It’s a familiar template, and Saleh’s direction can veer toward the heavy-handed in places, but it’s also an intriguingly damning portrait of the corruption currently hitting Egypt on all levels.

With a formidable cast, assured direction and skillful camerawork, Nostalgia proves to be a surprisingly absorbing film.

There are times when A Magnificent Life gets too heavily into the weeds, attempting to cover so many biographical bases that it loses narrative momentum. But the stylistic imagination and beautiful, hand-drawn animation on display more than make up for its awkward storytelling, and it ultimately emerges as a loving tribute to an important figure in French culture

If it weren’t directed by Coen ... Trouble would merit a debut at a less showy festival than Cannes, where reviews would boil down to “damn, they sure dug up a lotta great clips!”

Silence is Atef’s strength. The director impressively uses quiet moments to great effect.

Paris Memories is a mystery movie, with Mia, like Guy Pearce’s character in Memento, following various leads and fractured memories to get to the truth. It’s also a story of emotional renewal, chronicling the phases of recovery that follow in the wake of a major catastrophe, with all the ups and downs that entails.

A favorable flop of the ears to director Kevin Lima for the film's overall winning tone. [07 Apr 1995]

It’s frequently funny and occasionally savage in its commentary on the changed terrain. But in proving that Beavis and Butt-Head absolutely have a place in the contemporary world, it suggests that there’s a limit to how deeply we probably want to interrogate that place.

Even if Being BeBe doesn’t often go deep, the candor and infectious humor of Ngwa make it a satisfying watch — particularly for fans who have made RuPaul’s Drag Race its own vibrant chapter in contemporary queer pop-culture history.

A tense, occasionally terrifying thriller that’s hard to look away from, though what it’s ultimately trying to accomplish with all that energy isn’t always so clear.

Where the drama is headed is never in doubt, and the steps it takes to get there are often familiar. Yet by this time we are sufficiently invested in the couple to care deeply. If anything, the intrusion of mortality makes the relationship more believable as both Parsons and Aldridge (Epix’s Pennyworth) imbue their scenes with warmth and heart, regret and exquisite sadness.

It’s a concert film wrapped in biography and an appreciation for a sacred and beguiling genre. The power of gospel music comes alive here, and the doc’s subjects, the practitioners of this fervent form, keep it engaging.

Champions, feels overly familiar. But that doesn’t make this sure-to-be crowd-pleaser any less winning, especially with the endlessly likable Harrelson at its center.

A documentary that starts out odd and ends up oddly sweet.

For better or worse, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is the most overtly sci-fi film in the series, and on that level, it succeeds very well.

As a cleverly packaged pandemic production with narrative echoes of that global anxiety, it’s at the very least something fresh. A gruesome portrait of another young woman hungering for a life greater than the fate she’s been handed, it makes an amusing companion piece to X.

While a handful of the characters and the actors playing them have appeared in previous entries, there’s a disarming freshness to this first-time assembly, not to mention something even more unexpected: heart. That’s due to an appealing ensemble cast but also to the new blood of a creative team with a distinctive take on the genre.

In the case of Yusra and Sara Mardini’s remarkable survival story, their empowering journey ultimately proves more rewarding than the conventional destination.

Free Chol Soo Lee vibrates with this broader understanding of incarceration.

It’s a small-scale film that many might call unambitious, favoring delicate observation over big emotional payoff.

It’s an ambitious and auspicious debut, even though not all of its frayed edges seem to be intentional.

The balance between detail and momentum can at times be off, and the helmer doesn’t entirely avoid generic tropes of the legal drama. But he conveys the enormity of the undertaking at the film’s center — the first major war crimes trial since Nuremberg — and it’s felt in every moment of Darín’s compelling portrayal.

Turner Feature Animation dishes out some fancy footwork with "Cats Don't Dance," a delightful animated musical that conjures up a blend of those all-singin', all-dancin' vintage Hollywood extravaganzas and those deftly satirical Looney Tunes installments of the '30s and '40s. [21 Mar 1997]

Reginald Hudlin’s documentary about Sidney Poitier should be considered the beginning, not the end, of appraising the prolific actor’s career.

Mary Harron’s Dalíland revolves around the titular Surrealist, played with restraint and dignity by Ben Kingsley, while gently nudging the spotlight in the direction of his complicated wife/muse Gala, a role in which Barbara Sukowa more than earns the movie’s attention.

If we take a step back, we can see the faint outlines of another, more urgent, narrative thread in Kaepernick & America — one that encourages an all too rare kind of integrity and commitment to creating a more just world.

Nothing in the film has a fraction of the dramatic impact of the emotional roller-coaster Colman’s performance embodies.

Fans will be relieved to know that this Hellraiser definitely doesn’t skimp on the gore, providing enough viscera and flayed skin to satisfy the most bloodthirsty viewers.