Whose Streets? marks the filmmaking debut of Folayan and Davis, and it’s charged by its personal touch.

Rappeneau has his weaknesses - the battle sequences lack imagination, and the finale is unnecessarily protracted - but his romantic flourishes keep most of the movie humming. [25 Dec 1990, p.F1]

Smarter and funnier than the recent theatrical release, "Drop Dead Gorgeous," Michael Ritchie's superficially similar beauty-contest satire was mostly ignored when it came out in 1975. It has since become a classic, and a high point in the careers of Bruce Dern, Annette O'Toole, Barbara Feldon, Michael Kidd and Melanie Griffith. [05 Aug 1999]

It’s a film about heroism and the right to love, told without stirring speeches. Instead, it unfolds movingly in the tiny moments between Richard and Mildred.

The silence in Silence is deep and profound.

It’s an artful, moving and often beautiful film, but be careful about showing it to young children; nightmares could ensue. (It haunted me, and I’m quite grown.)

A knowledge of the novel is helpful as well.

Jane Campion's screen adaptation of New Zealand writer Janet Frame's memoirs is sometimes brilliant, and never less than good. [21 Jun 1991, p.21]

All in all, this “Buster” is something else.

Green Room is one nasty piece of work. And I mean that in a good way.

Working with Western funding and Western camera technology for the first time, Yimou also has created the most visually striking of recent Chinese films to reach this country. [15 Mar 1991, p.25]

Take-no-prisoners storytelling, the work of a master storyteller.

Techine never quite makes the crime element stick here. It seems unnecessary, imposed on the material, an unnatural outgrowth of a series of relationships that have more to do with dysfunctional family ties and midlife readjustments.[17 Jan 1997]

You leave The Assistant thinking about why some of us are invisible and some of us don’t notice — and about how evil lives in the places from which we look away.

Compelling epic filmmaking.

Not all of Hustlers is beautiful, to be sure, but it’s always a kick.

Isabelle is complicated, in a way that movie women often aren’t; Binoche makes her an intriguing puzzle to solve.

Though every performance is splendid, it’s Washington and Davis who create a mesmerizing symphony of emotion, finding both love and tragedy in every look, every line.

It’s a whiplash journey of humor bordering on callousness, and sadness just shy of suffocating, but you’ll want to hold its twisted, bruised heart in your hands all the same. It deserves some comfort after all it’s been through.

Its settings and cinematography are beautiful, filled with marble hallways and vivid red carpets that seem to be punctuating the scenery with a slash. . . And its performances are a pleasure, everywhere you look.

Sing Street reminds us of being young and lost in a song, realizing with a jolt that someone else had the same feelings we did.

Coppola tells the story through lush mood, meticulous art direction, swimmy music (not Presley’s) and her two actors’ gloriously big-screen faces.

Completely ignored at the Oscars in 1939, "Midnight" seems more sophisticated and durable than several of that year's winners.

With impeccable performances — particularly an electric, extended scene between Marcus and the college dean (Tracy Letts), and Gadon, whose wistful character has a face full of secrets — Indignation is an elegant debut for longtime producer Schamus; a visit to the past, with both sunshine and darkness.

A Different Man spins out of control in its final act, but still leaves you pondering its questions.

And therein lies perhaps the only issue with the movie: Tom Cruise flies so close to the sun he blots out anything that might illuminate a hypothetically talented cast of characters. And that’s OK — it’s a Tom Cruise movie, and Tom Cruise isn’t really an ensemble actor.

Drawing generously and honestly from her own experience as a single mother of two teenage girls, director Allison Anders, making her solo feature debut, has lovingly adapted Richard Peck's paperback novel "Don't Look and It Won't Hurt," crafting a delicate meditation on loves lost and found in the barren but magical truck-stop town of Laramie, N.M. [28 Aug 1992, p.24]

Magical, sinister and prankish, The Witches is a triumph.

Glory ultimately offers a stirring answer to the historical distortions of Mississippi Burning, by presenting African Americans as people who aggressively participated in their own struggle for freedom. [12 Jan 1990, p.22]

This is a movie about a process, not about who should be president or why. On that level, it's informative, smart and surprisingly entertaining - the best thing of its kind since Robert Altman covered the 1988 presidential follies with his mostly fictional "Tanner '88." [7 Jan 1994, p.D22]

Moore lets us see, through her quietly shining performance, that Gloria believes in love, in the way an old song can make you feel a little younger, and in the power of dressing up and hitting a dance floor by yourself, moving as if in a trance, letting the music take you to a better place.

Using a rich trove of archival footage and interviews with Cernan, members of his family, other former astronauts and key Apollo mission figures, director Mark Craig charts the flight path of Cernan’s life.

Shot in artful, quiet light (many of the frames look like elegant paintings), The Innocents is beautifully performed by its nearly all-female cast; each nun, even those unnamed, is given her own personality and story.

With all of Shults’ dark-night-of-the-soul mood manipulations, the film promises more than it delivers. Its buildups are impressive, but in the end its frights are mild.

Andrew Bergman's The Freshman is a charmed comedy, the kind of seemingly effortless movie in which everything falls neatly into place, as if ordained by nature.

Directed once again by Chad Stahelski, the one-time stunt man who has become a first-rate visual stylist and master of pacing over the years of directing “Wicks,” “Chapter 4” is dazzling.

The redemption here — if there may, please, please, be some — is in the celebration of his life, and in the fact that all the love for him clearly cannot do anything but continue on.

In fact it’s really writer-director Schrader who is Isaac’s true co-star in “The Card Counter.” A product of a strict Calvinist upbringing in Michigan, the filmmaker’s trademarks — guilt, redemption, a soul in torment — are all here.

It’s the trio that gives this story liftoff, thanks to spectacular performances from Groff, Radcliffe and Mendez as friends who have seen each other through their best and worst moments.

James Foley's screen adaptation of Jim Thompson's 1955 novel has its flaws - it's a little too mannered for its own good - but Patric is close to perfection. [24 Aug 1990, p.22]

Whichever side you come down on, Johns’ and Squires’ low-key performances are impressive (Johns won Best Actor at this year’s Seattle International Film Festival), and the technological/red-tape hurdles their characters face feel stingingly accurate.

Hunnam speaks in low tones, practically murmuring his lines in many scenes, which seem at odds with the underlying fierceness of Fawcett’s resolve. His manner is almost diffident, yet he’s steadfast in his purposefulness.

Oh yes indeed. Avengers: Endgame brought it...This film had an insanely difficult job to do — to gracefully and tidily wrap up a 22-movie Marvel Comics cycle with a cast list bigger than the Hulk, and to do so with both poignancy and hold-your-breath action — and it delivers.

The searing documentary Hooligan Sparrow is a portrait of courage.

Adapting a prizewinning novel by Canadian writer Patrick deWitt, Audiard has made an atmospheric Western in which the four lead actors portray their characters with remarkable subtlety.

Like Lee's last film, "Mo' Better Blues," this one seems to disintegrate before your eyes. Both movies lack the drive and assurance of his masterpiece, "Do the Right Thing." Yet so much of the first half of Jungle Fever is first-rate that you wish Lee could go back, rewrite and reshoot the rest.

Linklater really nails the atmosphere here; watching Blue Moon feels like sitting with smart people in a retro bar, covered in a gentle blanket of cocktail piano. And Hawke, often surrounded by wafting symphonies of cigar smoke, gives a beautifully shaded performance, of equal parts bravado and vulnerability.

Zootopia delights, in ways big and small.

The interracial love affair in Mira Nair's Mississippi Masala doesn't burn up the screen the way it did in Spike Lee's overheated "Jungle Fever." But the movie itself is ultimately more satisfying, generating much more light than sizzle. [14 Feb 1992, p.23]

A civilized summer entertainment that never quite transcends its genre. [7 Aug 1992, p.24]

Barbarian is skillfully directed, smartly cast and superbly acted.

It’s an impressive performance by Byrne, who embodies Linda with unhinged pathos; however, it just as often felt like watching a spiral for spiral’s sake. But, perhaps, viewers with kids of their own may find comfort in the moments Linda vulnerably faces her sense of ineptness as a mother and wrestles with her responsibility for her child’s illness.

This Frankenstein has no shortage of horrors, but it also finds notes of forgiveness and kindness; it’s a monster movie with a soul.

It works fine as an outrageous comedy, but the perceptive commentary will likely give it staying power. This is the fearless satire that America desperately needs right now.

While occasionally the film wanders a bit too far into sentimentality (a scene involving a baby feels like it crosses a plausibility line), watching 1917 is an emotional and moving experience. You think of these two young men as one minuscule piece of an enormous tragedy, filled with individual stories.

What’s most memorable about Kedi are the individual, self-contained moments.

Filmmaker Ivan Sen is a quadruple threat as writer, director, composer and cinematographer of this wily Australian thriller.

Soderbergh keeps the action light and playful, and lets the cast members find their own silliness within it.

The best surprise is Selick's handling of the live-action sequences, notably the opening scenes. Young James (a perfect Paul Terry) works around the surreal sets of Harley Jessup (conceived by illustrator Lane Smith).

It’s not the best Dracula movie of all time, though it aspires to that. Murnau’s original still leads the pack. But it certainly is the most stylish. Eggers is a filmmaker with astonishing visual flair.

There are moments of astonishing lyricism.

In a movie that reminds us that parenting comes in many forms, it’s touching to learn that the Cayuga word for “aunt” is “small mother.” We almost didn’t need the definition; it’s visible, in Gladstone and Delroy-Olson’s eyes.

Under Chukwu’s steady, sensitive direction, Deadwyler’s performance is such that it overshadows everyone else in the movie.

It’s essentially a plotless montage, a spellbinding filmic tapestry. Its visuals are out of this world, quite literally in the early going, as it presents the story of the creation of the universe.

Barker has a knack for jump scares — and for making a wildly fanciful story feel real.

It’s a detective story. It’s a spy thriller. It’s a cautionary tale. And it’s true.

It’s fun, but it’s not prime Peele by any means.

For all the witty voices and great escapes (maybe one too many of the latter), Finding Dory is ultimately a character story, and DeGeneres’ lovable, brave Dory swims right into our hearts.

This is a film where the trappings of the procedural plot matter infinitely less than the moments that come when you glimpse the visually beautiful yet bleak pit into which Harker is going to fall.

Inspiring drama about an air strike against Japan that left several U.S. fliers stranded in China. [24 Jul 1998]

What makes "Fly Away Home" worth seeing is Ballard and Deschanel's beguiling imagery: the geese devotedly following Paquin around the farm as she tries to speak their language; a wry shot of Kinney dozing off in front of a televised wrestling match as Amy sneaks off to tend her eggs; and those spectacular flying episodes, which are quite unlike anything else on the horizon. [13 Sep 1996]

Critically, the film’s many revelations aren’t neat and tidy, but they are revealing in all the ways that matter.

Are we alone, or is there more than we know? Personal Shopper is less interested in the answer than in, hauntingly, posing the question.

Mamaengaroa Kerr-Bell, who plays Grace, had never acted before, and neither have a couple of the other key players. But under the careful direction of television veteran Lee Tamahori, they all do credible and forceful work.

In the film, we’re able to see Ailey during the Kennedy Center honors, watching intently as “Revelations” is performed; he looks like he’s carefully checking it, making sure it’s perfect, wondering if it could be better — the artist watching the art. You leave Ailey hoping that, somewhere, he’s watching still.

It’s impossible to watch this film without a tapping toe and a smile.

For the most part, the movie finds a family-friendly balance between stunning scenery, hold-your-breath action and animals having goofy conversations with each other.

Koepp is one of the most successful screenwriters of all time, and Presence feels like one of the screenplays from his discard pile that Soderbergh scooped up for a quickie experiment. The experiment was indeed successful, but the story itself isn’t.

It’s a film full of creative swirls.

By the time the film turns into this unusual buddy adventure, it is an absolute joy, the pair putting their big brains to the task at hand and playfully ribbing each other as they go.

In its attempts to deal with her character's aimlessness and inability to discover a satisfying code of behavior ("Are there any real reasons for living right anyway?"), the script is sometimes thoughtful, sometimes banal and schoolgirlish. [12 Nov 1993, p.D16]

Filled with sweetly funny moments, “Thelma” is a perfect showcase for the delightfully wry Squibb, whose character constantly reminds us that you’re never too old to try something new, whether it’s takeout sushi or low-speed chasing after criminals.

Everything about Rose Glass’ violent revenge thriller Love Lies Bleeding is unexpected; you watch it as if strapped into a roller-coaster car, not sure when the next dip or swerve might be.

In a digital fantasy world where culture has been abandoned in favor of commerce, talent is the cheapest commodity.

Candles illuminate faces in the dark; a curving staircase looms like a shadow. And the actors pitch their roles perfectly: Kidman’s breathy calm; Farrell’s charm, just hinting at something dark within it; Fanning’s way of prettily arranging herself, showing off Alice’s newfound power; Dunst’s quiet melancholy.

In the midst of that hostile physical and psychic landscape, de Clermont-Tonnerre has made a stringent tale of a struggle for redemption.

Warmer and more forgiving than Bergman's own work, it is one of the most moving films ever made about the exacting, full-time job of living with another person.[31 Jul 1992, p.17]

Bigelow has a way of making scripted drama feel like an utterly gripping newsreel. That’s not necessarily all to the good — I found myself wishing for more character development — but you can’t deny the power of the filmmaking.

One of the movie's chief charms is Senegalese musician Youssou N'Dour's lyrical score, which almost suggests an anti-"Lion King" approach. The music isn't in a hurry to dramatize its story or make epic statements. The same might be said of writer-director Michel Ocelot's delicate animation style and his handling of small moments. [30 Jun 2000]

The Edge of Seventeen, in its R-rated way (booze and sex play supporting roles), is a sweetheart — just like Erwin.

Jackman and Stewart give perhaps the most heartfelt performances that they’re ever brought to an “X-Men” movie. Though the tone of the movie is pervasively downbeat, they’re both going out on a very high note.

Not that it was ever in question, but 28 Years Later is an invigorating reminder that Boyle, as a technician of dizzying, daring cinematic style, has never lost his fastball, and he employs it to great effect emphasizing Spike’s visceral emotional experience.

With a Morricone-inspired score, gorgeous cinematography that screams to be witnessed on a big screen, and bleak humor, this film’s tightly executed, meticulously controlled surface barely contains the seething fury within.

It's all very New York, and so deadpan that you sometimes have to wait for it to blink. It's also very funny. [16 Feb 1990, p.24]

Close owns this movie, from beginning to end; it’s a performance of such intelligence and subtlety that only when the movie is long over do you start wondering about whether the plot holds up.

The plot doesn’t matter in the slightest; young and old fans of the first movie will be lining up for the wit, for the inventiveness of the characters, for the breathtaking visuals — and just the sheer fun of it all.

The full title, Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World, is pure, over-the-top Herzog: simultaneously an embrace of fresh internet technology and an attempt to suggest a mythical dimension.

As with “Rivers and Tides,” Leaning into the Wind is a work of art in itself; beautifully and meditatively shot (by Riedelsheimer), accompanied by a faintly mysterious score that seems to be telling us secrets.