A singularly strange and affecting comedy.

In these days when flat-out comedy features are scarce, it’s one of the most welcome tenants at the summer multiplex. A mid-movie snowman gag puts the new one over the top, bestowing on it the honor of being mentionable alongside its predecessors. It sets the lunacy level to “inspired.”

The bad news about the Ennio Morricone documentary Ennio is its length: 2 1/2 hours. Far too short!

Goes from good to great in 90 minutes, and then it's over, except that it's really not, because this small masterwork grows even deeper and more affecting as it takes up permanent residence in your memory.

Every moment strengthens the essence of the drama—the bond of love between two people who came out of their mother’s womb within seconds of one another.

It’s also a film made by her grieving husband. On paper, it shouldn’t work at all. It works measurably better on screen.

Andrew Garfield's phenomenal performance makes room for the many and various pieces of Jack's personality, whether or not they're securely fastened together.

Unfortunately, the script by Zach Baylin doesn’t do an adequate job of making either side of these cat-and-mouse games thrilling.

Any movie with these two comics is a trip and a half. How about France for the next one? A perfect way to revisit Michael Caine.

Mr. Hausmann-Stokes hopes to keep the movie darkly comic until pivoting to a final, emotional payoff, but the mawkish late scenes are even more inept than the supposedly funny ones, as the director stages tearful hugs accompanied by soapy attempts at emotional dialogue.

The movie's metaphorical dimensions rarely interfere with the concrete, quirky pleasures of its story. The Flower of My Secret is Mr. Almodovar's most entertaining work since his phenomenal "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown." [15 Mar 1996]

Lovely & Amazing goes to the heart -- and face, and skin -- of a subject that's sure to ring true with women, and may even educate men.

There's plenty of scary pleasure to be had from this clever, compact thriller.

Never lacks for extravagance — the film looks as striking as it sounds — and some of the tales certainly seem outlandish. Yet they’re part of a truly remarkable origin story that the film and its subjects explore with uncommon thoughtfulness and depth of feeling.

The real head-scratcher is how such an endearingly modest, gentle film can say so much with such eloquence about a professional partnership that amounts to a love affair; about the mysterious business of being funny; and about the toll taken by the passage of time. (Messrs. Reilly and Coogan are both wonderful; so are Shirley Henderson and Nina Arianda as, respectively, Ollie’s wife, Lucille, and Stan’s wife, Ida.)

Undine isn’t a conventional romance, or a readily accessible one, but open yourself to this special film and you’re liable to be hooked.

Don’t write it off. You know about good things and small packages; this is a dark and startling thing in a brightly wrapped package, and the brightness is all the more misleading because the action takes place during Iceland’s radiant summer.

Documentarian Nanette Burstein has a wealth of photographic material at her disposal, much of it breathtakingly lovely, and she uses it gracefully and in the noble cause of forward motion.

Any meaningful perspective on the greedfest of the period is obscured by the gleefulness of the depiction.

Major League Baseball has passed new rules for the Dominican system, according to the film's closing credits, rules that will limit signing bonuses. Yet the harvest will continue, and it's not a pretty sight.

Where Dark Horse shines brightest is in its portraits of individuals, and of a town raised up from the depths of economic despair by the promise of one of its own making good.

The film is a dramatic and visual feast, one that portrays its adversaries as passionate humans who move us and make us laugh while they’re having at each other in search of common theological ground.

The celebrated percussionist Evelyn Glennie is the subject of a wonderful documentary called Touch the Sound, although calling her a percussionist is like calling Brancusi a demolitionist.

In Fyre, Mr. Smith tells a story of character, or lack thereof.

Last Summer is a provocation and a melodrama, and yet in Ms. Breillat’s hands these characters are precisely rendered humans—in their sensitivities, their wants, their vile follies.

In what I think may be the filmmaker’s plan, all that stuff — that maddeningly cacophonous Stuff — is what we’re meant to cut through and get past in order to become as alert and alive as the star of Mr. Godard’s movie. In this interpretation, it’s the pooch who points the way toward perceiving beauty by learning to live in the vibrant, fragrant present.

Influencers both dwells in and demolishes an online, text-happy, selfie-saturated world, one that thrives on misinformation and FOMO-mongering and drives CW more than a little crazy. Watching poseurs brought down is fun, though. So is Ms. Naud.

So what does the film, playing in theaters, want to make millions of moviegoers feel? Delight in graphic design? Sure, but the filmmaker’s familiar motifs, playful and inventive as they may be, operate in an emotional void.

Lost in La Mancha, a documentary about a movie that never got made, is more involving -- and heartbreaking -- than many movies that do get made.

Where the movie is at its best is in the comically laconic, straight-to-the-camera remarks offered by Carthage's residents. (They're played by a mix of local actors and real townspeople doing partially scripted versions of themselves.)

Through it all -- the free-form conversations, the brilliant set pieces, the preposterous gross-outs, the flawless performances -- Kristen Wiig's forlorn maid of honor, Annie, seeks her own destiny with a wrenchingly cockeyed passion.

This is a significant addition to the Verhoeven canon, meaning it’s elegantly crafted, formidably well performed and as fascinating as it is lurid.

The Invisible Woman gives us a plausible image of the great man in the fullness of his celebrity, and an affecting portrait of the woman who lived much of her life in his shadow.

Tully turns out to be a twofer. There’s the movie you see, which is whipsmart, intimate, affecting and fearlessly funny about the mixed blessings of motherhood. And there’s the movie you replay in your mind to sort out its several mysteries. That one is richer, deeper and strangely beautiful.

He’s (Oldman) superb in this one, a study in eccentric but magnetic leadership, and in masterly acting.

Ms. Hurwitz’s film, which was written by Michael Levine, is modest in scale yet far-ranging.

The film succeeds powerfully, even though it's short on practical solutions, makes some questionable statements of fact and, given Gore's current ambiguous position in public life, requires a tighter focus on the message than on the messenger.

There are remakes and there are remakes. I don't want to belabor the flaws and sexual excesses of the original; its great strength was its explosive energy. Still, this one investigates the unfulfilled potential of the first one so thoroughly, and develops it so audaciously, that it qualifies as a brilliant reinvention.

There's an old-Hollywood feel to the movie's solid showmanship and unabashed sophistication. These days it's feature-length 'toons, sporting the newest-fangled technology, that take kids and adults alike back to the movies' good old days.

The pulp-fictional hero is inhabited by the charismatic Andy Lau who, together with Chinese stars Bingbing Li, Ms. Lau and Tony Leung Ka-fai, makes Detective Dee the most purely entertaining film of our vanishing summer.

I’ll See You In My Dreams, has its shortcomings as drama, but she’s (Danner) the heroine, Carol Petersen, and she takes advantage of every resonant moment the role offers her.

If you’re looking for something to lift you up and take you away from the tumult and anguish of the moment, seek out Our Little Sister, a lovely new film, in Japanese with English subtitles, that’s going into national distribution this week.

The star of Susanna Nicchiarelli’s freely fictionalized biopic, Trine Dyrholm, finds fierce beauty in the woman Nico has become. I’ve never seen a performance quite like it — unsparingly harsh, but also graceful, droll and tender, a portrait of soul-weariness laced with a yearning for salvation.

This screwball comedy about a scrappy Hawaiian kid and the rabidly destructive little alien she mistakes for a dog is powered by ferocious joy. And, remarkably, it manages to incorporate traditional Disney values, such as the sanctity of the family, in a visually bold, subversively witty package that's as far from corporate as mainstream movies get.

The film contends admiringly, and convincingly, that Ralph Nader's authentic sense of outrage is the reason he persists when he can't prevail.

The new film, shot in vivid hi-def video, is part documentary and part fiction based on interviews; it uses on-camera interviews with workers, some played by themselves and some played by actors, to evoke a past of unimaginable toil, and suffering, in the service of the Communist state.

The story is a shallow-draft bark with flat characters on board: Josh, in particular, is de-energized to the point of entropy. Night Moves suffers from a lack of mystery and a deficit of motion.

There’s only one trouble with his semi-autobiographical account. It’s so polished—so spirited, funny and skillfully calibrated—that it could be taken for a while as a crowd-pleaser and not a lot more. Sign me up for the crowd, though. This is surely the most pleasing film I’ve seen so far this year, but also the most affecting.

Civil War is superficially silly—Mr. Garland writes himself into a trap in one tense scene and gets out of it with an absurd moment of action-hero gusto that is, as presented, not possible—but it’s also deeply silly. It’s a statement movie that contains no insights at all.

In another sense, though, everything is exactly what it seems, expertly crafted and cleverly compounded for high-dose entertainment.

A convincing, entertaining portrait of the revolutionist as a young man.

The most compelling reason to see A Private War is Rosamund Pike’s stunning performance as Marie Colvin, the American war correspondent who died in a bombardment while covering the Syrian government’s 2012 siege of Homs.

The film, produced in conjunction with NASA, also fulfills its inspirational function with screen-filling, soul-filling views of the main space station in the story — the one that harbors all our lives and hopes.

Mr. Field is a filmmaker with an exceptional gift for directing actors -- he's an actor himself -- and an eye for telling detail. (His cinematographer here, as in the previous film, is Antonio Calvache, and again the images are quietly sumptuous.) Yet I was put off by Little Children's satiric tone.

Together is less a fully conceived horror movie than a plodding relationship drama with some impressively disgusting effects superimposed on it. The two elements, alas, don’t quite complete each other.

By the Grace of God is overlong, and loses dramatic momentum as the group works out a social-media strategy and debates potential clickbait. But Mr. Ozon’s film is notable for the range of its concerns — the Church’s belief in redemption versus the legal requirement of punishment; the power of forgiveness versus the need for revenge; and before and after everything else, the special pain inflicted on innocent, uncomprehending children.

Marvel’s new “Captain America” is anything but bleak — what’s so audacious about the film, and so pleasing, is its quicksilver mix of hardcore action and bright comedy.

It is a very personal documentary, a designation that can connote the good, the not-so-bad and the distinctly uncomfortable. My Mom Jayne has it all, including a puzzle that Ms. Hargitay pursues throughout.

As naturally and insistently buoyant as Mr. Strassner is, Ms. Larsen is a marvel.

I did enjoy the movie's mercurial moods -- anxiety, terror, whimsical horror -- and I welcomed its confirmation that the work of the devil includes SUVs.

A thrillingly, thoroughly wonderful film.

All three performances are excellent, in their different ways.

A smart, funny and strangely touching film.

Some comedies make you laugh out loud. This one makes you smile inwardly, but often.

Born on the Fourth of July would be merely a hilariously inept gathering of Vietnam War movie cliches. Instead it is an unrelenting series of dramatic blows; almost every scene packs violence, sleaze, screamed rage and an ear-splitting music with headbutt force. For someone who despises the military, Mr. Stone is quite bellicose. [21 Dec 1989, p.1]

Kevin Macdonald’s Whitney is a documentary chronicle of Whitney Houston’s life; it’s tough-minded, unsparing and far superior to the biopic and the nonfiction film that preceded it.

Finally seems like a bit of a con in its own right, but a marvelously smooth one.

The most striking thing about X-Men: Days of Future Past is its generosity. Huge franchise installments are rarely as enjoyable as this one. They aren't as inventive, richly detailed, surprisingly varied, elegantly crafted or improbably stirring.

An act of expiation, Land of Mine is honorable, harrowing and stirring.

All horror film is metaphorical. But to qualify for the genre itself—and satisfy the base demands of the base—a movie is required to both accelerate toward lunacy and entertain a certain amount of mayhem. “Bring Her Back” contains enough gore to swamp a blood bank. But it also features a performance by Sally Hawkins that may be the best of the year, or even her career.

It’s really funny, though, an animated sendup of comic-book epics that vanquishes solemnity with the power of supersilliness.

Both magical and consistently joyous. The director, Robert Altman, and the writer, Garrison Keillor, have, against all odds, transmuted the fatigued public radio institution into a lovely fable about mortality, fleeting fame, fondness for the past and the ineffable beauty of life in the present.

The extraordinary thing about this film by Rodney Evans is how well it conveys the complexity. Vision is precious, it reminds us frequently. At the same time we’re brought to understand that blindness, far from being the end of the world, constitutes another mode of living in it.

Horror and social value contend for equal honors in Must Read After My Death, a frightening -- and eerily edifying -- documentary that Morgan Dews created from a family trove of photos, Dictaphone letters, audiotapes, voluminous transcripts and home movies.

Amy the writer has tried to reconcile her gift for whip-smart, razor-sharp comedy sketches with the demands of a feature film. On the whole she hasn’t pulled it off — the movie veers sharply off track toward the end. Still, the sum of its most memorable parts is great fun.

Better than a feelgood movie, it's a feelgreat movie -- genuinely clever, affecting when you least expect it to be and funny from start to finish.

What it's about is also what it requires for proper appreciation -- the ability of the human mind to hold, and even cherish, diametrically opposite thoughts.

A film such as this one ought to present a portrait that feels in some sense true and also make viewers so engaged that they’re hungry to learn more about the subject. Suffused with youthful passion and a deepening sensation of onrushing doom, Ms. O’Connor’s film heartily succeeds on both counts.

In the ultimate test, Kirby submits this very documentary to the tender mercies of the MPAA. It gets slapped with an NC-17 for graphic content. He appeals. He loses -- ten votes to zip.

Even those who find Ms. Wilkerson’s thesis convincing are likely to concede that it is more at home in the library than at the multiplex. Many others will find Origin confusing and dry.

If you lop off the closing credits of Fred Cavayé's preposterously exciting - and pleasingly preposterous - French-language thriller, the running time is a mere 80 minutes. Not since "Run Lola Run" has the term been used more aptly.

She is revealed in all her complexity by Mr. Björkman’s film, in which passages from his subject’s letters, notes and diaries are read by the fine young Swedish actress Alicia Vikander. “I don’t demand much,” the film quotes her as saying. “I just want everything.” She got a lot, and gave immeasurably more.

Though Ms. Bigelow includes a few humanizing and even humorous touches . . . she is not interested in the imperatives of the action movie or the moral lesson. She simply lays out one nauseatingly possible future, which means A House of Dynamite is one of the most terrifying movies ever made, but not in a fun way.

An astonishing and horrific thriller that has been constructed, like few films I’ve ever seen, to make you turn away from its frequent eruptions of savagery but then look back, just as often, to savor its mysterious beauty.

It’s amazing, and genuinely touching. At the age of 53 Mr. Cruise continues to give his all to these films, and his all in this latest episode is more than enough.

Mr. Bellocchio, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Susanna Nicchiarelli, has crafted a weighty, suspenseful family drama that touches on the eternal conflicts of religion but widens into a consideration of law, personal development and power politics.

The film transcends its various borrowings and occasional stumblings with a modern, exuberant spirit that draws heat from Broadway-style musical numbers and, before and after everything else, from marvelous 3-D animation

The writer-director Adrienne Shelly, who died in New York City late last year at the age of 40, took such perishable ingredients as wit, daring, poignancy, whimsy and romance, added passionate feelings plus the constant possibility of joy, decorated her one-of-a-kind production with pastel colors and created something close to perfection.

This is only the second feature for the director: the first was "True Adolescents." But Mr. Johnson's work with his actors is impeccable, and his style is freewheeling.

A brilliant mess, I suppose, in the way that seriously disturbed people can sometimes deliver a briefly mesmerizing vision of the universe while babbling. If nothing else, Natural Born Killers is the most in-your-face movie ever released by a major Hollywood studio. [25 Aug 1994, p.A10]

This brilliantly funny, casually profound and deeply affecting coming-of-age chronicle, directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon from a screenplay by Jesse Andrews, even manages to be life-enlightening—it’s a fresh take on contemporary adolescence as a journey from ironic detachment to openhearted feeling.

It’s difficult to describe the astonishing beauty of “Porcelain War” without trivializing everything and everyone involved.

Lots of Sicko stands as boffo political theater, but its major domo lost me by losing his sense of humor.

A seasoned director might have known when to ask Ms. Theron to do less, or nothing at all; as things stand, she acts at every single moment. But what brave and ferocious acting she does.

That Mr. Rohmer is an octogenarian just beginning to play with digital technology makes the venture even more intriguing.

Errol Morris's documentary was made, and scheduled for release, long before the News of the World story broke. The smart part is that the film dissects those excesses deftly with a quasitabloid style of its own.