Nelson’s newest film ... may be his most important yet. ... That’s why it’s hard to criticize Nelson when there are gaps in his storytelling.

Where journalism leaves off, Fire at Sea (Fuocoammare) begins. It takes a unique documentary filmmaker like Gianfranco Rosi to capture the drama through the periscope of his camera focused on the small Sicilian island of Lampedusa.

Even as the narrative becomes more perplexing — as before, realistic masks conceal true identities, characters' actual agendas remain hidden — the fast-moving spectacle unfolds in extraordinary fashion.

Like the film of Fences, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is too inextricably welded to its theatrical conception to become fully cinematic, even with Schliessler's lustrous visuals and the deluxe trappings of Mark Ricker's period production design, Ann Roth's gorgeous costumes and Branford Marsalis' jazzy underscoring. But watching actors of this caliber lose themselves in characters of such aching humanity is ample reward, with Boseman's towering work standing as a testament to a blazing talent lost too soon.

The use of music and sound design is very thoughtful throughout, capturing the way music by street performers makes life in the city feel like a musical all the time while the murmur of traffic and general hubbub creates its own atonal backing track.

Director Carl Franklin has cranked up an unnervingly tight-triggered film. Screenwriters Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson's scenario never relents from the out-of-control nature of the trio's bad acts. [7 May 1992]

Revolving around friendships, the pleasures of summer sport and the nitty-gritty of jobs that seldom take center stage, it's a work of unforced charm, a neorealist marvel.

This is a wondrous and moving account of a remarkable life that puts us right there with Goodall to share directly in her discoveries.

Perhaps the most perfectly constructed horror story in our time.

Funny and frank in its observations, the film is a delightful snapshot of female friendship at that age, from the giddy highs to the melancholy funks, from the sustaining bonds to the jealousies and stinging betrayals.

Full of eye-opening musical performances, the film also sparkles with tongue-in-cheek humor, and features contemporary interviews that are often far from what they seem. You have to go back to After Hours to find a Scorsese film with a similarly mischievous wit.

It's short, sweet and effective, tying together the divergent threads of the decades-spanning Small Axe project on a note both poignant and personal.

The famous dreamlike lighting and mise-en-scene are always perfect in capturing human foibles. But the offbeat sense of humor that characterized the trilogy is less evident than ever.

Time stands still and leaps across the epochs in Below the Clouds, which reveals how much our world has been transformed over the millennia, while also remaining the same.

Zhao collaborates with a major-name actor for the first time in Nomadland, guiding Frances McDormand to a remarkable performance of melancholy gravitas, so rigorously unmannered she's indistinguishable from the real-life nomads with whom she shares the screen.

It's the integrity of the performances by Hovig and Skarsgard that keeps the classy drama so engrossing, with the director making neither character entirely saint or sinner but giving them both infinite shadings in between.

Tavernier focuses on a dozen or so major and minor auteurs, showcasing their artistry in hundreds of film clips that he comments on with historical insight and aesthetic precision.

The movie rolls merrily along with slapstick action and whimsical characters.

A taut, involving drama centered around the mysterious disappearance of a young woman, About Elly confirms director Asghar Farhadi as a major talent in Iranian cinema whose ability to chronicle the middle-class malaise of his society is practically unrivaled.

A remarkably vibrant and frank look at one precocious teen’s emerging sexual life — a film with the stuff of life coursing through its veins and sex very much on its brain.

Tony Kushner's densely packed script has been directed by Spielberg in an efficient, unpretentious way that suggests Michael Curtiz at Warner Bros. in the 1940s, right down to the rogue's gallery of great character actors in a multitude of bewhiskered supporting roles backing up a first-rate leading performance by Daniel Day-Lewis.

Redford, who can’t avoid exuding charisma, plays this role with utter naturalism and lack of histrionics or self-regard.

For all its wit, its lively talk and deceptive lightness, this is arguably the writer-director’s most affecting work.

Cheeky in its approach as well as spirited and good-natured, this enterprising adaptation of the author’s relatively unfamiliar early novella Lady Susan remains buoyant through most of its short running time but lacks the stirring emotional hooks found in the best Austen works, on the page as well as the screen.

Hereditary takes the core haunting element of a spirit with a malevolent agenda and runs with it in a seemingly endless series of unexpected directions over two breathless hours of escalating terror that never slackens for a minute.

An enthrallingly intimate look at the brilliant, troubled and always charismatic screen legend.

Gideon’s Army is an eye-opening insight into a judicial hellhole world that ordinary citizens can never imagine.

Perhaps what’s most impressive about On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is Nyoni’s respect for subtext. Her film doesn’t aim to be a guide, a balm or an ode to forgiveness. The director rejects the ease of over-explanation and allure of an exclusively reverential tone. She reaches for honesty, and what she uncovers is at once disquieting and deeply absorbing.