Director Manuel Poirier (Antonio's Girlfriend) is easygoing in the way he uses Paco and Nino to poke through veneers of machismo.

If you want to see great acting that’s unadorned, not fancy, and very much in the style of 2024, see Plaza in the climactic scene from “My Old Ass.” You will walk out of this film different than when you walked in, and a little bit better for the experience.

What's exciting is that the Sprechers have delved into territory that is normally the domain of literature and have emerged with a film that's neither overly literary nor simplistic.

There are moments of satirical humor sparked by Ted's stiff, earnest demeanor and Fred's glib, transparent conniving.

Graizer takes his time and never feels the need to spell everything out, and The Cakemaker is a testament to what filmmakers can achieve when they trust the audience.

Gorgeous but dark -- not the usual Disney experience. Audiences will find much to embrace in this animated drama, yet they may not walk away humming the kind of catchy tunes contained in Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King or Aladdin.

So it’s not my bag, but I went into Jackass Forever with the best intentions.

The beauty of Duck Season is its insistence that profound human experiences can arrive slowly, in incremental packages, scattered over the course of an average Sunday.

This is spellbinding, transporting, damn near indescribable and the latest indication that Christopher Nolan might be the slyest narrative tactician making movies today.

As challenging as it must have been to pilot Joss Whedon's space opera from the TV junk pile to the big screen, the finished product is a triumph.

It is described as about a guy who came back to life, and clearly one of Dumont's aims in The Life of Jesus is to express a spirit of charity for flawed humanity amid the rhythms of ordinary life.

Unlike Sean Penn's demagogue in "All the King's Men," you're able to forget that Whitaker is acting. He embodies the role. When clips of the real Amin are shown at the end, it's almost shocking to realize the extent to which Whitaker has become him.

Gut-wrenching.

It will bring joy in a way certainly not intended, as one of the most gloriously and unwittingly silly films ever devised by a major American filmmaker.

Less subtle than its predecessor, Tomboy is like a pint-size "Boys Don't Cry," and as such, it's practically unique.

More than most espionage movies, the film is about relationships, the men with each other, the men with their own disapproving wives, and governments with each other. Everyone courts someone.

Though the movie has a handful of shots that are downright gross to witness, what makes The Orphanage scary is not what it threatens to show but what it suggests about life.

Guadagnino has a choice, whether to be an artist or just the maker of artistically rendered, conscientiously realized garbage. It’s time to quit while he’s behind.

The movie’s length is, at times, a challenge, but Dune is so original and contains so many strong scenes that the length mostly isn’t a problem.

Details the group's raucous history with humor and a minimum of hero worship.

(Holm) nails one of the best roles of his career.

An eerily affecting domestic drama combining elements of "The Lost Weekend'' with "Lost Highway.''

There's no joy and little playfulness about this caper comedy, which, despite a lighthearted script, has a sober undertone to it, almost a melancholia.

The sentimentality overtakes Wonder Boys when, in the last half hour, it tries to make nice with its characters and fashion a deep message from a trivial story.

A slow seduction.

The film is mentally graphic, not sexually graphic.

The ego trips and sexuality and driving are all filmed with equal intensity, to the point where the emotions and flesh and crunched metal seem to blend together. The movie's only major problem is that the tension sometimes overwhelms.

Some of the movie probably will mystify viewers not steeped in Middle Eastern history and culture, but a good deal of the humor can be appreciated by anybody.