Weirdest. Feminist. Movie. Ever.

Much of the film’s pleasure is in hearing Morrison speak.

A profoundly brave film.

Richard Linklater’s Hit Man is one of those movies that just picks you up immediately and sweeps you away; it’s made with an irresistibly breezy confidence.

A taut, gripping documentary about one young woman’s dream ... Maiden is wonderfully suspenseful — especially if you, like me, have no idea how the race turned out.

Serkis again proves that in the highly specialized realm of performance-capture acting, he has no peer.

Visually a macabre knockout, this 75-minute fantasy boasts some of the wittiest, most vigorous stop-motion animation effects in the history of the process.

Livington's film provides a lively look at an exotic subculture that mimics the values of the white majority with unique wit, irony, and style. [07 May 1991, p.2]

This is easily the best “Trek” movie since “Khan,” giving the rebooted franchise ample reason to proceed at warp speed.

A Quiet Place is brief, taut and often quite terrifying. And it creates in its audience a fascinating relationship with sound.

In this season of Big, Serious Movies, what a treat to find this wonderfully silly, perfectly paced hall of mirrors hanging out at the multiplexes. It’s as if Agatha Christie came back for a visit, after getting caught up on pop culture in the beyond.

Where the film falters is in establishing a cohesive tone.

It’s not a perfect movie, but Zendaya makes it a great pleasure.

It’s the kind of movie in which stories are conveyed wordlessly through a half-smile, a droopy posture, a man who looks for just a few seconds like he might cry but doesn’t — a film made all the more heartwarming for the work it takes to get to its heart.

Throughout, the fragility of the native cultures and of the rain-forest environment that is their home is underscored by Guerra in this fascinating, melancholy movie.

Though his character bears Fails’ name and the picture is autobiographical, it’s not a documentary. Fails and co-screenwriter Rob Richert have embroidered on his experiences to create a story that melds realism with make-believe.

Isle of Dogs is full of delightful touches, but it’s not Anderson’s best. Nice fur, though.

On this wintry landscape, with its endless plains and biting wind, it seems as if everyone — even the quietest — has a story, if you take the time to listen to it.

Those fascinated by the art of animation will find much to ponder here — the hand-drawn brush strokes, the lush colors, the way just a few quickly sketched lines suddenly take vivid life.

Arty examination of the nature of reality in Swinging London. [20 Feb 2004, p.H23]

The visuals relegate the acting to secondary importance. They overwhelm the story. And they make The Assassin unforgettable.

If you want to see a Conan the Barbarian-ish Vikesploitation movie, this one is more immersive but less action-packed than you might want. If you want to see a medieval art film, watch last year’s “The Green Knight.” If you want to watch a great Robert Eggers movie, go stream “The Witch.”

Hyperactive, incredibly gory, gratingly sentimental, The Killer is pure cinematic junk food for those who are into blood-and-guts highs.

It’s faithful to the book without being overly devout, asking a multitude of deeper, more probing questions while reflecting on the same unsettling and existentialist ones that the book did. By the time it closes with its unexpectedly mournful yet gently searing final frames, reinterpreting and expanding on the enduring source material one final time, it names all that Camus did not.

Pandas leaves its viewer newly educated, filled with hope, and dazzled.

So much of Sicario, Denis Villeneuve’s disturbing drama set in the world of law enforcement and Mexican drug cartels (the title is the Mexican term for a hit man), takes place on Emily Blunt’s face.

Based on the true story of Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, two late-1940s serial killers who conned and murdered several widows who took out lonely-hearts ads, writer-director Leonard Kastle's only feature film to date is one of the least glamorous couple-on-the-run movies ever made. [05 Dec 1992, p.C5]

In terms of the imaginative ways it expands on the themes of the first movie, it is the rare sequel that is at least the equal of its iconic original.

The film is inspiring and funny and lovely.

A riveting and illuminating documentary.

This expertly sustained 1971 suspense classic established Steven Spielberg's reputation as a director. [23 Dec 1993, p.E7]

You may not buy the plot of this gripping little movie about a 12-year-old Brooklyn drug runner who finds a novel way of escaping the crack ghetto. Too much depends on timing, luck and the myopia of adults who fail to pay enough attention to the boy. But the picture is so beautifully designed and dynamically performed that you'll probably feel inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt.

So much of the pleasure of Denis Villeneuve’s poignant science-fiction drama Arrival lies in watching Amy Adams figure things out.

The night after I saw Everything Everywhere All At Once I had a dream, in which I took a journey that was chaotic and messy and strangely beautiful. I suspect that dream was heavily flavored by the movie I had just seen, which also fit that description. The dream quickly faded, as dreams do, but the movie is staying with me, turning over and over in my head like stones in a kaleidoscope, ever-shifting.

The entire cast is superb, but special praise should go to De Bankole for his portrait of a life that simply isn't seen by those who have the greatest influence on it. It's difficult to imagine a more powerful and artfully assembled film about the limbo of those suspended between countries - or the suffering of those whose country is not entirely their own. [29 Mar 1990, p.C5]

The ingenious cinematographer, Bobby Shore, uses the Newfoundland locations to achieve some of his most striking effects. The result is sort of a horror film, but not really. It’s too funny to be categorized that way.

It’s heart that’s overflowing with love, poignancy, humor, color and music.

Jackie is mesmerizing; a familiar story told from an entirely different angle. It’s voyeuristic, to be sure — the scenes of Jackie alone in her White House bedroom, after the shooting, feel almost unbearably intimate — but you can’t look away.

A coming-of-age tale like you’ve never seen, Julia Ducournau’s Raw left me intrigued, mildly nauseated and extremely curious about what passes for recreation at French veterinary schools.

In the end, it’s all about that little girl and how she responds to the lavish song-and-dance epic designed to praise Korea’s leader, the late Kim Jong-II. Under the Sun may seem slow and hollow at times, but her emotions appear to be quite spontaneous.

Despite an unnecessary reliance on blurry re-enactment scenes early in the film, Wardle makes Three Identical Strangers as spellbinding as a great psychological thriller.

It’s a sharp, pointed satire that’s also very funny.

Until its final moments, Sweetie maintains a precarious and sublime balance between comedy and tragedy. The script - ably handled by a splendid ensemble cast - is generously spiced with wry and illuminating moments and is uncannily accurate in its portrait of a volatile dysfunctional family. [02 Mar 1990, p.22]

In only his second movie as a director, Peele is already a master of tone, and Us is full of memorable, vivid touches.

A comedy of great charm and generosity, Ang Lee's "The Wedding Banquet" is the freshest, happiest surprise of the movie year. [06 Aug 1993, p.D16]

See the movie. It’s a treat. And educational, too.

Everything in the picture, from the characters’ clothes and hairstyles to the vessels they sail, bear the stamp of authenticity. But Moana’s greatest strength is the verve in which they move the action along and the sheer joyousness evident in every aspect of their storytelling.

There’s a lot of exposition involved in making all this palace intrigue clear. But Zhang balances the talky sections with breathtaking outdoor scenes. Zhang’s trademark, preternaturally balletic fight sequences also do not disappoint.

Art-house audiences that might otherwise warm to this essentially sensitive drama could be turned off by an exceedingly bloody opening sequence and a late-arriving brawl that's reminiscent of the worst moments in John Ford's classics. But Imamura eventually makes it worth your indulgence. [06 Nov 1998]

That’s a lot for a viewer to take in, and as pleasing as some aspects of Your Name can be, there’s no question Shinkai’s overstuffed movie often trips over itself.

As its title suggests, it plays not only on sight - with masterfully composed images that glisten with the timeless quality of memory - but smell, touch, taste and sound are all equally well utilized, to establish the kind of serenity that has become all but extinct in movies today. [04 Feb 1994, p.D3]

Stirring and enraging, The Hate U Give squeezes the air from your lungs. Bleak and heavy, it’s also hopeful and joyous. A palpable manifestation of suppressed anger and frustration too powerful to ignore, it offers a complex look at a complicated problem, one screaming to be addressed.

You watch “Glass Onion” relaxed, feeling like you’re in good hands; everyone on-screen is clearly having a wonderful time, so you can’t help but join right in. The plot’s a clever, multilayered caper, echoing the elaborate structure the movie is named for, and Johnson fills the script with funny name-dropping . . . and lets the cast happily ham it up.

Cruise valiantly throws everything he’s got into the movie — including a lot of his trademark Very Intense Running — and the result mostly works, but it feels like a franchise that’s winding down. Here’s hoping a few thrills have been saved for “Part Two.”

This quiet tale of an ordinary 1950s London man (Bill Nighy) facing the end of his life is a joy: elegantly written, movingly performed, evocatively filmed.

There isn’t much here that hasn’t been explored in countless movies and novels before, but what makes “The Nest” utterly compelling is its front-row seat for two splendid performances.

Whether you care about motorsports or not, Ford v Ferrari is a kick: both a rollicking true story well told, and a moving depiction of male friendship.

The seminal police thriller is a prime example of McQueen's rising above his material. [12 Jun 2005, p.K1]

This is a confident, playful film that skewers both the amorality of the central character and, less comfortably, the gullibility of the people he so easily dupes. [5 Dec 1997, p.G5]

DaCosta takes some big stylistic swings — particularly with the soundtrack — that sometimes makes you feel as if you’re watching a comedy rather than a horror film. It’s a welcome, offbeat balm to the more intense moments sprinkled throughout and reflects the movie’s more pondering approach to a story that questions who the real monsters are.

Schultz has a lovely way of telling a just-on-the-verge-of-melodramatic story on a very human level.

Wake Up Dead Man is less funny and more meditative than its predecessors: Father Jud, a man of quiet faith, inspires a certain introspection in Benoit, and the two men ponder questions of religion and mortality, which wasn’t really on my “Knives Out” bingo card but was often utterly engrossing, with the two actors finding a thoughtful chemistry.

You'll never see a more depressing tale than Salesman. Glengarry Glen Ross has nothing on this 1968 documentary about sad-sack door-to-door Bible salesmen by the Maysles brothers. [07 Sep 2001]

Pattinson keeps you interested, even when the movie’s tone and pace wobbles.

A magnificent work of minimalism, the film is about these minute moments just as it’s about the most existential parts of life.

A deeply resonant literary quality gives what might otherwise seem like a dubious series of coincidences a profound sense of plausibility.

While it’s great fun to watch the Incredibles/Parrs zipping around saving the world (with help from their preternaturally cool pal Lucius/Frozone, voiced with gusto by Samuel L. Jackson), Incredibles 2 gets its heart by being a sweet family story.

There are moments in Gleason where it’s very hard — whether you know ALS or are new to it — to look at the screen; moments so devastating you wonder how this couple, and those who love them, can bear it. But there’s also, in this remarkable film, evidence of astonishing courage and miraculous love.

"Much Ado" is seductive fun sometimes. It's also overwrought and under-mined Shakespeare. [21 May 1993, p.18]

An odd combination of space adventure, psychological thriller and moody tone poem, it stops just short of dazzlement; instead Ad Astra, like an astronaut lost in space, slowly and majestically floats away.

An outstanding noir with young Burt Lancaster as an inmate plotting escape, and Hume Cronyn as the cruel, scheming bastard of a head guard. [15 Apr 2007, p.K4]

There's a welcome lack of blarney (Mason Daring's score is never cloying) and a freshness about the performances that makes the movie feel contemporary. [17 Feb 1995, p.I30]

Aside from the Brechtian ending, Taste of Cherry is not a difficult film, although the implications of the characters' references to "true" Moslems, "brave" Kurds and multiplying Afghans may be entirely clear only to an Iranian audience. [3 July 1998]

Bugsy is really pretty wonderful. It's the kind of old-fashioned yet multi-layered movie that Hollywood filmmakers seemed to have forgotten how to make in 1991, when well-written, carefully structured screenplays often appeared to have gone the way of manageable budgets. It couldn't have arrived at a more welcome moment.

Pushing three hours, American Honey feels every bit its length, often luxuriating in extended scenes inside the van, pot smoke swirling and hip-hop thumping. Like most of the film, these scenes are vividly rendered but increasingly repetitive and aimless.

Louis-Dreyfus, making Beth neurotic and loving and devastated and furious all at once, is a joy to watch.

You can imagine how other filmmakers might approach this — it’s a beautifully cinematic story — but no one else would film it quite as Malick has. This quiet, meditative and very deliberate film (nearly three hours long, though not a great deal happens) is at once historical drama, love story and ode to nature.

Ridley is the picture’s real find. Her Rey is fearless, forceful, resourceful, and with a hidden side to her personality that slowly manifests itself and will surely be more deeply explored in the sequels.

It's extremely well-made by a filmmaker who knows what he's doing and doesn't let the limitations of a $100,000 budget get in his way. The photography, acting, editing and use of sound effects and music are quite professional; McNaughton's movie looks and sounds as if it cost much more. It's also genuinely upsetting.

Some scenes hold up better than others, and there’s always a question about the film’s intentions: Is this voyeurism or is it satire taking off on the Playboy era? Condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency in 1960, Private Property is less dated than you might think.

The Barbie world was a grown-up one — wildly sanitized and outfit-focused and unrealistic, but grown-up nonetheless — and, for a kid, an irresistible place to visit. Greta Gerwig’s exuberantly pink new movie “Barbie” both understands that thrill and has sly fun with it.

Dreamy and impressionistic, interspersed with fantastic bursts of animation, We the Animals plays like a gauzy, mesmerizing, half-remembered experience from childhood.

Sure, it's one of the silliest titles of all time, especially if you make a drinking game of substituting words for Head? chair, spleen, lunch, etc. But it's a masterpiece from The Wild Bunch director Sam Peckinpah. [22 Mar 2005, p.H22]

The eye is enchanted by the richness of the picture’s spectacle.

You watch it rapt, leaning in, wanting to know more; you leave it wondering if that shadow at the window was, maybe, yourself.

While A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is charmingly filmed (I loved the animated depictions of the toy Neighborhood, and the way Heller switches camera formats to give a more old-school portrayal of Rogers’ TV show), it didn’t quite have the emotional wallop I expected.

The 42-year-old Assayas demonstrates an assured light touch here, drawing expert comic performances from Cheung, Richard and Ogier while using a 16mm hand-held camera to lend the film a live, experimental quality. It dovetails neatly with a surreal and quite hilarious ending that carries the technique - and Vidal's cinematic pretensions - to their logical conclusion. [26 Sept 1997]

Lorenzo's Oil begins with an epigram stating that life has meaning only in the struggle. As the film unfolds over 2 hours and 15 minutes, those words take on a greater and deeper significance, resonating throughout a remarkable real-life drama that pulls the viewer through an almost unbearable ordeal to arrive at a pinnacle of triumph and almost miraculous perseverence. [15 Jan 1993, p.03]

Angelopoulos remains faithful to his oeurve with Eternity and a Day. A slow journey through remembrance and repentance, the film's haunting message is told with a transcendent trickery that blends past and present into single scenes. [18 Jun 1999]

The mood of the picture is relaxed. The vibe given off by Redford and his principal co-stars Casey Affleck and Sissy Spacek is one of accomplished professionals feeling supremely comfortable inhabiting their roles.

Diego Garcia’s cinematography plays a key role, showing us lavender sunsets, endless plains and fire spreading down a hill like melting butter. Amid this beauty, Dano’s direction is restrained, letting us focus on the pain in Mulligan’s darting eyes.

Eat Drink Man Woman is so cleverly plotted, edited, scored, performed and photographed that the audience is frequently just as surprised as the characters, yet Lee and his co-writers plant just enough clues to keep you from feeling tricked. [05 Aug 1994, p.E22]

Raoul Walsh's lengthy, relatively gritty 1945 war movie stars Errol Flynn as the leader of a paratrooper group that goes after a key Japanese target. [02 Sep 1999]

The visuals are gorgeous. The mood is unsettling from start to finish. Annihilation is a strong sophomore effort from a very talented filmmaker.

Twisty, terrific little thriller. [29 Apr 1994, p.D31]

Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of the Vladimir Nabokov classic isn't as racy as the new one by Adrian Lyne, which opens in theaters tomorrow. But it's a lot funnier, thanks in no small part to the casting of Peter Sellers as a mystery man of many accents and Shelley Winters as Lolita's silly mother. [01 Oct 1998]