The theme is richly comic, and the film is great fun, even though it sacrifices Serpico's story--one of the rare hopeful stories of the time--for a cynical, downbeat finish.

The film is a hybrid. Its backdrop is despair, but the foreground action has the silvery zest of a comedy.

Milk is a rowdy anthem of triumph, brought to an abrupt halt by Milk's personal tragedies and the unfathomable moral chaos of Dan White.

If Roll Red Roll feels raw and pressing, six and a half years after the event, that’s because it is set on one of the world’s most contested borders: the place where online justice meets, and chafes against, the due process of the law. Expect worse battles to come.

Yogi unfolds the characters’ intimate stories and the region’s history in sharply textured details and rapturous images; he blends social practicalities and metaphysical mysteries with a serene, straightforward astonishment.

As with "Together," Moodysson has pulled off a staggering dramatic coup, and again we are forced to ask: How does he do it? [21 & 28 April 2003, p.194]

Exciting, handsomely staged, and campy.

Rarely have high spirits and theatrical energy seemed like such a tragic waste; an era and its myths seem to be dying on-screen in real time.

The slender, swift Bruce Lee was the Fred Astaire of martial arts, and many of the fights that could be merely brutal come across as lighting-fast choreography.

Its raw and violent subject is matched by its hectic style; the thin production values take a backseat to Fuller’s rich imagination.

A lovely, stubbornly idiosyncratic fable of aspiration and survival.

A shapeless mess, but at least it’s not as monotonous as “Kill Bill Vol. 1.” [19 & 26 April 2004, p. 202]

Marvellous, though it is smaller in emotional range than such earlier Mike Leigh films as the goofy bourgeois satire "High Hopes" (1988), the candid and piercing "Secrets & Lies" (1996), and the splendid theatrical spectacle "Topsy-Turvy" (1999).

Lee would contend, I guess, that the sober approach will no longer suffice — that the age we inhabit is too drunk on its own craziness. He has a point.

As admirable as some of the onscreen talk is, it’s mainly just delivered, along with the intentions and meanings that it contains; its precision leaves little overflow, little room for observation, little scope for imagination beyond the intimate purview of the story.

The Novelist’s Film is straightforwardly chronological and naturalistic, but that makes it no less intricate or sophisticated a reflection on the nature of movies, both intellectual and practical.

Glazer is nothing if not ambitious; the rough edge of naturalism, on the streets, slices into the more controlled and stylized look of science fiction, and the result seems both to drift and to gather to a point of almost painful intensity.

Truffaut's The Wild Child is a more beautifully conceived picture on the same theme, but even with its imperfections and staginess this early Penn film is extraordinary.

Nothing is more promisingly solid, to the moviegoer, than a major Spielberg production. You can foretell everything from the calibration of the craftsmanship to the heft of the cast, and The Post inarguably delivers.

Nobody does shrewishness better than McEwan. [8 August 2003, p. 84]

It has charm and a lot of entertaining kinkiness, too.

The movie makes it clear that, for all his snarls and outbursts, he is intelligent, candid, and easily wounded; that he is by turns inordinately proud and inordinately ashamed and, above all, intensely curious about himself, as if his own nature were a mystery that had not yet been solved.

This is a visually claustrophobic, mechanically plotted movie that's meant to be a roguishly charming entertainment, and many people probably consider it just that.

Cronenberg made a movie called “The Dead Zone,” and I sometimes wonder whether, for all his formal brilliance, he has ever torn himself away from that locked-in, airless state of mind. You walk out of Eastern Promises feeling spooked and sullied, as if waking from a noisome dream.

Irresistibly enjoyable.

Nothing has exploded on the screen in recent years as violently as that mad quarrel in a tiny room - a room that is Israel itself. [16 April 2012, p.86]

Werner Herzog may lack heroes, nowadays, who seem adequate to his fierce capacity for wonder. When occasion demands, however, he can still turn the world upside down.

Pennebaker films Stritch’s first rendition, among the most celebrated outtakes in history, with a rapt devotion that’s as revealing of the limits of recording as it is of the thrills of live performance—and of the camera’s mediating creative power.

One of the most eloquent records we have of a tragedy that brought out some of the most impressively alive men and women in New Orleans.

Its effortful attempts to craft and sustain an ominous mood comes at the expense of observation, which is too bad, because the film’s premise is powerful and its lead actors are formidable.

Misericordia is, fundamentally, a snappy and satisfying entertainment, a thriller that thrills.

Mustang is the début feature of Deniz Gamze Ergüven, and it’s quite something: a coming-of-age fable mapped onto a prison break, at once dream-hazed and sharp-edged with suspense.

What does make this movie stand out is the presence of Cristin Milioti, a paragon of goofiness and grace.

I happen to prefer the extreme unslackness of “Halloween,” and the resourceful pluck of Curtis, to the dreamier dread of Maika Monroe. Nonetheless, like her pursuers, It Follows won’t leave you alone.

Birbiglia films what he knows, offering ample and intricate scenes of improvisations performed onstage, along with an insider’s view of the industry.

The whole work drips with a camp savagery (hence the presence of Sacha Baron Cohen as Pirelli, a rival barber and faux-Italianate fop), which in turn relies on the conviction that death itself, like sexual desire, exists to be sniffed at and chuckled over.

A debonair macabre thriller--romantic, scary, satisfying.

The film’s considerable power depends entirely on its moment-to-moment persuasiveness, on a set of narrative and aesthetic choices that, as presented—in a series of swift, kinetically composed, and jaggedly edited scenes—seldom feel like choices at all.

No one who was not laughably self-involved would agree to a project like 20,000 Days on Earth, and yet Cave, to his credit, comes most alive in his hymns to other selves.

Duvall's performance is so passionate, so energized, that it's almost eerie: is Sonny acting him or is he acting Sonny?

For all its political determination, RRR is also a musical, and an electrifying one.

Ingeniously, Coogler has transformed “Rocky”—the modern cinematic myth that, perhaps more than any other, endures as a modern capitalist Horatio Alger story of personal determination and sheer will—into a vision of community and opportunity, connections and social capital, family and money.

The movie is so discreet and respectful that, outside the classroom, within whose walls the glory of French literature and language triumph, it never quite comes to life. [16 April 2012, p. 86]

Vincente Minnelli directed, in a confident, confectionery styles that carries all--or almost all--before it.

Sitting through Transit is like watching an anti-“Casablanca,” so diligent is Petzold in the draining of romantic hopes, and there were times when I dreamed that Claude Rains would stroll in and order a champagne cocktail. What sustains this highly unusual film, and lends it an ominous momentum, is the figure of Rogowski, as Georg.

Beautiful and damning, Dear Comrades! is also an act of remembrance.

It has a sweetness and a simplicity that suggest greatness of feeling, and this is so rare in films that to cite a comparison one searches beyond the medium.

A wonderful movie...It isn't remarkable visually, but features some of the best young actors in the country.

This movie (directed by Sam Wrench) hardly adds another level of experience to the performances, because its visual composition, moment to moment, is burdened by convention and complacency. This doesn’t get in the way of the music, but it disregards the authenticity of Swift’s presence, the physical side of her performance.

Sachs presents his characters’ intellect and emotion, their artistic energy, as inseparable from physicality: he avoids the cliché of talking heads and realizes the idea of talking bodies.

Despite some expert performances --the picture remains as confused as its hero; unlike him, it never does find its identity.

We long-term Kiefer nerds may not learn much, but so what? It’s more important that newcomers thrill to—or recoil from—this self-mythicizing figure who forges sculptures out of fighter planes and U-boats.

Linklater’s direction keeps “Hit Man” brisk and jazzy, as does the jovial force of Powell’s performance.

With the help of blankly matter-of-fact yet omniscient voice-over narration (spoken by Madeleine James), D’Ambrose achieves the span and the depth of a cinematic bildungsroman in shards of experience and epigrammatic flickers.

The movie is best when it calms down and concentrates on the sinister peculiarities of the experience, and when it focuses on Franco's face. [8 Nov. 2010, p . 93]

It’s Cluzet’s intense performance that makes this genre piece a heart-wrenching experience.

Sex is the subtext of everything that happens, yet this may be one of the least erotic movies ever made. It's stern and noble, very much in the Rattigan spirit. [26 March 2012, p.108]

Anybody hoping that The End of the Tour would mirror the formal dazzle of Wallace’s fiction, doubling back on itself like the frantically probing encounters in his 1999 collection, “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men,” will be disappointed. Yet the film, despite its flatness, is worth exploring.

Too long, but it feels sturdy and stirring – there's an old fashioned decency in the way that it exerts, and increases, its claim upon our feelings. [26 Sept 1994, p.108]

For all its observational realism, Vortex is a message movie, a work of philosophical art that packs a grim view not merely of old age but of modern life over all.

The movie is also sparing with metaphors and symbols—though the few that Rasoulof builds into the texture of the drama, such as a view of Javad’s wet military uniform hanging from a tree and an image of a fox prowling around a farm, are piercingly effective.

Robert Altman finds a sure, soft tone in this movie, from 1974, and he never loses it. His account of Coca-Cola-swigging young lovers in the thirties is the most quietly poetic of his films; it’s sensuous right from the first pearly-green long shot, and it seems to achieve beauty without artifice.

The main problem with War for the Planet of the Apes is that, although it rouses and overwhelms, it ain’t much fun.

Think about it a day later, though, and its hectic swoop from romance to thriller to campaign manifesto leaves oddly little afterglow. The gardener is the only constant here; so much else burns up and blows away.

It moves between cities and centuries, and teasingly undermines the relationship between sound and image, with a sly and miraculous fluidity.

The revelation here is Chevallier—or, to quote the end credits, “Martine Chevallier of the Comédie Française”—as Mado. Watch her watching the people around her, after the languid strength of her body has failed. Some of them discuss her as if she were absent, or dead, but her sharp blue eyes, following the action, and almost filling the movie screen, show that her wits are intact. So is her force of will. She’s all there.

Gerima films Jay’s intimate confrontations with an impressionistic flair that focusses attention on characters’ listening, thinking, and remembering; flashbacks and dream sequences infuse Jay’s tightening conflicts with the pressure of history—both social and intimate.

Irvin Kershner, who directed this one, is a master of visual flow, and, joining his own kinks and obsessions to Lucas's, he gave Empire a splendiferousness that may even have transcended what Lucas had in mind...The characters in this fairy-tale cliff-hanger show more depth of feeling than they had in the first film, and the music - John Williams' variations on the Star Wars theme - seems to saturate and enrich the intensely clear images. Scenes linger in the mind.

There’s neither pity nor sentimentality in Gomes’s populism; the highest strain of modern humanism faces up to the first person.

If you fancy a fresh dose of grotesquerie, and more technical phraseology than you can shake a joystick at, I recommend “Grand Theft Hamlet.”

Sadiq is not lecturing us or trading in types; he is taking us by sensory surprise, and the tale that he tells is funny, forward, and sometimes woundingly sad.

A sombrely beautiful dream of the violent Irish past. Refusing the standard flourishes of Irish wildness or lyricism, Loach has made a film for our moment, a time of bewildering internecine warfare.

There are few thrills in this romantic comedy-thriller--it's no more than a pleasant minor diversion, but it does have a zingy air of sophistication.

The Lobster is more than a satire on the dating game. It digs deeper, needling at the status of our most tender emotions.

A satirical comedy--ruthless and heartbreaking, but a comedy nonetheless. The movie is also about disintegration and the possibility of rebirth. In other words, it’s a small miracle.

This new Star Trek is nonsense, no question ("Prepare the red matter!"), but at least it's not boggy nonsense, the way most of the other movies were, and it powers along, unheeding of its own absurdity, with a drive and a confidence that the producers of the original TV series might have smiled upon.

Ray's tense choreographic staging and tightly framed compositions give the film a sensuous, nervous feeling of imminent betrayal. Yet this film-noir stylization, elegant in design terms and emotionally powerful, is also very simplistic; the movie suffers from metaphysical liberalism--social injustice treated as cosmic fatalism.

That is why, of the two tales, A Quiet Place is not just more enjoyable but, alien invaders notwithstanding, more coherently plausible, revelling in the logic of well-grounded terror.

C’mon C’mon is a tender and turbulent melodrama that amplifies its power with a documentary current. The result is a film of an extraordinary amplitude; it’s both poised and frenetic, contemplative and active, heartily sentimental and astringently contentious, intensively intimate and expansively world-embracing, exactingly composed and wildly spontaneous.

Schlesinger, working from a script by Malcolm Bradbury, maintains a steady rhythm and a light, cheerful mood that seem to reflect the brisk sanity of the heroine.

In all, Steve McQueen is a master of fascination rather than of drama--he creates stunning shots rather than an intricate story.

Its characters are no different from the rest of us, in the cluster of their annoyances and kicks, yet utterly removed from us by a system that frowns upon ordinary desire. Jafar Panahi's movie, unsurprisingly, has been outlawed in Iran. Nobody likes a prophet. [19 January 2004, p. 93]

The most stirring release of the year thus far is a documentary.

Best of all -- and the only thing that has really made me laugh at the movies this year -- is a lengthy scene in which Coogan, inspired by the landscape, confesses his desire to star in a traditional costume drama. [13 & 20 June 2011, p. 128]

You have to have considerable tolerance to make it through Chayefsky's repetitive dialogue, his insistence on the humanity of "little" people, and his attempt to create poetry out of humble, drab conversations.

It’s all fascinating. Gilroy is an entertainer.

As a piece of acting, Ganz’s work is not just astounding, it’s actually rather moving. But I have doubts about the way his virtuosity has been put to use.

Sumptuous and diverting.

The Spectacular Now goes a little soft at the end, but most of it has the melancholy sense of life just passing by — until, that is, someone has the courage to grab it and make it take some meaning and form.

The movie starts out with a promising satiric idea and winds up in box-office romance, but it's likable and well-paced even at its silliest.

The movie is constructed entirely of a remarkable array of archival footage, including Beckermann’s recordings, that spotlights unresolved national traumas and unabated anti-Semitism.

Shot in grainy black and white, the material is rather unformed. It's dim and larval, like Danny. Allen leaves us in the uncomfortable position of waiting for laugh lines and character developments that aren't there. The picture has a curdled, Diane Arbus bleakness, but it also has some good fast talk and some push. Allen plugs up the holes with gags that still get laughs; he remembers to pull the old Frank Capra, cutrate Dickens strings, and he keeps things moving along.

Along with “No End in Sight,” this movie is one of the essential documentaries of the ongoing war.

The smallest details (a stammering child, the wrinkle in the turned page of a book) stick like burrs, and we are left to wonder if any director has delved with more modesty and honesty into the heartbreak of the past.

The attraction of the movie is its friendly, light tone, its affectlessness, and its total lack of humanity. [6 Aug 1984, p.72]

An intricate time-jumping framework is a large part of what makes the film distinctive, but the compromises made to achieve this are responsible for a pervasive feeling of emptiness.

The film is redeemed only by the dour, weary, mournful, stubborn, and wise performance of Nicolas Cage, which is not so much a star turn as the project’s sole raison d’être.

At once breakneck and tolerant, Give Me Liberty manages to be both rousingly Russian and touchingly all-American. The Cold War is officially over.