[Buckley's] all-in performance is riveting, and well balanced by Paul Mescal’s quieter intensity as the Bard, making the film worth watching – but never rescuing it from the cheap biographical determinism of its third act.

Disturbing and taut, Eggers’s direction is almost without fault. His only mistake lies in the film’s final 30 seconds, where all the implied horror of the family’s plight becomes just a shade too explicit.

Looper ups the ante like a poker player on speed. What a potpourri of genres we have here – noir again, but sci-fi too, and action and horror and psycho-drama with existential trimmings, the latter designed to invite the thinking viewer into the fray.

The plot depends on an improbably interdependent set of acquaintances and events, but the cinematography, the dialogue and the performances, especially Adrian Titieni’s as an earnest and anxious Mr. Fix-It, are impressively naturalistic.

The characters feel underdeveloped, to the point where it’s sometimes difficult to remain invested in their triumphs and failures.

Essentially, it re-constitutes the war movie, and in so doing marries a feminist Rambo to Star Wars. [19 July 1986, p.D9]

It's a rare feat for a director whose films, from their muted humour and dated-seeming mise-en-scène, to their use of flat, unexpressive, Bressonian close-ups of characters, have always seemed weirdly outside of time.

Alternately deploying twisty monologues and quick back-and-forth exchanges, Montague and Sanger are clearly having a ball. They’re not only riffing on obvious inspirations like Orson Welles’s "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast and "Twilight Zone" mastermind Rod Serling, but also the modern ubiquity of podcasts, and their propensity for devolving into audio fabulism.

A precise, subtle and emotionally affecting portrait of the fraying friendship between two men, director Kelly Reichardt's Old Joy is an increasingly rare sort of American independent film: It aspires to be something other than a Hollywood movie with less money.

Set against the high-tension strings and jarringly funky synthesizers of Greenwood’s score, the film is transformative and transfixing.

He gets much of what he wants, but not all of it, and not all of the time - the film is just too eclectic on occasion, a bit jumpy in its tone and its pacing.

If you’ve ever loved anyone or anything, A Ghost Story is going to break your heart. It is devastating – and devastatingly good.

Plot isn't what drives the picture; instead, this is a cinematic tone poem, where the dominant mood is a Faulknerian mix of sorrow and endurance.

As down-to-earth as a ghost story gets.

In the end, Ahmed claims a kind of victory, noting that open dissent and public protest has become embedded in the culture, even if Egyptians have not yet found a leader to unite them all. Something has begun, he says. Its real meaning is not yet clear.

Led by a magnificent Viola Davis, the cast is ridiculously stacked. The action is tremendous. And the ultimate message – that nothing comes for free in America – is devastating in its swift brutality.

Not everyone is equal, though, if we’re being honest. Synonyms are words that mean similar but ultimately different things. At one point, students in the class are asked to stand individually and recite sections of La Marseillaise. Who knew the chorus of the French anthem contains the bracing nationalist lyrics, “Let us march! Let us march! So that impure blood irrigates our fields!”?

Politicians are craven and driven by all the wrong reasons, and though the pair uncover a handful of hopeful voices – especially Ben Feinstein, a compassionate and committed idealist – you will likely exit the world of Boys State as cynical as you entered it.

It’s a hybrid drama/art-history essay about how looking at art recasts our experience of looking at the world.

Poised, delicate, powerful, hovering between poignancy and pealing laughter, it is a feast formed by skill and serendipity.

Heartwarming, tragic and, at times, hilariously funny drama.

It is immersive, engaging and dizzying filmmaking.

An efficient, cold-blooded sci-fi splatter movie that never makes the mistake of forgetting that on some level it is deeply ridiculous.

Without “spoiling” it, it’s a film that at least opens up a possibility for change, instead of providing another rote reshuffling of power from the Black Hats back to the White Hats.

As refreshing as it is to find a movie that leaves you smiling, it's something much rarer to discover a film that makes you think about what a commitment to happiness really means.

The freestyle approach is an apt fit with the freestyle, spontaneous comedy, as both the playful director and affable star capture moments on the fly.

There may be almost nothing about this comedy that is new; but there is almost nothing about this comedy that is not funny...Victoria/Victoria is marvellous vaudeville. [19 March 1982]

The result is a rarity on the modern screen -- a film with more brains than heart.