The material is often intimate, often heartbreaking.

Barbie is a template for how not to write a crowd-pleasing Hollywood feature.

Though his movie wraps challenging ideas and ingenious visual conceits in a futurist film-noir style, it's pretentious, didactic and intentionally but mercilessly bleak in ways that classic noir never was.

Every once in a while a movie grabs you, unsuspecting, and hustles its way into your heart. Jeremiah Zagar’s We the Animals does that. This exquisite debut feature, based on a poetic debut novel by Justin Torres, is a tumbling evocation of a volatile family, narrated by one of three young brothers living in upstate New York with their Puerto Rican father and white mother.

Ms. Buckley brings her own truth to this mostly synthetic confection, and it’s a beautiful thing to behold.

After 18 seasons and some 400 episodes of their Fox TV series, the family created by Matt Groening, the family that put the dys in dysfunctional, makes a seamless transition from the shag carpet to the red carpet in the long-awaited Simpsons Movie.

Every sport, and every sports film, must have its superman. The role is filled here by Laird Hamilton, who, we are told -- and, more astonishingly, shown -- took "the single most significant ride in surfing history." Seeing is believing.

Room 237, which goes into national distribution this weekend, may be the surpassingly eccentric — and enormously entertaining — film that Kubrick deserves.

Torn between Tarantino-esque genre pastiche and stilted art-film seriousness, The Settlers is at once unsettling and tonally unsettled. The result is a muddled study of brutal history.

The results leave one thinking of the film’s subject as too delicate for punk, too vulnerable for the Rat Pack, and happy to be the kind of singular phenomenon worthy of Scorsese-ian scrutiny.

The Beast has sequences of such insidiously effective suspense and arresting, even moving strangeness that the film could only have come from exactly those to whom it pays singular tribute: thinking, feeling humans.

Given the nature of the production — it was made for grownups, not children, in an era when life moves much faster than it did in Mr. Rogers’s day — sticky sweetness threatens at every turn, along with naked contrivance. Yet the movie bets on goodness, and wins.

Even when it falters The Forty-Year-Old Version exudes confidence—the director has confidence in her lead actress, and vice versa; both trust the writer, whose more amusing lines are often contained in asides between characters discussing.

For those with a hunger for surprising, affecting films, I say seek this one out by all means. Mr. Kuosmanen’s direction of actors is impeccable; he and his stars deserve one another fully.

A lot of Lucky is philosophical mischief, some of it is tediously ruminative, and some moments achieve a loveliness that belies the film’s craggy desert terrain, the earthiness of its characters and even the landscape of Mr. Stanton’s body.

This modest little fable from Israel, in English, Hebrew and Arabic, has spellbinding resonances, yet never breaks the spell by blowing its own horn.

Desert One, a superb documentary by Barbara Kopple, snatches high drama from the jaws of devastating failure.

The result is a movie more concerned with movie-making than with the stuff of Sterne's great book, but a movie that's good for lots of laughs if you share its fondness for actors and for fatuous actors' banter, which I do.

Many movies these days are too long; this one, at 90 minutes, feels too short. That's because its purpose is so sharply defined: a tight close-up, in black and white, of a single, seminal moment -- a black and white moment -- in American history, and American journalism.

The heart of the film, though, lies in what remains closest to Mr. Crosby’s heart—not the bum one with the eight stents but the musical one that has been churning out new songs and albums with improbable, unquenchable zest. True to its subject, who has been true to his muse, David Crosby: Remember My Name is about music in a revelatory way.

A work of singular beauty and a significant technical achievement, the film makes water audible — the thumps and groans of calving glaciers sound like the planet coming apart — and almost palpable; heaving mountains of blue-black waves in an Atlantic storm convey stupendous mass and titanic energy as in no motion picture I’ve seen before.

As Crowhurst's situation grows desperate, the scope of the film expands -- from a good yarn to a haunting, complex tale of self-promotion, media madness, self-delusion and, finally, self-destruction.

Like earlier Dardenne films, Lorna’s Silence is naturalistic, yet this one, beautifully shot in 35 mm film by Alain Marcoen, achieves a poetry of bereftness.

Clouds Of Sils Maria. swirls with provocative ideas, but they’re talked about more than dramatized

Coraline is distinguished, if you can call it that, by a creepiness so deep as to seem perverse, and the film finally succumbs to terminal deficits in dramatic energy, narrative coherence and plain old heart.

While the film itself isn't perfect, who cares about perfection in the face of abundant life, authentic screwiness and lovely surprises by the busload?

In a word, The Old Man & the Gun is enjoyable; that’s all it means to be and that’s what it is.

A great premise for a movie. Unfortunately, The War of the Roses is not clever, at least not very often. [14 Dec 1989, p.A20(E)]

Mr. Gaffigan’s feel for his perpetually disappointed character keeps us invested in him while Mr. West devises some insightful moments and a climax whose emotional content nearly matches its tricksy element.

The new film may not qualify for masterpiece status, but it's an enthralling portrait of a man — an exceptionally brilliant and articulate man — who personified the courage, complexity and moral ambiguity of his tortured time.

Ms. Berg's film, which she wrote with Billy McMillin, tells the story with unprecedented clarity. She has a dramatist's eye for what was irretrievably lost-the innocent lives of the children, plus 18 years of three other innocent lives.

A huge delight.

What Ron Howard gets, to a degree that's astonishing in a two-hour film, is the density and complexity, as well as the generous entertainment quotient, of Peter Morgan's screenplay.

An affecting coming-of-age drama based on a superb book and directed by an exceptional actor in his directorial debut.

What's most rewarding, though, is that Mr. Senna speaks extensively and eloquently for himself, and reveals himself to be an eminently human hero. He's thoughtful, even philosophical, about decisions that deprive him of seemingly well-earned victories.

Who doesn't need what this movie has to give?

It's tempting to see Beyond the Hills solely as an indictment of religion, but the film is more ambitious than that. Ignorance and superstition aren't confined to the convent; people in town, including the cops, drop casual references to witchcraft as if it were part of everyday life. The broader subject is possession by primitive ideas.

Both performances are strong; Ms. Ben-Shlush is especially appealing in what might have been a clichéd role. If anything, Working Woman goes out of its way to play fair by making Orna insufficiently self-protective. All the same, she’s an innocent on the way to becoming a victim in an understated polemic that becomes an affecting drama.

The Sessions is admirable, and often enjoyable, yet self-limiting in concept. It's exactly about what it sets out to be about - no less but no more.

Mank really is about betrayal — not just what the hero does to others but how, over the years and decades, he has betrayed the precious talent at his core. Yet it’s equally about him saving his soul. The worst fix he’s ever been in yields the best thing he’s ever written.

Watch them march to the very extremes of extremis, though, and it's easy to feel awe.

The result is daringly original and frequently beautiful, a shimmering treat from a singular intelligence.

It's not fair to say that Ms. Davis steals scenes - one of the movie's strengths is its ensemble cast - but she supercharges every scene she's in.

Pride may not be a model of impeccable craftsmanship, but it's a fine example of turning a terrific subject into a gleeful event. It's also an example of the power of entertainment — of entertainment within entertainment.

There is an implicit story within—about the ancients building with marble for eternity and us moderns building with concrete for a virtual moment. But it isn’t just beauty Mr. Kossakovsky is concerned with here. It is how humans view their world and, more importantly, themselves. And their place in the universe. And their disposable landscape.

Hotel Rwanda isn't impersonal, even though it only hints at the story's full horror. It's stunning.

Ms. Reijn’s film is brilliantly evocative, exploring the shameful, shadowy parts of a complicated woman’s psyche, the ones she would never discuss and doesn’t fully understand herself.

Eureka demands active attention, but rewards it with emotional resonance, thematic complexity and a succession of images that take up permanent residence in our brains.

Ms. Kim strives to remain true to her subject’s sensibilities—her imagistic narrative amounts to energetic homage—and this includes not romanticizing his life.

What she thinks of herself, though, seems perfectly, if improbably, reasonable--a queen of comedy who won't and shouldn't abdicate.

All the backing-and-forthing between olden and modern days intensifies the emotional impact of a compelling story, and underlines the enduring power of narrative itself.

Martius comes to a bad end, while Mr. Fiennes achieves a great beginning. As a director, his grasp exceeds his daring reach, and his performance stands as a chilling exemplar of psychomartial ferocity.

The movie about his life and legend, written and directed by Sean Mullin, has two purposes and succeeds delightfully at both.

It’s a delicate and memorable performance by Mr. Jackman. Ms. Janney does the whole Long Island thing as well as anyone ever has. The most resonant character, though, might be Rachel, whom Ms. Viswanathan imbues with the indignation of youth—something the rest of the characters have long outgrown, but which the story was always going to need.

While inseparable from Ukraine and its echoes, the film argues quietly but convincingly that its story is not specific to its time and place, necessarily, but is rather about how traumatized children everywhere might respond, react and/or rebel.

Mr. Garrone seems so desperate to create a powerful humanist plea that he has neglected to provide his movie with the detail and artistry that would give it force, and he conspicuously concludes his story just before it would have started to become more contentious—and more interesting.

The movie, with some of the trappings of a murder mystery, makes its points with blunt force. Fun seldom figures in this adaptation, which is overlong and mysteriously unaffecting. Still, Mr. Fincher's film has many fascinations.

It's a different city today, in a country that sees its racial and social divides with more clarity than it did back then. But the most troubling question the film raises is how clearly we may see even now.

Liam Neeson has never had a richer character to play on screen -- including his landmark role in "Schindler's List" -- and has never displayed such formidable energy and virtuosity.

Appeal lies on the bright, shiny surface of its ostensibly simple plot, and in its rat-a-tat-tat language, which often sounds like Mamet-visits-Spyne.

Jarmusch's uncharacteristically mainstream -- wonderful -- road trip movie.

The most daring part of this wonderful film, which was written and directed by Jeff Nichols, is its calmness. Momentous events move at a human pace while Richard and Mildred Loving — a matchless pair of performances by Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga — try with varying success to comprehend what’s happening to them.

The Christophers is zingy fun. Whichever world Mr. Soderbergh decides to visit, he invariably makes the trip worthwhile.

This is filmmaking as an act of devotion, and exploration — not just of the nature of faith but of faith’s obverse, abject doubt. The production is physically beautiful, and evokes the beauties of classic Japanese films, but the substance makes few concessions to conventional notions of entertainment.

Philippe Claudel gives his heroine unusual depth, which Kristin Scott Thomas reveals with unusual passion.

This superb film, by Kent Jones, adds three more layers to the book’s alluvial wisdom: stunning clips from Hitchcock features, audio clips from the original conversations and fascinating comments by contemporary directors.

The cheap perfume of sentimentality wafts through the closing moments of Flags of Our Fathers. It's all the more noticeable for having been avoided so well and so long. Mr. Eastwood knows that sort of thing doesn't mix with the stench of war.

Anders Danielsen Lie, gives a performance that's as distinctive as any in recent memory -- casually witty, remarkably graceful and yet terrifying in its explosiveness.

Based on the Le Carré memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel allows Mr. Morris to exercise his extraordinary gift for making the interview format irresistibly cinematic, and feels like a collaboration of kindred spirits.

The latest in a series of stiletto-sharp social comedies by the French filmmakers Jean-Pierre Bacri and Agnès Jaoui.

Instead of a theme park, it’s more of a cathedral—solemn, sober, beautiful and forbidding. Greig Fraser’s photography and Hans Zimmer’s score are full of majesty.

If you believe that the much-loved, much-banned Judy Blume has corrupted several decades of impressionable youth, Judy Blume Forever is probably not the film for you—it’s a salute, celebration and round of applause all rolled into one.

Few actors working today could make emotional sense of such a protean character, but Ryan Gosling does so with calm authority. He's a formidable presence in a film that grabs your gaze and won't let go except for moments when you can't help but look away.

I have minor misgivings about the use of a few Disney-esque sound effects, as well as some conventionally garish voicings in the score by Danny Elfman, Hollywood's current master of the macabre. But none of that diminishes the educational value of Deep Sea 3-D, which was directed by Howard Hall, or the sometimes ethereal, sometimes fearsome beauty of its cast of trillions.

While the film handles itself well in the ring, it's brilliant in the arena of a blue-collar family that brutalizes its younger son and best hope for worldly success in the name of sustaining him.

The made movie — i.e. Mr. Pavich's documentary — makes for a great seminar on creativity. Its star is Mr. Jodorowsky, outrageously handsome and dynamic at the age of 84.

This is a harrowing film to watch. In spite of the vibrant jungle greens and the searing sun, it’s as bleak a vision of modern warfare as has ever been put on screen.

Ms. Wilson may put a viewer off balance with a lack of concrete detail, but it is a seduction technique that works, to satisfying effect.

Now the movie can be seen for what it was all along, remarkable by any standards.

The Visitor tells of renewal through love. Its song is tinged with sadness, but stirring all the same.

The gadgetry is absolutely dazzling, the action is mostly exhilarating, the comedy is scintillating and the whole enormous enterprise, spawned by Marvel comics, throbs with dramatic energy because the man inside the shiny red robotic rig is a daring choice for an action hero, and an inspired one.

News management is the main issue. Control Room shows how coverage is tailored to fit the audience, both by al-Jazeera and its Western counterparts.

You don't have to be a fan of Mr. Jarmusch's special brand of indie spookiness to enjoy his new film. All that's required is patience with its languorous pace, plus a willingness to swing between amusement and delight, with periodic pauses at ennui.

The deliriously talented Lake Bell wrote, produced, directed and stars in this peculiar bit of comedy magic, set amid the cutthroat world of Hollywood voiceover artists.

At its best, Ava DuVernay’s biographical film honors Dr. King’s legacy by dramatizing the racist brutality that spurred him and his colleagues to action. The director and her screenwriter, Paul Webb, are less successful — sometimes much less so — at breathing life into the private moments that define King as an inspirational figure with human flaws, and a political as well as spiritual force.

At its best, “Furiosa” is like a more fun, less ponderous and mysticism-free “Dune,” with every pedal properly to the metal. But it’s closer to numbing than enthralling, like a long ride with no shock absorbers.

Ms. Garner transcends the inherent limits of her role to convey ineffable tenderness and wordless ferocity in a movie that’s bigger than it seems.

The film forges ahead, in vivid 3-D, with such energy, expertise and thunderous conviction that you readily accept its basic premise — the pell-mell emergence of great intelligence, plus moral awareness, in primitive bodies — and find yourself exactly where the filmmakers want you to be, swinging giddily between sympathy for the apes and the humans in what threatens to become all-out war.

Computer travel may not be the real thing, but IMAX makes this an astonishing trip all the same.

A stunning drama that's distinguished by a magnificent performance; the most powerful scenes are those that play, as recollection or confession, on Lena Endre's lovely face.

The lean, athletic Mr. Herzog, 83 years old, seems as spry and eager as ever, and his global enthusiasm remains a force of nature in itself. Ghost Elephants takes its place as yet another of the director’s essential forays into the wild and unknown.

The movie is maddening too, just as it intends to be, but you do watch, and care, and learn. What seems at first to be a gallery of narcissistic rogues turns into something else, a study in equal-opportunity romantic folly.

Mr. Lee's film is stronger as a visual experience - especially in 3-D - than an emotional one, but it has a final plot twist that may also change what you thought you knew about the ancient art of storytelling.

This is more than a respectful remake; Let Me In is quietly stylish and thoroughly chilling in its own right.

It’s all too seldom that a feature film combines brilliant acting with a spellbinding flow of language.

The Witness is remarkable for its emotional impact, and its clarity. The picture that emerges isn’t perfectly clear; the whole truth will never be known, Bill Genovese says. What he has made known, though, is valuable.

No beauty contest has ever been more bizarre than the one in Gerardo Naranjo's shockingly powerful thriller.

Should be a delight for everyone. Bird watchers will find affirmation and even explanation for their avocation. People who can't tell a towhee from a titmouse will still wonder at the beauty of it all.