The Italian belongs in group of excellent recent Russian films -- most notably Andrei Zvyagintsev's "The Return" and Boris Khlebnikov and Aleksei Popogrebsky's "Roads to Koktebel" -- that have examined the effects of the country's woes on its youngest and most vulnerable citizens, as well as the problems faced by any child unfortunate enough to have faulty or absent parents. At its best, The Italian conveys this grave issue with admirable clarity and power.

When Lee puts Washington in just the right scene, with just the right power dynamics and just the right nerve-rattling dialogue, the result is a thing of high art. Forget the film’s initial low points – just keep aiming toward the top. And keep watching King David’s throne.

A typically hypnotic, slow-coiling drama from 80-year-old French filmmaker, Jacques Rivette.

The winner of this year's audience award for best documentary at Sundance has it all: heartless media, art fraud and a four-year-old painting prodigy.

Two Lovers is two movies – the complex, alluring one we want, and the simple, pedestrian one we'll settle for.

WAG the Dog is a cozy political satire, the warm-and-fuzzy kind that is always entertaining yet never disturbing.

Writer-director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat’s feature is built on a number of sly narrative and stylistic tricks that gradually cement its status as a new action classic full of nasty surprises.

Sin City gives sin a great name -- it's never been more plentiful or looked so gorgeous.

Over all, Neil Young Journeys is a pretty solemn affair, kinda like the man himself.

In terms of musical-theatre bona fides and genuine, soaring emotion, Tick, Tick … Boom! drowns out its contemporaries all the way up to the rafters.

Along the way, the narrative does drag at times, but mainly the film slowly and steadily impresses as two excellent reporters – and two excellent actresses, Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan – go about their work.

Michelle Monaghan's clowning response to her boyfriend's sudden histrionics lends the drama a giddy fizz.

The charming Johnny Flynn ultimately struggles to find the right tone for the boyfriend, not helped by a director who hasn’t quite mastered the rhythm required for his surprise ending.

None of this would work with anywhere near the power it does without Nicolas Cage, whom Green has smartly cast in this sometimes maddeningly erratic and ill-disciplined actor’s most perfectly suited role since "Leaving Las Vegas" and "Adaptation."

There is almost zero chance that this film escapes the festival or art-house circuit to become a mainstream cultural artifact – its sexually explicit material all but guarantees it – but Jude’s work is an almost profound act of high-wire lampoonery that deserves to be seen and debated far and wide.

Thor films have traditionally landed with a heavy foot. Thank goodness Waititi taught the big guy how to dance.

The problem here isn't how the figures look; rather, it's what they do and say -- the story is lame and the dialogue no better.

Perhaps Bird is best understood as a film about self-consciousness or perhaps it is just a self-conscious film, ironing out the flaws of these well-meaning characters to create a fairy tale or apologue.

Often refuses to adhere to the formula, sometimes offering a tantalizing ambiguity, other times aspiring to a more complex drama it cannot entirely deliver.

Queen & Slim’s ultimate route is a powerful one – a drive meant to be shared, and discussed, long after the road ends.

Under better circumstances, Cooper might be said to have stolen the picture outright. But as it is, and compelling as he is, there's just nothing here to steal.

Undoubtedly the rudest and possibly the most inspired comedy of the summer.

Around about the third act, the picture does what no self-respecting virus ever would -- relents, turns confused, and lets our immune system fight back with thoughts of its own, with distracting cavils about the logic of the plot and the slightness of the themes.

The story in Japanese Story grabs you precisely because it's so wonderfully hard to define.

Floating in between the dramatic and the campy, Novitiate doesn’t tell a straightforward story of love and sacrifice, of faith and its crises. Betts’s film is ritualistic and enthralling, with a complex feminism woven into its cloth, and it’s something of a blessing.

It takes a party pooper to point out that it's not very good. But this is one party that people familiar with the play - especially people familiar with Heath Lambert's memorable performance in the title role - would do well to pass up: every addition to the original results in subtraction. [19 June 1987]

So, if you must celebrate Bill Murray Day this year, pour yourself a Suntory Whisky and watch "Lost in Translation" instead. And make that drink neat.

Much like its predecessors, Bloodlines joyfully relishes in its Rube Goldbergian kills and thrills, often trading on the absurd humour of its own fashioning.

The result is a road movie with a lofty message that too frequently gets lost in its own thematic barrens.

This film is about giving credit where previously neglected credit is due. “You wouldn’t let us talk about it before,” Robertson says at the end of the doc. “But now I’m going to talk about it real loud.” No volume is too much at this point.

With its claustrophobic unity of time and place, the disintegrating party feels highly theatrical and, of various classic screen adaptations from the stage, this wonderfully performed black-and-white film recalls in particular Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." Yet also, Potter's comic dissection of the London intelligentsia's personal and political angst is completely of the moment.

Smartly cast, in the sense that Reeves, gloomy and pained, and Harrelson, confused and explosive, both seem befuddled while Downey, as the devious, intellectual Barris, is befuddling.

It's a long time since I've heard a press screening audience applaud a foreign film, but then it's a long time since a French movie has been as funny as The Dinner Game.

This is a picture as severe as the real-life generational abuse that its director is chronicling, even if a few false steps mean that The Iron Claw ultimately lands as a technical knock-out.

As expected, it has gaping holes where back stories used to be. Still, it's a historical war movie with impressive sweep, strong characterizations and the kind of idiosyncratic flourishes that made Woo such an irresistible storyteller.

By turns brutal and tender, Rust and Bone is a bullet train of heightened melodrama that refuses to derail.

While Robinson’s lecture is thought-provoking and his living tour of that same history is illuminating, the Kunstlers don’t add much in terms of directorial vision. Robinson is an apt orator and tour guide, but the literal translation of his lecture to screen lacks life and suffers from the inherent banality that comes with watching a recording of someone – no matter how charismatic – speaking to a live audience we are not part of.

By the time Inland Empire, David Lynch's three-hour digital epic shot on a home video camera, takes you through its tour of the contents of the director's febrile imagination, it's probably the bunnies you'll most remember.

The political buck-passing from all entertains and creates the film’s time-sensitive tension.

The juxtaposition of Loretta learning how to be a good capitalist and the historical flashbacks to her ancestor on the block at a slave auction rings unintentionally awkward. The good intentions, though, aren't in doubt: For the sake of the generations who have made sacrifices before her, Loretta has an obligation not to waste her life. [24 Dec 1998, p.D6]

A fine bilingual cast, haunting period detail and a provocative approach to a twisting story carry the day.

It's light, it's bright and it succeeds precisely where the lesser doc fails -- by setting modest targets and hitting them square on.

If Yung, who made the Genie Award-winning Up the Yangtze, comes off as too deferential toward Fisk, he does acknowledge the controversial nature of his subject, noting how Fisk is regularly proclaimed to be a pawn of the different sides of whatever conflict he is covering.

While the case could be made that Koreeda is merely replicating the world as the blinkered Ryota sees it, the disparity between the characters’ development still leaves you feeling slightly cheated, if only because you want to see more of what this truly gifted student of human behaviour might do with them.

Even though Rain comes up short in overall effect, it is noteworthy for the singularly powerful performance of Nick Nolte. [14 Aug 1978]

The film is neither a stern lecture nor cheap entertainment, with Domont instead threading the needle somewhere in-between to create a tense guessing game of just how far she will push her characters.

This is a raw, intense movie circling on despair, hopelessness and inevitable dead ends. It is about the dark. But in plumbing the pitch black, Werewolf offers the distinct hope of a brighter future – at least, a brighter future for Canadian cinema.

Over all, A Field in England aims to confound. The filth-encrusted characters aren’t easy to keep apart, and the narrative is too fragmentary and freakish to grasp (the sun turns black, a character vomits rune stones).

Even with new information provided in the film, however, his personality remains not so much elusive as cantankerous, particularly in contrast with the expansiveness of his songs. That gap gives I'm Not There something of a hollow centre.

By refining both the plot and the theme, the film redeems the clunkier aspects of the book. The blatant foreshadowing (doomed mice and rabbits and puppy dogs everywhere), the unadulterated villainy (that nasty Curley, the boss's son), the calculated repetition and the oh-so-pat parallels - it's all here, but less obtrusively than in most adaptations. Sinise is intent on not allowing the mediocre poetry to get in the way of a great parable, and the climax is a testament to how well he succeeds. Because, there, the poetry is genuine. You know exactly what's coming and it still hits you hard, simultaneously laid low and buoyed up - felled by the certainty that none can prevail and cheered by the knowledge that some will endure. [2 Oct 1992]

Perhaps now more than ever, the Pixar folks seem to be stuck inside their corporate heads instead of listening to their beating hearts.

The picture's charm lies in the continuing by-play between the filmmakers and their subject, with each side doing its best to deconstruct the other.

Always perceptive and curiously light in tone if not in content -- such a remarkably delicate look at an absolutely devastating subject.

Directed by Paul Greengrass, the unflinching eye behind "Bloody Sunday," The Bourne Supremacy not only lives up to the promises of the novel by Robert Ludlum, but in many ways manages to improve on the first film.

Huston's performance has a keen edge to it, as do those of the other actors, yet everyone suffers from the same problem -- they're not playing knowable characters so much as thematic points on the broad spectrum of violence.

Everyone should be thankful, if not for the doc's content, then certainly for its tone – there is no fulminating here. Instead, courtesy of Canadian co-directors Luc Côté and Patricio Henriquez, witnesses are quietly gathered and arguments are quietly made. For once, no one rants, and, in the relative calm, the tone can be heard, so muted and sad.

The film’s most egregious misstep, though, is sabotaging its own best stunt: the high-wire chemistry between Gosling and Blunt.

The actor is as engaging and captivating as ever on-screen as Adonis, yet he’s just as present and committed behind the camera, delivering a stirring string of heartwarming and jaw-breaking moments that add up to something if not exactly unique, than certainly rousing, effective and entertaining.

Oddly enough, the movie is both sumptuous and somewhat soulless.

The film’s harmless pro-nature message is replaced with a drippy sense of self-congratulatory idealism, turning the film into a home movie by way of humble-brag. And then, by the hour mark, it’s merely a giant commercial for the couple’s 200-acre Apricot Lane Farm in Moorpark, Calif.

In a contest between passion and pretension, Laurence Anyways reaches a kind of draw. What holds up here isn’t Dolan’s overly decorative filmmaking, but what he gets from his performers.

The film’s director, who would make an excellent character witness for the defence, raises the questions but frustratingly doesn’t answer them in an otherwise compelling documentary.

Like a book we want to keep reading, despite the compression of pages telling us the end is near, it’s hard not to want A Most Wanted Man to go on forever, if only to spend time in the company of Hoffman – one of the great actors of his, or any, generation.

A documentary as inspiring as it is flat-out bizarre.

As many of the most memorable and darker thrillers have, Arbitrage plays with affinities in order to completely confuse the drawing of any clear lines between good and evil, criminal and executive, skilled pro and callous cad.

Lamenting the loss of the arthouse rom-com often feels like pleading for dessert. Thankfully, Piani’s debut is sweet enough to nurse the craving.

Respectable by the tube's standards, even a cut above dumbed-down Hollywood, but hardly the stuff of creative renewal.

Surprisingly entertaining.

Demme not only gives the script's nuttiness its due, he adds to it by filling the frame in virtually every scene with silliness - a motorcycle- riding dog, a harpsichordist, a man wearing a T-shirt that reads, "I don't love you since you ate my dog." [7 Nov 1986]

The clever and defiant Ai, who is forever filming himself and others on his phone, does in one instance capture Johnsen on camera, but mainly the doc is missing any explanation of how a dissident forbidden from giving interviews agreed to it – as well as much context about his personal life.

The dialogue is often mundane...and the actors' lurching delivery of these lines, often flattened, sometimes speechifying, sometimes rushed, but never naturalistic, forces the viewer to question the point of the action as Lanthimos crafts a dark satire about responsibility, justice and retribution.

Sheridan knows how to craft a tidy whodunit – and a late-act switch in perspective works better than it should – but he eventually leans toward sermonizing instead of storytelling, a well-intentioned move that edges the story just this close to melodrama.

The movie is so across-the-board charming that even the most hardcore of socialists will find themselves rooting for Nike – that bastion of global corporate responsibility – to make gobs and gobs of money off the hard work of a young Black athlete.

This is a 3-D film sorely lacking in dimension. Hit me hard, hit me soft, Cameron, but hit me with something.

There's a particular upside-down, half-masked kiss that instantly becomes one of movie history's more memorable smooches. It's the kiss to send any teenaged boy on a spinning high, as well as launching the new age of arachnophilia.

All right, there are bits and pieces of new material in Chapter 3, but they come in the form of gobbledygook world-building. What’s worse is that all this blather about the underground assassin economy arrives gussied up with characters uttering needlessly intimidating Latin phrases.

Plot, characterization and dialogue are merely the frame here for the real goods, an immersion into the Indonesian martial arts form known as silat.

The best parts of Sonatine reach into that space where the fear ends and death begins, and find there the music of life. [01 May 1998, p.C4]

Disney unleashes a mousey minor masterpiece. [02 July 1986, p.C5]

It’s ripe to the point of bursting and, with a plot that tilts to melodrama, Davies flirts dangerously with cliché, creating an over-wrought period piece where every wheat field is bathed in golden sunlight and every childbirth is announced by chilling screams.

Visually impressive, splendidly performed, thematically significant, this is a movie in full possession of every key cinematic asset except one -- a solid script. Casino is a polished vehicle with an untuned engine.

The song playing sombrely over the tail credits is Afraid of Everyone, which is a hell of a way to die, but an even worse way to live. There is no cheer to Transpecos.

Supernova feels less like a film to cherish and more a tweet to favourite.

For those who have been waiting for movies to catch up with the graphic possibilities of comic books, wait no longer: The Matrix is among us.

The Impossible looks back at a natural calamity with unflinching honesty. It sees fear and pain, it sees fortitude and bravery, but mainly it sees this: In that raging instant when the sea becomes its own monster, there's precious little to separate the devoured from the spared – nothing but the thin wedge of luck.

A film that appeared exceptional turns mundane.

Watching Morgan Spurlock commit slow suicide in Super Size Me is rather like watching Nic Cage do the same in "Leaving Las Vegas," except here the "preferred" instruments of destruction are hamburgers and vanilla milkshakes instead of booze and cigarettes.

Has a subtle magnetism, and a real human pulse, especially as it concentrates on its two main characters.

Extraordinarily gross, metaphorically blunt, but also perversely and wildly entertaining, the new Spanish splatter satire The Platform is the perfect movie to watch while the world seemingly teeters on the edge of existence.

Like many of its Pixar predecessors, Hoppers manages to thread the needle between a charming story for a young audience and a considered take on the climate crisis that will also resonate for their adult caregivers.

Thanks to the specificity of Richardson’s performance in particular and Giles Nuttgen’s gorgeous cinematography (the movie is shot on 35 mm), Montana Story evokes a grandiose style of American frontier filmmaking, somewhere between John Ford and Kelly Reichardt. See it on the largest screen you can find.

All the signs pointed to a major movie achievement...And it does -- sometimes, and dazzlingly so. But the dazzle doesn't add up to the sustained act of brilliance I'd been expecting.

Directed by Foley’s childhood friend Brian Oakes, the doc does raise some difficult issues – albeit very tactfully.

Partly a scintillating performance documentary, partly a comic romp through a rough-and-tumble culture, The Commitments has the charismatic energy of the music it salutes - this is blues that cheers you up, soul with a whole lot of heart. [16 Aug 1991]

The very name Orson Welles stands for genius wasted and betrayed, and the movie offers some foreshadowing of his triumphs and failures to come.

The movies have given us plenty of loquacious teenagers – from such fast-talking truants as Ferris Bueller to such overachieving political animals as Tracy Flick ( Election). Hal Hefner is not one of these kids.

While the movie is narrow, it has a deep, melancholic resonance.

The laughs in Working Girl are the laughs of near-recognition - just good enough to make us wish they were much better.