Director Michael Tyburski and co-writer Ben Nabors' lyrical character study ... deftly balances the cerebral with the soulful in a story of transfixing originality.

This is a confidently shot and beautifully acted story that manages to transcend quite a few — if clearly not all — of the coming-of-age genre’s cliches by delving into how the Millennial generation experiences sexuality, ostracism and growing up and how they try to relate to their parents and peers.

The King of Staten Island is nothing if not conventional in its arc and themes, and has some of the usual Apatow aggravations, but it's winning: relaxed, generous, suffused with warmth and a surprisingly delicate sorrow.

One Million American Dreams makes a valuable contribution to the argument that the city's forgotten people surely deserve better.

The doc mostly addresses trauma and healing from afar, referring to combat experience without dwelling on it, never saying much about what difficulties men then faced in peacetime.

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.

The filmmakers never underline the emotions they want to evoke, and yet by the end, audiences may be moved to tears by this tale of fractured lives that find just the right measure of repair.

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

The film improves upon reflection, raising, as it does, some knotty questions about originality in art and in life, as well as provocatively positing that even a copy of a copy of a copy has the potential to move hearts and minds.

Lapid continues to exhibit a singular blend of intensity and absurdity, as well as a distinct attention to cinematic craft.

The director is such an engaging presence onscreen — wry and humane, balancing sly social commentary with a playfully child-like attitude — that even a minor autumnal work like this is still a heart-warming mood-lifter.

While Woods' brash vitality is the movie's motor, it's in the moments when Goldie drops her bravado and reveals her vulnerability that the story becomes more than a reckless adventure.

A fundamentally serious film leavened by a streak of deadpan, droll humor, its quality will ensure even greater interest in Ailhaud's memoir in the run-up to its impending centenary.

Bunuel is above all a good story elegantly told.

Norman Jewison's Fiddler on the Roof is a lavish, carefully made, splendidly designed musical film. It demonstrates once again that ample amounts of time and money, intelligently employed, can indeed buy perfection.

The film represents another leap forward for [Morris].

As well as building a strong case, through example, of the implications for towns and cities across the country, the film delivers telling glimpses of the personal day-to-day coping mechanisms of the cops themselves.

Revisiting some of the events that marked Aleppo’s final year under siege, as well as those that led up to them, the film offers up a rare firsthand account of war from a strictly female perspective, focusing on how conflict affects families, and, especially, the hundreds of innocent victims that are children.

Attanasio has made a sharp, affecting film that's brimming with darkness and hope, every instant of it vividly alive.

Within the culinary world and beyond, the honors and accolades have been plentiful for Kennedy, who's been compared to Julia Child, Mick Jagger and Indiana Jones. Whomever her extraordinary life might bring to mind, this grande dame of gastronomy has lived it on her own terms.

The pic is visually exciting and has a palpably organic quality that translates well to the screen. ... A refreshing and confident piece of work.

Observing how six service dogs provide crucial daily help and companionship for their grateful owners, the ruminative, accessible affair proves as soothing to the viewer as the faithful pets are to their humans.

If the title MS Slavic 7 fails to ring a bell, its abstractness conveys the industrious intellectual labor demanded by this witty one-hour Canadian film.

The picture is a slow-burning but ultimately empowering drama that works despite a lack of the bigger, louder, more outwardly emotional moments it could have succumbed to.

A very entertaining film, stuffed with colorful idiots and serves-you-right twists. Silly in ways that reflect poorly of the filmmaker's taste but will endear it to many viewers, it's a true-crime tale that has much to do with Major League Baseball but requires no interest in the sport to enjoy.

Even those unfamiliar with the tale will find it charming and moving, and, as is so often the case with Australian films, the scenery can't be beat.

To say that thespians live for opportunities such as this is an understatement, and Schull, whose restrained underplaying only makes the material more powerful, makes the most of it.

Viewers may worry that Bazawule's starkly gorgeous pictures aren't going to add up to anything, but Burial satisfies in prosaic as well as poetic terms, supplying an end that makes sense of its beginning. It will leave many who see it eager for the young filmmaker's next fable.