There’s a profound, unresolvable melancholy to “About Dry Grasses” that’s hard to shake.

Hard Truths runs just 97 minutes, but it’s the kind of film and character that will stay with you long after — especially and most importantly when you find yourself having a Pansy kind of day.

Bentley’s film is haunting and patient, a dreamlike journey through a world that was disappearing in real time and an ode to the beauty that’s remained.

A Star Is Born, is simply terrific — a big-scale cinematic delight that will have the masses singing, swooning and sobbing along with it.

Kail’s camera captures actors’ intimate faces during key moments in a way impossible for theater-goers and incorporates audience reaction to create an electric filmed version.

A clever concept, not a profound film. Terrifically acted and finely crafted though it is, it’s a brilliant but hollow exercise in perspective that calls more attention to its artful orchestration than it does life or loss.

There is a precise sensation of out-of-body powerlessness and comic absurdity throughout that can only be described as dream-like. And the overall experience is a meditative and powerful one.

It’s a testament to the actors and director that it remains riveting throughout.

It’s a film that on one level plays like a melodrama, with wild twists and turns fitting of soap opera cliffhangers. But there is something deeper going on too, underneath the beautiful surface and base pleasures of plot and simply watching Penélope Cruz through Almodóvar’s loving lens.

It is sickly hilarious to make a movie in which so much consensual sex is had, often so gleefully, that is not the least bit sexy. Though Bella Baxter’s insatiable libido might be her guiding light at first in Poor Things, sexual liberation (or “furious jumping,” as she calls it) is only part of this fantastical, anarchic journey to consciousness.

In pants or skirts, Hoffman remains true to character, and his perplexity is real, especially when one girlfriend (Teri Garr) suspects he is a gay male, while the other (Jessica Lange) believes he is a lesbian female. Both actresses are excellent, and Miss Lange continues her promise to become a superstar of the 1980s. [27 Dec 1982]

Unlike many of its more hollow predecessors, Black Panther has real, honest-to-goodness stakes. As the most earnest and big-budget attempt yet of a black superhero film, Black Panther is assured of being an overdue cinematic landmark. But it's also simply ravishing, grand-scale filmmaking.

Brooklyn is a story for anyone who has ever left home. It’s a story for those who’ve waffled in indecision, for those forming their identities and forging their own paths. It’s a story awash in muted pastel nostalgia about family and love and ambition and heritage and goodbyes. And it’s one of the loveliest films to grace cinemas this year.

Apollo 11 might not tell you anything you don’t already know about the moon landing. But it will make you feel it, and see it, anew.

“Moonlight” is a hard act to follow, and while Beale Street might not quite reach the heights of Jenkins’ instant classic of a best picture-winner, it is its own kind of marvel, lovely, transcendent, heartbreaking and as smooth as its jazzy soundtrack.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? sings best — or rather, grumbles spectacularly — when McCarthy and Grant are together. They are kindred misfits and malcontents happy for each other’s company.

After the junk-food movies of spring and summer, it is a delight to encounter a full-course gourmet meal. [18 Sep 1984]

Some may find the film too loosely plotted, a series of vignettes more than a single, tight narrative. But they only need to sit back, listen to the beautiful score by Alberto Iglesias, and let Almodovar weave it all together _ from the first meditative shot of Banderas to the satisfying surprise of the ending shot _ as only Almodovar can.

Whatever your level of familiarity, Haynes’ doc — the first for this accomplished director — is so stylistically compelling, it doesn’t really matter what you knew coming in.

Much ink has been spent analyzing this enduring phenomenon called Tom Cruise, and what motivates him, onscreen and off. “I just want to entertain people,” he said recently. That’s one mission he can still nail.

It goes without saying that the performance is brilliant, and yes, electric, but it’s also heroic. If there had to be a final role, what a gift that it was this, an exclamation point to a career that seems ever more momentous.

To a remarkable degree, “Robot Dreams” has fully imbibed all the melancholy and joy of Earth, Wind & Fire’s disco classic. Just as the song asks “Do you remember?” so too does “Robot Dreams,” a sweetly wistful little movie that, like a good pop song, expresses something profound without wasting a word.

There is a searching, ruminative dialogue running throughout the film. Brown and editors Michael Bloch and Geoffrey Richman beautifully weave together disparate voices into a meditative chorus.

This film is a small miracle and a uniquely meditative experience.

The Banshees of Inisherin is a rich, soulful journey, full of agony, dry Irish wit and big, haunting questions. If it’s answers you’re looking for, however, you’re not going to find them on Inisherin.

Aster, who also wrote the film, fills his movie with foreshadowing clues that give the gruesome events to come a cruel note of inevitability. There’s a curse on this family, whether by ghost or DNA.

If you can suspend your disbelief, The Fugitive is a raucous, rampaging adventure that's certain to thrill. If your eye gets caught on details, however, you'll be annoyed by plot twists that range from unlikely to unbelievable. For the most part, director Andrew Davis ("Under Siege") knits a fabulous story. [5 Aug 1993]

Nyoni and her cinematographer David Gallego make this a transportive, stylish and unforgettable experience that powerfully transcends the specifics of its setting, while also taking audiences into an culture that’s likely unfamiliar.