Like a newborn planet, Melancholia is magnetically beautiful, but it's also an unformed mass of hot air.

A fanciful French cousin to Allen's "Zelig" and "The Purple Rose of Cairo," yet the fulfilled wish for a better life is high-concept absurdity without high-anxiety guffaws.

The story unfolds not as contrived drama, but with all the surprise and inevitability of real life.

Until the sci-fi switcheroo, the versatile supporting cast puts Gary in such a ridiculous light that we can’t help laughing at him. Then suddenly this subversive movie challenges us to laugh at our own assumptions.

The reason District 9 reverberates so loudly is because its moral indignation is cranked to 11.

When films are good, actors and directors get a lot of the credit that should go to the screenwriters. In the case of Silver Linings Playbook, which is one of the best films of the year, there is a popcorn bowl of glory to go around.

Periodically deviating from its fly-on-the-wall aesthetic, the film does a noticeably better job than the Joan Rivers movie of incorporating old footage and photos to underscore its subject’s importance.

Waiting for Superman raises important questions while wearing a big red heart on its chest, but inconvenient facts are its kryptonite.

A gorgeous film that could inspire a whole new crop of astronauts.

Although it has some memorably disquieting scenes, this story of long-delayed justice is sustained by its melancholy more than its thrills.

Good Time is not so much a crime drama as it is a meditation on the genre’s virtues and limitations.

So many of today's children's movies are loud. Loud explosions, loud colors, loud soundtracks, loud humor. The animated The Secret World of Arrietty is the antidote to those films.

Although it's a guilty pleasure, The Queen of Versailles is artful enough that both the prosecution and the defense could invoke it when the peasants cry "Off with their heads!"

Canadian director Denis Villaneuve knows how to stoke a hot debate about the legacy of violence. But in this case, where there's smoke, there's not enough air.

Bursting with style and imagination, The Incredibles 2 sets a standard that few superhero flicks — animated or live-action — can match.

The Secret of Roan Inish glows with a misty, lyrical beauty, helped no little by the cinematography of Haskell Wexler. Once again, writer-director Sayles ("Passion Fish") succeeds in creating a mature, complex film that touches the heart without using any Hollywood tricks. [14 Apr 1995, p.3E]

Love & Mercy is artfully but unobtrusively directed by Bill Pohlad.

Barry Levinson's film, Bugsy, glamorizes the back side of the American dream, adjusting facts as necessary to keep the story dramatic and to paint Siegel in better colors. The result is a strong, fascinating film that features a number of impressive performances, especially from Warren Beatty as Siegel and Annette Bening as Virginia Hill, whose nickname became the name of Siegel's dream hotel and casino in Las Vegas, the Flamingo.

In an Arnold film, plot is pretty much beside the point. Instead, she focuses on the subtleties of character — and her insights can be both enlightening and terrifying.

True Grit is just a couple bloody gunfights removed from an old-fashioned Disney yarn. Yet it's still unmistakably a Coen brothers movie, from the stray weirdness of a bearskin-clad dentist to the bulls-eye delights of the dialogue.

Like a train, I Wish is slow to build momentum, then it carries us away in a wondrous rush.

Perhaps the greatest triumph of Star Wars: The Force Awakens is that it justifies the enormous hype. Working from a screenplay that he co-wrote with Michael Arndt and Lawrence Kasdan, director J.J. Abrams (“Star Trek”) brings fresh energy to the franchise while adhering to the storytelling values that made it matter in the first place.

McNaughton directs well, and with power, but celebrating murder is a waste of his talents. [17 August 1990, p.3F]

You might expect a cartoon about a man and his dog to be strictly for kids, but My Dog Tulip, based on a memoir by J.R. Ackerley, has a psychological richness and anatomical explicitness that is very grown-up.

An art-history lesson and a spiritual exercise disguised as a movie.

Lean on Pete is not the sentimental boy-and-his-horse flick that audiences might expect, and it’s certainly not for children. It’s a contemplative art film of subtle beauty.

Although viewing this movie leaves you raw emotionally, it is a powerful testimony to one family's unwavering love and willpower, captured splendidly by Susan Sarandon, Nick Nolte and director and co-writer George Miller. [27 Jan 1993, p.5G]

This isn't just another crime story, and it would be misleading to suggest that it has anything to do with stylish gunplay, exhilarating car chases or brutal fistfights.