David Mamet's play about the wheelings and dealings of real-estate salesmen gets dedicated playing from a splendid cast, but gains nothing by the transfer from stage to screen..

A triumph of comic irreverence and dramatic purpose, Episode VIII dazzles like the sci-fi saga hasn't in decades.

The documentary's scope feels a bit small overall - more concerned with capturing the episodic adventures of these disparate subjects than with connecting their experiences to larger societal ills.

The lengthy final two shots (each running more than ten minutes) rank among the best work this inimitable artist has ever done.

A classically structured rampage that bears serious comparison to the definitive greats of Akira Kurosawa, 13 Assassins will floor connoisseurs of action, mood and the dignity of a pissed-off scowl.

Indeed, you leave the film feeling like Wiseman has given you a glimpse of one of those ephemeral ports in a storm to which all of us retreat at times.

That the duo will work their way back to each other is never in doubt, although Chazelle doesn't succumb to easy sentiment. If anything, he moves too far in the other direction, aiming for a wizened ambiguity that doesn't entirely come off.

A manufactured kid-in-jeopardy climax and Blake’s rehab stint blow the mood. Until then, this is great American acting.

Hitchcock's most sombre film, unrelieved by his usual macabre humour; the black-and-white photography and the persecuted Fonda's sharply chiselled features lend an impressive documentary feel.

It's more like confession, the director still seething and replaying Vertigo in his head, lost in the curves of his career. De Palma is a public therapy session that upturns all expectations.

Local Hero, which concerns the frustrations of a Texas oilman's attempts to buy up an idyllic Scottish village, ranks as a lyrical anti-urban comedy in the great tradition of films like I Know Where I'm Going and Whisky Galore!; and its essential triumph is to prove that comedy can still contain a gentle, almost mystical, aspect without necessarily being old-fashioned.

William Friedkin’s full-throttle adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s novel works because it fuses the extreme and the everyday.

It’s unblinking in a Dardenne-ish way and often hard to watch, with the emotional toll playing on its characters’ faces. The ending is a floorer too.

Its erotic content now seems tame indeed; but the grotesquely caricatured performances and the evocation of the baking, dusty, indolent homestead make for witty and compelling viewing.

This adaptation of Roddy Doyle's novel may not display the glitz and relentless energy of The Commitments, but it has wit, feeling and authenticity.

For all of its innumerable pleasures, however, The Forbidden Room can feel like too much of a good thing—premiering at Sundance, Maddin’s latest plays like a robust film festival unto itself.

This still-prescient vivisection of modern culture’s vapidity crackles with the nervous energy of midtown’s hothouse broadcasters.

Riveting, exhilarating stuff.

Groundbreaking, breathtaking...Imperfect, then, but intermittently awe-inspiring.

The Brothers have never been so chaotic or so aggressively funny.

The film is at its best when it’s sitting just with them, not doing much, not trying too hard to be eccentric; just shooting the breeze and being cheerfully weird.

Jiro’s genius is godlike, but his personality is nonexistent; time is too-briskly spanned, then ground into blow-by-blow melodrama.

It’s unfortunate that the result is so unaffecting, especially in light of all the things the director does right.

If anything, Soul is guilty of over-ambition. The wizardry and wit is there, but it lacks Pixar’s usual deftness in making complex themes sing for youngsters. Mixing heart and existential angst, it’ll connect more with Joe’s generation than little ones. It’s smart and, yes, soulful but it never quite takes flight.

Wenders’s reverent enthusiasm for his subject is evident throughout the film, and he details every chapter of Salgado’s life with an acolyte’s inability to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Sing Sing’s most affecting quality is its commitment to reality over shock value. With Domingo masterfully anchoring the ensemble, it’s never bogged down by the specifics of the men’s crimes.

20 Days in Mariupol can’t match For Sama for a Hollywood ending. That film sought to cut its bleakness with a whisper of hope – a new baby born in a shelled maternity ward – and a sense that something might, just might, survive the horror. Chernov has nothing as optimistic as that for us, just a fly-on-the-wall account of an unfolding atrocity. And it’s devastating.

Helter-skelter, a bit mad and full of heart, it bounces along with the out-of-control energy of the early adolescence its depicts. When it pauses, it also offers a seriously touching snapshot of mums and their daughters, as well as a smart critique of why the burden of family expectations and the inevitability of teenage boundary-pushing usually results in carnage.

It’s a simple, angry work, determined to get across its point with force and with few distractions.

Sellers's performance—as the innocent neuter figure who rises accidentally to political power on the strength of vacant homilies—is remarkable. But Ashby's direction is marred by the same softness that made The Last Detail and Coming Home so morally bland.

Reviving the musical's fortunes in one fell swoop, Bacon and Busby Berkeley's backstage saga set the benchmark for the putting-on-a-show subgenre not by means of plot (a thin and hackneyed affair about a young understudy finding stardom when she covers for the temperamental diva) but through sassy songs and dialogue and dazzling mise-en-scène.

Ballour’s presence makes Fayyad’s film inspiring, even as we cringe for her safety with every overhead explosion.

Blackfish, a troubling exposé of Sea World’s hazardous entertainment trade, does much to restore a realistic sense of danger, interviewing former park workers who detail their shoddy, nonscientific training, and chronicling the much-suppressed history of whale-on-human violence.

The good news is that the film's stylistic excesses don't negate the many fascinating aspects of Nim's story.

This is Young in his playroom, grabbing his toys at random while indulging his every antimelodic whim, and Demme’s off-the-cuff approach makes for the perfect aesthetic complement.

The Lighthouse leaves you dazed, terrified and elated, and it signals Eggers as one of the most exciting directors working today.

It’s mostly Wayne all the way. He towers over everything in the film – actors, script [from Charles Portis’ novel], even the magnificent Colorado mountains. He rides tall in the saddle in this character role of ‘the fat old man.’

It’s the goriest film you’ll see this year that involves no guns, axes or zombies, but its gross-out/empowerment duality acts as a metaphor for a whole host of less visible social and emotional taboos.

Cosmatos needs you to be charitable toward his performances. Or, barring that, he needs you to be stoned. Many will oblige: Mandy is an instant midnight mood, graced by a thickly menacing synth score by composer Jóhann Jóhannsson (Sicario), whose recent death from a drug overdose robs us of not only a singular talent but also an obvious superfan of Vangelis.

The sisterhood who have made this an art form mostly remain unsung heroes, as it were, of the hit parade. Their collective bow is long overdue.

The question lingers as the movie comes to its triumphant body-swapping close: Is this a pro-environment parable or a prophecy of virtual realities yet to come? Cameron's new world may very well be a verdant Matrix.

If you’re even remotely a fan, you need to see this.

The characters of 20th Century Women, more interconnected than most, generate a group narrative that’s just substantial enough to keep you in thrall by how uninhibited a movie can be.

The portrait that emerges is refreshingly clear-eyed yet highly insular.

From the (prolific) output of a largely unfashionable director, Wyler's Wuthering Heights has a distinctive look that elevates it above the blandness Goldwyn productions are so often charged with.

This isn't the kind of doc to explain everything (or anything, really)-it does honor its subject, though, and that's plenty.

The strength of Animal Kingdom is its slow-building fatalism; the criminals' luck runs out, but then finds depressing extension via an out-of-left-field collaborator. It's a movie that has very little faith in authority, not even in Guy Pearce's righteous detective. The only law here is Darwin's.

You still can't help admiring the project's ambition; an odd combo of "Babe: Pig in the City" and Godard's "Histoire(s) du cinéma," Hugo is the strangest bird to grace the multiplex in a while.

It does confirm Argento's dedication to the technicalities of constructing images - Grand Guignol for L'Uomo Vogue, perhaps - but you'll still end up feeling you've left some vital digestive organs back in the seat.

The film impresses for its authenticity, careful delineation of mood, and subtle balancing of the personal and political. Téchiné wins sterling support from his young cast, who give the kind of quiet, naturalistic performances the French are so good at. A delicacy to savour.

As social critique, the film provokes pity and anger, not thought: understandable, since it's never quite clear exactly what Loach is attacking.

There's a darker, fanatical side to blindness too-and this is the movie to show it. Leave all judgments behind.

A 25-words-or-less pitch for The Day He Arrives - shot in luminous black-and-white - might go something like: "Hong Sang-soo does Groundhog Day."

William Hechter and Peter Miller’s documentary explores an artistic life well lived, combining interviews (Leiber & Stoller, Jimmy Scott, Ben E. King) and footage of the man at work beside kindred spirits like Dr. John, to construct a moving, un-mawkish portrait of a songwriting icon.

Mike Eley’s gorgeously saturated cinematography helps elevate the boys’ struggle into the realm of the heroic, but it’s the two young stars — one a whirlwind and the other a quiet protector — who make this only-slightly tall tale into something towering.

Japanese superstar-in-the-making Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s (Drive My Car) latest film is a touching ecological parable full of little feints and narrative red herrings. Just when you think it’s heading in one direction, it slips off elsewhere, like a fawn in the woods.

Crossing takes all of us down paths that even the shrewdly observant Lia would be unable to predict, but that she’d be the first to appreciate. ​It's a heartbreaker in all the best ways.

Seymour unfolds like a Jewish Jiro Dreams of Sushi—Bernstein may look like your average NYC grandpa, but he lives like a monk and talks like a guru.

Apted once wanted to give us "glimpses into Britain's future," per the archival-footage announcer. With this installment, he's delivered an intimate portrait of settling down and finally making peace with one's well-publicized past.

Whereas the later film built up an impressively complex series of narrative strands and psychological motivations, this is far more one-dimensional, and is so laxly structured that its rambling story seems to last longer than the (almost) three-hour Prince of the City.

Reitman, who also cowrote the screenplay, feels the constant need to "deepen" his characters, granting them wants and motivations--especially during the moralistic third act--that are totally alien to how they're initially portrayed.

A film that is voyeuristic in the extreme, extending no warmth to the bizarre mother and daughter as they battle out their lives together, but choosing instead to film them in the most offensive of ways.

Worth seeing for Lee, but still unforgivably wasteful of his talents.

Ozu's first film in colour, and he uses it sparingly. Subdued dress sense and domestic interiors are set against splashes of significant red (look out for the kettle!), representing the amaryllis which blooms around the autumn equinox - the perfect image for a film about transition.

It takes a little swallowing, but Fuller's grasp of character and milieu is so sure that the film gradually imposes itself as a scathing exposé of hypocrisy.

It’s a journey into the lives – and headspaces – of several young non-verbal autistic people around the world that’s part immersive deep dive, part primal scream of upset and frustration, and part cri de coeur for more understanding and empathy from the rest of us.

Mamoru Hosoda’s cyber fairy-tale is basically wall-to-wall bangers, all backdropped by virtual worlds that wash over you in waves of world-building so detailed and epic, they’d make William Gibson’s eyes pop.

The riskiness of [Jenkins'] set-up, one that blooms with complications and rawness, is a thing of adventurous beauty. Her film is a gift to those people who discretely flinch at every dinner party and kid-celebratory anecdote.

Whatever your favourite side to the limitlessly faceted David Bowie, this magnificently mind-bending film serves it up in a 140-minute career-spanning opus that races by in a snap of the fingers. It’s almost as extraordinary as the man himself.

Veering from blaxploitation spoof to undercover thriller and ending with a no-punches-pulled real-life coda, it’s riotous fun one minute, savagely biting the next.

It’s the two characters with no dialogue at all, Gromit and Feathers, who steal the show – a pair of silent cinema-style adversaries sparring in another joyfully Aardman nostalgic caper.

It could all come across as terribly zany, or sentimental. But Baker’s writing and direction has a near-hallucinatory sparseness to it.

There’s a quiet fury to Johnny Guitar, best embodied by Mercedes McCambridge’s vicious Emma, who wants to drive Vienna out of town. It’s a film that climaxes with a gunfight between two women, while the men hide behind tree stumps.

It's a stunningly impressive piece of work, typically (for Penn) deriving much of its power from the performances.

As usual with Miyazaki, the plot fits, starts and digresses at will, taking in the textures of pre-fascist Italy, details on the history of aviation and a lucid discussion on gender equality and physical beauty. Oh, and the kids will love it too.

Undeniably, The Post feels timely, but there’s a counter-argument to be made that, in our current era of “fake news” and easily swayed public opinion, it’s actually a dinosaur of a film—and not Jurassic Park. Thank God for the owners, it ultimately says, who sometimes do the right thing. That’s a perfectly fine idea, but our times could use something sharper.

The Flat details his efforts to understand this unusual situation, and although the film suggests that his relatives may have maintained this odd friendship as a denial of their homeland's betrayals, there's only so deep Goldfinger can dig.

Edmund H North's intelligent script and Wise's smooth direction are serious without being solemn, while Bernard Herrmann's effectively alien-sounding score reinforces the atmosphere of strangeness and potential menace.

All a bit soulless, but at least there's no equivalent of the 'Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head' sequence. All those who liked the earlier film should enjoy this as much.

Von Sternberg, who was forever looking for new kinds of stylisation, said that he intended everything in Shanghai Express to have the rhythm of a train. He clearly meant it: the bizarre stop-go cadences of the dialogue delivery are the most blatantly non-naturalistic element, but the overall design and dramatic pacing are equally extraordinary.

Cedar's idiosyncratically brilliant script also has a moral question at its heart: Is lying to spare someone's feelings ever justified? Surely the Talmud has a thing or two to say about that.

Free Solo is about getting dangerously close to the edge, where some people feel most alive. We get to experience that thrill secondhand, and that’s enough.

Cynthia Nixon commits wholly to her role’s maternal patience and scattered mental decay, but it’s Abbott who really dominates James White.

After 2012’s similarly themed "Sleepwalk with Me," Birbiglia continues to mine a scene he knows well, and even though he doesn’t strike you as a natural-born filmmaker (some of these scenes are as flatly lensed as the Saturday Night Live sketches being spoofed), he’s evolving as a confrontational dramatist.

While hardly as sturdy or provoking an entertainment as North by Northwest, say, it remains an entertainment.

The searching period reconstruction includes some dark notes (peasants sing Fascist anthems in the fields), but this is mostly a starry eyed celebration of the time when Movies were still Magic, complete with a bitter-sweet pastiche Nino Rota score.

A moving and humorous coming-of-age story which is told with brio, avoiding the usual divots of social realism misery.

Needless to say, Souleymane’s Story is not an easy watch. It’s a tough, unsparing and often heartbreaking look at life for the migrants who make the online world tick, and a jolt for those of us who use it unthinkingly.

Kurosawa plays most of it for laughs by expertly parodying the conventions of Japanese period action movies, but the tone switches to a magnificent vehemence in the heart-stopping finale.

Mann's first film with James Stewart, with whom he was to make a series of classic Westerns, this offers the clearest example of Mann's use of the revenge plot.

With just three actors, a boat, and a huge expanse of water, [Polanski] and script-writer Jerzy Skolimowski milk the situation for all it's worth, rarely descending into dramatic contrivance, but managing to heap up the tension and ambiguities.

Of Stallone’s surprisingly tender performance — a definitive late-career triumph — enough can’t be said

Fellag does for the film what his Lazhar does for the pupils: He's soothing and entrancingly enigmatic enough to keep us fixed to our seats.

The combination of these two visual elitists is really too much - it's like a meal consisting of cheesecake, and one quickly longs for something solid and vulgar to weigh things down.

[Russ] Meyer could never make a psychodrama as sophisticated as Biller has now.

Mike Cheslik’s Hundreds Of Beavers is that rare thing in the current film landscape: a genuine cult classic.

Not a lot to it, but the sense of period is acute, the script witty without falling into the crude pitfalls that beset other adolescent comedies, and the performances are spot-on.

She’s charming, authoritative, and ferociously intelligent. ‘I think she captured the essence of what it means to be human, to be alive and to be here on this Earth,’ says Winfrey. She’s speaking about one of Morrison’s characters, but it goes double for the author.