If there is a missing ingredient in this otherwise extremely impressive opus, however, it is emotion. The contemplation of greatness, vastness and infinity doesn't lend itself to simple feelings and the succession of fantastic natural imagery begins to tire.

Just looking at men of this age adds new depth to questions about legalizing gay marriage and further normalizing the kind of institutionalized responsibilities straight people take for granted.

A deeply disappointing follow-up to her promising 2015 short Kiss Kiss Fingerbang, Gillian Wallace Horvat's I Blame Society is a first feature that points out many of its faults as it goes, as if to transmute them into satirical jabs at an uncertain object.

The work’s considerations of the intimate connection among being, art and life finally feel quite superficial.

Very funny at the outset and escalating steadily for most of its brisk running time, the film represents a big win for neophyte screenwriters Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O'Brien.

A refreshingly upbeat film that finds its roots in some seriously sobering events.

Darren Aronofsky wrestles one of scripture's most primal stories to the ground and extracts something vital and audacious, while also pushing some aggressive environmentalism, in Noah.

The film offers up more mysteries than it solves. Still, riveting work from Viggo Mortensen and Léa Seydoux as performance artists whose canvas is internal organ mutations will draw the curious.

Starring John Hawkes as a booze-addicted former cop who stumbles across a mystery he can't stand to leave unsolved, the scuzzy-looking pic is a boon to the actor's fans.

Though not solely for superfans, it plays best for those who appreciate a hard-to-untangle knot of realness, fakeness, vanity, artistry, self-commentary and pure comedy. Laced with truly hilarious moments, it’s less daring than one might hope given its conceit, Eggersian title and Charlie Kaufman-seasoned icon-star.

Neither as frightening as a good horror flick nor as enlightening as a straight documentary, Rodney Ascher's The Nightmare borrows from both worlds in its depiction of the phenomenon known as sleep paralysis.

Whether the narrative is in amped-up overdrive or idling, the director and her magnetic cast keep us fully invested in their cautious reconnection and their ability to survive a series of life-threatening encounters.

Clicks on so many levels -- heartwarming family story, rough-and-tumble display of grrrl power and a secondary but tender and convincing romance.

Make of it what you will, this off-the-wall film essay entertains hugely while it makes the audience squirm in their seats.

At times, The Most Dangerous Year gets bogged down with its extensive footage of hearings about various bills and ballot initiatives that, however pertinent, inevitably come across with a C-SPAN dullness. But that's a minor quibble about this powerful documentary, which makes the valuable point that this is a civil rights issue and that the arguments being put forth about transgender people sound much like those promoting segregation decades ago.

Diluting its powerful themes with overcooked melodrama and unnecessarily distracting subplots, The Other Story would have benefited from a simpler, more direct approach.

Frank & Louis poses thoughtful questions about atonement and forgiveness, about how much sense it makes to keep ailing men behind bars when they no longer remember who they were or what they did. It’s an interesting angle for a prison drama, handled with great sensitivity by the filmmakers and cast.

Craig Zobel effectively sets all its surface parts in motion but, crucially, doesn’t sufficiently develop that turbulent undercurrents of tension and intrigue that are called for in the hothouse circumstances.

Torres has created a weird and special little film, one that reflects his particular tastes and curiosities.

This film neither really embraces the mechanics of primitive cinema nor creates a coherent syntax of its own.

Sienna Miller offers a beautiful, agile performance that would by itself justify the film's existence.

The outcome is a flamingly sexy soap opera whose satire on high society is sometimes as savage as Claude Chabrol's "La ceremonie."

Scott packages these concerns and others in a smart way, and includes the occasional bit of eye-opening history.

It's a slow-burn drama with a fairly austere attitude toward conventional exposition, dialogue and character development, which will confine it to the commercial margins. But the film is also transfixing in its formal rigor, impressive craft and striking visual beauty.

May be too clever for its own good. Essentially, it's the story of weekend scientists who build a time machine in a suburban garage. But this nearly gets lost in a miasma of technical jargon and scientific conjecture.

Andre Techine's many admirers will not be disappointed by his latest offering, The Girl on the Train, but they might be hard-pressed to define it.

A hilarious farce and a brilliant takedown of the imbecility of fanaticism.

Beyond celebrating the music, 40 Years in the Making: The Magic Music Movie has something to say about the compromises and reconciliations that are a part of aging, and it turns out to make for a stirring and healing reunion.

Wolfe has made an admiring but nuanced feature that doesn’t aim for biopic completism or cause-and-effect formula.

This is a bittersweet comedy-drama that manages to be hilarious in one scene and extremely touching in the next.

Both goofy and edgy, the film may not land every punchline, but it satisfies in visceral, pleasurable ways that a more sophisticated comedy could not.

A sharp-looking and enjoyable doc that celebrates the writer's legacy but, in its willfully obscure structure, seems a bit too bent on echoing his famous nonconformity.

It's an uncompromising, sophisticated, multi-layered work of art which demands to be met at least halfway.

All this is portrayed in such elementary terms it could be the libretto of a 19th century operetta, or maybe a children’s film, were it not so disturbing.

Monsters and Men is a robust ensemble piece in which every performer finds subtle shadings in characters fully embedded in a realistic milieu. It's a smart, urgently relevant movie that marks an impressive upgrade from his acclaimed short films for writer-director Green.

Emphasizing brawn over brain and spectacle over intimacy, Ridley Scott's Gladiator nevertheless is an impressive accomplishment in its re-creation not only of the golden age of the Roman Empire but of the unspeakable brutality with which one of the world's greatest states conducted its business.

Keeping exposition spare, Edmands’ storytelling displays a pleasing economy of means, and an empathetic handle on characters all flawed in one way or another, existing in self-imposed solitude.

The Divine Order (Die Goettliche Ordnung) is an entertaining, if largely predictable, story of an individual swept up in the tide of history.

Under Duncan Jones' kinetic direction, Moon also shines on the production front: Cinematographer Gary Shaw's shaded shots intensify the drama, and Clint Mansell's music heightens the psycho-scape.

More than two hours in length, The Sentinel packs too much into a weird tale that shifts ground between political thriller and psychological drama -- too much to be completely comprehensible except to Desplechin himself. It would require a severe editing job to rescue it, even for the friendly art-house crowd. [19 May 1992]

Garcia’s take, however beautiful physically, is intellectually opaque and creatively cautious, leaving the interested viewer, whether or not a believer, with much to wonder about but little to actually chew on.

Where Band Aid excels is in its mix of blisteringly understated comedy with a compassionate view of the ways we can let our lives drift away from us. There’s something bracingly fresh in the way Lister-Jones and Pally combine blind spots and vulnerabilities with a particularly secular-Jewish self-consciousness.

The central premise is arresting, as is the style, but there's a lot more that could have been done with it than just show how one ill-defined individual instantly opts to join his country's lowest form of life.

Solid rom com finds another Judd Apatow acolyte moving into the spotlight.

A marvelous debut film for its director, writer and lead actors, Bottle Rocket is propelled by a fresh approach to the caper genre, with a trio of youthful Texan misfits thoroughly botching their half-baked "adventures," with the goal of someday graduating to more ambitious levels of criminality.

A provocative parable about individuals at war with development and the global economy.

American Promise shows the emotional toll that each boy endures, not only from the image that their privileged peers have of minority males but, accordingly, their own lack of confidence.

A mature crime picture whose decades-hopping action makes the effects of generational poverty obvious without having to spell it out, it lacks some of the flash expected in commercial genre pictures, but makes up for that in seriousness.

Dead Man’s Wire is a timely, entertaining reflection on the way the offer of the American Dream often tends to be snatched back.

Laslo Benedek’s expert megging keeps the action taut and suspenseful, drawing top performances from a capable cast.

The occasional touch of cliché or corny dialogue can't dampen the vibrant spirit of this moving, well-acted drama about a fractured family coming together in unexpected ways.

In terms of narrative sophistication and even more so dialogue, this $350 million sequel is almost as basic as its predecessor, even feeble at times. But the expanded, bio-diverse world-building pulls you in, the visual spectacle keeps you mesmerized, the passion for environmental awareness is stirring and the warfare is as visceral and exciting as any multiplex audience could desire.

Snow Angels succeeds because of the depth of its well-drawn characters. With no cinematic sugarcoating, it's an organic story that draws us in to these people's lives, as flawed and destructive as they may be.

A slow meander through the mostly stagnant life of a character hardly worth the bother.

Blair keeps the strange comedy coming, but he also lets the film dip into moments of contemplative thought, into hardscrabble philosophy. The Shitheads simply becomes a far more interesting film — a suspenseful one, too.

What holds the film back is the familiarity of its elements.

Though less novel than Flanagan's previous pic, Oculus, Hush finds plenty of ways to flip roles in this cat-and-mouse game, letting his heroine get a bead on her stalker only to see the advantage taken away from her again.

Kelly depicts a deep filial love that isn't dependent on complete telepathic understanding.

The 3-D footage of Titanic does speak volumes, and sometimes the sheer fussiness of all the ghosts and archival images get in the way. As huge as the Imax screen is, when six different images vie for one's attention, it looks cluttered.

It's a quiet film, shunning melodrama and political polemic. Instead, it opts for a human touch, conveying how a group of very different survivors come to terms with the past and plan a future in their own unique ways.

It all moves along briskly, with a degree of visual grace and a solid feel for 3D.

Robot & Frank reminds quirk-hardened veterans that an odd premise and big heart don't have to add up to too-precious awards bait.

Gunn maintains the ideal glib pitch for most of the picture, flirting with camp but never hanging around it long enough to water down the squirm-inducing stuff.

Corbet's high-caliber melodrama combines food for thought with sense-blitzing spectacle. Between screaming tantrums and booming anthems, it leaves us with a nagging sense that history never quite repeats itself, but sometimes rhymes. Usually to a thumping disco beat.

Heartfelt but dramatically tepid tale.

Chock full of wonderful lines delivered by a splendid cast, the film toys with the conventions and mostly transcends the limitations.

[Aubrey Plaza] adds something different to Hartley’s usual hijinks, making for a crime dramedy that’s ostensibly quirky, but also short, sweet and quite moving.

Kyle Mooney (a longtime McCary collaborator on Saturday Night Live and elsewhere) is winning in the lead role, naive but not cartoonishly so in a film that walks a fine line, credibility-wise.

Filmed in a gorgeous, dreamlike style and Infused with heavy doses of mysticism and allegory, The Vessel is an impressive effort that loses some of its impact, however, for being so derivative.

A richly uplifting if somewhat rambling portrait of indomitableness in the face of old age and infirmity, Been Rich All My Life will be inspirational to young and old alike.

Confidently dovetailing three strands that depict present and past reality, as well as a dark fictional detour that functions as a blunt real-life rebuke, the film once again demonstrates that Ford is both an intoxicating sensualist and an accomplished storyteller, with as fine an eye for character detail as he has for color and composition.

Another highly entertaining portrait of attractive young Europeans looking for personal and professional fulfillment amidst gorgeous locations.

Though Framing John DeLorean offers a more comprehensive look at a flamboyant subject's life, it doesn't entirely do justice to the tale, and the meta-movie nature of its dramatized scenes does little to help.

There's a terrific tenderness in Travolta's performance, while Cyrus and company are similarly effective.

A polished, finely acted tale of love and class in the south of France.

A missed opportunity on multiple levels, T2 is stylistically an overwrought rehash which relies heavily on over-caffeinated camerawork and flashy effects (cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle's trademark gritty flair is overwhelmed by a flurry of Dutch angles and freeze-frames) to distract us from its essential paucity of raison d'etre.

It also expresses the anxiety and insecurity of comics conscious of the big issues in life they are expected either to avoid or make fun of in their work. Rogen and Goldberg take the latter approach here, in an immature but sometimes surprisingly upfront way one can interpret seriously. Or not.

Simply designed animation, modeled on the look of cool cartoons of the time such as Daria, adds an extra comic jauntiness. You could say, to use a popular slang term from the 90s, this puts the “mental” back in experimental, but in a good way.

The production is graced by bold performances, lyrical visuals and, most notably, Irving's own words, which have made the transition quite intact thanks to a faithful but still filmic adaptation by writer-director Tod Williams.

Now Batmanglij and Marling deliver another terrific and engrossing venture into speculative fiction, Sound of My Voice.

This is an affectionate portrait rather than a meaningful critical analysis.

The only misstep Jun makes, and it's hard to fault him given the budget, is the mediocre and at times heavy-handed use of music. Still, it's an unqualified success from the heartland.

An insightful and affectionate glimpse into the behind-the-scenes struggles of modern-day winemaking.

Moore stays "on message" here from first shot to last. There is no debate, no analysis of facts or search for historical context. Moore simply wants to blame one man and his family for the situation in Iraq the United States now finds itself in…So the real question is not how good a film is Fahrenheit 9/11 -- it is undoubtedly Moore's weakest -- but will a film help to get a president fired?

There's plenty of time for the viewer to muse on what The Wall might or might not symbolize -- when events finally take an abruptly surprising and violent turn, the tonal shift is unsatisfyingly awkward.

Writer-director Maïmouna Doucouré's captivating but structurally shaky first feature is stronger on setup than development or payoff, becoming less controlled as its opposing forces of tradition and rebellion collide.

Docs like Jed Rothstein's excellent The China Hustle present us with such frequent occasions for outrage that, in the interest of fairness, it's time for a few top documentarians to assemble a five-minute disclaimer to run in front of each new exposé.

The picture has a good shock or two up its sleeve before getting to Laurie's armored, booby-trapped home, and once it's there, it surprises us again.

Will mesmerize some and mystify others, while many will be bored silly. It's not a dream, Kaufman says, but it has a dreamlike quality, and those won over by its otherworldly jigsaw puzzle of duplicated characters, multiple environments and shifting time frames will dissect it endlessly.

In this film, directed by Mike Nichols in one of his most satirical moods and scripted by Hollywood's most politically astute writer Aaron Sorkin, a womanizing, alcoholic, easily tempted bachelor gets elected in a Texas district that doesn't care what he does as long as he brings home the bacon.

This autobiographical tale of a 10-year-old boy coping with his mother's severe illness boasts terrific performances from its three leads -- Joe Pantoliano, Marcia Gay Harden and young Devon Gearhart.

The plot holds no surprises, but the eventual climactic foot chase and showdown suffice (if barely) to satisfy genre expectations.

An evocative examination of the clash between tradition and modernism in the handling of an age-old problem.

Compared to his stellar hit "Ip Man" - a biopic on the Wing Chun master who tutored Bruce Lee - Wilson Yip's more lavishly produced sequel Ip Man 2 is a fistful of hits and misses.

A gloriously inspirational film documenting music’s healing power in Alzheimer patients.

The Nightingale is technically remarkable. Beyond its socio-political context, however, the film offers hardly anything inventive to the familiar generation-gap rite-of-passage dramedy.

Yadav’s concerns about discrimination and violence against women are evident in nearly every scene of the film, as her script positions each of the principal characters to undergo an experience of self-actualization in defiance of prevailing patriarchal norms.

Transposing the Athenian comedy to Southern California, Casey Wilder Mott takes his bow as a feature director with a sensuous, silly and superbly cast version, one whose visually vibrancy matches its feel for the language.