing Up is in being dropped into this woman’s life and, more profoundly, into her consciousness.

This movie doesn't work unless the central relationship between Atafeh and Shireen works. It does, beautifully; whether together in a nightclub or alone in a bedroom, Boosheri and Kazemy find a delicacy and sensitivity that reinforces, not diminishes, their strength.

Dangerous Liaisons isn't necessarily a work of art, but it's a guilty pleasure for sure.

Anyone with any doubt as to the importance, in a functioning democracy, of American newspapers - with working newsrooms full of professional, paid journalists - needs to see this movie.

A tennis match can be a personal battle, a clash not only of athleticism but of mind, and Guadagnino gives every game and set the gravity of gladiatorial contest.

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.”

Children of Men is Cuarón's run for freedom, with a riveting story, fantastic action scenes and acting so universally solid that even the dogs perform masterfully under his direction.

A movie to savor.

In Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan takes an eggheady topic and, without insulting anyone’s intelligence, turns it into a gut-level experience. He shows that the kind of hyper, jacked-up, ultra-modern filmmaking associated with the action and superhero genres can be harnessed in the service of a smart, serious movie.

The payoff is a consistently rich piece with impressive visual vitality.

Utilizing plentiful archival footage, contemporary commentary, recent interview observations from people who were there and some dramatized recreation, director Cristina Costantini gets some sly laughs, edged with appropriate anger, out of the sexist mindsets Ride deftly steered her career through in the 1970s and ’80s.

Funny, riveting look at the music scene that ruled Manchester, England, from 1976 to 1992.

Maybe the best shoot-'em-up ever made, the one that turned meanness into a haunting pictorial poetry and summed up the corruption of guilt, old age and death in the American fantasy of the Old West.

A gem of fast action, sophisticated wit and inspired comedy.

The result is a comedy that's low budget in all the right ways - so hilarious, testosterone-charged and yet cringe-inducing to watch that the result is almost exhausting.

It's an horrific and tragic story, but somehow made beautiful through the care and attention of Schnabel's direction and Bardem's tender, unforgettable performance.