Part sincere and part smarmy, part amusing and part windy nonsense, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs plays like an old Western-themed vaudeville show featuring six unrelated sketches of drastically differing quality.

Medel, seldom off-screen, turns in a marvelous, utterly engaging portrait of an intelligent, caring person slowly stretched to breaking point.

A compelling and illuminating story of four people who form an unlikely and momentary friendship of considerable depth.

It’s the pairing of Bellingcat’s story of citizen journalism with the larger story of the state of media and its relationship to democracy that makes this documentary stand out. It’s frankly a relief to hear someone explain how we got here, how the culture of “fake news” came to rule the day, and then provide a clear example of how one group of people is standing up against it.

As action, it's niftily executed, the suspense neatly built, and the shocks expectedly surprising.

Charlie Polinger opens his thrilling and uneasy directorial debut feature The Plague with an arresting sequence that quickly establishes the haunting undertones of this adolescent psychological thriller.

Downey plays off his own bad-boy image wonderfully. The writers give him great lines to work with and ditto that for his Girl Friday, Gwyneth Paltrow's Pepper Potts, whose own svelte lines cannot be improved on.

Reygadas has hitched his austere and protracted style to an allegorical tale of subtle strength and depth.

Scenes of dark humor abound as well, like the episode in which the gathered journalists react in fury when they are not provided with pictures of the infamous deck of playing cards depicting the "50 Most Wanted" Iraqi figures.

Manning Walker does a fine job building a sense of dread and shifting tone without losing the story’s momentum.

Only Lovers Left Alive is an addictive mood and tone piece, a nocturnal reverie that incidentally celebrates a marriage that has lasted untold centuries.

Schimberg confidently blurs the lines between fantasy and reality (more than once a scene that appears to be real is actually fiction and vice versa), though never to the point that it detracts from the people onscreen.

A lively, sometimes very funny comedy.

Celebration ultimately resembles more of a snapshot than a fleshed-out portrait, but it's one that's likely to linger in your memory for a long time afterwards.

Intelligently written, vividly shot, tightly edited, sharply acted, the film represents a rare example of craftsmanship working to produce a deeply moving piece of history.

Anya Taylor-Joy is a fierce presence in the title role and Chris Hemsworth is clearly having fun as a gonzo Wasteland warlord, but the mythmaking lacks muscle, just as the action mostly lacks the visual poetry of its predecessor.

Driven by Cummings' transfixingly vulnerable performance, the movie not only justifies returning to the source: Shockingly, it does so without even using the device that seemed key to the short's success.

Another charmingly eccentric exercise in meta-fiction from Portugal's offbeat new directing star Miguel Gomes, Tabu chooses to explore its characters without following narrative rules, or rather, by reshuffling hackneyed tropes from film and novels to turn them into strange, modern entertainment.

As the script and performances dive inward, exploring David's ability to endure while sending Cal into memories of hunting trips with his own father (Bill Pullman), the movie uses Todd McMullen's fine scenic photography to show how stranded they are.

It’s a trippy, meandering journey, but the moments of amusement and insight are ample.

The central character never develops in an interesting way. Well before the wrap-up of this brief tale, her cultivated recessiveness becomes tiresome and, in these particular circumstances, a bit dull.

Under director Emir Kusturica's gifted hand, lunacy here takes a poignant and, ultimately, uplifting turn. [28 Oct 1996]

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes manages to do at least three things exceptionally well that are hard enough to pull off individually: Maintain a simmering level of tension without let-up for two hours, seriously improve on a very good first entry in a franchise and produce a powerful humanistic statement using a significantly simian cast of characters.

The film, narrated ably by Leonardo DiCaprio, who seems to share the audience's amazement at what is appearing onscreen, is over too quickly in a mere 43 minutes. So line up and see it again.

Punchy delivery styles, shimmering personalities and kaleidoscopic perspectives make up the soul of D. Smith’s gutsy documentary Kokomo City

Part workplace dramedy, part revenge fantasy, the film weaves together a series of satisfying, organic-feeling turns.

The film slowly but surely works its charms, painting a rich, emotionally complex portrait of a woman who, like Denis herself, will not let herself be boxed in.

Meticulous care is evident in every aspect of the film. All three actors playing Pi are outstanding.