The film’s methods are boldly unorthodox and its constantly alternating moods and shifts in tone from drama to humor, joy to tragedy can be disconcerting. It’s not a film for all audiences, but despite its eccentricities it is always watchable, thanks to strongly drawn characters and the soul-stirring poetry of its imagery.

The film’s minimalist aesthetic makes little concession to the usual forms of cinematic expression and extends to the set design: living spaces devoid of furniture, the nondescript hotel room, the typical street scenes. The two actors are similarly inexpressive, their faces blank as though personal interaction was a major risk.

For viewers who resist the temptation to flee for the nearest exit, this fascinating and probing look at modern surgery is a memorable experience, making us ponder our own humanity as we watch humans reduced to pure flesh-and-blood organisms.

Steven Spielberg has done it again. He has created another instant American classic.

Perhaps returning to Apocalypse Now will reinvigorate the once brilliant storyteller. Certainly, the images, colors and design still astonish. And let's hope that Apocalypse Now Redux will become the definitive version. For the movie hits home even harder now. [14 May 2001]

The teen-abortion factor tags Never Rarely Sometimes Always as an issue drama, and in the most unconventional way, it is — raw, haunting and painfully real. But it's perhaps better defined as a moving snapshot of female friendship, solidarity and bravery.

It's a marvelously quirky film, with not quite something for everybody.

A fully rounded and complicated portrait of both the man and a company that somehow managed to survive under devastating circumstances.

At this point it doesn’t seem a stretch to say that Jonathan Glazer is incapable of making a movie that’s anything less than bracingly original.

The incisive beauty of the documentary, and its power, is that it's not a thesis or an argument but a full-blooded, multifaceted real-life drama.

In this brilliant depiction of the early years of TV and the phenomenal powers it asserted in breaking down the walls of America's living rooms and homogenizing our culture, director Robert Redford has crafted a superb piece of cracked Americana. Buena Vista will win heartfelt plaudits from mature audiences and, come awards season, will certainly increase its viewership through anticipated nominations. [9 Sept 1994]

Simultaneously a modern essay on suffering, an open-ended thriller, and a black social comedy, it is most importantly of all a thinly-veiled political parable drenched in bitter irony that takes aim against the corrupt, corrosive regime of Vladimir Putin.

Woody, Buzz and playmates make a thoroughly engaging, emotionally satisfying return.

This is an illuminating (self-)portrait of a young artist as well as a mesmerizing chronicle of a consuming, destructive relationship that steadily inches its way under the viewer's skin.

The Look of Silence is perhaps even more riveting for focusing on one man’s personal search for answers as he bravely confronts his brother’s killers.

As the melee comes to feel like it may never end, the film executes a masterful narrative shift that will produce instant lumps in many viewers' throats.

It’s a major achievement, and for my money, sure to be one of the best films of the year.

This is a beautifully crafted film loaded with glancing insights and observations into an understated triangular relationship, one rife with subtle perceptions about class privilege, reverberating family legacies, creative confidence, self-invention, sexual jealousy, justice and revenge.

There are poetic and profound rewards here, even if Hamaguchi makes us wait too long for this quietly devastating emotional pay-off.

As drama the film mostly serves to illustrate the two sides of this crucial social debate in Africa.

Panahi’s latest feature is a straightforward 24-hour narrative staged with his usual attention to realistic detail, and backed by a terrific ensemble cast. Subtly plotted like a good thriller, the movie slowly but surely builds into a stark condemnation of abusive power and its long-lasting effects.

Saint Omer might be fiction, but Diop does not stray too far from her documentary roots. The film maintains a sense of naturalism even during its most tense moments. Diop’s directing style leans observational, as if she is watching and recording her screenplay’s effect on her performers.

Meditative and dreamlike yet gem-sharp, director Rob Tregenza's fifth feature in 30 years is an elegantly told story that churns with emotion beneath its deceptive stillness.

The movie contains priceless slapstick from Bill Murray, finely tuned performances by Murray and the beautiful Scarlett Johansson and a visual and aural design that cultivates a romantic though melancholy mood.

Sora has made a work of magnificent minimalism. Its vision of immortality might be most stirring in the moments when Sakamoto’s elegant hands hover above the keyboard at the end of a piece. It’s as though he’s coaxing the final chords to resonate just a bit longer before they fade into something like silence but now, after his conjuring, much richer.

Utterly uneasy to watch but strikingly and confidently assembled, the film is a powerful aural and visual experience that doesn’t quite manage to sustain itself over the course of its running time, but is a remarkable — and remarkably intense — experience nonetheless.

James Whale has done a great job in his direction. This is not an easy thing to direct — just how far to go in playing upon an audience's credulity, it's sympathy, it's nerves. Whale seems to have gone far enough, but not too far.

This is a probing, inquisitive work of a very high order, although it goes a bit slack in the final third and concludes rather conventionally compared to much that has come before.

The action flows with the rhythms of play and labor, joy and grief, thanks to sensitive editing by Lucrecia Gutiérrez Maupomé and Huezo and the sound team’s evocative work.

Gerwig skillfully navigates the line between respecting the story's old-fashioned bones while illuminating the modernity of its proto-feminist perspective, only occasionally leaning into speechy advocacy of a woman's right to self-actualization beyond marriage. Her cast may be slightly bound by their canonical character types, but there's lovely ensemble work here, captained with coltish physicality and hard-charging pluck by the luminous Saoirse Ronan as Jo.

It’s heady, strange stuff, perhaps not as emotionally resonant as TV Glow, but captivating in both its confusion and honesty.

As charming as the C.S. Forester novel on which it is based, The African Queen is top flight entertainment, delightful, different, always interesting. It is filled with excitement and adventure and sparked by superlative performances from Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart.

The frenetic editing might leave some viewers dizzy as they try to sort sober realities from sensational storytelling, but Grimonprez makes thrilling connections that should push viewers to pursue their own research.

A delicate miniature that’s magnificently humanist, occasionally amusing and shot in a palette of rich, saturated nighttime hues, this is the kind of really small movie that is actually really great.

It's a powerful and poetic memoir of personal struggle and self-discovery that expands the definition of documentary.

Never talking down to his audience, he rather pulls them up to an intellectual level where other filmmakers fear to go.

At once Panh's personal eulogy to the victims of this pogrom (around one-fifth of Cambodia's population perished during the Khmer Rouge's four-year reign of terror) and a subtly informative treatise about history and universal humanity, Graves Without A Name is at once emotionally overwhelming, visually ravishing and intellectually stimulating.

Noisy, joyous and as exhausting as the multi-generational bash at the heart of its story, Totem packs a hefty wallop for a film that’s only 95 minutes, and should further solidify Aviles’ reputation as an auteur with a unique vision and remarkable skills with actors, especially non-professionals.

This playfully complex and gently slippery analysis of memory and personal narrative manages to engage us in what's essentially the private business, some might even say the dirty laundry, of total strangers.

Ross, honoring the perspective shift that characterizes Whitehead’s novel, switches between Elwood and Turner’s points of view, remaining, at all times, in the subjective mode. The commitment to this way of storytelling imbues Nickel Boy with an overwhelming intimacy and becomes another way that Ross, as a filmmaker, stretches what it means to represent Black people.

The film could be read many ways, but fundamentally, it plays like a heartfelt depiction of resilience in the face of conflict and grief, a gentle call to find friends and trusted allies, to move forward and bring humanity and understanding to the world.

This brutal, violently realistic drama, set against the sordid background of the New York waterfront, packs a terrific wallop that results in topflight entertainment.

Amazingly, Panahi turns the utterly simple, economical format of a camera inside a car into something relevant to his own artistic state and full of eye-opening insights into Iranian society.

Frame by frame, Ida looks resplendently bleak, its stunning monochromes combining with the inevitable gloomy Polish weather and communist-era deprivations to create a harsh, unforgiving environment.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed takes [the director's] work to new aesthetic heights and wrenching emotional depths.

The chosen style of animation leads to a distracting choppiness that renders the movements, gestures and facial expressions of the interviewees unconvincing. The other problem is that, memory naturally being something that returns in fits and starts, the film is rarely able to sustain any consistent narrative thrust.

You can feel Panahi drifting away from his director forefathers, including his own father, testing out new ideas and methods to see if they suit him, trying to find a different way to express himself. Like the older son in Hit the Road, he’s bravely venturing off into unknown territory for his first movie — although he also keeps one foot firmly planted in the past, creating the kind of quiet miracles Iranian cinema is known for.

As a immersive primer on the first-hand experiences of British soldiers, this innovative documentary is a haunting, moving and consistently engaging lesson in how to bring the past vividly alive

While Anora could stand to lose 10-15 minutes, it’s a very satisfying watch; the director continues firmly staking out his niche as a chronicler of the messy lives of an often invisible American underclass.

[Yorgos Lanthimos'] fabulously entertaining tragicomedy, The Favourite, is a juicy power tangle connecting three women in the royal court of early 18th-century England, played by a divine trio who bounce off one another with obvious relish.

Obtaining all-areas access to Olympic-competing Russian star athlete Margarita Mamun, Prus records in intense detail the verbal and physical pressures to which the young woman is subjected by her fiercely determined coaches.

Carpenter creates excellent tension throughout and he avoids excessive blood and gore in the murder sequences. The violent actions are mostly implied more than graphically depicted, which serves to heighten the effect.

Rarely has a film made a historic accomplishment seem so vivid and personal.

The film is both a food lover’s dream and an aspiring chef’s guidebook, uncovering the sophisticated alchemy that makes such places not only run flawlessly, but serve up groundbreaking dishes that are also locally sourced.

What comes out of this unlikely comparison between astronomy and history is a totally new perspective, something broader, with glimpses into deeper meanings.

This is one hot, provocative, revelatory and astonishing documentary, one sure to provoke enthralled interest and controversy wherever it is shown worldwide.

The Brutalist is a massive film in every sense, closing with a resonant epilogue that illustrates how art and beauty reach out from the past, transcending space and time to reveal a freedom of thought and identity often denied its makers.

This is one of the most wildly romantic movies in ages.

Rohrwacher makes movies you sink into rather than watch dispassionately, taking time to establish the milieu as her characters and stories reveal themselves in layers.

More than ever, Trier reveals how well he can keep shifting tones and emotional arcs without losing any narrative momentum.

A harrowing World War II epic about the struggle to uphold decency in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, the visual masterwork finds Spielberg atop his craft, weaving heart-pounding action and gut-wrenching emotion — often during the same sequence — that will leave viewers silently shaken.

The movie, particularly in its meandering second hour, often leaves you wondering where it’s going, more in frustration than curiosity.

The film is an important step toward repairing the broken links and resurrecting almost a century of music and the women who made it.

An extraordinary motion picture, greater in dimension and significance than any similar film of our time, Ben-Hur is more spectacular than any of the previous spectacles. More importantly, it is at the same time a highly rewarding dramatic experience, rich and complex in human values: a great adventure, full of excitement, visual beauty, thrills and unsurpassed cinema artistry.

The Alabama Solution is difficult to watch, and impossible to watch without escalating anger. There isn’t easy catharsis or an easy non-Alabama solution, but it’s impossible to deny that something better must be done.

Seeds is not a journalistic investigation but a poetic contemplation.

It is immaculately performed by Zischler and especially Hüller, grounding the film throughout with an uncanny, expressive stillness.

While not a lot happens in First Cow by the standards of most two-hour narrative films, and some may wish for a less open-ended conclusion, the drama's rough-edged lyricism kept me rapt the entire time.

The first two Max features ran barely 90 minutes and it takes guts and real confidence to dare push a straight chase film with very little dialogue to two hours. But Miller has pulled it off by coming up with innumerable new elements to keep the action compelling.

This rigorously well-made, grippy-as-a-live-squid, toska-steeped work is Zvyagintsev’s most openly critical commentary on the motherland’s current political, spiritual and moral malaise, a denunciation never said in so many words but expressed with intricate layers of irony.

Grim backwoods tale takes its time building momentum.

A fascinating mix of high-minded gossip and historical perspective, examines the clash of values -- of ritual and traditions versus media savvy and political ambition -- that leads to a crisis for the British monarchy.

It’s an altogether strange but astonishing work of craftsmanship.

An intriguing exposé of a gripping story.

While it unfolds in a hazy dream state rooted in Adam’s loneliness and the emotional suspension that has blocked him from moving forward, it’s by no means a downer. It’s a thing of beauty, heartfelt and unforgettable.

The visuals here...are never less than stunning in their impact, yet always seem well within the realm of possibility. It is also to Spielberg's credit, however, that despite all of this visual opulence, his actors are never dwarfed.

It is neither a very happy or driving picture. But it is intellectually daring and marks an important breakthrough in the growing up of the Hollywood film.

The sequences crackle with vitality as well as setting subtly the characterizations and packing the explosives to be detonated later.

There is no denying the passion or intelligence of this work, which is meant to be an encouragement to explore the films for ourselves rather than a dry history lesson. On that level, "Viaggio" fully succeeds.

Less concerned with classic storytelling than with creating virtual performance pieces on screen, the film features dozens of extended sequences of Adele and Emma both in and out of bed—scenes that are virtuously acted and directed, even if they run on for longer than most filmmakers would allow.

It's an extraordinary film.

More unconventional and downright weird on a moment-to-moment basis than it is in overall design and intent, it's a singular work played out mostly in small rooms that harks back to psychological melodramas of the 1940s/50s but hits stylistic notes entirely its own.

Alfred Hitchcock has concocted an elaborate tease in The Birds, as if to prove that suspense and thrills can be induced as much by the expectation of horror as by horror itself.

A stirring requiem of rage and resistance.

A terrifically engaging picture of life beyond the headlines, My Perestroika lifts the veil of Cold War mystery.

Blurring the confines between documentary and fiction, it takes the empathetic viewer on an incredible journey that can be almost as painful to follow vicariously from a theater seat as it must have been on the pilgrims.

The distinctive British filmmaker is at the height of her powers in this semiautobiographical work.

Enyedi is a master stylist who knows how to create a certain mood, mixing visual poetry with deadpan humor, and big ideas with quotidian foibles, in a film that explores our mysterious relationship with both the green world and one another.

An exhilarating fish story in the perfectly cast comic adventure.

Schilinski doesn’t spare us all their pain and suffering, nor does she hide the joy and wonder they sometimes experience. Her brave girls carry their forebearers within them from one generation to the next, surging toward the future both damaged and victorious.

Sugarcane’s sensitivity to the ongoing pain of its subjects is one of the film’s principal achievements. NoiseCat and Kassie offer an affecting portrait of a community that endures in spite of colonial genocide.

The drama really sparks into high gear once the trial gets under way, a shift signaled by arresting cathedral-like shots of the Old Bailey's Neo-Baroque domed ceiling accompanied by the dissonant strings of Mica Levi's sparingly used score. The transition also gives the excellent principal cast ample opportunities both for impassioned oratory and amusing disruption.

Pixar again hitches top-notch storytelling to the very best in CG animation.

If cinema is an empathy machine, to paraphrase the late Roger Ebert, then Agnieszka Holland’s new film is one precision-tooled specimen.

What's most immediately remarkable about the film is the raw intensity of its hyper-realistic encounters, hugely enhanced by the superb acting of newcomer Rahim.

This is a big, ballsy, serious-minded cinematic event of a type now virtually extinct from the studios. It fully embraces the contradictions of an intellectual giant who was also a deeply flawed man, his legacy complicated by his own ambivalence toward the breakthrough achievement that secured his place in the history books.

Cold War, Pawel Pawlikowski's latest film, is bittersweet and unbearably lovely, a sad ballad of two lovers who can't stand to stay apart but also sometimes can't stand each other either.

The film has enormous charm and zero pretense.