It’s beautiful to look at, but the story of a young man on the run who encounters death at every turn of the winding road doesn’t really make much sense even in metaphorical terms.

Whether you find this entertaining or repugnant will depend on your stomach for a despicable reality. But the movie delivers unquestionable pleasures in the pairing of Pike's monstrous manipulator with the always wonderful Dinklage's cool, calm killer, a man too smart not to recognize and respect his adversary's formidable intelligence.

What unfolds is a match of artistic intellects, thrilling to behold not just for its dynamic array of topics — religion, the Oedipal complex, revolution and, above all, what it means to be a filmmaker — but also for its public unveiling after half a century gathering cobwebs in Welles' celluloid archives.

The beautifully rendered result proves to be even more than one had hoped for: a visually dazzling, richly imaginative, emotionally resonant production that taps into contemporary concerns while being true to its distant origins.

MLK/FBI indeed serves as a chilling reminder that white supremacy is not solely a partisan problem; it’s a cruelty baked into the fabric of our political system, poisoning it at every level.

A dramatic thriller tackling serious themes — the aftermath of war, the cost of retribution and the possibility of redemption — the movie can't always get out of its own way, as reliably effective as Rapace is.

Green's grasp of this tender, family-focused story shows equal restraint and compassion, and mastery of a tricky structure.

I Am Greta is a smoothly constructed view of a heroine in the making, and of how the world largely embraced and sometimes dismissed her.

There are no heroes in Final Account, no one to empathize with. What makes it uniquely worth watching is its cast of octogenarians and nonagenarians who were eyewitnesses and in some cases active participants in the horrors of the concentration camps.

Another Round ultimately has little fresh or profound to say about intoxication and addiction, but it is an engaging tribute to friendship, family and bacchanalian hedonism in moderation.

A funny-moving story enjoyably retold with classic British understatement and just the right twist at the end.

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.

The fast-moving story goes deeper than a pure thriller, as Wang Jing focuses on the faces of his characters in all their anxiety and human dignity.

Simultaneously deadpan and dour, somber and surreal, this is a haunting meditation on the manipulation of memory to anesthetize pain, crafted with a meticulous attention to visual and aural composition that makes for arresting viewing.

Viewers of this Venice competition title are likely to find the ideological confusion contagious and the romance pretty trite. But the camerawork and music choices are lively and may enable a younger gen to relate and discuss.

Much as I admired and was at times stirred by The World to Come, I'm convinced it would be a significantly stronger movie with 75 percent of the narration stripped away.

For anyone not in the very specific demographic group depicted, the experience of watching this is like being trapped in a tiny downtown club, where the food isn't that good and the portions are tiny.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s intriguingly titled Wife of a Spy (Spy no Tsuma) bookends the Second World War in an absorbing, exotic, well-paced thriller with moments of disconcerting realism and horror.

Though Sun Children lacks the visual lushness and poetry that made Children of Heaven so seductive, its condemnation of child labor and the inaccessibility of basic education to the poor comes across with great force.

A little bit like finding an eyewitness to history and then describing everything he feels but not much about the event itself, it leaves the viewer with a sense that something very important has been left out.

Audiences might conceivably be divided on the vicious gut punch of Franco's approach, but as a call for more equitable distribution of wealth and power, it's terrifyingly riveting.

The film has its own fascination that rises above the type of music being played and sung.

Although at first sight this dramatization of a 1962 strike at a factory in the U.S.S.R. may seem a long way from the interests of contemporary audiences, it is surprising how much resonance the film has with the political struggles of our own time.

Those with the stomach for a forcefully acted representation of the gut-wrenching impact and long-range after-effects of sudden infant death will be rewarded with moments both powerful and affecting.

To some extent, One Night in Miami remains high-quality filmed theater. But the conviction and stirring feeling brought to it elevate the material, making this an auspicious feature debut. Here's hoping that King, one of our most consistently excellent screen actors, continues to spread her wings in this direction.

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.

This is the work of a mature filmmaker in full command of his voice, yielding remarkable performances, chief among them a complex character study of stoicism and desire from Kate Winslet that might be the best work of her career.

What makes the film work as well as it does, at least up to a point, are the perfectly calibrated performances. Folkins is superb as the socially maladroit Andy, making his character sympathetic in his genuine satisfaction in being a caretaker despite the personal toll it enacts. And Wheaton, whose entire performance consists of sitting in a chair and talking directly to the camera, uses his innate likeability to at first disarming and then chillingly creepy effect.