But Clermont-Tonnerre has established herself as a filmmaker to watch with The Mustang, and has also made the most compelling case yet that Schoenaerts can not only handle an American accent, but excel with it too.

This is an unusually soulful coming-of-age movie considering the number of spinal cords that get ripped right of bodies.

It’s an exploration that touches not just on policing and justice, but astronomy, politics, phrenology and race.

There’s something comforting about the fact that Jarmusch is still doing his thing, exactly how he wants to, and that so many great actors are lining up to be part of it. He’s a singular voice in a landscape that’s always in danger of flattening.

Shayda is set in 1995 and yet still feels quite relevant, and not just for Iranian women. In Niasari, we have a brave and distinctive new filmmaking voice and I can’t wait to see what she does next.

There’s nothing terribly interesting about the way it’s told, it’s just a straightforward underdog story with a big beating heart.

I Carry You with Me couldn’t be any more specific about the trials of an undocumented gay couple trying to carve out a place for themselves, but it’s that specificity that makes its themes and emotions all the more universal.

The destination may be startling but, thanks to a magnetic star turn from Krieps, the voyage is never boring.

Red Rocket could have soared in a traditional Hollywood feel-good way but instead stays small and down to the ground, sticking with you uncomfortably and brilliantly.

Bahrani, with Paolo Carnera’s vivid cinematography, builds a dense, incisive film that nevertheless feels uneven in structure.

Kids movies so often bear little of the actual lived-in experience of growing up, but Yamada Naoko’s luminous anime “The Colors Within” gently reverberates with the doubts and yearnings of young life.

Another of the most cherished cartoon features ever. [05 Mar 2007]

As in any Sorkin joint there are at least three lines of dialogue that might make your eyes roll into the back of your head and your body produce an involuntary groan so extended that you will likely have to rewind. But it just goes to show how good the rest of it is that a few clunkers could stick out that much.

Flora and Son, like a B-side to Carney’s earlier hits, may sound a little like a tune you’ve heard before. But it’s sung with enough heart to have even the coldest cynic humming.

Dave is a movie packed with many, many magical moments. They seem childlike in their simplicity, just as spontaneous ... and just as charming. [06 May 1993]

It’s a triumph of small-budget, naturalistic filmmaking, where cars on a gravel road kick up choking clouds of dust and arm bones crack when pressure is applied.

We Grown Now is slightly dreamy and stylized, too, but instead of a liability, it makes this very small story feel grand, poetic and cinematic — just like it would for an 11-year-old.

Taylour Paige is phenomenal, for one. The movie, though, is a bold and admirable experiment that doesn’t totally work.

A stylish, well-crafted piece of filmmaking that marks the auspicious arrival of twin Australian filmmakers Michael and Danny Philippou.

Paolo Sorrentino’s films can be overwrought, grotesque and uneven but they are rarely not alive. His latest, The Hand of God, is a catalog of wonders — of miracles both banal and eternal.

Spencer may be a let down as a story about Diana, but as an exaggerated portrait of Stewart, it’s magnetic.

The story is so sensational that you almost wish Cassandro was instead a feature-length documentary.

With so many murky motives, there’s little to care about, no way to anticipate the next con and no sense of real peril.

The film looks of its time, but it also feels fairly modern in its sensibilities which makes it always seem more like a re-telling than an in-the-moment experience. This may be to its detriment, yet it’s still an undeniably riveting and compelling watch.

There are, hopefully, still many stories left to be told about the phenom of the Williams sisters. But King Richard is a very good start.

There are few more daring actors around right now than Moss, and “Shirley” may be her best performance yet. She’s brutally cutting but the pain of every slight ripples across her face.

The film is exactly what you need it to be: An exciting and emotionally true spectacle that required a heck of a fight to simply exist.

Asteroid City, with its sprawling cast, beautiful hues, mumbled jokes, box-within-a-box setup, references that only the 80+ crowd may truly get and retro-cool soundtrack, actually makes you feel things even if it can’t quite make sense of itself.